No, these are not the greatest images, that’s not the intent. The D4 has a new Custom Setting, e4 that I wanted to test and get to know it and the weather was perfect for do just that (have a D4 but don’t know about e4…oops…guess you have some testing to do). I started off with that intent but then it was such great shooting, I kinda shunned testing and work and just kept blasting away. What you see here is the very simple but so important use of flash in wildlife photography. The image on the left has flash fill and the right, ambient light exposure. The goal to me is real simple, you don’t know I’m using flash when I’m using flash. Now you might be asking, how did I do that? I thought you might ask that question so in the next posting, I have an answer for you!
This photograph of an endangered Giant Kangaroo Rat was taken with a 14mm lens less then 8″ away from the critter. How did I do that and a more important question, can you do that?
I think you can with a little knowledge and that’s where this course will help. Short Lens Wildlife Photography Course is for anybody with any brand and any focal length lens. But the goal is to teach basic and advance wildlife photography techniques and strategies using lenses no longer than 400mm. Just how do you fill the frame with your subject with just a 200mm or 300mm lens? That’s one question we’ll answer in this two day class. In that answer is such information like finding the critter, light, flash, biology, approach and a few other essential pieces of the puzzle.
What’s required for the course? A willingness and passion for wildlife photography. That’s all! But if you want to take it further, this is what else you might want to bring. It is an intensive two day, weekend course with no field shooting. But (you knew that was coming) when you come with a camera body, a lens, 70-200 or 70-300 or 300f2.8 or 200-400 or straight 400mm just to mention a few options and a flash, I will have you shooting in the class subjects that might not be moving but will drive you nuts while teaching you very important lessons. My goal for you for the weekend is for you to leave with the confidence and knowledge you can photograph any critter your heart desires with the gear you own!
Have I caught your imagination, more importantly your heart? Well here’s the deal, we’re looking for at least 10 people (25 max) to register to put this on. It will be 7-8 July, 2012 and the price is only $395 (pays for instruction only) for the weekend course. You call, and register and once we have the minimum of 10 folks, we’ll charge you for the workshop and off we go. Oh yeah, it will be held in Mammoth Lakes, CA high up in the Sierra where in July you’ll have plenty of subjects to practice on in the evenings after the course. If you’re game, give us a call at 760.924.8632 / 661.204.1506!
The brushes from Visible Dust Kit, they have saved my butt on more then one occasion! I have two kits, one in the office and one in my travel gear and each kit contains 3 brushes. Like just about everyone else on the planet, at some time or another I have got the tips of the brushes under the sensor frame coating the brushes and then the sensor in crap! After cleaning the sensor with swabs, I’m left with a non-useable brush. Now Visible Dust does sell a fluid for cleaning their brushes but beside being $40, it’s simply not easy to use. I wasn’t getting my brushes clean so they were still unusable. And brushes are too expensive to be disposable! I needed a solution in every sense of the word.
So I put up a note on G+ that Jason Odell responded to saying he just uses Dawn dish soap. Well, I got that so I gave it a go and darn if it didn’t work perfectly! So here’s my version of Jason’s technique for cleaning brushes:
Put a couple of drops of Dawn dish soap in a, clean, one cup container with enough tap water to cover brush heads
Thoroughly wet the brushes with tap water and then whisk around in the soapy water you just made.
Thoroughly rinse out the brushes in tap water until NO soap remains (watch the bubbles).
Thoroughly rinse out the brushes again but this time use distilled water.
Shake dry as best you can and then let dry for about 24hrs
You might be wondering about drying. I did grab Sharon’s hairdryer and hit the brushes for a couple of minutes and then let them air dry the rest of the time. Now here’s the most important part, testing the brushes after you’re done. I used a clean mirror and a flashlight to check my brushes and found one not clean so I repeated the process. I now have a clean set of brushes and all it cost was a couple of drops of Dawn and half gallon of distilled water. I want to thank Jason for sharing this great tip!
With the Think Tank videos posted on YouTube, had a number of emails and board postings asking more about my use of it. The video shows how I pack it, but you might wanna also look at the other video, the external parts of the bag as it does into things. But to answer the universal question, 99.9% of the time, it does in the overhead in the plane. There are a couple of times on regional jets (and not everytime), it has to go Ala Cart. Watch the external video to see how I deal with that. When I’m doing aviation work and the longest lens I’m going to use is the 200-400VR2, Think Tank is the way to go. If I’m taking the 600VR, it’s MP-1 time!
We just had in one day (what is it they say about Mondays?) two hardship cancelations for our upcoming FL K&M Adventure at the end of this month (25-30 April) and our SD K&M Adventure (16-21 May). We’re talking birds and boat ride, pronghorn and baby bison. We are talking landscape and digital darkroom, we are talking good ol fun! If you can make it, give Sharon a call 760.924.8632.
Yeap, you can see my videos now on YouTube on the Moose Channel! The crew came down for the weekend to help the ol man get caught up and thanks to Katt, the Channel is up and running. You cannot only see new video content we’ve never posted before here, but you can watch it on your mobile device as well. We’ve only got about 15% of the video content up and because of the system, the order is passes on upload date and not shot date so I have created Playlists to try to organize the content. Some is dated, some is pathetic and some is just downright comedic and it’s all there to help share what knowledge I have acquired. Enjoy!
