Oct 20, 2017 | Wildlife Photography
I had the itch to spend some time with my birds. So I set up the D850 / 800mm on a bird bath where I could work on the computer and shoot. I actually had a great time, photographed over a dozen species and made a couple of images I really like. What I love seeing in the photographs was the dramatic change in the light. Over the couple of hours, the light on the birds and the background really changed, changing the entire photo. What you see below is Cassin’s Finch, Red-breasted, White-breasted and Pygmy Nuthatch, male & female Red-shafted Flicker, White-headed Woodpecker, Evening Grosbeak and Stellar’s Jay. I just love my birds!
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Oct 9, 2017 | Wildlife Photography
White-crowned Sparrow
captured by D850 / 800mm
I’ve had a whole lot of folks ask about the D850 for wildlife photography. The honest answer is, I’ve not really had the time nor opportunity to truly photograph critters with it yet. It’s a valid question because, on paper, the D850 appears to be perfect. For example, I’ve always needed myself a minimum frames per second of 5.5FPS which the D850 blows by with 7 native and 9FPS with the MB-D18. Even better is the buffer which for all intent and purpose is endless (yes, technically there is a limit). After a week of focusing in on the backyard critters, I can easily say the D850 does a great job with wildlife!
Golden-mantled Ground Squirrel
captured by D850 / 300PF
I first went with a D850 / 300PF combo chasing squirrels around the wood pile. This small, light package was pretty darn easy and fun to shoot with. The rockin D850 AF system made shooting in the low light a snap which is really important in wildlife photography. With that checked off the list for first tests, I switched to the big gun and birds. With fall color quickly disappearing from our meadow, I set up on a bird bath for the birds coming in. White-crowns just showed up for fall so I focused in on them while saying fall in the photo. The first thing I noticed with the D850 on the 800mm was the balance. To really make that work for my style of photography, the MB-D18 needs to be attached. The balance on the rig as well as vertical firing button it provides is needed for my style of shooting. But when it comes to performance, the D850 rocked it. Many have asked if the D850 will be my main wildlide body. It won’t be because I not only love the D5, I don’t need those huge files for critters. Will I use the D850 for critters though? From time to time, you bet. Can the D850 be your main body for wildlife? Oh heck ya! With that choice, you’d never have to look back, but only forward to killer performance and images!
Sep 27, 2017 | Wildlife Photography
I’ve written many times about getting down low when shooting. The whole thing about getting down low is to control the background so the subject pops. This need comes from shooting a subject low to the ground and pointing the lens down captures too much background or, shooting up not only controls the background but adds drama. When standing up how do you know how low you need to go, or even if you need to go low in the first place? It starts with seeing that the subject is blending in with the background. After that, it’s just getting down a lot and knowing if it’s worth it or not.
Here are two photos of the same American Golden Plover and one is working and one is not. Can you tell which? I love the action of the tail in the top photo and the biology and calm of the bottom photo. That said, the light at the top of the frame in the top photo drives me nuts! The eye goes up there and there it stays. The bottom photo the background permits the eye to go around and around searching through the information to gather the story. Now getting down with a D5 / 800mm gracefully and quiet enough not to bother a nesting bird is a challenge in itself. Using the Gitzo GT5563GS takes no more than pull out the lock on the collar and flattening the rig. So when you get in position and you see you’re too low, simply take just ONE leg up just ONE notch and you can fine tune the background like you see above. The key is to SEE that bright light at the top of the frame because when you do, you know the answer to how low to go!
Aug 30, 2017 | Wildlife Photography
Fall is less than a month away and with it comes colder temps and thicker fur. At the same time for many mammals, it’s time for fall mating rituals. When you add into this mix the colors of fall and the gorgeous light and you have a wildlife photographer’s nirvana! This all can bring to the table a huge challenge as a visual storyteller. You might think gear can be an issue, but I think that’s the least of them. The basics of photo creating gets in there quickly. There can be a lot going on in excluding those elements that take the eye away from the subject while including those that tell the story. But on the scale of the biggest, it has to be the romance. Here are some thoughts.
Dall Sheep
captured by D2H / 400f2.8
I’ve selected the images I have illustrating this post based on all the varied gear used to make the photos. The only common thread is it’s all Nikon and all digital. After that, it’s kinda all over the map on bodies and lenses. This is to make the point that while I might prefer the 200-400VR2 for my big game photography, I’ve used all sorts of varying focal lengths with success (you can click on links in the captions to learn more about the lenses). What’s the key to the right lens? You need a focal length that YOU are comfortable with to tell YOUR story. How to find that focal length? I quick way is to rent a lens like the Nikkor 200-500, and then photograph a big dog/horse at 200mm, then 300mm, 400mm, 500mm (nothing in between, not zooming to frame your subject) by using your feet to zoom. You will find the focal length you prefer to tell the story pretty fast. That is as long you don’t go to the “eyeball” camp. But there is more to this than just gear.
If you take a moment and look at these four images, they all have one important thing in common. At least I think it’s important, and that’s the light. Showing off that thick fall/winter fur, I prefer and overcast light that has direction. And that direction is backlight. Why? Lack of contrast I feel is very important because too much contrast brings shadow and that makes the fur look “thinner” because individual hairs appear. The lack of shadow makes the fur “thicker” as the hair is in mass. The backlight gives a slight sheen to the hair as well as poop the critter from the background. But most importantly, this combination of light brings out the bulk of the critter, its muscle and fur bulk that comes with fall. These are important ingredients leading down the road of romance. But there is still more to get to that final image.
