Living Wilderness

Don't let backyard photography give you cold feet

2012-01-31T23:05:00.000-08:00

The black-capped chickadee is no ivory-billed woodpecker. Dozens visit my office window every day to feast on the free suet.

But just because they're common, doesn't mean they are not interesting. And a recent snow storm that, at times, had my yard buried under nearly 10 inches of snow allowed me to create some images that help tell their remarkable winter story.

That much snow is relatively unusual for the greater Seattle area where I'm based, but the black-capped chickadee is unusually well prepared for it.

The bird looks cold in the image, but it's probably not uncomfortable. It likely can't feel the ice it's standing on. Chickadees, another other tiny songbirds in the passerine family, have very few nerves and blood vessels in their feet. Because of that, they're not really bothered by the cold.

With food scarce and days short in the wintertime, they also have another key feature that helps them conserve energy: they can put themselves in a state of hypothermia at night. In fact, they can lower their body temperature from 107.6 Fahrenheit (42 Celsius) in the day to 86 Fahrenheit (30 Celsius) at night. By slowing their bodies down, they use less energy, but they still remain alert enough to be able to make at least a feeble attempt to get away from predators.

The snow storm here lasted a week. Early on, I captured images of chickadees on their icy perches. As the storm progressed, though, I continued to head out to capture images of the songbirds dwarfed by the towering piles of snow.

Chickadees may be fairly common, but they are tough to photograph. They're fast. They would flit around deep in my overgrown rhododendron, then briefly appear on a branch and race to the feeder. During the winter, chickadees travel in flocks, helping each other find food.

What worked to my advantage, however, is that they do not like to share the feeder. One at a time, seems to be their motto. When one was on the feeder, occasionally one or two others would wait patiently on a branch, in full view, for their turn to feed. They had a few favorite branches so I concentrated on those.

This required quite a deal of patience on my part. I would venture out for an hour or two at a time. Each of those sessions resulted in only a few minutes of productive photography.

Look close and you may notice a small highlight, or catch light, on the bird's eye. I used an off-camera flash to bring out the colors in the chickadee and add the glimmer to its eye.

When working some distance away from small birds, it's helpful to use an attachment that extends the reach of your flash. Attachable Fresnel lenses, such as the Better Beamer or the Flash Extender Kit from Harbor Digital Design (I use the latter), concentrate your flash's power into a narrow beam that travels farther. This image was captured with a 600mm lens, so the more narrow coverage area was not a problem.

One tip, however: When using a projected flash, it's important that your flash is at least a foot away from your camera. If the flash and lens are too close to each other, the light from the flash will be too intense as it reflects back into the lens. It won't harm the bird, but it will cause the bird's eye to look like a steel marble. In fact, this phenomenon — the same issue that causes red eye pictures of people — is known as "steel eye."

I got around this problem by placing the flash on its own tripod that was about two feet away from the camera. I used a cord to connect the camera with the flash, however, you could use wireless PocketWizard transceivers.

Technical challenges aside, the story of the black-capped chickadees and their adaptations to winter weather prove that you don't have to travel around the world to photograph fascinating animals. Sometimes amazing stories and photos are right in your backyard.

(Follow Kevin Ebi's photography on Facebook, Twitter, or Google +.)

Best images of 2011

2012-01-01T11:58:00.000-08:00

For each of the past few years, I have compiled a small gallery of my favorite images from the year. It was something I did when I first started out in photography; Jim Goldstein, whose blog collects the best-of collections from more than a hundred other photographers, inspired me to restart the tradition.

I think the exercise of reviewing and editing your work is quite helpful in refining your art and identifying opportunities for improvement. For me, one of the things that was immediately evident in past years was that I often relied on travel to exotic locations to fuel my creativity. In 2011, I worked hard to bring the level of excitement and passion that I feel in a new place back to the familiar scenery at home.

I think it worked. One of my favorite images was taken within walking distance of my house. Four more were taken within 30 miles. One of the images that nearly made this list was taken right outside my office window. It feels great to again be doing my best and most creative work in the area that gave me my start.

In no particular order, here are my favorite images from 2011:

I've been photographing bald eagles for nearly as long as I have been a photographer. I photographed nesting eagles before, but this year I discovered a nest just a few freeway exits from my house. The close proximity allowed me to visit several times a week from the time the eggs hatched until the two young eagles flew away for good. I really got to know the birds and their habits and routines, and it paid off with some of my best eagle images ever. This image is of one of the two young fledglings. You can check out the rest of the series here.

I drove past this field many times over the years. It's a buffer area behind a strip mall not far from my house. It's incredibly beautiful for a couple of weeks when the buttercup in in bloom. Each year, I would say someday I'll stop and take a picture. This year, I finally did.

Thor's Well is the remnant of an old blowhole on the Oregon coast at Cape Perpetua. The hole is too wide for the water to blow out with much force, but when the tide is high and the conditions are just right, you can capture a nice 360-degree waterfall as the water races back in. It took several attempts over the past couple years to get this image.

This image is also from Cape Perpetua, Oregon. I had a few hours to wait for the sun to set, so I hiked along the coast, found this patch of sea palms and worked to create an image that showed them in the context of their tough environment.

My photography career began in the Seattle Arboretum. I photographed the wildlife in the wetlands from an inflatable kayak. I got my "big break" when a publisher discovered my work and created a book using many of my images. I returned to the wetlands and made many new images. My favorite is of this familiar bluet damselfly waiting on a water lily for his mate.

Yosemite National Park is incredible in winter. Even during a storm, the Tunnel View pullout was packed with photographers. Most were waiting for the weather to clear, but I found it much more interesting to photograph ravens flying around in the heavy snow.

Here's another image of Yosemite in winter. I took a short hike along the Merced River and had this view all to myself.

And here's another raven image. Actually, these two are crows. It's an example of how sometimes "bad" technique can result in exceptional images. Look closely at the birds. See how their eyes are glowing? That happens when you use a projected flash too close to the camera. The glowing eyes are the animal equivalent of red eye pictures of people. In this case, though, I think it helps make the image more moody.

The wide panoramas of the Painted Hills in John Day, Oregon are stunning, but the deep shadows, strong lines, and vibrant colors made this image my favorite.

Skagit Valley is known best for the huge flocks of snow geese that winter there. These are starlings. A long exposure, combined with parts of the flock flying in different directions made this one of my favorite images of the year.

Mount Shuksan in Washington's North Cascades is one of the most photographed mountains in the world. But the unusual weather in the Northwest this year allowed me to photograph fall and winter at the same time.

There are only a few days each year where you can capture the full moon with Mount Si reflecting in this lake near Snoqualmie, Washington. This has been on my calendar for a few years. For once, the weather worked out.

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Moving the camera to stop motion

2011-12-30T13:13:00.000-08:00

The usual goal in photography is to create an exceptionally sharp image. If you're photographing a bird, for example, most photographers want an image that's so sharp you can see every feather on the bird and every barb on the feather.

To capture that, you typically need a sturdy tripod, a cable release, lots of light — and a stationary subject.

But what if the light is dim and your subject is moving? That's when you need to pan — moving the camera with your subject. It involves moving the camera so that your subject is always at the same spot in the image. If during the exposure your subject is always at the same place on the sensor (or frame of film) it's like your subject isn't moving at all. Meanwhile, everything else blurs into a swath of solid color.

The image of a flock of starlings in flight at the top of this post illustrates the concept. The birds were flying fast and not in the same direction. Some were flying to the right. Some were making a U-turn. Some had already started flying left.

My exposure time of 1/50^th of a second was far too slow to capture every bird in sharp detail, so I panned the camera with the birds that were flying to the right. By moving the camera in the same direction at the same speed as they were flying, they are sharp in the final image. All of the other birds appear as streaks of light.

Panning is one of the more difficult photographic techniques to perfect. With most DSLRs, the viewfinder goes black during the exposure so you have to follow your often unpredictable subject without being able to see it.

Despite the challenges, you can raise your chances of success with a lot of practice and these tips:

Get a good tripod. It may seem odd that a tripod, which is designed the hold the camera steady, does anything but hinder panning. I actually think a tripod with a smooth action head is a critical piece of equipment. While you can do without a tripod, I find the support of the tripod results in smoother motion.

A tripod with a ball head, though, probably won't help much. I use a Wimberley II, a gimbal head that places the weight of the lens and head below their pivot point. Set up correctly, even a heavy 600mm lens moves as if it was weightless. A cheaper option is the Wimberley Sidekick, which allows you to temporarily convert any ball head into a gimbal head.

With either, it's important to perfectly balance your camera and lens on the head. Even with the two panning knobs loosened, the camera shouldn't move at all. Gravity should hold everything in place.

While panning, I have the two panning knobs as loose as they will go and I rest one of my arms on the lens to provide varying amounts of tension.

Use "fast" shutter speeds and short lenses. The longer your exposure time, the harder it is to perfectly pan with your subject. Longer exposure times allow you to turn more of the background into a blur, but any mistake you make in tracking your subject will cause it to blur, too. Shorter exposures cut the chances for making mistakes.

Also, shorter lenses are more forgiving than longer ones. Very powerful lenses magnify everything, including any panning mistakes.

The image of the starlings was captured with what's effectively a 1,200mm lens (a 600mm lens with a 2x tele-converter). With that much magnification, an exposure time of 1/50^th of a second is plenty slow. With a 50mm lens, however, that same exposure would have captured all the birds sharply. Start off with just a little blur and gradually switch to stronger lenses and longer exposures as your technique improves.

Shoot in a burst and track your progress. Most of my successful images have been in the middle in a series of a half dozen or so shots. The first shot or two are usually off, but by about the third, I'm usually in tune with the animal.

In a flock, I try to pick out one particular bird. When tracking a single bird or other animal, I try to pick out a particular feature, such as its eye. In every shot, I try to make sure that the bird or the feature of the animal is on the same autofocus sensor. I hold down the shutter button and in the split second between shots when the scene is visible in the viewfinder, I adjust for any tracking errors. It's all about getting the rhythm of the animals.

Practice in movie mode. Most digital cameras offer a movie mode nowadays. You can see what you're recording on the LCD screen at all times. Unlike panning with the viewfinder, you don't have to cope with the screen constantly going black.

Practice making movies where you pan with wildlife. Keep practicing until your movies are no longer jerky. You may also find it easier to start your practice on your own pets before graduating to wildlife.

These digital cameras typically let you take still images while the screen is on. If the viewfinder blackouts really bother you, try taking your panning pictures in this mode.

Even with the blackouts, I like using the viewfinder because it allows me to support the camera better, which results in smoother motion. (I also learned how to pan before I had a camera with a live view LCD, so I may be biased for that reason.) But there is no one correct answer. Do what works for you.

Don't give up. Panning is a difficult technique to master. You probably won't master it on your first try. Or your second. Or your third. I didn't. Thanks to digital cameras, however, it's free to practice. Keep trying until you get it. The results are worth it.

(Follow Kevin Ebi's photography on Facebook, Twitter, or Google +.)

Dramatic sunsets: Two shows daily

2011-11-30T19:53:00.000-08:00

If you're out photographing a sunset and you're not happy with what you get, you can try again. In a half hour.

For photography purposes, there are two sunsets every night. The sun actually sets below the horizon just once, but the dramatic golden color on mountains and clouds happens twice. And it's that golden color that photographers typically care about.

Like most photographers, I used to set up for the sunset and pack everything away after the color faded from the sky. But one day, while on a long post-sunset hike back to my car, I saw the sky turn red again. It wasn't anywhere near as bright as the first sunset, but the colors were just as intense.

Over the years, I've learned that wasn't a one-time show. It happens every night. (Actually, it happens every morning, too. There's a bonus sunrise about a half hour before the sun actually climbs above the horizon.)

The physics are too complicated to explain without a few graphs, but in a nutshell, even with the sun is below the horizon, some of its light still colors the atmosphere. About a half hour after sunset, the last of that light fades away. The red wavelengths of light are the most rugged, if you will — they aren't as easily blocked by particles floating in the air — which is why the clouds appear red a second time.

The process is exactly backward for the sunrise. The red wavelengths are the first to appear.

For the exact times of the bonus sunrises and sunsets, look up the civil twilight times for your area. The bonus sunrise is right after civil twilight ends; the bonus sunset is just before it begins.

This effect is particularly dramatic with mountains. Because they reach higher into the atmosphere, they will actually seem to glow at about the same time the clouds turn red again.

To photograph this phenomenon, you will definitely need a tripod. The image at the top of this post is of the first sunrise at the Haleakala Crater on Maui. This image was captured 35 minutes before the sun touched the horizon. The light level was so low that I needed a 70-second exposure at 400 ISO to capture it.

The light level may be low, but as you can see, the colors are dramatic. And on that morning, they were even better than the colors during the actual sunrise.

It's not often you get second chances in life, but nature gives them to you every sunrise and sunset.

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Photographing the elusive northern lights

2011-10-26T09:32:00.000-07:00

For the next couple years, you'll have a better-than-average chance of seeing and photographing the northern lights. Just this week, a large solar storm resulted in a northern lights display visible as far south as Georgia.

The northern lights appear when electrically-charged particles from the sun crash into Earth's magnetic field. The sun is just entering the active phase of its cycle, which will peak in 2013.

The activity is always strongest at the poles, which is why most of the northern lights images you see are taken from places like Alaska or Iceland. But if the conditions are just right, you can capture them a bit farther south. And there are a couple of prediction websites so that seeing them isn't purely by chance.

Still, there are no guarantees. I had been trying to photograph the aurora borealis for a couple years — getting up in the middle of the night, driving to a peak far from city lights and waiting in the cold — but repeatedly returned home with nothing. It took one of the largest solar flares ever recorded to produce this northern lights display over Washington's Central Cascades.

Washington typically gets a few light shows a year. The catch is knowing when the light shows will develop — and being lucky enough to have them develop on a clear night when little of the moon is showing. I use a couple of web sites to track the aurora activity and make sure I'm position to capture the lights any time the conditions appear ideal.

A website called Today's Space Weather gives three-day solar forecasts, similar to the weather forecasts you see on TV. If there's a big solar storm, it will tell you what day and time it will reach Earth.

When the sun is stormy, I frequently check a site from NOAA's Space Environmental Center. The site rates the aurora activity at both poles on a scale of 1 to 10++. To see the northern lights from the peaks in Snohomish County, Washington, where my images were taken, you need a northern pass reading of 10 or more. There's a chart that gives you the necessary level for cities throughout North America.

The problem is that the aurora levels can bounce around a lot. I've seen the levels jump from 7 to 10 in under an hour and vice versa. Generally, I head out any time the aurora levels have consistently reached 9 and 10 over a period of several hours, even if the level has since dropped to 7 or 8. That's probably why I had been met with so little success.

That wasn't the case, though, in late October 2003 when I was lucky enough to witness the northern lights two nights in a row.

