Gadgetry

iPhone image, post processed in Best Camera iphone application

OK I admit it, I'm a total sucker for gadgetry. And in that vein, I just got an iphone. I'd admired the little do-it-all wonder for some time, but the price had kept me from jumping on the band wagon. Recently, however, my other plan expired and I decided it was worth the extra bit for the shear niftiness of the iphone. Among that niftiness is the iphone's camera. At a mere 2 megapixels in the version I have, it is unlikely to ever produce to a truly publishable image, but that is not its purpose. Rather, I look at it as I would a Holga. A tool for creativity rather than reproduction. And it is great for that, always with me it allows me to snap some shots I would not have otherwise bothered with. Add to it, the neat application: Best Photo, developed by Chase Jarvis and you have hours and hours of entertainment. The image above is post-processed in Best Photo, which has some neat effects for a very simple program.

Anything to keep my creativity going, right? Or is it anything for a new spiffy gadget?

Not My Image: Patrick Endres

Patrick Endres is one of my favorite photographers of the Alaskan landscape. Add to that, he is a prolific Fairbanks local whose images, rich in color and depth, pop up all over the place. Though a generalist nature photographer, shooting everything from wildlife to people to landscapes, it is my opinion that Patrick does his best work when shooting dramatic mountain scenery. The image above is one of my favorites of his. He made it while shooting quickly in Prince William Sound. (Read his blog entry detailing the shot HERE).

I like the image because of the limited color. It primarily consists of tones of gray and blue. The image has excellent depth and most importantly tells a great story of the stark post-glacial landscape. It seems this shot could have been made in almost any year of earth's history, and I like that.

Additionally Patrick has a great blog where he discusses everything about Alaska photography, if you want to learn something from one of the best of Alaska's photographers, I encourage you to check it out HERE.

I'm looking forward to gleaning what I can from his this winter as we both work as guides on a Cheeseman's Ecology Safaris trip to Antarctica and the Southern Ocean. I'll be headed that direction shortly after Christmas.

Skiing Shoot

Canon EOS 7D, 500mm f4L, f4.0, 1/500th second, ISO 400, Exposure compensation: +0.17, tripod mounted.

An acquaintance of mine, an Olympic hopeful in cross-country skiing asked me to take some photos of him this weekend. He was looking for some decent looking action shots to send to his sponsors and get printed into posters to hand out at races. As it turns out, there is a lot more to going for the Olympics than just training and being fast on skis. There is a lot networking, and creating buzz.

So I met Tyson Flaharty and his wive Davya on Saturday afternoon. It was overcast which made for less than dramatic lighting, but at least the exposure was easy to judge without the sunlight creating too much contrast. There are a few hurdles to this kind of work. First it was reasonably cold, with the mercury sitting right around zero. That means that my batteries would not hold their charge nearly as long as on a warm day. To compensate for that I often pulled the battery out of the camera and put it in my pocket when we were moving from spot to spot, or as I was waiting for Tyson to get ready for another shoot.

The second issue with the cold is that, once outside, I couldn't take my equipment back indoors until the end of the shoot. Why? you ask. Simple: condensation. Just like a cold glass of beer sweating in a hot room, had I taken my cold camera and lenses indoors they would have fogged up and frosted over like an ice cube. (Tip: You can put your equipment in a plastic ziplock bags to keep this from happening, if you ever need to go in and out a lot during a cold shoot).

The last hurdle was the shoot itself. As I already mentioned the lighting was flat, but easy to expose for. I pushed the exposure about a stop to bring the snow to near white, but retaining texture and keeping texture in Tyson's black clothes. I nailed almost every exposure, it was easy. I shot primarily two lenses, my 70-200 f2.8L, and my 500mm f4L. We were shooting on forested ski trails so making Tyson pop out from the background required a very shallow depth of field. I shot wide open at ISO 400. I think I had better success with the 500 because of its extremely narrow depth of field. the background in the image above blurs nicely. It retains enough information to see that it is forest, but not enough to distract from Tyson.

Skiing, as any fast-paced sport is tough to shoot. Focus distances are constantly shifting and getting sharp images requires a fast autofocus and/or perfect timing. The 7D did well in this regard, it kept up with Tyson as he accelerated toward me and most shots are sharp. The image quality at ISO 400 suffered somewhat, a bit noisy which reduced some sharpness, but the results are acceptable.

As winter is here with a vengeance (it is now -22F as I write this) there will likely be more of this kind of thing to come. Mushing and ski season are underway!

Not My Image: NASA- (the merging of science and art)

Image by NASA of the center of the Milky Way Galaxy compiling photos from the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes and the Chandra Observatory

I found this image today on one of my favorite non-photography blogs: "Bad Astronomy" written by Dr. Phil Plait. I'm not really much of an astronomy buff, (though I do like to stare at the night sky for long periods of time), but Dr. Plait's blog is an excellent and highly readable mix of skepticism, science and trivia.

I selected this image for today's Not My Image feature because, I mean, really, like....wow. Soooo cool. This is a photo composite of the center of our milky way taken by three very different telescopes: the Hubble, Spitzer and Chandra. I won't go through the details, if you are curious about them you can read all about it on Bad Astronomy right HERE.

I will tell you what I like about it. Most importantly is what I mentioned in the title: It is a true merging of art and science. This image will be as interesting to a single-minded scientist with hardly a neuron firing on the right side of his brain as it will be to an artist, writer or photographer. The photo is full of mystery and questions, history and future, violence and incredible beauty, and... {stutters to a stop}.

I mean, really, like...wow...

