Nov 24, 2014 | Wildlife Photography
I just wanted to take a moment to say thanks … thanks for the gorgeous Chilkat River Valley that in the 70’s wise folks were smart enough to preserve for the eagles. Thankful for the GREAT guys who asked us to come up to witness this amazing part of our wild heritage. And thankful the majesty of the Bald Eagle still flies in our skies and we can watch them endlessly going through their antics. It was an amazing week with much more to come once back to a reliable connection. Homeward bound after this past week, it sticks in your soul, the magic of eagles.
Nov 21, 2014 | Wildlife Photography
The Eagles of Haines or Chilkat River are legendary! I’ve known about them long before I was even a photographer. It was once the place only the brave traveled, it remoteness and severity in weather made it a locale few ventured to. That changed and now it is a destination for many wildlife photographers from around the world. A loyal group of K&M folk asked Kevin & I 18 months ago to bring them up here. We’d never been here but were more than up for the adventure, so here we are! But the eagles, well …
You need two important elements to get the legendary show the area is known for, ice and salmon. We have neither right now and that makes the photography a challenge. Furthering the challenge for me personally is, I have photographed Bald Eagles, a lot, and have my own favorites that will be hard to improve on. With the challenges of getting here, we got a late start today, what good light had slipped by before we were in the field. None the less we found eagles. Now, these photos to me are really, well, barely keepers. One thing I mentioned to the group is the Bald Eagle is a commonly photographed bird. Hard to understand when they are a challenge for most but so many venture to locations like Chilkoot that there are lots of great images out there. So getting the uncommon shots of the common will be the goal. These photos though shot with the D4s / 800mm are common shots at the very best. We will do better but I won’t be satisfied with these kinds of images. Only time will tell how well we’ll do as I’m back with the eagles.
Nov 20, 2014 | Wildlife Photography
The effects of going to Africa are still very much resonating in my heart even a month later. All the images are filed, backed up and finished and I find myself constantly going back and looking at them to see if, the trip really did happen and if I really did take the photos. This is a pair of White-fronted Bee-eaters. Greg did a marvelous driving the landie right up to them and with a couple of tweaks, I had the perfect background. Not only were the birds really cool, but the light and more importantly, its direction perfect to light up them colors. Just look at them backs light up! Gorgeous, simply gorgeous! And the fact they were in love didn’t hurt a thing, they were quite animated.
Shooting with the D4s / 800mm (with the converter) I still used HSC to make the shot. The HSC helped also with the FPS, increasing it so I could capture the small, quick gestures of love the two displayed. If they were on any other perch, bigger in diameter or deeper in the tree, the photo wouldn’t have worked and there were times, they used other perches while foraging. It was this moment that lasted perhaps, 2-3 minutes though which stand out in my memory. I’m just so thankful that the moments aren’t committed to just memory. So glad the camera captured the moment to.
Nov 12, 2014 | Wildlife Photography
It’s been a few weeks since getting back from Africa and I’m still getting through all my images from the Safari. At this point, I’ve forgotten which drive I ended up with a horrible dust spot on my sensor (Sensor Gel was a life saver!), so I’m checking all my images. Even though I was shooting D4s / 800mm wide open, this one dust spot is HUGE! Well, got to the lion shots and I started seeing all these additional, new spots and I started to mumble to myself. I hate dealing with dust in post … boring! I’m in ACR doing this, kinda machine like looking at the black and white outlines on the prowl for dust. I then turned off the preview to realize that the dust spots I was so diligently removing weren’t dust spots at all, but flies! So, I had to go back and undue all the “dust” spots I removed so the flies can live. Argh!
Oct 30, 2014 | Wildlife Photography
I have a whole new appreciation and admiration for the very endangered African Wild Dog. No, never once felt threatened by the Dogs or any critter at anytime on safari. This adult who’s pack had just made two kills, was as well fed as Wild Dogs can be. It’s one of those moments I look for in my files after a shoot like this where I’ve laid down on the hammer and taken 50+ images in a few seconds. Shooting the D4s / 800mm, it’s the tilt of the right ear that connects with my warp sense of humor. As I go through my images, I just see things like this and most of the time, just say the caption with an inside voice. Then there are times I let it out.
Oct 28, 2014 | Wildlife Photography
We have such marvelous tools available to us, but in order to select the right one for the task at hand, we have to first ask, “The problem is …” and then come up with the answer. We all approach our photography differently, that’s how it is supposed to be! And while that is true, there are many aspects of the craft we all have in common. One of those is this thing called exposure. The light and how it falls on our subject and then is related by our meter to the pixels is a magical and maddening process at times. There are many aspects to this formula but the one that is the hardest for most to wrangle with is the light. While we can see with our eyes/brain a range of 14 stops of light with a single glance, most cameras can only hold detail in 5 stops, and a couple, 6 stops, in a single click. And I know right there, in that one sentence, I just lost many of you. That’s why I think I was flooded with questions from the confusion generated by my post yesterday. To get the full, long winded explanation to this, I encourage you to get our FREE Photography FUNdementals. But here’s the abridge version.
If we were to measure the light using a spot meter (this is a “IF” proposition, I DO NOT use a spot meter) falling on the top and front of this Leopard, keeping a constant f/stop, we would see the shutter speed change by just less than 5 stops. That tells us we have a 5 stop range of light on the subject. The camera can hold all the detail in one click. The background, which is shadow, if we measured it the same way using the top of the Leopard’s head and just the background behind the head, we would see we have a 7 stop range in the shutter speeds. And because of this, the background shadow is going black, loosing detail in that busy bush. I have no doubt this very, very, very brief description of the problem is just as confusing to many. That is to be expected because we are trying to use words to describe a visual issue that manifests itself technically. Yuck! That’s why in the 90’s I came up with the Teddy Bear Exercise in my own process of mastering this very important part of our visual storytelling. In grasping this limited 5 stop range of light, you have three important variables: Light, Camera, You! Exposure = Emotion but to get to this point in your photography, you must master light, camera and your storytelling. So before you try to grasp how the D4s works with a 6 stop of light of light, master how your camera you have now works and communicates light through exposure to tell your story. There is no race, time is your friend, you just gotta remember to find the right answer for your photography when you ask, the problem is …