It all started with word of a near-record solar storm. A mass of particles thirteen times the size of the earth erupted from the sun and began racing our way at 5 million miles per hour. At that speed, it took just 19 hours to travel from the sun to Earth. The particle storm was rated G5 — the most severe category. There have been just five solar storms of that magnitude over the past 15 years, and most of them did not collide with Earth.

Such storms are bad for satellite operators and for the electrical grid, but can potentially result in an aurora borealis display as far south as Texas. Sure enough, the NOAA site showed aurora readings of 10 for several consecutive hours. I took a nap that evening and planned to be halfway up Mount Pilchuck by midnight when the northern lights display tends to be most intense. The effort paid off.

The vertical composition you see above was the image I captured the first night. To your eyes, the aurora borealis is fairly dim. All I could make out was the green bands. I could see that the bands moved around a fair amount, but the color was not anywhere near as intense as it was in the resulting image. I couldn't see any of the red at all.

Because of my long exposure, the camera was capable of recording parts of the aurora that I couldn't see. I set my digital camera to simulate ISO 400 film and I used shutter speeds of between 20 and 30 seconds. If I used slower film and longer shutter speeds, the bands would blur and appear out of focus in the final image. They really do move around quite a bit. Putting up with a little grain was a fine trade off for capturing the bands of light. Even though I couldn't make out all the colors with my own eyes, the shifting bands were truly impressive.

The aurora borealis show didn't last very long. The peak activity lasted less than five minutes, but I was sure I had a picture that would work out. And given the severity of the storm, I decided to try to photograph the northern lights the following night from a different location. The image to your right was captured that second night from a road off the Mountain Loop Highway, east of Mt. Pilchuck. It's tough to see in the compressed Internet version of the image, but the big dipper is visible starting at the horizon in the middle of the image and stretching up and to the right.

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iPad photography (business) apps

2011-09-27T12:05:00.000-07:00

Judging by the number of articles written about the iPad over the past few months, you wouldn't think we would need another. But I think we do.

Most of the articles I've seen are obsessed with using it as a camera. They go on and on about all the creative effects you can buy and use. But my camera is my camera; my iPad is a tool for getting my photography business work done when I'm away from the office.

With that, here's my list of useful apps. Some are directly related to photography; others are applicable to any small business. One word of caution: developers seem to change their prices all the time, so the prices that are listed here are the prices that were posted the last time I checked.

Wi-Fi Finder (Free)

I mostly use my iPad to get online, check email, etc., and you need an internet connection for that. If you don't have the 3G cellular version or if you travel overseas, the Wi-Fi Finder app can help you find Wi-Fi access. Pick a location, and it will display a map with the nearest access points. It will also tell you if they're free or not. And you don't need internet access to use it; you can download the entire world database before you leave home.

It's not perfect. It doesn't seem to be updated very often. It still shows there's free Wi-Fi at the Border's bookstore near my house, which went out of business six months ago. And coverage in some countries, like Iceland, is really spotty. For example, I know there's free Wi-Fi in the café at the top of the Eymundsson bookstore in downtown Reykjavik, but the app doesn't have any access points listed at all for Iceland's largest city.

That flaw aside, when it works, it's much better than wandering around aimlessly trying to find a Wi-Fi signal on your own.

Voice Memos for iPad (listed as 99 cents, but effectively $1.98)

When I'm on the road, I often need to jot down quick notes with details about subjects I've photographed, things I need to do, or ideas. Voice Memos turns the iPad into a voice recorder. You can record quick notes and play them back and transcribe them later when you have time.

It works well, but the pricing scheme is a bit bizarre. The basic app costs 99 cents and it only lets you record and listen to your notes on the iPad. It you want to email your notes to yourself so that you can play them back on a computer or share them with someone else, that will cost you another 99 cents.

Penultimate ($1.99)

For taking notes in your own handwriting, you have a lot of options. I've tried several, but Penultimate is my favorite. It does a great job of capturing handwriting; its pages look stunning. It doesn't translate your handwriting into text, but that's not an issue for me. And it gives you lots of options for sharing or sending a single page or an entire notebook.

Notability (99 cents)

For note taking, Notability is also an amazing app. In addition to taking typed and written notes, it has a voice recorder feature that works incredibly well. I often use it when I'm interviewing someone. It records the conversation so I can go back and pull quotes later while still allowing me to jot down some notes during the interview.

Whichever note taking app you use, I think you need a stylus. I know Apple founder Steve Jobs hates them, but it just isn't natural or comfortable to write notes of much length with your finger. I absolutely hate the Pogo Sketch, which is available behind the counter at some Apple stores. The foam tip is really cheaply made and becomes seriously deformed after only a few uses. It's also incredibly tiny, so if you have larger hands, it can feel like you're trying to write with a toothpick. Models from Targus and Griffin feel like fine pens in your hand and come with a nice, durable rubber tip that glides across the iPad screen.

iWork suite: Pages, Numbers, Keynote ($9.99 each)

These three apps are the iPad equivalents of the word processing, spreadsheet and presentation applications you may use on your computer. They're all custom designed for the iPad, so they work well, are intuitive, and have a full feature set. With Numbers, for example, I can easily put together a great looking invoice without having to do any of the math myself. With Keynote, you can put together an attractive photo slide show, although it would be even more useful if you could program the presentation to loop continuously.

The weak part of the iWork suite is that the apps don't share data well with others. It's probably easy if your computer is a Mac, but with Windows the options seem unnecessarily limited. I don't want to have to install iTunes on every PC I may use just to transfer files back and forth.

To get around this limitation, I use Box.net, a service that lets you store files online and access them from any device that's connected to the internet. Once you've created a Box.net account, create a folder, such as Documents, where you want your iPad to store your files. Then in each of iWorks apps, when you want to save a file, select the Copy to WebDAV option. The first time you do this, you'll have to fill in your Box.net account information.

For server, type https://www.box.net/dav//Documents (replace Documents with the actual name of your folder). The double slash is critical. Also fill in your user name and password.

Next, it will ask you how you want to save the file. If you just want a read-only copy, you can select PDF. If you want to edit the file on your PC, you'll have to save documents as a .DOC, spreadsheets as an .XLS, and presentations as a .PPT.

With a tap, the iPad will copy the file you're currently working on to your online Box.net account, which you can then access from any computer. Download the file on a PC, make your changes, and save the revised file back to your Box.net account. You can then open that file on your iPad by going into the appropriate app, tapping the + button from the My Documents screen, and selecting Copy from WebDAV.

Documents To Go Premium ($16.99) is much better at sharing your files with other machines – it can even sync with Google Docs – but I still like working with the iWorks apps better.

GoodReader ($4.99)

For viewing PDF files, GoodReader is an incredible app. PDFs render beautifully and the app makes it easy to take notes directly in the file. You can place sticky notes throughout the document or even draw arrows toward important information. When I travel, I'll often send my trip research to my iPad in a PDF file.

LightTrac ($4.99). Also available for Android ($1.99)

Like a lot of photographers, I like to know where the sun and moon will rise and set before I arrive on a location to maximize my chances of making a great image. LightTrac, a screen shot is at the top of this post, not only gives you the time and angles, it draws them over a satellite view of your chosen location. It really helps you visualize the conditions ahead of time. It beats using an angle finder and astronomical charts. This app works so well, I actually pull out my iPad even when I'm working in the office to use it.

Weather Radar HD Lite (Free)

The weather can make or break a photo, so I use a couple of tools to help me predict what the conditions will be like. I like Weather Radar HD Lite is best for its radar and cloud cover maps, although they can be very slow to load. For hour-by-hour and daily forecasts, I just open weather.com or the National Weather Service in a web browser. The other apps seem to be more trouble than what they're worth.

MultiTide (Free)

Tides can also affect your photo opportunities. MultiTide is a free app that shows predicted tides for many locations along the coasts. The interface is awkward. You essentially have to add a particular tide station as a favorite before you can view the predicted tides there. But it's free and it offers a huge list of prediction locations.

Pad Folio ($9.99)

While the iPad comes with an app to display your photos, I find it cumbersome. There are several photography portfolio apps, but I like Pad Folio the best. It can pull photos from your DropBox account; you have to work through iTunes to add images to many of the others. Re-arranging the order of the images in your slideshow is as easy as drag-and-drop. If you're looking for extensive branding customization, the similarly named PadFolios may be a better choice for you.

Easy Release ($9.99)

Do you need to collect model or property releases while you're out in the field? Easy Release can let you complete those releases on location. The app comes with completed releases, but you're free to customize them. On location, you can fill them out and collect signatures from your subjects. The completed releases are then emailed to you in either the JPEG or PDF format.

Nightstand Central (Free)

Lots of times when I travel, the time on the alarm clock in the hotel room is never right. Or the alarm is overly complicated to set. Nightstand Central turns your iPad into an alarm clock. The interface looks a lot like the home screen on an Android phone and can be dimmed for the night. You have a number of alarm options, including the ability to gradually fade in the alarm sound so that you're not jolted awake.

iBird (Free — $19.99)

While I often photograph birds, I don't always know what they are. I have traveled with guidebooks, but iBird has replaced them. The most advanced version, iBird Explorer Pro, includes 924 species of birds with lots of illustrations, photos and descriptive information. What I like about it, however, is that it's easy to search. The search feature allows you to narrow the catalog down by more than a dozen different traits, including size, wing shape, color, location, and on and on. It makes it easy to quickly identify the bird that you photographed.

There are lots of other options, however. Many of the Audubon guides have been ported over to the iPad, including guides for trees, butterflies, mammals, insects and wildflowers. I think the Audubon guides provide better images and species information, but I find the search features lacking.

So those are some of my favorite iPad photography (business) apps. What are yours? Feel free to share your favorites in the comments section. You can also share them on my Facebook or Google+ pages.

A tripod with sea legs

2011-08-31T20:52:00.000-07:00

People often ask me what they can do to improve their images. Often, I reply, "Get a tripod."

I'm a firm believer in tripods, so to speak. They allow you to capture sharp images that could be impossible to capture with shaky hands. They also slow you down. In the time it takes to set up your equipment, you can also think about whether your first idea for a composition is really the best it can be. Nearly all of my images were captured from a tripod.

This one wasn't. And it wouldn't be anywhere near as good if it had been.

My inspiration to become a nature photographer came not from seeing the great work of the pros before me; it came during a canoe trip through the Seattle Arboretum. As I rowed through the wetlands, I was absolutely amazed that wildlife that wouldn't let me approach within a 100 yards on land would completely ignore me on the water.

Great blue herons would fish barely a dozen feet from the boat. Baby ducklings would swim up and try to eat my oar. I got a camera and took up photography to show others the wonder of the wetlands. And as often as I can, I take to the water to capture images that would be difficult, if not impossible, to capture on land.

This image of a familiar bluet damselfly casting its shadow on a water lily is such an image. During mating season, these insects spend nearly all of their time on the water.

This one is a male who hasn't found his mate yet. All around me, dozens of other males had. Once the males find a mate, they grab her neck; the end of their tails works like a claw. Once joined, they fly in tandem from water lily to water lily, depositing eggs just below the surface of the water.

It's an absolutely amazing to watch. I was able to photograph this once from shore, but most of the time, they're farther out in the wetlands. A boat is the best place to capture the action.

To capture this guy, however, I still needed a fairly powerful lens. This was captured using my 100-400 lens at full power with a 1.4x extender added. The final focal length is 560mm. With that much zoom power, I needed to find a way to keep the camera very steady or I ran the risk of getting only blurry images. Basically, I needed a tripod on the water.

Over the years, I've come up with a steady camera system that works for me and the key part is to get an inflatable kayak. I have a two-person Sevylor inflatable kayak, which actually looks a little more like a canoe. I rarely take a second person, using the second seat to store my gear or to stretch out so that I can lie down in the boat.

I use the boat's soft, squishy sides as the tripod replacement. I lie down in the boat and rest the lens barrel on the side of the boat. It has a little give and it acts as a stabilizer. With some practice, you can stabilize the lens as well with the boat's side as you can with a camera bean bag.

An inflatable kayak, however, does pose another challenge. Because it's filled with air, it's relatively light. If there's much wind at all, the kayak acts like a kite.

There are two ways to deal with this challenge.

First, paddle at a moderate speed and then stop paddling when you're 15 feet or so from where you want to be to take the picture. As the momentum carries the boat forward, get into shooting position. You will need to use a fast shutter speed to compensate for the movement of the boat, but at least the boat will be going the direction you want (hopefully).

Whenever possible, however, I try to get my kayak tangled in lily pads. If there are enough lily pads under the boat, friction should keep your boat in place.

As for keeping your equipment dry, I bought a dry bag at a sporting goods store. You can also find them at a boating supply store. These bags are made of a waterproof material and the opening has several rubber strips. When closed properly, the bag is completely watertight. Some dry bags also float if they end up in the water, providing a little extra protection.

I also carry with me an absorbent cloth to dry up any water droplets my camera may catch.

I've been doing this for well over a decade now and I've yet to lose or damage a piece of equipment, but that's no guarantee. Make sure all your equipment is insured and don't take anything out on the water that you can't afford to lose.

The full resolution file of the image at the top of this post is so sharp that you can see each individual hair neatly on his head. It does the bluet justice; after all, he's trying to look nice for his date.

(Follow Kevin Ebi's photography on his Facebook page or on Google+.)

The Big Picture

2011-07-31T14:56:00.000-07:00

I rarely crop my images. There's nothing wrong with cropping; I just find that most of the time, the relatively wide 35mm frame works for me.

But every now and then, I want something wider. Really wide. Perhaps 10 times the width of a traditional 35mm frame. A serious panorama.

It wasn't long ago that to make a panorama you needed a special camera. One of the more popular cameras was the Hasselblad XPan. It was an extra wide 35mm camera that shot two frames side-by-side at the same time. You could get an image twice as wide as you could typically.

Today, you can make extreme panoramas by shooting as many digital frames as you want and then stitching them together later in software. You can even make complete 360 degree panoramas, capturing everything around you.

Instead of fitting the entire scene into your viewfinder, you turn your camera on its side, zoom in, capture one part of the scene, move the camera left (or right) a tiny amount, and capture another. Repeat the process until you have images of every part of the scene that you want to be in your final image.

Later, you import all of these images into your panorama software, which sorts them and stitches them together into one single image.

The image at the top of this post is made up of 22 different frames. The final image is more than 45,000 pixels wide and could be printed 16 feet wide without going through any image enlargement process! In fact, in one part of the image, you can see a few antelope feeding:

If I were simply to have cropped this panorama out of a single frame, I would never have captured this kind of detail.

The past few versions of Photoshop have included Panomerge, which creates panoramas for you. It works well and it's what I use. Other photographers like to use specialized programs, such as Kolor Autopano Giga or Panorama Maker Pro. They may be worth the extra cost, but I haven't tried them.