Another Moose Image

Canon 7D, 70-200 f2.8L IS @ 200mm, 1/100th sec, f2.8, ISO 800, +.25 Exposure Compensation

I mean really, can you actually have too many images of a moose?

This is another from the series made a while back. It is a bit different perspective, though I was still trying to tell the same story as the image I previously posted. In short: Moose live in dense brush and are surprisingly hidden for huge animals. I also like the clearly winter aspect of the scene. One thing I prefer about this image is that the animal is not facing me directly. In wildlife photography, a little eye contact can create some visual tension which is good, but what it means is that the animal was aware of you, and more importantly, paying attention to you. That, is not good. In the previous image, I was a obtrusive and influencing the animal's natural behavior which is generally to be avoided. This image shows the moose paying me no mind, merely looking around its habitat (at the other moose that was there actually). In this shot, there is no evidence aside from the image itself that I was even there. Wildlife photographers should be that way, invisible except for our vision of the scene.

Katmai Bear Fight

Canon 40D, 500mm f4L IS, 1/1000th @ f4.5, ISO 100, -2/3 exposure compensation.

I've been meaning to post this image for some time, but just haven't gotten around to it. This is one of my favorite shots from this past summer. I made it during a National Geographic Expeditions trip I was leading in July. The highlight of the trip (at least for me) is a short day trip out to Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park. Brooks is THE place to watch bears, which also, and unfortunately, makes it a very popular place. There are lots of tourists and people management instead of wildlife management seems to be the main chore of the park rangers. Nonetheless, it is a great place for photography. If your timing is right, the bears are plentiful, close, and very easy to photograph. I've seen point-and-shooters emerge from Brooks Falls with enviable images. Visit if you get the chance, it won't be a solitary experience, but you'll enjoy it.

I made this image from the lower platform at the falls. This is the spill-over platform and is usually much less crowded. I actually prefer it to the upper platform for photography because the perspective is lower and behavior is easier observe. These two sub-adult bears were bickering over a fishing spot and my location provided a great angle on the action. None of the photogs lining the railing on the upper platform could get this kind of shot.

I'd like to say this took some huge amount of skill to attain, but really it didn't. It was a matter of being in the right place at the right time and knowing my camera well enough to focus and compose quickly. In fact, let that be today's lesson:

Know Your Camera: To work fast in changing light or action, you must know the controls of your camera backwards and forwards and in the dark (literally). You should be able to operate all you camera's settings without removing your eye from the view-finder. Can you change the ISO, the f-stop and shutter speed without looking at your fingers? If not, spend some time with your camera learning where everything is located. It will speed you up when you need it, because in wildlife, portrait, and even to a certain extent, landscape photography, things move quickly. You must too.

Not My Image: Alex Badyaev

Today, I launch a new feature here on the Wild Imagination Journal. I'm going to call it simply: Not My Image. That way there will be no mistaking these for mine, not that I think you'll be confused. The purpose of these occasional posts will be to share work of some of the photographers whom I admire and take inspiration.

I can think of no photographer I'd rather honor with this first post than Alex Badyaev. He is, in my opinion, one of the finest wildlife photographers...period. His work is absolutely beautiful, simultaneously showing behavior and place, combined with exquisite composition. He is an evolutionary biologist by trade, a professor of biology at the University of Arizona. And that makes his work even more outstanding: Photography isn't even his job! His expertise and knowledge about wildlife allow him a perspective rarely found in images of animals. Alex's technical expertise is also out of this world, incredible light, depth of field, composition, and focus. Take a few minutes, or longer, to browse his mind-blowing galleries and you'll understand what I'm talking about.

Find his site here: Ten Best Photos.

Return of the Night

Canon 7d, Sigma 30mm f1.4, 56 seconds, f1.4, (Bulb setting) ISO 400

I captured this image a few weeks ago on my very first night with Canon 7D. Night imagery is tricky in the digital world because the longer the shutter speed the more noise is generated. This image at 56 seconds is pushing it, but with acceptable results. The haze is from approaching clouds which were catching the lights of Fairbanks a few miles to the south of where I made the image on my property.

Winter is a difficult time of year for photography in Alaska. Conditions can be brutally cold, which is hard on equipment, hands and the rest of us. But the rewards can be great. Even close to Fairbanks we have superb sky watching, some of the best in fact. The aurora can rise in green curtains without warning and disappear just as quickly. I have relatively few images of the aurora, and once again, on the night I made this image it was absent yet again. I'll continue to keep my eyes on the sky this winter, and hopefully I come up with some images to share.

Oh, it's clear, full moon and -5 out as I write this. Welcome winter!

November Desktop

November Desktop calendar for your enjoyment. Click the image above to take you to a Flickr page. Select "all sizes" then download the size you want and set as your desktop.

Wilderness Photography

Canon 20D, 500mm f4L w/ 1.4tc, 1/800th sec @ f10, ISO 200

I made the image above on a photography trip I was leading for the excellent wilderness outfitter Arctic Wild in 2007. It was a custom trip, which basically means that the two clients wanted to have a trip designed to their needs. I was fortunate enough to be their guide. In mid-June I met my two clients in the remote village of Kaktovik on the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. From there we flew out to a wilderness airstrip on the Canning River for a few days of shooting, then moved north to the mouth of the Canning for the final days of the trip. Bird photography was the goal of the trip, and I did my best to put the two clients in the best situations I could muster. I think I was fairly successful. But shooting in these areas is not easy. There are a lot of considerations from memory cards to charging batteries, to packing light for small-plane travel. I regularly get questions about what I carry on a wilderness photography trip, and here is my answer:

I take what I need. There now we can all go home.

