Oct 18, 2019 | Landscape Photography
There is a certain calm that comes with Friday morning and that’s the knowledge tomorrow is the weekend. When you’re able to train your lens than on a landscape with the rolling ground fog constantly transforming your view, it’s just the perfect start to it all. That was our morning this morning. Went to Plan A site to find no ground fog so went to Plan B site and bam … there is was!!!
There are many approaches one can take to shooting the landscape draped in ground fog. For example, color or black and white. Another is wide or long and this morning overlooking Townsend, TN, I went with long. That’s because I wanted to bring the calm beauty of the wrapping ground fog up close and personal. The Z7 / 180-400VR made it real simple shooting at times at 180mm and then 560mm and anything in between. And each time I saw a new detail, graphic, in the viewfinder I would decide to go either B&W or color. It was the perfect start to the weekend!
Oct 15, 2019 | Landscape Photography
Our time in Newfoundland last week was simply amazing! One of the cool things we did on a really dark day was spending time at Cape Spear. Cape Spear is as far east as you can get in North America. This amazingly gorgeous and romantic piece of land is so fascinating, we spent three hours in the very cold fog wandering around with our cameras shooting Z6 / Z14-30).
This is the original lighthouse that over time went from a single light in a dome to be enclosed in this structure. The new lighthouse you can see down the bluff. Going inside the original lighthouse, you can see how the lightkeepers lived and worked. One of the windows looks out on the Atlantic and takes in the new lighthouse.
The dark skies and the subject matter were an instant call to go to B&W. Cape Spear sticking put in the Atlantic as it does, the clouds swirl around so, in a short time, the skies will be different. I used this as I walked around to frame up the original lighthouse. I worked the thinner – lighter parts of the sky so they would be above the structure and I walked around doing a full 360 of the lighthouse. Being the furthest east part of North America, on the Atlantic and the mood of the skies really made the photo process pretty simple. The romance just oozed in!
Oct 4, 2019 | Wildlife Photography
When most hear the name Bighorn Sheep, they think of those high up in the Rockies, butting heads in the snow and braving the cold. The Rocky Mountain Bighorn is a spectacular creature but they are rivaled by their desert cousin, the Nelson’s or Desert Bighorn Sheep. My life long fascination and love for Bighorn began with the Desert Bighorn way back in ’84 when I was part of a translocation, there to document and work the move. When you are sitting on three animals (that’s a heck of a story) and one of them kicks your F3T out of your hand while shooting, you tend to have a whole lot of respect for that critter. I fell in love with them that day which still goes strong today.
As you might imagine, finding let alone photographing Desert Bighorn Sheep requires going to the desert. At the same time, finding them in that vast space when they move about so much is a huge challenge. There are a few locations like in Palm Springs and by Hoover Dam, you find small bands that are well known, but by and large they are a secretive species. That’s one reason why I’ve not gone after them for decades with a camera, just watched them every now and then with bins. Another reason is they live in a rugged word where triple digits and vertical faces are the nicest things you can say about their habit. This doesn’t lend themselves to a quick pic.
One well known but guarded secret place to find the Desert Bighorn Sheep is the Great Basin Nat’l Park. That’s where we found them for a couple of days until they moved downrange to forage. For those couple of days, we had a herd of ninty head, rams and ewes which had come together at the beginning of their rut. When sex is in the air, a big, white Suburban is not even noticed bristling with 180-400VR out its window. The time we had with the herd was the finest Bighorn Sheep photography I’ve ever experienced!
On the last day of our trip, the sheep were gone from the locales where we had been working them. After many hours, we finally found them downslope foraging and new greens and in a locale, there was no way we could access. I talked with a range manager a week later to find out they had walked over the mountain and were in a valley that was accessible by helo only. We lucked out with our three days with the herd, but what a magical three days. You can see more images from my time here but this is just a fraction of what I shot and doesn’t come close to fulfilling my love affair with this noble king of the desert.
Oct 2, 2019 | Wildlife Photography
Ever since I saw my first photo of a Northern Gannet over thirty years ago, I’ve longed to see it with my own eyes. Bird Rock at the Cape St Mary’s Ecological Reserve is the site of the Northern Gannet nesting colony. Just a tad short of the eastern point of North America, this lone sea stack starting in May, is the home to forty thousand plus Gannets for the few months they come off the sea to set forth the next generation. It’s a sight and sound I have longed to witness and it is nothing like I imagined. It is so much more!
The photographic challenge smacks you right in the face when you walk up to the edge. How do you tell the story of this natural wonder, nesting Northern Gannets of Newfoundland? Standing back and shooting the entire coastline (Z6 / Z24-70f2.8) is one option but then, who are all the white dots? You focus on just an individual, even one propositioning a hopeful mate (D5 / 180-400VR), and you lose the mass. I’m a couple of days into this challenge and after the first day, I knew I was close, but no cigar. The second day I was closer … I have more days to tell the story in my photos of one of many.
Sep 26, 2019 | Wildlife Photography
The Alaskan Sea Otter is an incredibly charismatic critter that you simply fall in love with the first time you see them! The first otter biologist we worked with called them Teddy Bears of the Sea and the next biologist called them the Clowns of the Sea. They are both and so much more. When you’re on the water with them, they share their world with you as they sleep, eat, swim and of course, constantly replenish the air in their thick coats. It’s soooo easy to get caught up in all of this as you watch them in your viewfinder and forget the one very important element, the background.
Sea Otters tend to have light-toned heads, more so as they get older. Since the mind’s eye goes to light and bright first, this basic physiological characteristic makes it really simple to make the Otter in their watery world pop in your photo no matter how small it is in the frame. That’s unless you lose track of the bright highlights/reflections of the water surrounding them. That’s not to say those reflections from the sky need to be entirely eliminated, but minimized doesn’t hurt your visual storytelling. You want your viewer’s eye going to just one place in your photo, to that cute Sea Otter!
Photos captured by D5 / 180-400VR from Karls magnificent boat on Kachemak Bay, AK
Sep 23, 2019 | Landscape Photography
Alabama Hills
captured by D3x / 24-70f2.8
Yeah, it’s simply gorgeous out! Spent the morning stacking firewood with the clouds floating past overhead and the gorgeous light that is, fall. I have basically every minute between now and Thanksgiving planned to be out amongst the leaves to drink in every drop of light pouring through them. It comes to fast each year and goes by even faster!
Conway Summit
captured by D3x / 24-70f2.8
As I mentioned in my podcast today, I think the Eastern Sierra (this is Conway Summit) will have a good fall color show. You need two key ingredients for fall color, wet late spring and a good cold snap. We had the snow in May and we just had a quick storm blow through a week ago with its cold temps. That is setting up the eastside for good color. If you need hints or ideas on how to work with fall color, be sure to check out my KelbyOne Classes on Moose’s Fall Color Class. And be sure to get out and play in the leaves, it’s good for the soul!