Regardless of the software that you use to stitch the images together, there are a number of things you should do to make its job easier. If you're someone who likes to "fix it in Photoshop later," keep in mind that even minor errors and discrepancies between images can ruin your entire panorama.

Clean your camera first. It's bad cloning out dust spots in one frame. If your panorama is made up of 22 images, you'll have to fix each dust spot as much as 22 times.

Make sure your camera and tripod are perfectly level. If your horizon is even the slightest bit crooked, it will throw off your entire panorama. Every single frame in your series should be level.

Overlap each frame by at least 1/3. The software needs to be able to see how all of your images fit together. It's sort of like a jig-saw puzzle. The more your images overlap, the better the final panorama will turn out.

Manually set your exposure and white balance. If the exposure or color tone varies from one frame to the next, you'll get an odd blotchy panorama. Given the techniques that the software uses to blend the frames together, that blotchy look can be difficult if not impossible to fix after the fact. Avoid that problem by making sure that every frame is captured with identical settings.

Consider your computer's limits. If you have an older computer, you probably don't want to try extreme panoramas. It takes a lot of memory and computing power to stitch the images together. If your machine is short on power, stick with panoramas that consist of only a handful of images. My computer has 8 gigs of RAM is running a 64-bit version of Windows 7. Even with that power, it took about a half hour to make this panorama.

Panoramas can be a great way of capturing a wide landscape. These tips will help ensure that your final image lives up to your expectations.

(Follow Kevin's photography through his Living Wilderness Facebook page.)

Getting to know all about you

2011-06-30T09:08:00.000-07:00

For as much time as I've spent watching this bald eagle nest, I should be on a first name basis with the owners. The eagles don't talk much, so I'll just assume their names are Eddie and Ellen.

I found out about the nest in Heritage Park in Kirkland, Wash., several months ago, long before any eaglets were born. Now the two chicks are nearly as big as their parents. One eaglet been testing his wings and could try to fly any day now; the other doesn't seem far behind.

I've photographed bald eagle nests before, but what's different is that I've really gotten to know the eagles here. I've visited the nest at least once a week. Many weeks, I've visited even more often.

Like most nature photographers, I rarely get to spend much time with my subjects. When traveling, I need to create the best images that I can as quickly as possible. If I spent months getting to know one small place far away, I would never be able to recoup my expenses.

This nest is different. It's only four freeway exits away. I can spend a few hours photographing it and still have time to get other work done.

And by really getting to know it and its residents, I've produced some of my best bald eagle images ever.

Because I've seen their flight path dozens and dozens of times, when one of the parents goes off to fish in Lake Washington, I know where to set up to get the best images of them returning with supper.

It also turns out that breakfast time for the eaglets is at about the same time every day.

Because I've been at the nest all times of the day, I know about a 45-minute window each morning when the sun shines into the nest. The rest of the day, the nest and the birds inside are in the shade and harder to photograph.

I have watched crows dive-bomb the eagles so often that I have numerous images as well as video.

And then there's the flock of Caspian terns that go fishing every morning right at sunrise.

I could go on and on, but what the experience has taught me is that I've placed too much of an emphasis on traveling far and working quickly. Regardless of the location, you can get different — and often better — images by taking the time to learn about the place.

And it's not just the knowledge that pays off. Having more time allows me to try new compositions, even if I'm not sure they will work out.

I wanted to get an image that clearly showed a fish in the eagle's talons. I set up in a place where I knew I could photograph the eagle from behind as it flew past, but I didn't know if I would also be able to see its face.

If I had only once chance to get this image, I would have probably tried a more conventional approach so that I could be guaranteed a shot. Here, if that idea didn't work out, I could always try again the next day. Or the day after that. Missing a shot isn't a big deal. I can afford to take risks here.

I can't afford to work this slowly wherever I go, but if you can slow down even just a little bit and take the time to really learn about your subject, it may pay off with truly special images.

And Eddie and Ellen say, "hello."

(I'm editing the video footage of the bald eagles and crows right now. Become a fan of my Living Wilderness page at Facebook to find out when it's posted.)

Raining? Use an umbrella, not a lens cap.

2011-05-31T18:58:00.000-07:00

It's a gray day in Seattle, just like yesterday, the day before, and the week before that. It's the end of May, and I've been able to barbeque only twice so far this year. And one of those times was in the rain.

So what does this have to do with nature photography? If you only photograph (or barbeque) when the weather is just right, there may be long periods of time when you don't get to do it.

You may have to change your photographic style a bit. Sweeping landscapes can appear dull under a battleship gray sky. Here are a few things to try to make art outdoors even when the weather isn't ideal. (I've had to use all of these techniques this spring.)

Patterns of nature

Look for patterns large and small. Is there an interesting pattern in the arrangement of flowers? Do the blooms on grass stalks line up in an interesting way?

Take time to look at the little patterns that make up the bigger landscape. Those little patterns can make interesting photographs and you can photograph them even if the sky is an ugly color.

Get close

Overcast days are my favorite for macro photography, a type of photography where you make the little details appear larger than life. The clouds soften the sunlight, preventing harsh shadows. Take time to examine the tiniest details in everything.

This is an area where you may be limited by your equipment. All lenses have a minimum focusing distance. Some can focus on subjects that are just a few inches away; many cannot. If you have an interchangeable lens camera but don't have a macro lens, you can buy relatively inexpensive extension tubes that let you focus closer to your subject than you could otherwise. (If you have a point-and-shoot, press the mode button until the flower icon appears.)

Photograph the rain

Trying to photograph rain is a great creative exercise. I didn't really appreciate rain until I was working on my book about the cycle of water. I realized I didn't have an image that illustrated rain well and I had to go out and make one. It's harder than it sounds. The image at the top of this post is the result of that effort.

Think in terms of creating an image that tells a story. Imagine you've been assigned to come up with an image to be the opening spread for an article about rain. Think of a concept and keep refining it until you come up with one single image that illustrates how much it's been raining.

Exercise your creativity

Creativity and muscle strength have a lot in common. If you were training for a marathon and took a month off, you'll probably be out of breath during the first run after your break. Creating art is the same. If it's been a while since you've taken a photo, you'll probably find your creativity has suffered a bit.

It's okay to hate the rain, but the practice you gain from photographing despite it will help you come up with more creative images when the weather is better.

(Check out a full preview of Kevin's book, Running in Circles, which traces the cycle of water.)

Stunning shorebird migration zig-zags into Grays Harbor

2011-04-30T17:59:00.000-07:00

It's late April and the sun is just beginning to rise over the Bowerman Basin, a muddy bay in Washington's Grays Harbor.

Very little mud is visible right now. One of the highest tides of the month, 8½ feet, is covering much of the mud. Tens of thousands of shorebirds are covering the rest. And more shorebirds are on the way.

Over the the span of a few weeks, maybe a million shorebirds will stop here. The flock consists mainly of western sandpipers, dunlin, two varieties of dowitchers, and plover.

They're on their way to breeding grounds in Alaska and northern Canada, but given that some started in Chile and Argentina, they tend to take a few regular breaks on their way north. Grays Harbor is one of the few major stopovers.

As the tide begins to turn, a flock of maybe 1,000 shorebirds, flies into the basin in a tight formation, hugging the shoreline. They land together on a tiny patch of mud smaller than the footprint of a tiny house. Then an even larger group flies in. And another. And another.

They don't really need to spread out. Within one square yard of mud, there may be 50,000 invertebrates within an inch or two of the surface. The high tide washes in the amphipods; the receding tide reveals the all-you-can-eat buffet.

After a few minutes, the flock of shorebirds, now numbering in the tens of thousands, takes off all at once and zig-zags to another patch of mud. And more shorebirds join in all the time.

The sheer number of birds is impressive enough, but the formation flying is simply stunning.

While the flock is made up of a few different kinds of birds, they all generally have white breasts and brown backs. Depending on the direction it's flying, the mass of birds can appear all brown or all white. Occasionally, the flock changes directions and the mass of birds gradually changes colors.

The display is even more impressive when the flock does a quick jog around an obstacle or zig-zags to hug the shoreline. Then you get to see a band of the opposite color move through the flock. It appears more precise than the "wave" at a football game and yet quieter than someone watching the game at home alone.

Bowerman Basin, part of the Grays Harbor National Wildlife Refuge, is one of the best places to see the show. It's the last part of Grays Harbor to be covered by high tide and the first to be exposed, so the shorebirds tend to congregate there. During very high tides, the high water pushes the birds closer to a boardwalk with several viewing decks.

The best time to see the shorebirds is during the last few weeks of April and the first part of May within a couple hours right around high tide. It's such an amazing sight to see, I go nearly every year.

(I'm editing some video of the display. To find out when it's finished, become a LivingWilderness Facebook fan.)

Everything old can be new again

2011-03-31T20:42:00.000-07:00

Last month, I wrote about sharing a small vantage point in Yosemite National Park with hundreds of other people, all hoping to catch one of the most photographed natural events in the park. This month, I want to talk about how to do your own thing despite that.

At least when it comes to national parks, I think it's almost impossible not to be influenced by other people. The number of photographers visiting the parks has never been higher. Digital technology and the popularity of sites like flickr and Facebook have made it easier than ever before to share their images.

So when you arrive at a vantage point, even if you've never been in the park before, it's quite likely you've already seen the view. Repeatedly.

Many of the images tend to look the same. Especially if a famous photographer created an image there, it's almost as if all who follow believe there is one "correct" way to photograph it.

But photography is supposed to be an art, and that means there's no one correct way to interpret anything.

I know photographers who consciously try to avoid looking at pictures of places they're about to visit. I think that's almost impossible to do anymore.

Instead, I try to approach any popular vantage points the same way I approach places back home where few photographers go. Before making an image I ask myself what I find special about the view. Why am I drawn to it? Then I try to compose an image that expresses that. The image isn't about the vantage point. It's about my impression of it.

The image at the top of this post is of a pretty famous waterfall in Glacier National Park, Montana. By the time I stumbled across it, Galen Rowell produced a widely published image of it. His image uses just two of the waterfalls. He positioned them so they're directly opposite each other with the mountains of Logan Pass in the background. It's a stunning image, so stunning the AAA used his image on the cover of a book about the beauty of North America.

When I arrived here, his image was definitely on my mind. I could have duplicated his composition, but I strive to be an artist, not a photocopier. I could have walked away, since this place had already been done.

Instead, I looked for a way to make an image all my own. I began by asking myself, "What's so special about this place." For me, it was the irony of the location. The creek is located near the Continental Divide, a line that's all about the water dividing and working its way into different oceans. But here, many different creeks from several different mountains actually join together.

Rather than standing in Rowell's footsteps, I climbed into one of the creeks and set my tripod up so that I could show as many of the streams as possible. I'd like to think that while it's the same viewpoint that he used, my image provides a different view.

If you're struggling at a popular viewpoint to make your own image, stop for a moment and take in the landscape. What about it is special to you? Photograph what the land says to you, not what other images tell you.

(Follow Kevin's latest work by becoming a fan of his Living Wilderness Facebook page.)

Everybody's doing it (and you should too)

2011-02-27T11:04:00.000-08:00

I'm waiting in knee-deep snow for a natural light show that may or may not happen. So are hundreds of other photographers. Any parking space within a half mile of good vantage point was claimed three or four hours before show time.

We're all waiting for the setting sun to light up Horsetail Falls, a thin thread of a waterfall that occasionally glides down El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. For a few weeks in February, if the conditions are just right, the setting sun will make the waterfall appear as if it were on fire.

There's a very narrow window of opportunity. The sun has to set at just the right angle. The western skies have to be relatively clear. The seasonal pond at the top of El Capitan that feeds the falls has to have enough water in it. And it has to be warm enough that the water can actually flow.

If it doesn't happen, I will have "wasted" an afternoon. If it does happen, I'll get an amazing image I'll never be able to sell. Hundreds of photographers today would get the essentially the same image, and in the years before us, probably thousands more have too.

So waiting, it seems, makes no financial or, frankly, even artistic sense.

You can probably tell by the image at the top of this post that the conditions didn't work out for me. The best I was able to do was get this image of a few wisps of golden clouds hanging near the summit of El Capitan. But I'll gladly try again someday.

There are some photographers who argue you shouldn't waste your time with anything that's already been done. And on some level they're right. Most of my favorite nature experiences involve some degree of solitude. The once-in-a-lifetime encounter with amazing light or wildlife and the resulting images are mine and mine alone.

But I also believe that some places and some experiences are so great that they should be shared. These days, the "fire falls" may not break any new artistic ground, but it can light up your passion for photography and nature.

When I first began photographing nature, I longed to visit places like Yosemite and see with my own eyes the amazing sights I had seen in the books made by master photographers. My images didn't even come close to matching their work. I didn't break any ground that first trip as I shared popular viewpoints with others seeking the same thing. But Yosemite broke new ground in me. It inspired me to look for and capture beauty wherever I went.

I met a few interesting people that day. There were a couple of photographers who were obviously disappointed: "I wish I could finally get an image of it so I can cross if off the list."

And I met a couple who brought their young son to the El Capitan picnic area — the prime viewpoint. Their camera was a tiny point-and-shoot. They took a few photos, but that clearly wasn't their goal. They had seen the fire falls a few years ago. They were so overcome with awe that they've camped in the Yosemite Valley every President's Day weekend since for the opportunity to see it again.

They were smiling as they walked back to the car even though they didn't get to see the "fire falls" this year. They were in such a great mood they offered to shuttle me, my wife, and my gear back to my car that was parked two miles away.

They had a great weekend. They spent the first part of the day hiking to Mirror Lake. Their eyes grew bright as they talked about seeing this much snow in the Yosemite Valley, a first for them.

They had a great nature experience. Sometimes those of us who do this for a living need to be reminded why we took this up in the first place.

For my part, I had an amazing Yosemite trip. I got to photograph dramatic snow storms from Tunnel View. I saw the full moon set over the Merced River with feet of fresh snow on its banks. I got to watch a family of deer play in the frazil ice below Yosemite Falls.

My time there filled me with awe and inspiration. Essentially the "fire falls" did all that, even though it never was lit when I was there. Some places are amazing like that, which is why we should visit them, even if they've been done before.

(I'm overhauling my photo website. In the meantime, you can see my favorite images from this Yosemite trip at my Living Wilderness Facebook page.)

And now, something different

2011-01-17T19:55:00.000-08:00

Imagine a print by Ansel Adams. You're probably thinking of a black and white image, impeccably sharp and detailed, perhaps of Yosemite. Now visualize something by Monet. You're probably seeing a vividly colorful "impressionistic" painting, perhaps of a Japanese bridge or the French coast.

A lot of artists have a definitive style. You can see a piece and instantly know that it is an Adams, for example. Cultivating a style can be key to developing your own brand as an artist.

But you may also want to try something else.