Of course it isn't that straightforward. Needs and wants are often confounded so its important to understand priorities. First and foremost, I carry what I need to stay warm, dry, and well-fed. It is impossible to take good photographs, if my hands are too cold to hold the camera because I decided to leave behind my mittens in exchange for an extra lens. I won't go into the details of my personal packing list, because it varies so much from trip to trip. From there I can start thinking about camera gear.

On most flights into the bush, passengers are limited to 50-60lbs of personal gear. On backpacking trips that amount will also include your share of the food and group equipment. So packing light is key. I can generally get all my non-photographic equipment including tent, clothing, sleeping bag, pad and such down to 25-30lbs. That leaves 25-35 lbs remaining for camera gear. Here is my photo equipment list for a non-backpacking, photography specific trip:

2 camera bodies (a backup is vital)
500mm f4
1.4x TC
17-40 f4
70-200 f2.8
30mm f1.4 (this one is optional, and can be left behind if things are tight)
Carbon fiber tripod
Memory card wallet with about 25 gigs of memory
Camera backpack
2-3 extra batteries
Solar panel and battery charger
2 stand-alone battery powered hard drive/card readers
Small bag of filters, remote triggers and other accessories

Total camera gear weight: about 30lbs.

Backing up images is vital. A good friend and fellow Alaska photographer, Hugh Rose, recently lost his compact flash card wallet overboard in Prince William Sound. I'm not sure he had his images backed up or not, but the lesson is clear: cards are replaceable, but your images aren't, so backup. Several companies make external, stand-alone, battery-powered hard drives that can be used to back up your images no matter where you are. Jobo, Sanho, Nexto, and Epson are four. I carry two in separate waterproof cases so everything is in duplicate.

Battery charging- With some luck, your time in the backcountry will include a few sunny days and the sun is an excellent source of electricity if you've got the right tools. Brunton manufactures several varieties of compact and foldable solar panels. With the right attachments and chargers, you have all you need to keep shooting. I won't go into the technical details here, but check out their website for some ideas. You can purchase chargers made to work with a variety of camera batteries (using adjustable contact points on the charger) which are compatible with solar panels. A visit to your local battery supply store will get you going in the right direction.

So the summary is this: extended photo trips to the world's wild places can be full of hurdles. But none of them are insurmountable. If you have more questions about this, or anything else, leave them in the comments and I'll do my best to answer them.

Winter Afternoon

Canon 7D, 70-200 f2.8L IS @ 200mm, 1/1600th at f2.8, ISO 100

I'm afraid I'm not feeling inspired today for blogging, but here is an image from this afternoon. The last of the clouds from the past days snow blew away in the night and we were graced with a beautiful sunny day. I got away from the computer for an hour or so to take a walk with my camera. Nothing earth shattering, I'm afraid, but I like the depth of this image.

I got an email today asking about what equipment to take on a wilderness photography trip next summer. It seemed like a good topic for a blog post since I imagine a lot of you may have the same question. Look for that tomorrow.

Yard Moose

Canon 7D, 70-200f2.8L IS @ 200mm, handheld, 1/40th, f2.8, ISO 800.

It even looks like winter now. Over the past couple of days 4 or 5 inches of snow have fallen and more is coming down outside as I type this. With winter comes some difficulties, the roads get nasty, my driveway becomes an utter disaster, but it is also remarkably beautiful. The spruces become coated with a thick layer of snow, and things start to look, well, Christmasy... In Fairbanks and much of Alaska, the stereotype of Christmas is the reality for much of the long winter. That stasis makes the beauty hard to appreciate, so it is the seasons of change, like right now, when I am most enthralled.

I photographed this moose on my property this morning. I live on ten acres and through the lower section of the property a small creek flows (or ices over depending on the season). The valley is used as a corridor for all kinds of animals. There were fox tracks all over the driveway this morning and a pair of moose tracks as well. They were fresh, and sure enough, as I was heading out, there they were, two cow moose, grazing unconcernedly on the willows. I grabbed my camera and made a few images. The light was just getting bright enough and the moose were cooperative, even with the 70-200 I was able to easily get frame-filling images. I like this image the best because it says something about the animal. Moose spend a lot of time in dense brush, and despite their enormous size (1000lbs or more) they often seem invisible. Trying to portray that, and still get a tight shot, I framed through a window of spruce boughs. This is not an image I thought long and hard about, but I know a bit about moose and the decision for how to compose was an easy one. I have some other frames from the morning I'll try to post in the next few days to show some alternatives. Wildlife photography happens on the fly and knowing something about the subject before you start shooting will help you work more quickly and with better results.

There is No Bad Light

Canon 7D, 17-40L @ 17mm, 1/4 sec, f4, ISO 800, -1.0 stop exposure conpensation, vertical pan blur.

Well that isn't entirely true. Some light is easier to work with than others. You aren't going to get a beautiful landscape image in harsh mid-day sunshine. You just aren't. Sorry. But move into a grove of trees where things are shaded and suddenly you have nice diffused light for making portraits, flower shots, and such.

This morning however, was a challenge. I was walking home after dropping my truck off at the mechanic. It was about 8:30, snowing lightly and only the dim, blue, pre-dawn light was filtering through the flakes and clouds. In short, it was nearly dark. So how do you work with this? There are a number of ways. You could mount a tripod use a long exposure on a low ISO to keep the noise down and hope for the best. But likely the best, using that technique, would be a very blue looking snowy-forest. Not ideal. I was trying to work with how the scene felt to me. Early light here is very blue, I'm cool with that, so I let the camera go to blue without adjusting white balance to compensate. The forests of birches I was walking through always seem very surreal this time of day, kind of spooky even, all blues and whites. I didn't have a tripod, just my 7D and 17-40 f4L lens. So I created blurs. Zoom blurs, vertical and horizontal pan blurs. I jiggled the camera, shook it and spun around as fast as I could to see what kind of image I'd get. This is my favorite. It is a vertical pan blur and I think, in a very abstract way it represents the look of the boreal forest early on winter morning. I also like the way the dark middle almost makes the top and bottom appear like reflections, or a Rorschach test. It takes a moment to grasp what you are looking at, and I like that.

