Field Reports | Moose Peterson's Website

GearHead Wednesday 14 – 28

Aug 6, 2014 | Field Reports

GearHead

Got a gear question you want/need answered? I want to help and answer it. Send your gear questions to me at Gear Questions and I’ll do my best every Wednesday (accept there will not be one next Wed) to answer as many questions as I can. Keep in mind the answers are just my $.02 worth and you have to take what works for you and your photography and embrace it and ignore the rest. So here’s this weeks questions ….

OK Moose
You’re heading off to photograph Grizzly Bears for the 100th time, what gear are you taking and why?
Al

Al, even as I write this I’m not 100% sure of everything I’m taking. I’ve photographed them so many times with so much different gear, I’m still pondering. For example, I’ve had as my prime long lens for the trip the: 300f2.8, 400f2.8, 200-400, 600f4 and last year for the first time, the 800f5.6AFS. This trip, I’m taking (I’m 99% sure) the following:

Bodies: D4s (primary) D810 (location/video work) Nikon 1 V3 w/10-30 (pocket camera) and 2x GoPro Hero+ (for vid and time lapse station)

Lenses: 800f5.6AFS (prime griz lens), 80-400VR3 (primary knock around lens), 24-70AFS (primary general storytelling), 18-35AFS (primary landscape), 16Fish (because its fun!)

Video: MS-77 DSLR/Video Mini Shotgun Microphone Kit (for sound on D4s / D810)

Tripod: Gitzo 5561SGT w/ Arca Swiss B2 (the height, weight, stability and flexibility which is vital in sand, mud and hillsides)

Flash: SB-910 (ppl portraits) loaded with Watson AA batteries

Media: 4 – Lexar 256GB 1066x, 2 – Lexar 64GB XQD, 6 – Lexar 128GB 600x SD, 2 – Lexar 64GB MicroSD (hope I don’t loose them!)

Back end: MacBook Retina, Buffalo Thunderbolt 2TB x2 (all of this to bring back the images), Lexar USB 3.0 Dual-Slot
GoalZero Sherpa 100 w/inverter (no electricity where we’re goin and this powers the Mac!), Xuma 8000 (charge GoPro, iPad)

and Sharon will have her Nikon 1 V2

The only other essential piece of gear is hip boots, we live in them while there. We’re going to be with griz and wolves and that’s the main objective. So each day I head out, I will take for sure the D4s / 800mm (set up and over my shoudler) and the rest will depend on the weather. I have an old Kelty Daypack that will hold two other lenses, rain shells, water and lunch and that’s it. There are no cars, no streets, you get around with just your feet. Hope this answers your question and only time will tell if I took the right set of tools..

“Why Do You Shoot So Much?”

Aug 5, 2014 | Field Reports

“Why do you shoot so much? You have so many great images, why are you always out shooting?” This question came in lately and it struck me as a little odd but then I started to notice things on the web that might have been the genesis of this question. The first and most heartfelt answer to why I shoot so much is simply, I love it! And just can’t think of anything else I want to do (being with Sharon of course goes without saying). Is there another reason?

Long ago, an editor said to me, “You’re only as good as your last published image.” Is that true? I don’t know but I took those words to heart. I took them as meaning that I need to constantly shoot to improve my photography and more importantly, visual storytelling. I need to perfect those techniques that are working and find new techniques for those photos that fail. It’s a constant process which is kept alive simply by shooting, a lot. Also, some of you are LONG time fans (to which I am ~very~ grateful!) and I think I owe you not to show you the same, old image over and over and over again. Same reason why at Photoshop World, I don’t repeat an image in all my shows (at least try like hell not to do that).

Sharon & I take off tomorrow to Alaska for, I don’t know, our hundredth trip perhaps, to spend more time with Grizzly Bears. My original reason to spend time with them was to understand an important part of California’s wild heritage which has disappeared. But within the first five minutes with them I was hooked and keep going back even though I have over 60k images of them in my files and they DON’T sell! What you see here are a couple of the first digital images I took of griz, shot in June, 2000 with a Nikon D1 / 400f2.8AFS (no one was shooting digital in June 2000). They don’t suck, pretty good biology but at this point, they are fourteen years old. I feel if I were to settle with these as all I want in my files for Grizzly Bear, I’m not only not growing photographically, but I’m not finishing the visual story I want to share with all of you about griz.

Every photographer follows their photographic passion differently and that’s what makes photography so great. We can all do just that! But for me, repeating old photos over and over again leaves me feeling, “I’m not learning much and don’t have much to share.” And quite the opposite is the case, I am constantly learning and I have lots to share. So, that’s the long winded answer to why I shoot so much.

D810 2 Week Wrap Up – A Vid

Aug 5, 2014 | Field Reports

Here ya go, D810 trivia learned the past two weeks. Blog posts mentioned in the video: First Impressions, D810 Video, Time Lapse, Flat and Flat and settings. Hope this helps you

Changing Our Measuring Stick?

Aug 4, 2014 | Field Reports

Why do we go click? Why do we go click after click after click?

We all, thank goodness, answer this question differently. But no matter where we are in our photography, so much goes into every click seemingly having the weight of the world on it. And because we are all different and because we are all in different places in our photography, we all measure the success of our clicks differently. But measure we do and from that rating, we make judgment calls. We might simply change exposure or lenses at the point of capture. Or later, we might delete or print the photo. What is the stick you measure your photos against … perfection?

“It’s Sharp!” “The Exposure is good!” “I like it!” These common measures are all very valid reasons along with a long list of others to measure our photographs as successful. These are the best reasons to keep clicking and to share those clicks. But are these measures enough, are they the starting point or the ending point we should shoot for in our photography?

The Falling Soldier by Capra, Life Magazine calls it an iconic photograph. Do you know the photo? I ask because it’s a photo that well, isn’t sharp, not truly a good exposure and as I understand it (and I’m not expert here), he only, kinda liked it. I’ve gone back and looked at this photo and its power for decades, never seeing it quite the same each time. And as Life states it so bluntly “the photograph was, in fact, just that: a photograph in a magazine. Period.” But it’s, iconic.

I’ve seen a whole bunch of fine images of late, ones that the photographers should be very proud to share. By every modern standard, they all measured up just fine. But is that good enough? I’m not saying that bad exposure and out focus is always acceptable, I’m also not saying that perfection is the best measure. In telling a visual story, perhaps those basic measures of exposure and sharpness aren’t the only marks? In telling that story, what if we measure with a higher standard such as the heart? We might just fine photography just got more difficult, but success is much sweeter. So I just raise the question in the desire to improve our photography, can we do it by changing our measuring stick?