Most of my work falls into two categories: sharp, dramatic landscapes under fiery red skies and images of wildlife in the context of its environment. While that makes up the majority of what I show, it's not the whole of what I do.

For years, I've experimented with alternative ways of photographing the natural world. Inspired by the work of Freeman Patterson, William Neill and others, I've made a number of impressionistic images. Sometimes I move the camera around during a long exposure. Sometimes I zoom in or out while the shutter is open. Sometimes I try to make multiple exposures on the same frame.

The image at the top of this post is from a beach in Edmonds, Washington. I headed there to photograph the sunset over the Olympic Mountains. The sunset was pretty, but not especially dramatic. Whatever I got that night was not going to be better than images of the Olympics I had taken in the past.

So I decided to try something else. For some time, I wanted to create an image that showed the layers of the Olympics. It's hard to do. The peaks are very similar in height, so short of using aerial photography, it's hard to show rows and rows of mountains.

I was at sea level, so I created the rows of mountains by using an impressionistic approach. I used the longest shutter speed I could, held the camera in one position for a second, moved it a bit and held it in that position for a while, and so on. In this image, there are probably six or seven rows of mountains.

The image at the bottom was from another session at a nearby beach. I panned the camera with incoming waves at sunset.

Very few people get to see the results of my experiments. Most of the images are quickly deleted. I tuck a few away in an "abstract" file.

I got a chance to pull that abstract file out recently. An art gallery that I regularly work with has a client that wants abstract images of the Pacific Northwest. They invited me to submit images even though that's not generally my thing. I pulled a dozen of my favorites and the client seems really interested in about half.

Even now, I'm not sure I'll show much more of my abstract work. It's mainly for me. It helps me to concentrate on shapes and color — good design that helps me create better "traditional" images.

That, and I think there's something to be said for creating your own brand. Creating a brand usually requires some consistency.

On the other hand, I recently toured the special Picasso exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum. Even pieces he created just a few months apart looked like they were done by different people. That didn't seem to hurt his career.

Whatever the case, I've found it helpful to try something else from time to time. If you're developing your style, a little experimentation can help you find it. If you have a style, experimentation can help you refine it and keep it fresh.

And don't be afraid to share a few of your experiments. You may find a captive audience.

(Become a Facebook fan of Living Wilderness to get first word of new images and blog posts.)

My Best Images of 2010

2011-01-01T11:38:00.000-08:00

Ansel Adams once said that producing "twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop." I'm not going to go so far as to call these 12 images significant, but of the images I produced in 2010, they are my favorites. At least for now. My tastes change over time.

I posted my first "12 best" set last year, prompted by photographer Jim Goldstein. I'm doing it again because it's a worthwhile exercise. It can help you identify themes that you're passionate about so you can focus on them in the New Year. It can help you see where you're in a rut.

It can also help you feel better about your work. Creating a significant image is incredibly difficult. It's easy to get frustrated by uncooperative weather or wildlife. Reviewing your best work of the year can help you see the photographic drought was never as long as it seemed at the time.

So here are my favorites, in no particular order:

I've been working for years to capture a great breaching whale. I've yet to get it, but this is my favorite whale image so far. This orca, named Ruffles for its wavy fin, swam right in front of the boat and popped up for a breath. The spray was partially backlit and glowed like pixie dust, making the magical day look magical.

Each winter, thousands of snow geese winter in the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico. They spend the night on ponds and lakes and take off just before sunrise. They were late on this morning, but the sun in the image helps to tell the story.

You can make great images from a commercial jetliner! We flew over these mountains in eastern Greenland at about 1:30 in the morning. Their north faces are lit, which happens only with the Midnight Sun of summer. (This shot was planned and I specifically selected the seat on this flight to get it. Find more aerial photography tips here.)

I spent a stormy night at Tuweep, one of the most remote sections of Grand Canyon National Park. One thunderstorm after another rolled through. I got a short break in the weather about an hour before sunrise. A very long exposure allowed me to capture the faint color in the sky.

Here's another time when it paid to wait out the weather. Before sunrise, the fog in Washington's North Cascades was so thick you could barely even see the road. A few other photographers turned around and went home. I hiked up to a ridge line to get above the fog and was rewarded with this image of Mount Shuksan.

This isn't the standard vantage point of Zebra Slot in the Grand Staircase of Utah. The canyon was flooded and the water was a little chilly. I waded in waist-deep and took this image. This vantage point doesn't show the striped walls quite as well as the "typical" location, but I love the reflections.

Some of the ice floating in Jökulsárlón, Iceland is 1,500 years old — older than the nation itself. The weight of younger snow and ice above presses out any impurities, resulting in ice that resembles fine crystal. It tastes amazingly fresh too.

Strokkur in Icelandic means "churning." Just before this geyser erupts, it makes a giant blue ball of water. This ball, for lack of a better term, repeatedly surges and retreats, getting a little larger each time, until it finally erupts. It took a few hours of effort to capture the very beginning of the eruption. Thankfully, it erupts about 10 times an hour.

For a few weeks each spring, sandhill cranes use Othello, Washington, as a rest stop during their migration north. The overall flock is much, much larger than this, but I loved the shape of this small group as it flew over the road from one farmer's field to another.

One morning after trying to photograph wildflowers at Mount Rainier National Park, I went for a hike along the Paradise River. The very low angle light was touching only the splashes from a small waterfall in the river. A long exposure made those splashes look like fireworks.

It's easy to get close to the Atlantic puffins on the Látrabjarg bird cliff in Iceland. Making a truly special image takes a little more work. I found a great subject in these two birds that shared a narrow ledge. Dressed in black and white, they reminded me of opera singers putting on a performance.

I find the patterns in White Sands National Monument, New Mexico, even more interesting than the rolling dunes. I really like the simplicity of this one soap yucca and its long shadow on the white sand. There's something special about such simple designs and I'm going to work on creating more images like this in 2011.

(Become a Facebook fan to find out when I add new images and blog posts.)

New Mexico Travel Guide

2010-12-30T07:51:00.000-08:00

Getting great images is usually less the result of the equipment you have and more about being in the right place at the right time. In the past, I've written about how you should never write your plans in stone. Keep your eyes open and chase better opportunities, if they present themselves.

However, especially if you're traveling, doing a little planning in advance will almost always result in better photos. I recently took a trip to New Mexico. Here are some of the things I discovered:

Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge

This place is absolutely stunning in winter (November-February) and was the reason for my trip. Thousands of snow geese and sandhill cranes feed and rest up on the ponds there.

I've seen much bigger flocks of snow geese in the Skagit Valley of Washington state, but Bosque del Apache presents a unique photo opportunity: You can photograph a flock of snow geese lifting off from a lake at sunrise. They do it every morning with nearly the regularity of a Las Vegas show.

The reserve opens an hour before sunrise and you'll want to stake out your space at a viewpoint known as the Flight Deck within 15 minutes of it opening. The place is incredibly popular with photographers – and photo tours in particular. The days I were there, close to half of the photographers on the deck were part of one tour or another. Within 20-25 minutes of the park opening, there absolutely was no room for anyone else on the deck. There are some other vantage points along the road, but I don't think they are as good. They're claimed pretty early too.

The other reason to go early: the birds are somewhat unpredictable. I spent three days there. The first day they flew a few minutes before sunrise, the second day they flew about 10 minutes after sunrise, and the third day they flew about 20 minutes before sunrise.

Go early to get your place. Dress warm – it was just 13 degrees Fahrenheit the mornings I was there. And keep your eyes open.

Once the snow geese perform, head to the roadside ponds north of the visitor center, a couple of miles from the entrance gate. These ponds will be packed with sandhill cranes and you can photograph them taking off in the golden light. They don't take off all at once like snow geese, but you can get stunning images of small groups.

White Sands National Monument

From the distance, it looks like a ski resort. Up close, it looks like mounds of powdered sugar. White Sands National Monument is a very large reserve of white sand dunes.

Most of the pictures you've seen of this place are abstracts and close-ups. Here's why: photography here is best at sunrise and the park never opens until 7 a.m. For a few weeks around the winter solstice, the sunrise is right around 7. Why the park doesn't open earlier is beyond me. Even the park brochure acknowledges the best lighting is at sunrise. (The dunes are close to a mountain range, so they fall into the shadow about an hour before sunset.)

Also check the missile testing schedule. The park is next door to the White Sands Missile Testing Range. Whenever they're testing, the dunes are off limits.

Carlsbad Caverns National Park

I have photographed a number of caves, but I was truly impressed with the formations in the Carlsbad Caverns. The main cavern is a few miles long and there was no shortage of things to photograph.

Tripods are allowed in the natural entrance and the Big Room route and if you plan to do any serious photography, you should bring and use one. Those are also self-guided tours. Plan to go there early. The park service begins closing the cave mid-afternoon to get everyone out by 4:30.

While you can use a flash, I rarely did. Many of the formations are lit with differently-colored lights for dramatic effect and your flash unit will just negate that. If you do plan to do take some close-ups, though, a flash unit will probably help.

Cameras, but not tripods, are allowed in the ranger-guided King's Palace tour. This cavern got a lighting "upgrade" a few years ago, though I'm guessing it made things worse for photographers. This section of the cave is lit with energy-efficient LEDs. It's soft lighting that's pleasing on the eyes, but it also seems dimmer than the lighting in the main section. Even setting my camera to ISO 6400, I couldn't get a shutter speed fast enough for handheld photography. There are some benches that you can use to brace your camera, but photography in this section is incredibly difficult. It's worth doing the tour; it is the most stunning section of the cave that I visited. Just don't expect great photos.

Other spots

There's an amazing petroglyph site at Three Rivers, less than an hour north of White Sands. They've found thousands of different petroglyphs on rocks scattered throughout the park. A well-marked trail and brochure guide you some of the highlights, but this is a place you just want to look around.

Shiprock in northwestern New Mexico is also worth a visit. This mountain, located on Navajo land, rises out of nowhere and is beautiful bathed in the golden light of sunrise. The Navajo name for the mountain translates into "rock with wings." According to their legend, a bird guided them from the North to the present-day Four Corners area. Check out the rock from different angles. From some angles, it looks like a bird with wings. From others, it looks like an old sailing schooner, which is why we call it Shiprock.

(See more of Kevin's New Mexico photography by being a fan of his Facebook page.)

An adventure to fill the spirit

2010-11-30T16:58:00.000-08:00

The Grand Canyon is the second most popular national park. More than 4 million people visit each year. So it's a little surprising there's any place where you can have part of the rim to yourself.

It's called Toroweap. Or Tuweep. The national park guide doesn't appear to take sides.

Two and a half hours of bad road — 25 percent of travelers will suffer at least one flat tire — act as a strainer, keeping all but the most dedicated adventurers out.

The adventure is worth it. There's just one word to describe the payoff: Wow! In the more popular sections of the park, it's hard to view the canyon in context. At the official north and south rims the canyon is more than 10 miles wide; you can't see the other side.

The width here is just a mile, but the canyon is still 3,000 feet deep. Here, it not only feels like a grand canyon, it's one of the few places where you can see the Colorado River, which carved it.

The adventure begins from the town of Fredonia, Arizona. Get all the fuel and supplies you need here. Civilization ends at the city limits.

Follow highway 389 west for about 8 miles until you see a small turnoff and dirt road on your left. A sign tells you "Toroweap" is 61 miles away. The drive seems easy enough, but the rocks can be sharp. When I went, about 10 miles in there were pieces of someone's fender littering the road. There are two other roads, but they're supposedly even more rugged.

The national park boundary is about 10 miles from the end of the road and it's one of the few places where the park service displays a sense of humor. A sign welcomes you to the "Greater Tuweep Metropolitan Area." The greater metropolis consists of a ranger's residence, a maintenance shed and a vault toilet. It's bordered by the lesser metropolis, which consists of a cattle pasture and tumbleweed.

Once you've left the metropolitan area, the road gets really bad. You definitely need a high-clearance vehicle to navigate the boulders, potholes and other obstacles. Depending on your comfort level, in a few spots you may need a passenger to get out and spot you.

But when you reach the rim, you almost forget how hard it was to get there. There aren't any official trails at the main overlook, but you don't need any. It just adds to the sense of adventure. I practically felt like a kid again scrambling up and down rocks to check out the view from various points.

The adventurous spirit worked its way into my photography, too. I laid down to photograph the reflection of a peak in a natural pothole that trapped water from a recent storm. I stayed up late that night to photograph the canyon and the landscape above in the light of the full moon (there are nine spaces in a primitive campsite near the rim; first-come, first-served).

Whatever it's called, my time there ranks among my best days of photography and it's not just because of the spectacular view. The adventure transformed me into an explorer. I hunted to see what there was to see. I wanted to experience the area, rather than simply look for a place to hold my tripod.

If your photographic spirit gets a flat, try filling it with an adventure.

(Kevin's new book, which traces a drop of water from the ocean into storm clouds and ice caps and back again, is now available. Check out a full preview of Running in Circles.)

Desert storm

2010-10-31T13:53:00.000-07:00

Zebra Slot, Escalante, Utah

It rains in the desert. And when it does, it rains hard.

I've always known this. I've made close to a dozen serious photo expeditions to the American Southwest, always timing my slot canyon hikes for the time of the year when I'm least likely to be swept away in a flash flood.

But until my trip to Arizona and Utah this month, I had never personally experienced how wet a desert can get. It's nothing like the storms even in the rain forests of Olympic National Park that I've "enjoyed" many times.

The intensity isn't much different; heavy rain is heavy rain. The difference is that the desert simply isn't equipped for it.

There are no towering big leaf maple trees to act as natural umbrellas. There are few plants to drink up any of the water. And the land, which for thousands of years has been baked like a clay pot, doesn't absorb any either.

The desert rain essentially transforms the land into a wild theme park water slide.

And it's amazing to watch.

One afternoon, while photographing the fall color in the Kolob section of Utah's Zion National Park, the sky turned black. Moments later, the rain began. The hotel shower that morning wasn't anywhere that wet. Puddles formed everywhere, but the real show was on the mountainside in front of me.

All of the rain landing on the mountain was funneled into a handful of channels carved by all of the storms that preceded it. Water has no place to go but down and as fast as possible. Waterfalls raced down the mountain with such force, they pulled down pieces of the mountainside with them. Some waterfalls consumed so much red sandstone, they turned red themselves.

I counted 13 waterfalls on the north face of Paria Point. The smallest was a few hundred feet tall; the largest was a few thousand.

With each raindrop, the nearby river — actually, it's a wash — grew louder. There are few rivers in the Southwest, except during a storm. You see dry riverbeds most of the time. During a storm, raging rivers flow there, "washing" away any plants or debris that accumulated since the last storm. The babbling brook that I noticed when I first started hiking was now a powerful force I wouldn't dare cross.

As fast as it started, the rain stopped. The waterfalls dried up almost immediately.