Even bad light has potential if you use it the right way.

Return of the Winter Birds

Canon 7D, 500mm f4L IS, Tripod mounted, 1/80th @ f5.6, ISO 800.

I mentioned a few days back how, now that winter is arriving, the light is long and sweet for most of the daylight hours. Well its true, but in exchange, we have many fewer hours of light. In fact today we declined down to 8 hours and 28 minutes of possible sunlight, a loss of about 6 and half minutes over yesterday. But that is all beside the point. Yesterday I took advantage of the last hour of daylight to shoot the birds around our feeders. I've been trying for awhile to get a really excellent image of a Boreal Chickadee, but I still haven't attained it. The one above is fine, but not much more than that. Getting the perfect image takes a lot of time and effort, and I'll be working on this one for awhile. I think part of the problem is that I'm having a hard time visualizing exactly what I want from the image. This part of the creative process of photography that is most difficult for me. Determining what I want before I go out and try to get it. It is best to have some idea of the story you want to tell. In this case, I want to say something about the bird, its natural history and habitat, its ability to survive the cold. The image above does none of those things. Rather is a simple portrait, eating a sunflower seed no less. Hardly a natural food source here in Fairbanks.

My point in all this rambling is to think about your photos before you go out and try to make them. Ask yourself what story you want to tell and then think hard about what image will tell that story, then work to make the image. I'm still struggling with this myself.

A great image by Danny Green

Image by Danny Green

I just had to share this image from this year's Veolia Environment Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. This image is by Danny Green, and I absolutely love it. Great use of a long exposure to capture the wave of a huge starling flock passing over the trees. Motion, mass and volume all represented. Very cool indeed. You can check out the rest of the winning images here.

Canon 7D- thoughts

So a week or so ago, I promised you all some more detailed thoughts on Canon's new 7D. This is in no way a detailed technical review, there are more than enough sources on the internet to find that information if you want it. Rather, I'm going to give you some of my thoughts on the camera, how I think it handles, what I like and what I don't. Here it comes, beware the faint of heart:

1. First of all I like the look of the camera. From the XXD line it upgrades a bit on the design end. The sharp lines where the pop-up flash rises in the XXD series is smoothed in the 7D, emulating to some degree, the contours of Canon's professional grade cameras. It is perhaps a touch heavier than my 40D without the battery grip. I also very much like that Canon dispensed with the silly pre-set options on the dial (landscape, portrait, close-up etc.) I never used those, and nor should any serious photographer. It is nice to see them gone. I wish it came equipped with a vertical grip such as the 1D and 1Ds series but that, I realize, is asking too much in a mid-line camera. There are also substantial upgrades to the body material, full magnesium alloy which should make it substantially more durable than the XXD line and more equivalent to the 5D.

2. I LOVE the resolution on the screen. It is far and away better than the 40D. Great colors, and sharpness with enough detail to get a solid idea of the noise in an image. An excellent upgrade.

3. I even more love the fact that this camera can shoot full HD video. This opens up a world of possibilities for new creative endeavors, expanding my work into the realm of multi-media. I'm no expert in this regard so can't say how it compares to other cameras, but it is hard to imagine a better image, the files are huge, sharp and detailed. One nit is that I can't seem to get the camera to autofocus while shooting video, I may just not have the settings right, but this is something I need to explore more.

4. The autofocus is an improvement over the XXD line, but the user interface to select among the 18 sensors is a bit cumbersome. Again, maybe I just need to play with this, but so far, I'm only able to figure out how to select a focus point manually by clicking the select button then moving the multi-controller. On my 40D I only had to adjust the multi-controller which took less time. The autofocus does suffer from Canonitis. That being, it is a bit slow and unreliable in low-light conditions.

5. I love that the pop-up flash (otherwise useless) can be used as a commander for off-camera flash. With the click of a few menu selections I can separately control three groups of flashes. The camera seems to seamlessly communicate with both my old Canon 420EX and my new 580EX II. For general portrait and studio work, this saves the hassle and expense of dealing with Pocket Wizards.

6. Noise. This camera is 18+ megapixels in an APS-C sized sensor. That is PACKING them in there so I'm not surprised there is a bit of noise. Low ISOs (100-400 or even 800) are quite acceptable and require relatively little clean-up in Lightroom. However at 1600 and above it starts to get messy. I've gotten decent results at 1600 but that was starting to push it. With good noise reduction software on your side, or small reproduction sizes you might be able to go higher.

Well there you go. As you can see, in general, I like this camera a lot. It isn't perfect, the noise and auto-focus could be improved, but for the bucks, I think its the best camera on the market.

Ruffed Grouse, and stuff...

Canon 7D, 70-200f2.8L IS, f2.8, 1/200th second, ISO 1600, handheld.

