Kauai Bird Portfolio
I posted a portfolio of some of my personal favorite images from our Kauai Adventure a few weeks back....
Read More
The Nēnē
I was kinda getting into desperate mode! It was shaping up to be another trip looking for certain species and because they are simply disappearing, vanished, gone from the planet, I was too late, again! The last couple of years I’ve been trying to photograph species that when I first started out in the 70’s I couldn’t because I didn’t have the means let alone the skill to go get the photograph. The last couple of years, I feel I’m getting more and more desperate as I make the journey only to find all too often, I’m too late! So it was on Kauai a few weeks back when I was laser beam focused on photographing the few remaining endangered bird species left on the island. By day three, we’d struck out and I was feeling pretty low. Our destruction of our wild heritage has been pretty thorough in the last forty years! After a frustrating morning at the top of Waimea Canyon looking a couple of endemic, endangered...
Read More
What Inspired Me
I’m often asked which photographers have inspired me. Those who know me know I can’t remember a person’s name seconds after being told it. I can name all the critters of North America, but someone I just meet, their name is lost to me. And while I don’t recall names worth a hoot, I can remember all the photographs I’ve seen over the decades. One of the photos I saw when I first got into photography decades ago was of a Red-tailed Tropicbird. The way the light came through the wings, the crazy long, red tail and the “floating in air” look of its flight simply caught my imagination. It’s a photograph I’ve always wanted, a species I’ve wanted to experience. And forty years later, I meet my inspiration! The photograph I saw all those years ago is pretty much the top photo you see here. It was simply a tropicbird floating by. Getting that shot way back when would have been quite a feat with manual advance camera...
Read More
Bird Photography in Paradise
We jetted from Florida and Photoshop World directly to Kauai for a Pacific paradise birding adventure. We really love Kauai having come here many times but this is the first with the express purpose of photographing birds. We started off with birds I’d seen before but not spent time photographing, they are grouped under the big heading of pelagic birds. That’s a term used for a group of birds that spend their life at sea except for nesting season. Amazing flyers, watching them catch and soar in the trade winds is a thing of beauty. That’s what I wanted to bring to my photographs. The birds dart about in the winds as they perform courtship to aerial chases with incredible speed and ease. There was only one option as far as I was concerned for gear, the D5 / 300PF with the D5 set to Auto Area AF. I started with the TC-14eIII because of the old adage, “Go out with your longest lens or come back short,” but...
Read More
Baby Day!
One of the great passages of spring is spring babies! Mother Nature knows how to celebrate when it brings us the kiddies to celebrate in our photographs! Yellowstone this past week was full of kids, especially with calf Wolf, Elk & Bison. But we had special moments with like Griz Cubs and others as well. When you are invited into the home of these critters and you can be a good guest and bring back the photographic memories, well then you simply count your blessing and share the stories! Up by Tower were a Black Bear and her cub. We were told that there were three cubs, but we only saw and photographed the one. Now it was your basic Yellowstone Bear Jam scenario which can drive some mad, and ugly. We avoided that by simply standing further back and longer glass. Shooting with the D5 / 800mm and picking the spot I wanted to photograph the bears on my terms. Living literally with black bears, I had a...
Read More
Life’s Surprises
Probably one of the biggest reasons I love being a wildlife photographer is because no matter how well I plan, how well equipped I might be, critters always surprise me. In that moment of surprise there is delight, learning, bewilderment and sometimes, a photograph to record the memory. Of course the pitfalls are monsterous but equally the rewards are staggering. So it was this afternoon in Yellowstone when we came around the corner and there were two 2-3year Griz siblings enjoying the afternoon sun. There was a small bear jam and since I’ve enjoyed griz many times, I took a vantage point where I could only see them through a small hole in the pines. Not even a good shot, just a fun shot to preserve the joy and fun of watching life unfold. It is essential in our photographic pursuits as we strive to do our best, to have fun and be open to all of life’s surprises! I want to tip my hat to the Rangers and...
Read More