Now that I knew where to look, I could see evidence of all the prior storms. I saw narrow passages swept clean. I saw big chunks of sandstone on the canyon floor. I saw black stripes running straight down the mountainside where the temporary waterfalls left deposits.

I couldn't have planned to photograph any of this. That day's weather forecast called for stormy weather, but it didn't sound especially epic.

The image below is of the waterfalls tumbling down Paria Point. I tried to photograph it the next day when the forecast called for even more storms. I ended up seeing two of those waterfalls again, but only two.

That makes me appreciate my few short minutes in the Zion water park even more. Sometimes the key to creating dramatic images is simply having your eyes open to nature's wonder.

(Kevin's new book on water, called Running in Circles, will be available soon. Become a Facebook fan of LivingWilderness to learn more.)

It's the little things

2010-09-29T19:53:00.000-07:00

The best laid plans in nature photography don't always work out. OK, they rarely work out.

But whether the grand landscape is hidden in fog or if you just have a little extra time, there's always something to photograph: the little details.

I call them patterns of nature, but often they're more natural designs than patterns. You can find them anywhere. The bark of a tree. The texture of a rock. The path of the water in a small creek. All of these can be subjects for great images. Just look around.

I was on a training climb a couple weeks ago and brought my camera even though it was mid-afternoon on a clear day — not the stereotypical "ideal" time for photography. I didn't plan on making any images that day. I just wanted to get used to climbing with the weight.

But I got distracted. I usually do. This time, it was the sunlight shining down through big maple leaves. The leaves were bright green. The backlighting made their veins stand out. The rest of the forest canopy was in the shade, so the leaves photographed as if they were on a black background with a few circles of blue sky here and there.

I probably spent 15 minutes with my camera pointed directly overhead photographing those leaves in ever-changing light. I haven't edited images from that session yet, but I'll have to share them with you sometime.

The image above is from a few years ago. I was working along the Carbon River in Mount Rainier National Park. I got some images of volcanic rocks and hiked out to a large waterfall. The lighting wasn't anything special so I started heading home.

Then the sun came through the clouds. I stopped at an overpass where a small creek was running below. I hiked down and quickly discovered that the entire creek wasn't photogenic. There were big concrete supports and a drainage culvert.

But the sun was shining on one tiny portion that curved between two rocks. It was a gorgeous curve that I could make run from nearly one corner of the frame to another. And every so often a little water would splash up, catch the sunlight and sparkle.

They were two little details — a curve and the sparkles — but they captured the beauty of the water far better than any wide shot of a creek or waterfall ever could.

If you ever find yourself saying, "I love how that water sparkles," or "I really like the way that branch curves," stop! Take pictures – even if the rest of the scene doesn't catch your fancy.

You know how some people say you can tell a lot about a person by just looking into their eyes? Sometimes you can capture the essence of a scene by zooming in on its sparkle.

(My new photography book tracing the cycle of water is about to be released. Learn more by becoming a Facebook fan.)

I only photograph interesting things

2010-08-31T18:09:00.000-07:00

In a particularly brushy area in Seattle’s Discovery Park, I heard the unmistakable song of a winter wren. The birds were made to be heard, not seen, but I grabbed my camera and started looking for it anyway.

Moments later, a woman came up and asked what I found.

“Oh, I thought you found something interesting,” she said and then walked away.

I am just as obsessed with eagles, osprey and herons as anyone else, but I think an animal can be interesting even if it doesn’t eat others. In fact, the winter wren and its close relative the marsh wren (pictured above) are absolutely fascinating birds.

They’re the accomplished performers of the songbird family and they can really belt out a song. Despite the fact that their wingspan is shorter than a dollar bill, their songs dominate the air.

The songs are truly impressive. Rapid trills give the songs the feeling of a fine classical work at an allegro pace. And the bird is no one-hit wonder. Researchers found one marsh wren that sang 219 different songs. Most on the west coast of the United States know about 150. For some reason, those found in the East far fewer.

Like human teens, they get their musical tastes from other wrens their age. They don’t like oldies. They seem to resist learning their fathers’ songs.

And when in concert, as they are about a third of the time, there’s a deliberate order to the songs they perform. Studies found the birds that know the most songs tend to be the most particular about the order they sing them.

Hearing the marsh wren belt out a tune isn’t quite like watching a bald eagle dive for a fish. Still, it is an interesting animal. Actually, they all are. Taking the time to learn about your subjects is one of the best ways to improve your photography.

When I came across this marsh wren on Canada’s Vancouver Island, I already knew its story and I set out to create a photograph that tells it. I got a few nice shots of it flitting from cattail to cattail, but nothing that expressed what a truly accomplished singer it is.

Then, I got my frame. In the middle of one of its beautiful songs, it closed its eyes. It reminded me of a professional human singer who gets lost in the moment. Yes, I’m anthropomorphizing the wren, but I think the image tells the story of it and its songs as well as any still image can.

When students ask me what photography classes they should take to help with their nature photography, I tell them to study anything else. I’m not trying to discourage them. Rather, I truly believe that the more you know about what you photograph, the better you’re able to capture its magic.

And everything is interesting, if only you take the time to listen.

(Become a fan of Living Wilderness on Facebook to find out about new blog posts and images.)

Been there, done that, did it again

2010-07-31T11:42:00.000-07:00

When I show other photographers this image of the Icelandic geyser Strokkur erupting, their first question is usually, “Did you get that on your first try?”

I tell them that while Strokkur is incredibly regular as geysers go – it erupts about 10 times per hour – each individual eruption is incredibly irregular. Sometimes the eruption comes from the very center of the “bubble.” Sometimes it comes from the side. Most of the time, the bubble subsides and the geyser churns for a while before making a new one. You never know exactly what it will do.

This image came after a solid hour of effort. And after I got it, I tried for another hour to do better.

A wise photographer once said, “If you take only one picture that will be your best image of the day.” Maybe that was the best image you could have taken. Maybe not.

With rare exception, it’s impossible to take the same picture twice. Even if there’s no wind, the sun will be in a slightly different position. And even if your subject doesn’t move, you can. Sometimes, moving even a few inches can dramatically change your composition.

Just as a writer’s work is not finished with a first draft, often your work as a photographer isn’t finished with the first shot. Every now and then, my first image in a sequence really is the best. More often, my images get better as I try to improve upon my original.

You don’t need to snap hundreds of pictures every time you take your camera out of the bag, but after each shot you may want to ask yourself if there’s anything you can do better. Don’t waste all your time staring at your camera’s screen, but do review a few of the images while you’re on location to identify opportunities for improvement.

Also, try going back to places over and over. Visit them in different times of the day, in different weather, in different seasons. Many of my favorite images are the result of considerable effort over several trips.

It’s the quality of the finished image that matters, not whether you got it on the first try.

Leave them wanting more

2010-06-28T20:59:00.000-07:00

A great image, whether used in a magazine or a textbook or on an art collector’s wall, says something. It creates a feeling. It tells a story.

The art is in how you tell that story. The ability to tell a story with a camera makes the difference between a snapshot and a work of art.

One of the most common mistakes in visual storytelling is trying to say too much with one image or even one series of images. The result is an image that lacks emotion. It may be a faithful record of the scene, but without a story, the viewer tends to quickly move on. It just doesn’t hold their interest.

You can help the viewer by boiling down the image to its essential parts. Before you click the shutter, think about what you’re trying to say. Compose the image so that you include only those elements that help to tell the story. A picture may be worth 1,000 words, but you shouldn’t use 1,000 words when 10 will do. Eliminate as many distractions as you can.

The thing is, we do this naturally when we tell stories (although some people are better at it than others.)

I saw a funny reader board last week. When I tell friends about it, I don’t tell them about the CD I was listening to as I drove by it. I don’t describe the gray skies that were finally starting to clear up. I don’t talk about the gyro I bought for lunch at a Greek restaurant where I couldn’t get a table because it was packed with people watching a soccer match.

Those random details — even if they were interesting on their own — have nothing to do with the reader board, which was about recent high school graduates being thankful for divine intervention. Every superfluous detail only takes away from the punch line.

The image at the top of this post is from Jökulsárlón, an iceberg-filled lagoon in southern Iceland. The lagoon has lots of stories to tell.

Hundreds and hundreds of icebergs get trapped in the lagoon, which is located in a short river between a mountain and the Atlantic Ocean. Some icebergs try to escape, but frequently waves and the tide push them back in.

Most icebergs are bigger than my car; many are bigger than my house. The part under water is much, much bigger than the part that you can see.

Much of the ice is older than Iceland. Some of the ice floating in the lagoon today formed 400 years before the first settler arrived. The lagoon itself is quite young. It first appeared in 1935 and has more than doubled in size over the past 35 years.

As stories go, that’s just the tip of the iceberg (sorry!). The lagoon is the second-deepest lake in Iceland. It was featured in a James Bond movie.

I could tell you more, but what fascinated me most was the age of the ice. The ice in this image is probably more than 1,500 years old. Before it broke off the Breiðamerkurjökull glacier and ended up in the lagoon, 1,500 years of new snow piled up on top of it. That weight forced out any air bubbles and other impurities. It’s pure frozen water. This ancient ice looks like fine crystal.

The blue color also comes from its age. With no obstacles, light penetrates so deep into the ice that only the blue wavelengths reflect back.

To illustrate the age of the ice, I used a composition that shows only the texture and the color of it. I didn’t include the mountain where the ice spent the past millennium. I didn’t include any of the other icebergs floating nearby. I didn’t include the ocean where it will end up. If I had included any of those things, this gorgeous ice formation would have been a tiny speck in the frame and the story would have been lost.

I didn’t even provide a sense of scale. There’s nothing wrong with providing that sense of scale, but sometimes I’ve found an image is much more interesting if there’s a little bit of mystery. And providing that scale doesn’t do anything to tell the story of the ice’s age.

If you find your image isn’t as compelling as you hoped, think about what you can leave out. Remember what attracted you to that scene and compose to eliminate anything that competes with that.

Don’t add clutter. Leave your viewers wanting more.

(Living Wilderness is now on Facebook. Become a fan to get first word of new images and blog posts.)

Shoot now, edit now

2010-05-18T19:53:00.000-07:00

If I had to sum up what’s involved in being a nature photographer, I’d say it’s 1 percent being in the right place at the right time, 9 percent waiting for the right time, and 90 percent sitting in front of a computer editing photos and finding clients.

That last part is my least favorite, of course. I took up nature photography as a break from my desk job. I have yet to find any shortcuts to finding clients, but over the years I have found a few ways to save time when editing images. Anything that cuts the amount of office work is a good thing.

How many times have you returned from a photo outing only to dump all of the day’s images into a folder and then move on to another task? Have you ever gotten back to those images? If you did, how much fun was it to go through them?

I’ve found the longer the images have sat, the harder it is (and longer it takes) to go through them. Break yourself of this habit as fast as you can. This will help minimize your photo backlog and somewhat reduce your editing burden. If you’re doing this for a living, it will also get more of your hidden inventory out in front of clients. There’s no chance the unsorted images will sell.

Editing images soon after you take them will also help you write better captions and keywords. Words and details flow easier when the image is fresh. And often the captions and keywords are what lead to sales.

Still, editing can be a drag. Here are a few tips to cut your editing time:

Edit straight from the memory card

Only copy your “select” and “secondary” images to your hard drive. At least for me, it’s much harder to delete images than it is to only copy the ones I like.

Once something is on my hard drive, it’s difficult for me to part with it. I’ll end up going through the folder slowly, analyzing several images that look the same so that I only delete the right ones. Yet I have no problem with formatting a memory card, vaporizing hundreds of images instantly, after I have copied the handful of images that I really liked.

Work backward

This tip seems to be so obvious, I can’t believe it took me this long to figure it out: Start at the end of your memory card (or folder) and work backward.

If you think about it for a moment, your best images are probably at the end of a series. Whenever I come across a great scene or an animal, I take a few images and then gradually take more as I find a better composition or get closer. I move on when I can’t find a way to improve upon what I already have.

If this is how you photograph, why go through your rough drafts first? If you find great stuff at the end of the series, you may find you can delete those early attempts without even opening them.

Don’t open every image

Make a first pass by looking only at the thumbnails in your favorite editing program. If you’re not wild about the composition or its potential, why bother opening the image to check if it’s sharp? Save yourself time and just delete it right then.

Take fewer pictures

I take far more pictures with my digital cameras than I ever did when I was working with film. Toward the end of my film days, I figured that between the film and processing costs, it cost about 50 cents every time I tripped the shutter. That cost caused me to be very deliberate about my photography. I would try different compositions and exposures, but I thought before taking every photo.

With digital photography, there’s essentially no cost associated with taking an image. I think the result is that sometimes we take pictures just to take pictures. That’s okay – sometimes. There’s nothing wrong with experimentation. But if you have folders and folders of images you never seem have time to go through, maybe you need to be more deliberate with the images you take.

Time is money

Editing your images quickly can pay off. The image at the top of this post resulted in a sale the day after I captured it.

I spent an afternoon photographing an osprey nest. I went through the memory card right after dinner and posted one select image to my Facebook account that night. That image was spotted by an editor of a local newspaper, who decided to run it the next day.

Because I edited the images quickly, the paper was able to use the photo to illustrate that osprey were nesting off Jetty Island. Had I waited, the image would have lost its value.

Check out more of my wildlife images at LivingWilderness.com.

Spring into wildlife photography

2010-04-02T08:35:00.000-07:00

I enjoy all types of nature photography, but wildlife photography may be the most rewarding. It’s extremely challenging. Even if you’re lucky enough to find the animal you’re looking for, it may not be in the mood to pose for you. The challenging times are certainly frustrating, but they make you appreciate a stunning wildlife image all the more.

The spring migration (or fall migration, if you’re in the southern hemisphere) is a great time to photograph an even wider variety of wildlife. In Washington state, where I live, sandhill cranes started migrating through a few weeks ago; shorebirds will begin migrating up the coast in a couple weeks.

Nesting birds and animals coming out of hibernation to feed on colorful wildflowers provide even more opportunities.

Here are some tips I’ve developed over the years to maximize fun and minimize frustration:

Get over your lens envy

I was a wildlife photographer for many years before I was able to afford a really powerful telephoto lens. And I may have been more successful because of that.

There are two types of wildlife images: the trophy shot and the story shot. Having a really powerful lens tends to make people go for the trophy, for example, an image where only the bald eagle’s head fits into the frame. Those can be impressive images, but they don’t tell you the story of the animal.

Images that show where and how the animal lives within the context of its environment can be even more stunning. You can create these images with any lens. (You can read more tips on this in a previous post.)

Read and study

The more you know about your subject, the more likely you are to make great images of it. My bookshelf is full of field and wildlife behavior guides. I not only find them interesting, but helpful.

Photography is about being in the right place at the right time. There’s always an element of luck, but by knowing more about your subject, you can increase the odds in your favor.