This lovely Ruffed Grouse visited a tree just outside one of my cabin's windows day before yesterday. I had just a moment to snap an image or two before it wandered off into the woods. Which leads me to a thought:

Chase Jarvis the excellent commercial and lifestyle photographer and teacher, has a new book out called The Best Camera (is the one that's with you). It is a collection of his images shot from his iphone as well as some thoughts on opportunistic photography. I haven't read it, and probably won't for a while. Nothing against the book, I'm sure its great, but I've got a stack of photo books I'm working my way through and that one is way down at the bottom somewhere. However the POINT of the book is very clear- Have a camera with you. Always. The image above is representative of that. It seems like, much to my girlfriend's chagrin, that I always have a camera somewhere within arm's reach. Camera gear is scattered about our very small cabin, and it constantly gets in the way. But THIS is why. If I'd had to go digging for a camera, the grouse would have wandered off and I would have missed it entirely. But because I had my 7D sitting on a nearby chair, mounted with the 70-200, I got the image. No it isn't as good as it would have been had I had the chance to mount up the 500 on a tripod, but it's a perfectly acceptable image that I got because I was ready. So carry a camera. Always.

Icy Sunset

Canon 7D, 70-200f2.8L IS, 1/250th at f9.0, ISO 100

I'm afraid there is no denying it anymore, autumn is over, even if winter's snow has not yet arrived. There are people skating on the local ponds and talk has gone from admiring the indian summer to eager for snow. This time of year, as I noted a few days back, is also extremely good for photography. The morning and evening colors last forever, the stars are bright and fill the sky from horizon to horizon each cloudless night.

This image is of frozen Ballaine Pond on the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus. Crystals of frost were forming on top of the ice and that is why I stopped, but it wasn't the crystals that drew my attention, but the way the trees and fading sun reflected off the ice.

Different

Canon 7d, 70-200f2.8L IS, Handheld, 1/640th, f8.0, ISO 100

This is a rather atypical wildlife shot for me. It falls very much in to the "art" realm of my imagery. I've seen this kind of image (atypical framing and lighting, no distinct subject, but telling something of a story) fairly regularly in the fine art photography blogs and web sites. Most of my work falls into more classic structure. Yet I still kind of like this one. It's different, I don't feel like I've seen the image before, it tells a story and provides some scale. With increasing demand for atypical imagery, perhaps this kind of work has a future...

On another topic entirely, I'm currently reading David duChemin's book "Within the Frame". It is an excellent read, not about the technology of photography, but about vision. There are a million books out there on how to operate a camera, how to expose, depth of field, and other very teachable subjects. However, there are VERY few books on how to see. "Within the Frame" is one, "The Inner Game of Outdoor Photography" by Galen Rowell is another. So is the "Tao of Photography" by Gross and Shapiro. Teaching how to see, teaching art, is extremely difficult but learning it is even harder. These writers provide some insight into their techniques. I highly recommend you read them all. Carefully. And over and over again.

Flaming Birch

Canon 7D, 70-200f2.8L IS, 1/125th second @ f2.8, ISO 100, tripod mounted

This time of year can be difficult. Each day we are losing about seven minutes of sunlight. But what that means in terms of photography is that the sun rises less and less above the horizon and the light is long and sweet.

Backlighted images like this can be tricky. Its impossible, and not even desirable in a situation like this to expose for all of it. I much prefer the glowing, almost cloudy appearance of this. Closer to how this looked in reality, and much, much closer to how the scene felt.

P.S. I figured how to make the images on here bigger. I think its a BIG improvement. I hope you agree.

The Last Days of Autmn

Since I acquired my Canon 7D last week I've been experimenting quite a bit with video, and mixture of video and stills. This is video, which I hope will become the first of a series, is the outcome of my initial experimentation. Enjoy. By the way, the music is by A.A. Bondy. He's great, you should really buy one of his albums.

Alaska: The Last Days of Autumn from David Shaw on Vimeo.

More Autumn

Canon 40d, 17-40 f4.0 L, @26mm
ISO 100, f11, 1/10th second, handheld.
(Trick to handheld sharpness- sit down low, brace elbows on knees,
and click the shutter as you exhale.)

My good friend Cameron and I spent an afternoon tromping around the tundra of the White Mountains with our cameras in mid-September. It was a nearly perfect day for photography with a mix of sunshine, cloud shadows, rain squalls, rainbows, and rich clouded-colors. We hiked a few miles to the top of a ridge, then dropped down to a creek where I made this image. New England has the reputation of the best fall foliage, but Alaska, well Alaska is something else entirely. The window of color is brief, lasting maybe a week or two in a good year. But the colors are extraordinary. It is just like walking through a Vermont hardwood forest, except that all the trees are at knee level. Willows erupt with gold, Dwarf Birch spill like hot orange lava across the land, and Blueberries shed the color of a rich, red sunset. Dark granite and endless mountains. Really, what can be better than Alaska? I love this place.

Last Leaves

Canon 7D, 70-200mm f2.8L IS at 200mm
f2.8, 1/40th second, ISO 400, handheld.

This is the first processed image out of my brand spanking new, hot off the assembly-line, first-shipment Canon 7D. I'll do a review of my impressions of the camera at a later time, but I wanted to post this image that I made yesterday. Most of the leaves are now gone, but a few linger here and there, clinging delicately to their twigs. We've been graced by an incredible autumn, it was near 60 today, and I'm trying to relish every moment of it. Certainly, it can't last forever.

Revisiting Old Images

Canon 20D, 500mm f4L IS. 1/350th sec, f5.6 w/ 1.4 TC. ISO 200

I often get so preoccupied with creating new images that I forget to go back and look at old ones. But, I'm currently preparing a collection of images from a trip the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in the summer of 2007. It was a trip gifted with good light, amazing wildlife, and good people. These images are set to accompany an article I have forthcoming in Birder's World. I've been going back through the original RAW images, to reprocess the best in Lightroom. Better software and more advanced skills on my part have been led to much better completed images. The one above is perfect example. For whatever reason, I'm not even sure I've ever processed it before. And that is why it's a good idea to occasionally go back and take a look through your archives. You never know what you may find.