Wrapping all this up into a photo that reaches out and grabs the heartstring is a combination of background and biology. Where does your critter live, how does it survive, what makes it unique, how does it procreate? These are just some of the questions you can ask and answer in your photograph that begins to tap the viewer’s imagination. And this is still not enough! The final punch has to come from gesture in the entire photograph, critter, and its world. And the time to work all this out is not while you’re standing in front of battling Moose, perched Dall Sheep, foraging Polar Bear or dozy Pronghorn. The time to work this all out is with that big dog/horse. It’s from that practice that you can make the most of those precious moments with that critter in the wild. It’s only by thinking it through and working out the kinks that you’re ready for the season of fur!
Aug 1, 2017 | Wildlife Photography
Willow Ptarmigan
captured D5 / 800mm
Well, we call them Jim Bob, the rest of the world calls them Willow Ptarmigan (the Alaska State Bird). When it’s mating season this largish bird simply turns stupid. While not the brightest bird in the flock to start with (some hunt them by simply throwing rocks at them), when there is sex in the air, all thought goes to one thing, attracting a mate. Many years ago we had one basically fly into the window of the van while in pursuit of another male it felt was trespassing on its territory. Every since that moment, we’ve affectionately called them Jim Bob.
Willow Ptarmigan
captured D5 / 800mm
What you see here is their plumage as it changes from their all white winter garb to the brown summer garb. As they molt out their winter white you get the variants you see here. It is amazing how well this chicken size bird can hide behind just one piece of grass even with their plumage not completely swapped out. And when there are females flying about looking for a mate, the males simply turn stupid which for the wildlife photographer is a golden opportunity!
Willow Ptarmigan
captured D5 / 800mm
With their concentration elsewhere, getting up close is just a matter of time. At first, when you approach, they are like many birds and move away. But once you wait them out, perhaps just five or ten minutes, you can slowly move in to get the photograph you desire. I was shooting with the D5 / 800mm which permitted me to eliminate unwanted elements in the background while containing those elements I wanted. The time it took to get from the image at the top to the one at the bottom was about twenty minutes of slowly moving up. There was four of us working this one bird and we took turns moving forward five to eight feet at a time until finally, I was at my MFD of 16 feet from this male (photo below). Once I got my photos, I moved away just as slowly and an hour after we started shooting Jim Bob, we all had moved back to the vehicle and he hadn’t moved a stitch. But them, that’s why we call him affectionately, Jim Bob.
Willow Ptarmigan
captured D5 / 800mm
Jul 6, 2017 | Wildlife Photography
We were so fortunate last week to spend it in the company of some great shooter and amazing birds. That combination should have produced some killer images. It was on paper the perfect mix of biology and technology, hummers and flash. Madera Cyn, Santa Rita Lodge, in particular, is simply a spectacular location for birds, specifically hummers. With that biology, today’s iTTL technology is the perfect tool for produce the images we were after. We should start there, the image we were after. There are definitely two camps when it comes to Hummer photos, frozen wings, and blurred wings. After seeing my aviation work and the blurred props, it’s no coincidence I’m in the blurred wing camp. It’s simple, I experience hummers as this blurred jewel and that’s how I want to tell their story in my photos. And that’s where this all begins, the subject and the story I want to tell.
What makes hummers so darn cool? Their hovering abilities and the amazing colors they bring to our world. The key to bringing this to life is flash. There is a simple rule in photography regarding light … The angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection. This rule is very angular, straight line but our subject is anything but flat! The curve of the hummingbird gorget, throat, is very curved so if we use a flash by itself, we end up with just one specular highlight or one spot on the neck with color. To overcome this rule of physics, we used two SB-5000s each with a Rogue FlashBender 2 small. As you can see below, they are attached together and curved. With this, you can light up the entire throat of the hummer and the light bounces back with all the color to the film plane. Easy peasy! There is just one little flaw in this whole light, hummer, success theory!
The technology worked great. The main rig was the D500, 300PF, 2x SB-5000s (with SD connected) with the 2 Rogue. Shooting using the Autoarea AF in the D500 along with wireless WR-R10 iTTL made the technical pretty simple. The 300PF with its fast focsuing and MFD was the perfect lens to use for this challenge. More importantly, this very small, totally portable rig took the hassle out of big lights, boxes and expense out of the picture. And with the ease came the fun! The hitch to all this great theory is the person behind the camera and the bird in front of it. As you can see in the Magnificent photo at the top, when the Hummer was facing into the lights, he lights up like neon. But when he doesn’t face into the lights, the rule of light means we see only black neck.
So, what went wrong? The fault is all mine, the person behind the camera and not the theory or the technology but rather the execution. Control in wildlife photography is a myth but we can slant things in our favor. In this case, the hummer was able to feed on the side flowers on the feeder. By not placing tape on them, the hummer could come and go sides ways rather than in from the back which would have made them face the lights (like in the top photo). Now can this all work? Oh hell ya, just take a look at what Carol captured with the same rig, same hummer, gorgeous! So what does this all mean? It means I will spend more time working on my end of the deal, the person behind the camera and I will be heading back again next summer to Madera to put it into practice! Because where it has to look great in the photo, all the light melded together to show off these flying jewels. It doesn’t count if it jsut looks great on paper!
Note: Many have asked for my settings in doing this. Knowing that info is useless as the ambient light always changes, the flash to subject distance fluctuates and most importantly, how we meld light will always be different. If you want to find out the settings for you, set up your rig and photograph a red xmas ball in various light and then you will have your numbers for YOUR photography.