You don’t have to travel

I love being in a remote corner on the opposite side of the world, photographing animals that I normally don’t get to see, but I’ve also learned to appreciate the pond that’s 10 minutes from my house.

First, if I photographed only when I travel, I wouldn’t have much of a library. More importantly, the pond has taught me a lot about wildlife. Being able to watch the pond – and its residents – change throughout the year helps me learn more about nature than I could pick up in just a few weeks in some foreign location. And, again, knowledge provides opportunity.

Make friends

There’s no substitute for experience, but talking with the locals when you’re on the road can make up some of the difference. Talk to as many people who appreciate wildlife as you can. You never know what they’ll share with you.

In New Zealand, I met a woman who drew me a map to a secluded beach where a rare type of penguin roosts for the night. I didn’t have to ask for that. Once she could see that I was passionate and respectful of wildlife, she volunteered the information. I never would have found that beach on my own.

In the Mojave Desert, a ranger led me to a desert tortoise that was several hundred yards off trail. I ended up giving his non-profit group an image they could use in materials to protect the tortoises’ habitat.

Don’t get too close

This tip is for the safety of you – and the wildlife.

As the word suggests, wildlife is wild – unpredictable. Your camera and lens won’t protect you from charging bears. There’s a well-documented photography-related death in Yellowstone National Park. A photographer walked right up to a seemingly docile bison. It mauled him. Don’t be that guy.

It’s also not good for the animals. Especially during the mating and migration seasons, animals need to conserve energy. The energy that they expend fleeing from you may be energy they needed to migrate or to raise their young. No photograph is worth an animal’s life.

Check out more of my wildlife photography in the Wildlife Gallery at LivingWilderness.com.

It's waterfall season

2010-03-29T19:54:00.001-07:00

It’s spring in the northern hemisphere. Snow is melting in the mountains, and nearly-April rains are adding to the river flows. A lot of waterfalls are pretty impressive now.

Most people can name a few big waterfalls in their general area. But after you’ve photographed them repeatedly, then what?

There are many, many resources available for finding waterfalls to photograph. Waterfall enthusiasts are a lot like bird lovers. Many spend their time scouring topographical maps, examining the terrain to discover new waterfalls. There are waterfall web sites for virtually any region on Earth, developed by enthusiasts who provide directions and frequently snapshot photos.

You can easily find these waterfall web sites by doing a simple internet search for the name of the region you're interested in and the word "waterfalls." Just keep in mind that many of these sites are the work of waterfall hunters, not nature photographers. A waterfall that appears boring on one of these sites may be gorgeous in a different season, at a different time of day, or with a different composition. Go and explore. You'll never know if you don't go.

With larger waterfalls, a simple internet search can often tell you if the falls is raging or just a trickle. For flood control and other purposes, most major rivers are constantly observed by monitoring equipment. Do an internet search with the name of the river that contains the falls and the word "hydrograph." You’ll get graphs showing whether the river is rising or falling, and, therefore, whether the flow over the falls is increasing or decreasing. Visit your favorite waterfalls several times, comparing your experience to these figures, to get an idea of how the numbers translate into photographic opportunities.

Waterfalls don’t have to be raging, however, to result in good pictures. In fact, some waterfalls are much better with the flow is relatively low. Running Eagle Falls in Montana, also known as Trick Falls, is one such waterfall. Upstream and out of view, part of the river drops into a natural underground tunnel that ends in the middle of the waterfall. In mid-summer, the flow of water from the tunnel is greater than the volume of water coming over the top of the falls, resulting in a waterfall that’s much wider at the bottom than at the top. When the river is running high, the lower falls is hidden completely.

You don't have to go far to find great waterfalls. Even small falls can produce great images. Check maps, web sites and, especially, hiking guidebooks and you can likely find waterfalls to photograph within an hour or two of your home.

The waterfall at the top of this post is from Wallace Falls State Park near Goldbar, Wash., but it’s not of Wallace Falls. While hiking out to the park’s big waterfall, I took a side trail and discovered a gorgeous creek. I like this image even more than I like the image of Wallace Falls itself.

(For more waterfalls, check out the Waterfalls gallery at LivingWilderness.com.)

AF settings for birds in flight with the Canon 1D Mark IV

2010-03-24T21:43:00.000-07:00

The Canon 1D Mark IV is the most customizable camera I’ve ever used. It has dozens of settings that allow you to tune it to your exact needs. Wading through all those settings, though, can be challenging, especially if you don’t have a lot of time for trial and error.

After using the camera for more than two months of intensive wildlife photography, I’ve finally settled on autofocus settings that I really like. I’m sharing them with you because I’m often asked for my settings. Remember, these are settings that I like. Your style of shooting may be completely different, which is why the ability to change these settings exists in the first place.

With the exception of the following, I’ve left the other autofocus settings on the C.fn III menu at their default settings:

C.fn III-2 AI Servo tracking sensitivity

One step below middle. If you’re tracking something and something passes between you and the thing your tracking, this setting governs how long the camera will wait before refocusing on your selected focus point. The more you move the point to the left, the longer the camera will wait to refocus. The default setting actually works fine, but this is what I used with the Mark III series and it still seems to work well.

C.fn III-4 AI Servo AF tracking method

I switched this to 1, which turns on continuous AF track priority. This setting tells the camera whether it should concentrate on the focus point you selected, or the object it thinks you’re tracking. It’s designed for sports photographers. It will tell the camera to continue tracking a player even if a referee briefly gets in the way. For wildlife photography, it makes it easier to track birds, even when you can’t keep the autofocus point on the same spot.

C.fn III-5 Lens drive when AF impossible

I switched this to 1, “focus search off.” I found that with the default setting, the camera is way too quick to give up trying to lock focus. In its default setting, the camera then defocuses and slowly works its way through its range until it can focus on something. Problem is, when you’re working with a long lens and a bird that’s far off, when the lens defocuses, the viewfinder becomes a complete blur. It’s focusing close with a lens that has very little depth of field. When the viewfinder is a complete blur, it’s impossible for you to keep the autofocus point on the bird, and therefore the camera is never able to lock focus on anything. I’m having much more success by turning focus search off. When the camera can’t immediately lock focus, take your finger off the shutter (or AF button), compose so your autofocus point is back on top of the bird, and then try to focus again. You may need to repeat that process a few times for tricky subjects, but this works a million times better than the focus search method.

C.fn III-6 Lens AF stop button function

I set this to 7, “Spot AF.” On long telephoto lenses, there are little black buttons on the ring near the lens hood. These are called AF stop buttons. This camera setting determines what those buttons do when they’re held down. Spot AF, a new feature, is like spot metering. It causes the camera to concentrate on a small portion within an autofocus point. It’s supposed to allow it to lock focus in challenging conditions. It helps me a little when the animal is in front of a busy background, though the main reason I switched this to 7 is that I have absolutely no use for the other settings.

C.fn III-8 AF expansion with selected point

I set this to 2, “surrounding AF points.” When you’re tracking a bird (or anything else) this setting tells the camera whether or not it can use AF points besides the one you selected to help with tracking. The AF point expansion is handy, because it is incredibly hard to keep one single AF point on the very same part of a moving object. The 0 setting turns any assistance off; the 3 setting turns all autofocus points on. In theory, you’d think you would want to use 3 – to get any help you can get. In practice, when set to 3, the camera gets distracted very easily. It’s quick to focus on anything that’s closer than what you want to track. When tracking a bald eagle, for example, the camera quickly jumped from the eye (which is what I wanted in focus) to the tip of the wing closest to me. The setting 2 – surrounding AF points – allows the camera to use the AF points that are in a ring around the point you selected, and works very well.

C.fn III-9 Multi-controller when metering

I set this to 1, which allows you to use the “joystick” to select a new autofocus point. I love this feature because it allows me to quickly change my composition. If the bird suddenly changes direction, for example, I can rapidly move the autofocus point to the opposite side of the viewfinder to give the bird “room” to fly in my composition. A friend of mine who photographs sports, however, hates this feature because he accidentally bumps the joystick – and accidentally changes his autofocus point.

C.fn III-16 Orientation linked AF point

I set this to 1, which allows you to select separate autofocus points for when the camera is horizontal and vertical. When I can, I try to get horizontal and vertical images of a subject – you never know how a client will want to use an image. With this feature set to 1, I can quickly switch my orientation back and forth without having to change the autofocus point each time. The point that I selected when the camera was horizontal will automatically be made active when the camera is horizontal. I can select a completely different point that will become active when the camera is vertical.

Bonus autofocus tip

I've found the thing that makes the biggest difference in my autofocus success rate is not any one camera setting, it's how you use the AI Servo mode. I've found that if I track the bird with the shutter half-pressed for a short period — a half-second or so — the Canon 1D Mark IV locks focus and holds it amazingly well.

Have your own autofocus tips or preferred settigs? Share them in the comments section!

Big images from little lenses

2010-02-27T09:14:00.000-08:00

Quick! There’s a bald eagle across the river. What lens do you use?

To make art, we need to break ourselves from the habit of always answering “the longest lens I have.”

After writing a couple posts about new equipment, I figured it’s time to write about how some of the best images don’t necessarily come from the most expensive tools.

I’ve had the idea to write this post for a couple months. I posted the bald eagle image above on my flickr account. A woman who writes me every now and then left me a note saying that she never thought about photographing eagles since she has only a 300mm lens. An eagle would never fill the frame with such a small lens! She said my image showed her that you don’t always have to fill the frame.

She was easy to convince. Most aren’t.

Most photographers judge whether a wildlife image is good or not by how much space the animal’s head takes up in the final image. If the whole bird barely fits into the frame the image is good. If you used such a long lens that only the bird’s head can fit in the frame, it’s even better.

Problem is, their portfolios end up looking like a school year book for Bald Eagle High.

I certainly appreciate images of bald eagles that were taken from so close that you can see the texture of the birds’ tongues. But I also appreciate images that show the animal in the context of its environment – images that tell a story.

I never really intended to become a wildlife photographer. Most of my library is landscapes and images that tell the story of the geology of the land. But you can’t be in nature long without finding opportunities to photograph wildlife.

With a bag of lenses suited more toward landscapes, my wildlife images were rarely close-ups. They were mainly nice landscapes with an animal as the center of interest. I made the images that way because I didn’t have “better” equipment.

Then I discovered something: those are the kinds of images that publishers want.

The real eye-opening event came several years ago when I was photographing in the Badlands of South Dakota. I was there for the scenery, but spent a couple afternoons photographing a prairie dog town. Prairie dogs are generally skittish. These were even more so, since they were practically endangered. I got relatively close a few, but with my 400mm lens – my strongest – I was no match for another photographer there who had gear about twice the power of mine.

Since I was never going to get a frame-filling image of a prairie dog, I tried to make the best image I could with my equipment. I tried a different approach. I zoomed out a little and showed the plain with as many prairie dogs as I could fit in one frame. Suddenly, they all stood alert. A coyote ran through their town. I snapped a few frames and then packed up my gear and went for a hike.

A few weeks later, I heard from a major wildlife magazine. They wanted my prairie dog picture. It told the story of the growing prairie dog population and the dangers they still faced. They ran my image as a two-page opening spread. There’s almost no bigger accomplishment for a wildlife photographer.

I’m not telling you this story to brag. I’m sharing it because it’s a reminder that photography is art, and the best art communicates something, whether it’s a thought, an emotion or a story.

Sometimes you need a powerful telephoto lens to tell that story. Sometimes you don’t. Don’t let yourself fall into a trap that you can only take wildlife images with the most powerful lens you can (or can’t) afford.

Now a confession: the image that prompted this whole post was taken with a 600mm lens. With the wrong attitude, though, I never would have taken the image. The eagle was “too far away.”

And here are a couple wildlife images that were not taken with telephoto lenses. The geese below were taken with a 100mm lens; the bighorn sheep were taken with a lens set to 40mm.

Canon 1D Mark IV Post II

2010-02-26T17:54:00.000-08:00

I still have no plans to turn this into an equipment blog. That said, I promised an update to my original post on the Canon 1D Mark IV once I had a chance to test new firmware.

I found the original firmware in my camera (1.0.4) did an amazing job tracking birds in flight. In fact, it has the best auto focus system of any camera I’ve ever used. But I ran into lots of trouble with slow-swimming ducks on a pond.

I found that any time just a slight change in focus was needed from one frame to the next, the camera would get a few frames in sharp focus, then “get bored” and then stop tracking for several frames.

I’m happy to report that the new firmware, version 1.0.6, completely fixes this problem. And it doesn’t appear to break anything else!

Some other discoveries:

Spot AF

In my original post, I also wrote about problems where it seemed like the focus point was larger than it actually appeared in the viewfinder. I ran into this issue when photographing a cormorant. I selected an autofocus point that just fit inside the bird’s head, yet the camera was still distracted by the cattails in the background.

The 1D Mark IV includes a feature called Spot AF that works with some super telephoto lenses, like the 600mm I was using. If you change a custom function [C.Fn III-6], the AF Stop buttons on the lens (the little black buttons on the ring near the lens hood on my lens) change the focus point into a sort of super focus point.

While you hold down the AF Stop button, the camera will concentrate its resources on an area a fraction of the size of the regular focus point. It’s supposed to give you sharper focus on that concentrated area.

For me – and this may be because I’m using a tele-converter – Spot AF doesn’t appear to make much of a difference. It also didn’t appear to help much in challenging conditions – like fog. I would have a still bird nearly in focus and then tried using Spot AF. It would still completely defocus and hunt through its entire focusing range.

I’ve yet to find a situation where it works any better than regular focus, which is okay, since regular focus is fine most of the time. Lots of people like the feature, however. If it works for you, don’t let me stop you.

Expansion points

When you’re tracking a bird in flight, it’s tough to keep the autofocus point on the same part of the bird at all times. There are several options that let you tell the camera whether or not it can use other focus points to help track if it thinks the point you selected slipped off your target.

You can tell the camera never to use another point, to use points on the left and right of your selected point, use points in a circle around the point you selected, or use all available points.

After a couple months of heavy use, I’ve found the surrounding option seems to work the best for me.

Using all points seems to be a good idea in principle, but I’ve found that at least with flying birds, the camera seems much more likely to get distracted by things that are closer to you. I tracked an eagle, keeping my selected AF point on the same spot of the bird, but the camera suddenly switched to a point that covered the tip of the bird’s wing. The tip of the wing was sharp, but the bird’s eye (usually your goal) was not.

That said, using all points worked incredibly well with a huge flock of snow geese flying toward me. It made sure that the closest bird was always in focus.

Auto lighting optimizer

This is another feature that sounds incredibly useful. I, however, find it annoying and have turned it off.

As designed, the feature is supposed to give you a more even exposure in somewhat challenging lighting conditions. And it does that if you shoot JPEG or develop your raw files in Canon's Digital Photo Professional.