First Snow

Top: Canon G9, 1/30th sec, f5.6, ISO 100, 37mm.
Bottom: Canon G9, 1/25th sec, f5.6, ISO 100, 44mm.

We received our first snowfall of the season yesterday. I woke to a dusting on the ground around the cabin. Though it is beautifully sunny again today and the snow has disappeared, I know that fall is fading fast and it won't be long before the white stuff is here to stay. Adios Autumn, you were grand while you lasted.

Iconic Images and Boredom

Canon 40d, 70-200mm f2.8 L, at 155mm
1/400th sec, f4.0, ISO 100.

I'm not sure who made this image first. Not this exact image, of course, I made this one. But I'm referring to the original. The first of the iconic "Bear catching salmon" shots. I think every serious photographer who has visited Brooks Camp in Katmai National Park has some rendition of this photo. And I'm confused by that.

Why is it that we struggle to imitate the classic images of the places we visit? In Denali, its Mt. McKinley over Wonder Lake from Ansel Adams Point, or Denali in Reflection Pond. Both of those standards were, of course, set by Adams himself. There are the Tetons with the Snake River, and the Grand Canyon from the South Rim, Monument Valley from the East, and of course Katmai Brown Bear catching salmon in the air at Brooks Falls.

When I made this image, I was standing next to another photographer, a teched-out fella who rolled up to the viewing platform dragging two suitcases loaded with gear, took over a good portion of the upper level with his cases and then bull-dogged his way into the prime viewing spot to set up, pushing tourists aside with flying elbows as he passed. When I found my way next to him I cracked some joke about making the salmon jumping/bear catching image and how strange it is we all want that image. He replied with braggadocio, "I'VE got more than a dozen!". Wow, I thought, not only is he an ass, but he's a boring ass as well.

But why is it that we want those images? We tick them off like some kind of photo-destination checklist. And I do it too. I've got the shot of Denali from Reflection Pond and the Grand Canyon and now the bear and salmon from Katmai. These images aren't marketable, there are thousands of them already out there with stock agencies, and publishers have seen the image so many times they are bored. Rightfully so too. Of the hundreds of images of bears I have from Katmai, this isn't my favorite. I like it OK, but I like it because it gets a rise from viewers. It always gets a wow, or a gasp. I think it gets this response because they've seen the image before and think it must take some great skill to get it. Trust me it doesn't. It's damn easy in fact. Set up your tripod, adjust exposure, compose, and shoot when the salmon jumps. Click, click, click. Done. No long glass required. This, as you can see in the photo information above was only at 155mm. But its what people think it takes that matters. Ah yes, the magic of photography.

I suppose we try for these shots because someone else did the thinking for us. We didn't have to come up with the composition on our own, we just had to frame and execute. Same with the great landscape shots, we just copy and click. This of course, is also why none of the copies are as good as the original. I know quite well that this is far from the best image made of of a Katmai Bear and its prey. The light ain't that great, the sharpness isn't exactly perfect, there is some motion blur... Like a tape that has been copied a dozen times, it doesn't retain the same depth or freshness of the original. Still, I'm glad I've got it. It gets the "wow"s at slideshows, and makes everyone think I must be some kind of expert. And I'm happy to perpetuate that particular myth.

Prince William Sound

Black-legged Kittiwakes flushed from calving glacier
Canon EOS 40D, 70-200 f2.8 L, 1/4000th, f6.3, ISO 160, handheld

Continuing the series of summer catch-up images, today we have this shot of an enormous flock of Black-legged Kittiwakes taking off in front of a calving glacier. I made this image during a day-cruise of the northwestern portion of Prince William Sound. This was in early July and I was guiding a group as the National Geographic "Expert". I've visited PWS numerous times, but I'd never seen it under the bluebird skies like this particular day. The glacier was active and I was able to get numerous shots of seracs dropping into the water. This one however, was my favorite. There were thousands of Black-legged Kittiwakes foraging at the base of the glacier and when this particular block dropped into the sea they all lifted into the air. I like how they provide some perspective on the size of the glacier.

The trick to an image like this is timing. Have your camera ready, listen and watch the glacier. After missing the first few calving events you'll start to develop a eye for the active parts of the glacier, and that is where you have to pay attention.

Of course then you have to hope that there are a few thousand kittiwakes ready to fly off when the wave hits them.

Denali in Black and White

Denali from the McKinley River, Black and White.
Canon 40d, 1/13th sec, f22, ISO 100, handheld while sitting.
17-40mm f4.0 L at 17mm.

One of the nicest aspects of wide-angle lenses is the ability to handhold at VERY slow shutter speeds. If, that is, you've got a steady hand and the right technique. For this image I sat down cross-legged on the gravel bar and propped my elbows on my knees to provide some extra support. 1/13th, the speed this image was made is about my limit for sharp images, but it was sufficient to smooth the glacial water in the foreground.

This was mid-day and very bright. The original image has washed out colors, but I liked the composition so I converted to black and white, then did a fair amount of post-processing in Lightroom to optimize the contrast. It probably could still use a bit of work, I'd like to bring those clouds a bit closer to true white.

I made this image after about a 3 mile walk from Wonder Lake. It is a nice easy hike, that on days like these has one of the best views in Denali National Park. Click on it for a bigger version.

Denali over Wonder Lake

Denali, early morning from Wonder Lake. Canon 40d, 17-40 f4 L.
1/80 sec, f6.3, ISO 200, handheld from a bus window.
(Click for a larger version)

During both National Geographic trips that I led this summer, we had spectacular luck with the weather. During both trips we stayed at a lodge in the historic Kantishna Mining District which lies at the far western end of the Denali Park Road. The lodge is about five miles from Wonder Lake. If you've seen an image of Denali, there is a good chance it was made from somewhere within a few miles of where I made the above image.

