Oct 10, 2014 | Random Thoughts
Now I’m bloody excited! I’m heading out for my first Africa safari in a few hours and going with the amazing Images in Africa folks for what will be a trip of a lifetime. Being all new, I’ve been busy doing my homework trying to learn the new critters I’m hoping to photograph. Knowing your subject is so important to coming back with that memorable photograph. Now the giraffe and elephant, I’ve got them down. It’s the Cape Fox, Lesser Bushbay and African Swamphen or White-backed Mousebird (great, they combine mammal and bird names!) and so many more I’m working on. Jake is there now and today he wrote us saying, “even the dirt birds are great!” so I’m jamming and cramming. Part of this process is creating my file naming architecture. Each night, I will go through my images and edit them, figure out who is who and then with that done, be able to rename, file and back all the images up so when I get back in the office, I just have to move them to the NAS boxes. These are the two books I’m taking with me and relying on. You can see the bird book is a bit page warn already. That homework thing, knowing your subject so you can photograph it … it’s giving me a bit of a headache! Good thing I have a 20hrs flight to get over it.
Aug 25, 2014 | Aviation, Random Thoughts
“Think vertical, vertical, vertical!” My good friend Richard likes to remind aviation photographers to think vertical when flying air to air photo missions. I don’t know about you, but I just don’t think verticals naturally. My vision is always on either the wide or intimate horizontal not the vertical. My mind’s eye just doesn’t naturally go vertically but if you want magazine covers, you gotta think vertically. In my entire editorial career, I was never after covers because I naturally arrange elements horizonatly. The one cover I cherish the most was the last wrap around cover Audubon magazine ever did in 1995, a horizontal image of a California Gnatcatcher. Not really worried about covers, I don’t shoot verticals for covers. Just having my 10th cover for 2014 hitting the news rack this week, it made me think I should say something about this unnatural photographic format that does pay bills.
Being an old fart, I still call them verticals still while most call them the portrait format. Anyways, the vertical used on magazine covers is not the same aspect ration as when we turn our cameras vertically. At that same time, covers have to have room for type and at the very minimum, the name of the magazine at the top of the vertical. So if verticals aren’t a challenge enough, you should leave room for the cropping to the right aspect ration and type. Just knowing those two things, you can see why I’ve never been really trying to get covers. Staying true to your style and storytelling makes covers hard to do. But covers are where the money lies with some going for as much as $2k on the big mags! What you see here is our 10th cover for the year and one I shot hoping it would be a cover. If you look at the top image and remove the type, you can see that it’s not an image you would normally frame in that way. Because without the crop and text, it’s kinda stale. If you look at the bottom and crop it to the right aspect ratio for a cover and place type, you can imagine how tight it would be. That intimate portrait was why I framed it the way I did to begin with in the viewfinder. So while we typically go to the vertical format to tell the story of height, I want to encourage you to think about the other life of the vertical.
Apr 2, 2014 | Random Thoughts
but it wasn’t just ten minutes ago …..
Lying in bed about an hour ago when there was crash in the kitchen. One, single, noise. Sharon says, “There’s a critter in the house.” I go back to sleep.
Thirty minutes later, our dog jumps up in the bed and is lying there not really sleeping. I’ve gone back to sleep.
At 0400, I hear another loud noise upstairs so I’m sent to investigate. I have our dog with me and I no sooner turn the corner into the living room from the stairs then I see a gray flash going behind the TV, our dog in hot pursuit.
I get our dog downstairs, a net and Sharon upstairs and for the next ten minutes it is Loony Tune time as I chase a flying squirrel around the living room. Did you know them suckers are fast?!
The squirrel finally went down the stairs and hit the tile floor where it meet its match. The tile floor! It did a burn out on the tile not able to move an inch. No traction. I netted it and released it back on tree outside.
So, how did you spend your 0400 this morning?
Feb 4, 2014 | Random Thoughts
Sharon & I have spent a lot of time working with kids over the decades, sharing our passion for our wild heritage with them but this is a first. An “impersonator” went in my stead and it sounds like he was a HUGE success. We want to thank Mike for sharing the passion though the lack of a mustache is the dead give away!
Thanks Mike!!!!
Hi Moose,
Today was dress as your favorite character day at my elementary school. I dressed up as you (as best I could!) and had the students who were still in costume come down at the end of the day while our librarian snapped a photo. I went into each classroom during the day and showed them my “Moose Peterson ID” (the plastic sleeve on my photog jacket). I explained that you were a world famous wildlife photographer—and that you helped save endangered species. This made you quite popular! I told them to go home and google your website so you may get 500 hits over the weekend!
Enjoy,
Mike Schwinden, Principal
Mitchell Elementary School
Needham, MA
Jan 20, 2014 | Random Thoughts
His words make you think, his photos make you feel. Perfect!
Jan 9, 2014 | Random Thoughts
I was flooded with emails from an image I posted on G+ yesterday in regards to my comment, “rejected.” “How can you take rejection” one emailer asked. Another simply said, “You get rejected at this point in your career?” Failure is part of photography, from the taking of the image to getting it printed in a magazine and a whole lot more. Living in the editorial world, I have a filing cabinet drawer full of rejection notices, and that’s before the days of email! You have a lot of ways you can take rejection. In the world of editorial, I always ask why the images didn’t work. In the early years, it was because the images sucked and I often got an ear full how I could improve. Taking heed of what I was told, my photography improved. That’s how it works, you learn and grow. When rejection happens now, it’s not an image quality issue, it’s a simple, the photo didn’t work for the story being told. Now I still ask why, what’s missing because storytelling is very important to me. But I don’t take any of this personally, I embrace it as a learning possibility even if it hurts.