Problem is, it works by under exposing your images. That means if you use any other raw converter to process your files, you will have to work harder to adjust the brightness and tone to get the look you want.

Unlike many custom functions that have no affect whatsoever on the raw data, this one seems to deliberately under expose images. In my tests, the under-exposure is about a half-stop.

If you shoot JPEGs, by all means leave this feature on. It does a good job with a variety of lighting conditions. However, if you shoot in the raw format and want to use anything other than Canon's raw converter, turn the Auto Lighting Optimizer off via CFn II-4.

Capture One

The latest version of the Capture One raw converter (5.1) now supports files from the Canon 1D Mark IV. I haven’t had much time to play with it, but so far it looks like it does a great job with color, tone, and detail. No surprise.

Its luminance noise reduction, however, appears to be just as touchy as the noise reduction in Canon's Digital Photo Professional. Anything more than very low levels of luminance noise reduction quickly make the image look like plastic. It’s not like they need much anyway. At high ISOs, however, they do need a fair amount of color noise reduction.

So that’s it. Have any tips of your own? Share them in the comments section.

And the next post will not be about new equipment!

Hands on with the Canon 1D Mark IV

2010-01-24T23:01:00.000-08:00

Don’t worry. This is not turning into an equipment blog. It has always annoyed me when someone has looked at one of my best images and said, “What camera did you use? I should get one.”

Last I checked, my camera doesn’t venture out by itself. Or, if it does, it seems to forget to take the memory card with it.

I also think that a truly stunning image is more art than science. If we obsess only about the equipment, we act as if there’s no difference between photography and a chemistry equation: Camera X + Lens Y + Exposure Settings Z = Pulitzer!

That said, I got a new camera – a Canon 1D Mark IV –and I thought I’d share what I’ve learned in the first couple weeks of using it. Whenever I get new equipment, whether it’s a camera or a lens, I test it before I rely on it for anything critical.

I know of far too many photographers – including pros – who get new gear just before a big trip or big assignment and are surprised when it doesn’t work quite the way they expected. Don’t miss an incredible shot because you’re not familiar with your equipment.

What’s important is that you test the camera the same way you plan to use it. If you shoot landscapes, practicing at a basketball game won’t teach you want you really need to know.

This is going to be my primary wildlife camera, so I took it to wildlife preserves near my house spending hours and hours with the birds. I then spent an equal amount of time back in the office studying each image. If I found an image that didn’t turn out – and there were plenty – I analyzed it until I figured out why.

It doesn’t matter what kind or brand of camera you use. This investment in time can make the difference between getting that once-in-a-lifetime shot – or not. And even though I’ve used Canon 1-series digital cameras exclusively for seven years now, there is a lot to learn about the new model:

Image Quality

There’s a lot of detail in the 1D Mark IV’s files, but it’s not always immediately evident. I used the Canon 600/f4 IS lens – an incredibly sharp lens – for most of my sessions and was surprised that some images seemed to be missing fine detail. After manually focusing and trying other subjects, I think the problem is actually the result low default sharpening and high noise reduction.

I experimented with the “soft” images in Canon’s raw developer, Digital Photo Professional (DPP), and discovered that a minor increase from the default sharpening of 3 brought out all those details I expected to see. With a sharpening level of even 4 or 5, I could see each of the individual dots around a cormorant’s eye and the texture of a bald eagle’s toes. And these were images that looked soft straight out of the camera.

Sharpening is easy to fix after the fact, either with the Smart Sharpen tool in Photoshop or by adding sharpening in your raw converter, but I am going to set the default in-camera sharpening to 4. The final images are a tiny bit noisier, but I think they look better.

However, sometimes the images are soft, because they’re blurry. With a lot of pixels in its relatively small sensor, the camera captures a lot of detail. Even with a solid tripod, it’s hard to keep a long telephoto lens completely still for any length of time when there’s any wind at all. It seems to me that with the 1D Mark IV’s tremendous resolution, it’s also more likely to show flaws resulting from camera shake.

With my 1Ds Mark III, I could, more often than not, get usable images from my 600mm lens at shutter speeds as slow as 1/60. With the 1D Mark IV, I’m finding that 1/125 is probably more realistic as a lower limit. But that’s okay; you can always boost the ISO speed. (More on that in a minute.)

One final note about image quality: the camera’s auto white balance often results in images that are too blue for my taste. It’s easy to fix later if you shoot in the raw format, but something to watch for if you primarily shoot JPEGs or video.

High ISO

Very high ISO settings are one of the main new features in this camera. On the internet there are so many example images shot at all settings that I’m not going to bore with you with more.

The more you crank up the ISO speed, the noisier your images will be. The amount of noise you can put up is largely determined by how you plan to use your images. I think ISO 6400 is perfectly usable, even for large prints.

Do be aware that the noise reduction in DPP seems especially touchy. Luminance noise reduction (which gets rid of the grain-like noise) technically operates on a scale of 0 to 20. In reality, it’s a 0 to 5 based system. The more you turn up the noise reduction, the more fine details will be blurred away, of course. By the time you get to level 5, it’s blurring so much of the image to reduce grain that the image no longer looks real. The camera performs so well at ISO 6400 that even level 3 luminance noise reduction is enough.

Chrominance noise reduction (which gets rid of the color blotches) does not have the same problem, and you will need much more of this type of noise reduction as you boost the ISO speed.

One of the best ways I found to process high ISO images is to run them through the beta version of Adobe Lightroom 3. You’ll have to convert the raw images to Adobe’s DNG format first; it can’t read Canon 1D Mark IV files natively. Lightroom 3 does an amazing job of eliminating the chrominance noise. Luminance noise reduction is turned “off” in the beta, but you can clean that up later in Photoshop using your favorite tool, like Noiseware Professional.

Auto Focus

The auto focus was the other major change in the 1D Mark IV. I never used the 1D Mark III, so I don’t have an opinion on it. Supposedly, whatever problems existed in version 3 are long gone. Here’s what I found:

Auto focus tracking (AI servo) does a phenomenal job on subjects that are moving fast. I tracked bald eagles and hawks flying at and around me. I tracked huge flocks of snow geese flying straight toward me. I rapidly turned and caught a mallard landing on a pond. In all of these cases, the auto focus quickly locked on its target and tracked it. In almost all of these sequences, every shot was in perfect focus.

While the 1D Mark IV’s autofocus system is almost perfect with birds in flight, it was ho-hum with birds swimming on a pond. I tracked cormorants and several types of ducks on the pond and discovered no matter how slow they swam, the auto focus couldn’t keep up.

The problem occurs mainly with birds that swam just slightly away from me. I would pan with the birds. In a typical burst sequence, the camera would get the first two shots perfectly in focus and then would get bored and stop tracking the bird.

By shots four or five, the point where the camera focused was significantly behind the bird. Eventually, it would correctly track the bird again for a few frames, only to fall behind again.
To put it another way, this is an issue in sequences where you need some, although very little, change in focus from frame to frame.

Here are two images from a series where a northern shoveler was swimming slightly away from me. The in-focus shot was the first frame in the sequence; the out-of-focus shot was the fourth. These are screen captures from Canon's raw developer with the active auto focus point displayed in red. They're cropped differently. Even though it doesn't look it, the active auto focus point was the same in both images:

I just read that Canon will soon release new firmware to fix this problem. Once it’s available, I’ll re-test. (Edit: The update is now posted.)

Finally, when manually selecting auto focus points, do be aware that the points seem to be larger than they actually appear in the viewfinder.

When photographing a cormorant hunting from a log, I selected a solitary auto focus point that just fit within the bird’s head. Even still, the camera seemed to be distracted by the similarly-colored grass and brush behind it. AI servo caused the focus to ping-pong between the bird and the brush. In single-shot AF, about half the time the camera would focus on the brush.

I then selected an auto focus point in the center of the bird’s body and the problem disappeared. I think this is purely the result of the auto focus sensors being larger than they’re indicated in the viewfinder.

All in all, the Canon 1D Mark IV is a great camera. Knowing its quirks – and all cameras have them – will help me get the shot when it’s truly critical.

Looking back, looking forward

2010-01-07T16:49:00.000-08:00

While tearing apart my office this week in a frantic effort to find a Windows recovery CD – long story – I found a 20-page book. Each page showed off one of my best images from 2001.

I made books like that every year the first few years after I became a serious photographer. They were a way to celebrate my accomplishments. I also used them to get my first few gallery shows.

I don’t know why I stopped, but I’m going to start doing it again. I saw that photographer Jim Goldstein is compiling a directory of the year’s best images from a number of photographers. It seemed like a fun project, but it’s also worthwhile.

One of the things I discovered in compiling my 12 — just 12; I’m also a better photo editor now — is that I do my most creative work either while traveling or in the first few weeks after I’m back. One of my goals this year is to bring that creative approach to the things I see every day.

Check back in a year to see how I do. In the meantime, here's my best work from 2009:

Sign up for the Living Wilderness e-mail newsletter to find out when I add new images.

Open mind, open camera bag

2009-12-28T20:08:00.000-08:00

Some of my best bald eagle images have come from British Columbia on a little levee in a little town between the sea and the mountains.

Once I saw four eagles share a log, just hanging out, watching the river flow by. Another time, a bald eagle flew right by me, fresh salmon in tow, then land and eat lunch maybe 30 feet from where I set up my camera.

I’ve been going to this spot right around Christmas every year for the past few years. As impressive as it’s been, people who live around there have told me I should go a little earlier in the year. Come in late November, they say, and where I saw four eagles, I would see eight. Or 12.

This year, I took their advice. And this year, I saw one eagle – maybe two. It was hard to tell. They were so far away, the white head I saw may have been a patch of snow.

The eagle watching may very well be better there in November. It just may have been a bad week. When it comes to hunting for food, the bald eagle is more like a crow than a grizzly bear. Maybe a rendering truck spilled its load an hour up the road. Who knows?

What happened next is the single reason why my photo trips are as productive as they are: I looked for something else to photograph.

I scanned the horizon and saw a pyramid-shaped mountain I had never noticed before. In the past, I had been too busy looking at the birds to even notice the mountains. I found a spot where I could photograph the moon setting behind the peak.

Then I went back to the empty levee and hiked. In no time at all, I spotted a harbor seal chowing down on a fish. A handful of gulls spotted him, too. For a half hour, I photographed the seal and gulls in a dramatic game of keep away.

Oh, what a great day it was!

That morning, after the planning, the anticipation, the three-hour drive and the line at the border, it would have been easy to head home, cussing about the empty memory card. That’s obviously the wrong approach.

I became a nature photographer because I love being out in nature, and nature is unpredictable. Sometimes nature puts on a show that’s far better than anything I could have imagined. And sometimes things just don’t work out.

The fact that there were no eagles didn’t change the fact that I got to spend a day in nature doing something that I love to do. When life deals you an empty river, go fishing somewhere else.

(Check out my latest images at LivingWilderness.com)

Up, Click and Away!

2009-11-30T19:33:00.000-08:00

There’s nothing quite like standing on the top of a mountain, admiring a view that stretches for hundreds of miles. Looking out an airplane window is a close second, and with a little work, you can get some stunning images – even from a seat in a commercial jetliner.

I get a window seat whenever I fly. Aerial photography is pretty expensive to produce. Even the cheapest sight-seeing helicopters charge you hundreds of dollars for an hour. So why not try to get some aerial photography in while you’re flying to your destination? What else is there to do?

I generally try to get a seat between the wing and the tail. If you sit too close to the wing, you won’t get much of a view. You don’t want to sit right behind the wing either. The exhaust from the engine can really distort any images.

(Some jetliners have engines on their tail. If that’s the case with your plane, don’t sit in the last five or six rows. As you’re booking your flight, the web site usually shows you what kind of plane you’ll be flying on. Do a Google search on that type of plane before you book if you’re not sure where the engines are.)

Which side of the plane should you sit on? Often, there are great photo opportunities on both sides. However, depending on the destination, I may try for one side or the other.

For example, whenever I fly south out of Seattle, I try to sit on the side facing east (the left) so I can photograph Mount Rainier. When I flew from the north island of New Zealand to the south, I also sat on the east-facing side (again the left), so I could photograph the gorgeous mountains near Kaikoura. And when I flew back to the United States from Iceland, I requested a south-facing seat (yet again on the left) so I would have a better view of the stunning mountains in southern Greenland (the photo above).

To get an idea of what you’ll see on your flight – and therefore, which side you should sit on – run the flight information through FlightAware.com. It tracks all commercial flights within the United States, showing you the paths of several previous flights on that route.

Every flight is a little bit different because of weather, traffic patterns and whatnot, but it gives you a great idea of what you can expect. Switch the map from Classic to Earth View to get a better idea of what the terrain looks like.

Now that you have your seat, here are a few tips for taking pictures during the flight:

• Wear dark clothing. Bright clothing with intense colors will reflect on your window, wrecking your image.

• Use a lens hood. That will help minimize other reflections.

• Bring a cloth to wipe the window.

• Use the fastest shutter speed possible. Even in bright daylight, I try to use a shutter speed of 1/1000th of a second or faster. Remember, your plane is traveling 400 miles per hour or faster.

• Use a lens in the “normal” range. The plane is going too fast for you to use a telephoto lens.

• Don’t let the lens or the lens hood touch the airplane window. The vibrations from the window will make your image blurry.

• Shoot around the flaws in the window. I’ve yet to find a jetliner window that wasn’t seriously flawed in one way or another. Carefully examine the window and try to shoot through the best part.

• Use your camera’s burst mode. I’ll typically fire off a half dozen images at once in order to get one or two sharp images.

Have fun! Aerial photography is incredibly addictive and rewarding. It’s almost enough for me to look forward to my next flight. Almost.

(Check out more images at LivingWilderness.com)

A sunset without the sunset

2009-10-08T18:51:00.001-07:00

The sunset last night was absolutely incredible -- one of the most dramatic I've seen in a while. I had a feeling early on that it was going to be good. I noticed thin wispy clouds high in the sky early in the afternoon and made plans to be down by the water at sunset in case the sky lit up.

This, obviously, isn't the image I imagined earlier in the day. After all, there are no clouds in the frame.

The sunset wasn't the issue. It was even more dramatic than I thought it would be. Rather, I believe that a sunset (or a sunrise) is often best used as an accessory. When I shoot at sunset, I don't go out to shoot the sunset itself. I use it as an element to add drama to my overall composition.

There is a difference.

When I started photographing the magical light years ago, I concentrated on the sunset. The problem is you get stuck in a rut. You get one image of a red sky with a bare tree. And an image of a red sky with a mountain range. And a red sky with a lighthouse.

That's not a bad thing; it just starts to feel the same.

Early in my career, I would have been incredibly proud to get an image of the blazing sky above the Olympic mountains. I got several frames of that last night, but that's not the scene that moved me most.