This particular image has a message: Make the shot even if the conditions are not ideal. I made this from a bus window on our way out of the park on the last morning. I wanted desperately to stop and get out, set up the tripod and make the most of what promised to be a spectacular morning. Unfortunately there was no time for such luxuries, and my job was not to make images but to keep my clients happy and well informed. But at least I was there, and for that I'm grateful.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

Brown Bear, Brooks Falls, Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska.
Canon 40d, 500mm f4, tripod. Minimal post-processing in Lightroom. Full frame.

From the very beginning, the first entry of this edition of the blog actually, I noted that I am an inconsistent blogger. And the last several months were proof. So here is to turning over a new leaf. .

There is a lot to catch up on since April. The whole summer has rolled by, I've packrafted Beaver Creek, led two National Geographic Expeditions tours and an Arctic Wild Polar Bear watching trip. I've written three or four new articles for Birds and Blooms, enjoyed a visit from my parents, am in the process of renovating the cabin and creating a studio/office space from the workshop. And there went the summer. Now its autumn, the leaves are falling and winter seems all too close. Oh, and I'm running a marathon a week from tomorrow.

So that should catch everyone up on where things stand from my end. I'm going to start putting up some select images from the summer's adventures. Starting with the one above from Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park. Brooks is THE place to watch brown bears fishing for salmon. This visit was early July, prime-time for bears and there were around a dozen at the falls. The visit was far too short, and I was guiding a group of tourists and so couldn't dedicate myself entirely to photography. Still I came back with several shots I'm very happy with. Keep your eyes open for a how-to shoot bears at Katmai essay, sometime in the not too distant feature.

More to come...hopefully.

Weekend in the Alaska Range

Just have a couple of minutes to post a couple snaps from this weekend. I spent the past two days on a ski trip with 13 wonderful friends to a cabin in the northern foothills of the Alaska Range. Skied in yesterday afternoon in snowfall, and woke this morning to a classic Alaska alpenglow sunrise on the nearby Hayes Range. Not bad, not bad at all.

April Desktop

Just click on the image for a larger version, download and set as your desktop. The image is from Big Bend National Park, back in January. Enjoy.

SERIOUS Flash photography

Well, actually it was just a few minutes screwing around with camera, tripod, flash, off-camera cable, a compact Lumiquest softbox, and my own ugly mug. I've never been much into flash photography and honestly (in my mis-guided thinking) kind of looked down on strobe work as a crutch. Well it isn't a crutch, and in fact can greatly enhance many photographic situations. I'm not sure what brought me around to this thinking, but I believe it has something to do with the resurgence of my artistic sense in photography. I've been reading up on small flash photography, spending time reading the Strobist blog, and reading Joe McNally's new book : The Hotshoe Diaries. The latter is an excellent read. Joe 's writing is funny and entertaining but most importantly extremely useful. It isn't an instruction manual per se, rather he tells stories of how he made the images in the book. But there is little doubt you will come out at the end a lot more capable of making great light.

I also spent a few hours on Friday evening shooting a National Championship Nordic ski race. Tricky, fast, work in bad, overcast light, but I got a few decent images, I think. Look for a few shots in the near future.

Open North American Championships

Each March Fairbanks hosts one of the major sprint mushing races of the season. Mushers from across the country show up for the three days of racing. It is also one of my favorite events to photograph. Mushing, like any fast-paced sport is tricky to photograph. Focus is major challenge so I take a lot of photos to make sure some of them have the right subject in focus (generally the musher or the lead dogs). This year I shot for two days, Saturday and Sunday. The image above incidentally is Egil Ellis who has now captured the record for most wins by a single racer. His team is made almost entirely of hounds instead of huskies. Damn fast though. Here are a few images I think worked out fairly well:

OK- Bird Photography

Beware! The following is a long, opinionated, and possibly blatantly wrong series of thoughts on the art of bird photography.

Arthur Morris. There you go. That name says a lot about the current state of bird photography. Artie, as he calls himself, is an extremely talented photographer who has made his reputation with his own “brand” of imagery. His trademark is close shots, often portraiture, of wild birds in low angle, over the shoulder light. Very sharp with clean even backgrounds. It is stylish and simple. It WAS a distinctive look. I emphasize the word WAS because Artie’s work has become so synonymous with good bird photography that it seems every photographer shooting birds is doing their damnedest to imitate his style. Close. Sharp. Clean. As a result (and this is where my opinion rears its ugly head) run of the mill bird photography has become very, very, boring. The birds are beautiful and photographed in nice light they are usually in profile (ideally with the head turned 15 degrees toward the camera). The images are technically perfect and they all look exactly the same.

This striving for the “ideal” shot has led to a remarkable reliance on Photoshop. The program is used to clone out distracting elements (even very minor ones), to clean up non-uniform backgrounds, to remove unwanted parts of the image (other birds, evidence of humans, etc.), and even, in the more extreme cases, to replace parts of the bird that are not shown in ideal conditions with parts from other images. Thus it is possible to find shots of birds where a closed eye has been replaced by an open eye from the next photo in the series. A clipped wing may be replaced with one copied from the opposite side, feathers re-arranged, dirt removed from bills, feet placed in more aesthetically pleasing positions… WHERE DOES IT STOP?

At what point have we stopped portraying nature as it is and turned it into what we want it to be? I don’t think this is just a philosophical question. Nature photography has been criticized in the past for portraying nature as an ideal and not as reality. The late, great Galen Rowell received a scathing critique from an art critic who said that he was misleading the public through use of “colored filters” to believe that nature was a bright and colorful place when in fact it was mostly, brown, green, and gray. That critic was obviously wrong and I pity them for having spent so little time outside not to have seen the colors the world can produce. But if Galen’s true to life images could give that impression, what would that critic say about the kind of manipulations now common in bird photography?

But Dave, you say, we are talking about art not reality. In which case I say “touché…BUT…” photography is different. I’m sorry, but it just is. People, the viewing public, look at photography very differently from other forms of art. People BELIEVE photography in a way they don’t with other art forms. And when it comes to nature photography, well, I think nature should be appreciated in all its diverse forms, and our images should represent this, not just showing all the rare moments when our avian subjects appear in perfect light with clean backgrounds with their bills pointing exactly 15 degrees off of perpendicular. OK that was an off-subject tangent. My point is not that bird photography shouldn’t be viewed as art, but rather that bird photography shouldn’t all look the same.

The strange part is that I think many bird photographers recognize this in their gut. Because when the rare image appears on the Bird Photographer’s Network that has truly broken away from the formula like this one HERE. It gets rave reviews. Others, that I think are rather stunning with hidden textures and surprises like this one HERE, get notably mixed reviews because, in the eyes of many photographers, the image is close enough to being “correct” that it is wrong.

Now, after I wrote all this, I must acknowledge that I do love a good clean bird photo. These shots are easy to appreciate, and given the right situation and equipment are technically easy to execute. They illustrate the written word very well, but they are rarely memorable. The simple, the clean and sharp, may be the bread and butter of the wildlife photographer, but it should never be the only images made. As photographers we must remember to expand our vision beyond the normal. It is outside of the norm where we will find the truly exceptional.

Rant over.

Opportunism

Some more candy today. I've developed what is beginning to seem like a network of folks keeping their eyes open for cool bird photography opportunities. And today, before I headed into town, a friend called to tell me she had a flock of Bohemian Waxwings hanging out in the choke cherry trees behind her house. So I made a short detour on my way in this afternoon and spent a half hour shooting from her deck. These images are just quick and dirty post-processing of the jpegs. I haven't dived into the RAW files yet, perhaps I'll have a chance to work on them a bit more this evening. Then I'll post a few of the "finished" images so you can see the differences. This should give me the chance to start talking a bit about bird photography. I've got some thoughts on the subject, so beware.

For your viewing pleasure here are a few more:

Thoughts on a new book

I'm in the first pages of a new book: Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi. It is certainly a book on psychology, but it offers a lot of insight into the creative process. I imagine over the course of the next week or so that I'll be writing more about it. The book has immediately provided me with some food for thought. Last night as I was trying to keep my tired mind concentrating on the book I found a short passage that talked about how age relates to expertise in different disciplines. The author (god forbid I have to spell his name out again) notes that skill and problem solving abilities in mathematics (a science with discreet, known, rules) peaks in the mid 20s. Skills in many other sciences, (chemistry, economics, physics, etc.) which have less distinct rules takes until the mid-30s to peak. But disciplines that have few rules like literature and philosophy take until a person is late in life to master or reach the best of their abilities. It seems that life experience is vital in these disciplines. There is a clear progression.

Where then does photography fall on this line? No doubt that photography has a technical side, even a scientific side, but much more importantly it is a creative endeavor. I venture then that I can spend a lifetime and still progress as a photographic artist. This realization is great big bag of mixed blessings. It means that as long as I work at it, I will continue to improve. But it also means that that true mastery is perpetually out of reach.

Thoughts?

Ice!

Yes indeed the answer to the previous day's mystery photos, which no one even attempted to guess, is formations of ice. I happen to live on a small creek here on my Alaskan ten acres. The creek, during the summer anyway, flows beneath my driveway through a large culvert. In winter, that culvert ices up, all the way to the top and the overflow ice floods out along the valley floor covering my driveway in a thick layer of ice that builds up as more water spills out onto the surface. Now, nearing spring, the ice covers an area the size of a football field with several feet of rock-hard water. This is a hassle to say the least, but it makes for some very interesting photographic subjects. The images of the past couple of days show the layers as they are forming, one inch on top of another on top of another, forming what look like miniature mountain ranges, alluvial fans, and flood plains.

Needless to say, I won't be sad to watch my photographic subjects melt away over the next couple of months.

A couple more of...What?

Well the lack of guesses on my quiz give me a hunch that I've stumped you all. So here are a couple more. And a hint: think water. I'll provide the answer tomorrow.

What?

Photography is often considered truth. What ends up in the image must have been in front of the camera, right? Well of course, digital photography has entirely changed that. But what happens when the image shows only the reality the photographer chose to portray, or the subject is unknown to the viewer? For example, is this image and the one below, a moonscape? A lava flow? Death Valley? A landscape from space? Or something else entirely?


My point is that truth is subjective. Common subjects can be hidden in their details and the truth can be hidden behind layers of unknowns.

So what are these images? Any one have any guesses?

Back to something different

It was a strange foggy morning here in Fairbanks. Usually I would have stayed in during such weather and worked on the computer as the fog burned off. But this morning, the gray light and naturally black and white landscape lured me out to some agricultural fields. Images were forming in my mind, as they often do when I'm inspired, and I went in search of them. The image above is one that I successfully found.

I'm going through a period right now of major inspiration and enthusiasm for photography. I want nothing more recently than to be exploring with my camera. I hope this period lasts because my work is spinning off in new directions, directions that I like, that are pushing me and, I hope, making me a better photographer.