Standing at the beach, I was really struck by the interesting pattern of the partially-buried driftwood. I loved the shape. The driftwood was interesting by itself, but the sunset, which set the whole sky ablaze and the water, too, by reflection, added drama.

Sometimes the best part of the sunset is not the sunset itself, but what it does to the rest of the landscape.

Into the sun

2009-09-30T21:46:00.001-07:00

The vast majority of my images are captured at sunrise or sunset when the golden light makes the landscape look magical. However, sometimes shooting at the golden hour just isn’t possible. One trick to make dramatic images in the middle of the day is to use the sun in your image.

You don’t want to do this too often, or your portfolio will look gimmicky. Every now and then, though, a dramatic sunburst can liven up what would otherwise be an ordinary midday image. Here’s how to do it:

Hide part of the sun behind a tree branch, peak, or other something similar. You probably want only about a quarter to a third of the sun to show. Using any more than that will likely overwhelm the image. If too much of the sun shows in your frame, the darker exposure settings you will have to use to capture it will turn everything else in your frame black.

With just a tiny part of the sun showing, set your exposure using the smallest aperture possible. Very small apertures bend light, creating rays from very bright sources, like the sun. For this image, I used an aperture of f/22.

Experiment with your shutter speed and the amount of sun showing to create a nice, balanced composition. Remember, too much sun will result in everything else turning black. Too little sun will result in a tiny – or virtually non-existent – sunburst. Try different combinations to see what you like!

By the light of the moon

2009-08-29T18:55:00.000-07:00

I've been out late a lot lately. I've done more night photography in the past couple months than I have in my entire career.

It's not that I'm changing my style or anything. Sometimes that's just how things work out.

In New Zealand, the middle of the night provided one of my only two opportunities to photograph Taranaki, a beautiful, perfectly conical volcano. The clouds were too thick the rest of the time I was there. And back home, a client needed an image of Comet Falls, which is located in Mount Rainier National Park. The waterfall gets its name from the fact it looks like a comet. Given that, why wouldn't I photograph it at night?

A lot of photographers struggle trying to figure out what exposure settings to use. Night photography doesn't make that process any easier.

Before I became a serious photographer, I assumed that taking a picture was an instantaneous process. You snap the button. The image is immediately recorded. Now, I realize there's more to it.

For something to be visible in an image, you need a certain amount of light. It's the same amount of light whether you're photographing at high noon or at midnight. The difference is how long you have to keep the camera's shutter open to allow enough light to accumulate. At noon, the capture is practically instantaneous. At night, you may need to keep the shutter open for hours.

Getting stars in your image only complicates matters more. When you look at the sky, it doesn't really appear as though the stars are moving. Take a picture of them and you quickly realize how fast the Earth is spinning.

I've found you need to use a shutter speed of no slower than 20 or 30 seconds to record the stars as individual points of light. Go much longer — even 30 seconds is starting to get a little long — and the stars start to blur. They — or actually the Earth — are moving that fast.

The problem is, 20 seconds may be too quick for the landscape below. Remember, the camera will only capture the land if you give it enough time to collect light. The darker it is, the more time it needs.

One way to solve this problem is to find something to light the land. Some photographers use powerful flashlights, guiding the beam back and forth over their subject while the stars shine in the dark. Some people call this technique "light painting." You use the light to paint the landscape. It works if you paint evenly. But you have to be careful. If you shine the light too much in one spot, it will be overly bright. If you miss a spot, it will be black.

I like to do my night photography around the full moon. The moon evenly lights the land, and, in most cases, is bright enough to allow you to photograph the land and the sky with one 20-30 second exposure.

You will need fast film or to boost your digital camera's ISO (simulated film speed), however. This Comet Falls image is a 20-second digital exposure taken at ISO 800.

This technique is almost foolproof. The only negative is the sky will likely be too bright to be able to photograph the Milky Way. The flashlight technique, of course, doesn't light the atmosphere the way the moon does.

(Check out more waterfall images at LivingWilderness.com.)

To wait or not to wait

2009-07-31T12:21:00.001-07:00

It is a question every photographer faces: Do I wait for the clouds to part?

It’s never an easy question to answer. Usually by the time you’re faced with it, you’ve already invested a few hours carrying heavy equipment deep into the wilderness only to find the spectacular mountain you came to photograph is hiding behind a cloudy curtain with a bad case of stage fright.

Do I admit defeat and hike back to my car with nothing to show for my effort?

Do I invest even more time waiting for the stunning sunrise or sunset that may not show?

As a nature photographer, I don’t think there’s a worse question to face. Sometimes you wait and get nothing. Sometimes you give up and then witness the most amazing sunset you’ve ever seen from the comfort of your car.

At Matheson Lake in New Zealand, I waited. Three other photographers did not.

We were all there to catch the sunset. When the weather is just right, the lake is a fabulous place to capture Mounts Cook and Tasman, New Zealand’s tallest peaks. As we waited for the sun to set, one series of clouds after another blew in, blocking our view of Tasman or Cook or both.

When our watches said the sun had set, we briefly talked about whether we should wait. I was optimistic; they were not. The only clouds in the sky were around the mountains. Sometimes, when the heat from the sun is no longer stirring up the air, clouds like that tend to dissipate.

This time, I was right and I got a great image of the mountains bathed in alpenglow, reflecting in the still lake.

I’m sure it was tough for the other photographers to see the mountains come out of the clouds as they were driving back into town, but we’ve all been there. And the times we're wrong only make us appreciate the times we're right all the more.

(Sign up for the Living Wilderness mailing list to be the first to know when the New Zealand images are online!)

Low Tide, High Potential

2009-06-19T12:25:00.001-07:00

Over the next few days, you have an incredible opportunity to photographic things that would normally be way under the sea. We’ll get some of the lowest tides of the year Monday and Tuesday.

Photographing tide pools is great fun. I don’t dive. I don’t have an underwater housing for my camera. But for a few days every year, I get to photograph wildlife I can’t normally reach.

Tides are affected by a few dozen factors – mainly whether the gravity of the sun and moon is pulling in the same direction or not. In general, the lowest tides of the year seem to occur right around the summer solstice when the moon is new.

Here are a few tips to get the most out of your low tide photography:

Use a polarizer. This will reduce annoying glare that ruins your exposure and allow you to see through the reflections at the surface of tide pools (little ponds full of wildlife that are left behind up on shore when the water recedes.)

Try to make the back of your camera parallel to your subject when you’re shooting into a tide pool. Shooting through the water of a tide pool is like shooting through a dirty, deformed window. If you can shoot straight down, you minimize the amount of distortion caused by the uneven surface of the water.

Start photographing an hour or two before the tide is lowest. Work your way down the beach with the tide to maximize your photo opportunities.

Try not to handle or step on the sea creatures. They’re fragile and obviously not used to being around people. Rosario Beach in Deception Pass State Park, Washington, used to be covered with starfish during exceptionally low tides. They’re all gone now. Years ago, more than a thousand people packed onto the beach during a low tide, touching everything they could. Most everything died, and the sea life still hasn’t recovered fully.

How do you find out when low tide is? You can get tide charts for any beach on the coast of the United States from SaltWaterTides.com.

And to figure out what you’re photographing, you need a good identification guide. For years, I used Audubon guides, but they don’t do well around water. At Rosario Beach last month I met Mary Jo Adams and Jan Holmes who developed a great guide featuring most of the animals you’re likely to run across in Pacific Northwest tide pools. It’s laminated and their identification photos are really good. You can order your copy by e-mailing them at Periwinkle Press.

They also put together an online identification guide for the Washington State University Beach Watchers program.

I discovered that the brightly-colored creature in the picture above is a Red Sea Cucumber thanks to their helpful guide. Check it out.

(To see more sea creatures, check out the Beaches gallery at LivingWilderness.com)

The Cost of Free Photography

2009-05-15T11:46:00.000-07:00

“I would love to have the picture on our site, unfortunately we couldn't offer any sort of payment as it is not part of our budget.”

I get these messages all the time. Most photographers do. Most of the time, I say “no,” and here’s why you should say “no,” too.

When you give your work away you’re telling people your work is not worth anything. If it was worth something, why would you give it away?

Images can be incredibly valuable. They can catch someone’s eye, prompting them to buy a book or magazine – or car. They can inspire people to travel to a particular destination, generating sales for businesses there. A good image generates results like nothing else. That’s why they want your images.

Before you call me greedy, I frequently donate images for educational and environmental causes that I personally believe in. Sometimes I donate cash as well.

But there are many, many companies and groups that can afford to pay for our hard work, but refuse to. The reason I’m upset is that photography is hard and expensive work to produce. I think that most of those who benefit from our work should pay us for it.

The quote at the top of this post is from an e-mail I got this week. It came from a federal group that has a paid administrative staff, a paid web development staff, and a team of paid researchers who scour the Internet for free content to harvest.

If you’ve ever dreamed of going pro, this should scare the living daylight out of you. So many photographers give their work away that this group would rather pay people to find free images than to pay for the images themselves.

(By the way, whenever you fill up your car to drive to some scenic location to take these pictures, you are paying to fund this group. Mad yet?)

There are many reasons photographers give their work away. Some think that because they aren’t paying for film, there's no actual cost involved in producing the images. In reality, depending on how many pictures you take and how often you upgrade your camera, your digital pictures may cost more per click. And that doesn't even count your time and travel costs.

Others think that giving away photography is part of some initiation process necessary to earn paying jobs. Remember that group that I told you about that has a paid staff searching the Internet for free photos? Their “researchers” will just find someone else to work for free.

And if so many photographers continue to give their images away, economics will only prompt more organizations to pay vultures than to pay photographers.

The next time someone asks you for a free image, ask yourself if you would make a cash donation to their cause. If you wouldn’t, then why are you supporting them financially with your time and investments in equipment and travel?

P.S. If you use photography rather than produce it, consider that free photography doesn't really help you either. The image at the top of this post exists only because I thought someone would pay for it. It's not something I would hang in my home. If the only people left creating images are volunteers, it's going to become increasingly difficult to find concept images like this.

Temperatures Rise, Water Falls

2009-04-25T15:14:00.000-07:00

As the temperature warms and the snow melts, it's a great time to photograph waterfalls. Rainbow Falls, west of Chehalis, Wash., normally fits between two rocks in the middle of the Chehalis River. Right now, the waterfall is a gorgeous cascade that stretches all the way from one river bank to the other. Many falls are at or approaching their peak spring flow.

If you would like some tips with your own waterfall photography, check out the current issue of Digital Photographer magazine (issue 82). This issue's "Big Feature" is on water, and I was invited to share advice for photographing waterfalls. Among other things, you'll get the exposure settings for some of my favorite waterfall images, and you'll read about my technique for finding rainbows in waterfalls. Yes, there is a trick.

By the way, I do have a some of my 2009 Water Works calendars left. It features waterfalls, lakes, and rivers from throughout North America. While the year is well under way, the images are printed on fine-art paper, and are suitable for framing. Shipping is free.

(And don't forget to check out LivingWilderness.com for even more of my waterfall images.)

Cherry Blossom Impressions

2009-04-09T08:24:00.000-07:00

One problem most new photographers have is that they try to do too much in an image. They try to cram the entire world into the small viewfinder. And in the process of trying to do everything, the viewer ends up noticing nothing. What am I supposed to be looking at?

Over time, photographers learn to crop, use longer lenses, and creative composition to give their images a center of interest and their art a message.

Sometimes, even those techniques are not enough.

Walking through the Seattle Arboretum, I was struck by the different colors of the cherry blossoms. Some were white, some pink, some almost red. I found a place where I could see several different colors at once, and set up my tripod in a spot where the strong trunk lines added to the design.

But the sharp exposures were dull. I found my eye being pulled through the blossoms, looking at what was behind. Then there was the neatly manicured lawn and beauty bark. The detail was a distraction.

So, I tried an impressionistic approach. I took my camera off the tripod, set a long exposure time, and moved the camera during the exposure. The distracting details were blurred away, leaving only the colors and trunks that attracted my eye.

There's less detail, but more to see.

This technique isn't appropriate for every scene, but no one technique is. What's important is to think about what interests you about a subject before you press the shutter. Use whatever technique is appropriate to emphasize that.

(Check out the Seasons gallery at LivingWilderness.com for more springtime images.)

Right Place, Long Time

2009-03-14T15:03:00.000-07:00

Photography is often about being in the right place at the right time. And sometimes you have to wait a long time in that right place.

This image was from my first trip to the top of Maui's Mount Haleakala. The weather was terrible. The temperature was barely above freezing. The rain was so heavy, often you couldn't even see the cinder cones in the crater. And then the lightning strikes, which, according to a park ranger, were the worst in decades.

Every now and then, however, the clouds would part just enough to let a little bit of sunshine through. Stand in just the right spot and you could see vibrant rainbows. Sometimes even double rainbows. And every so often, the dense fog in the crater would allow a glimpse of a cinder cone or two.

None of the displays lasted very long. This process repeated over and over during the two hours I sat at the rim, bundled in layers of Gore-Tex products, with my camera under an umbrella.
A few times during my marathon in the rain, other people would join me. Some took their own pictures of the rainbows. They all hurried off, and a few remarked that I was nuts to subject myself to the elements for so long. After all, I already "got the rainbow."

What they meant was that I got "a" rainbow. I didn't get the shot that I visualized, which was the rainbow and the cinder cones surrounded by the severe storm. That's what I was waiting for. That's what I eventually got.

Once in a great while, a once-in-a-lifetime photography opportunity presents itself right as you pull up to a vantage point. More often, you have to wait for your turn.

(More Maui images are now online at LivingWilderness.com.)

Fall Arrives in the Mountains

2008-10-12T13:22:00.000-07:00

Here in the Pacific Northwest, it seemed summer lasted only a few weeks this year. We had one of the latest spring snows on record. And just a few weeks ago at Mount Rainier National Park, summer wildflowers were blooming next to ground cover ablaze in fall colors.

Despite a half-foot of snow at Stevens Pass this week, there's still plenty of fall color to be seen, especially on the east slope of the pass and along the Wenatchee River as you approach Leavenworth.

This image came from a crowded pull out, a few miles west of town. At times, I shared this spot with a half-dozen other photographers — some with SLRs, some with cell phone cams. I'm sure we all came home with different photos, though.

One person I talked to loved the color on the hillside. Another person was enamored with the rocks. I have a few images of the hillside and the rocks in the Wenatchee River, but this was my favorite image of the day.

Arriving at the turnout, I was struck by the beauty of the bare trunks against the golden fall color. It's been said the best art contains only the minimum number of elements to get its point across. I don't usually shoot abstract, impressionistic images, but the reflection in this tiny section of the Wenatchee River contained everything that drew me there. The lines may not be perfectly straight, but to me the reflection captured the essense of the place far better than a traditional shot ever could.

What do you think?

(More images at LivingWilderness.com)