I’m Going to Triple D
I wanted everyone to know that I have decided to go along on the PAW Triple D workshop- Lions, Tigers and Bears. This is a 3-4 day shoot from October 28 – Nov. 1. Go to the PAW website and you’ll find all the info under the workshops tag. There are only a few spaces left (we don’t take a big group, it is better that way) so don’t delay. Hope to see you there!
A Must Go Place
Triple D Game Farm I will say this as simply and plainly as I can – anyone reading this who hasn’t spent a few days photographing at the Triple D Game Farm in Kalispell, Montana is missing a fantastic experience. I don’t care if you prefer landscapes or close-ups, wildlife or people; Triple D should be on every photographer’s schedule. This is especially true if you are doing public slide shows or showing your work as prints or contemplating making submissions to calendars or magazines. Without images of the animals at Triple D you are making your photography-life more difficult. You can justify your lack of great wildlife shots any way you want. But every well known nature photographer I know has lots of great wildlife images and most of them are not shot in the wild. You figure it out. I go to Triple D almost every June. The last time I was there I photographed black bear cub, adult and baby raccoons, adult and baby striped skunks, gray fox, baby red fox, bobcat and tom turkeys in full display. Fifteen hundred images and I could have done another thousand without even thinking about it. It was great. And not only was it very productive photographically but just being around these animals, seeing them move around you, hearing them, just being so close to them is a thrill. I wasn’t even doing any particularly exotic animals this time, just everyday kind of critters. In previous times there I have gotten great shots of mountain lions, lynx, bobcat, wolf, grizzly bear, fisher, coyote, badger, snow leopard and Siberian tiger. Many of these shots are of babies, cuter than you can imagine. Go ahead, you try to sell the gazillionth shot of Delicate Arch or Portland Head Lighthouse, I’ll stick with charismatic animals, especially baby animals. We won’t be meeting at the bank. The Triple D Game Farm is owned by Jay and Kim Diest with much of the day to day operation overseen by Kathleen. Logan and/or Jay will be with you while you are shooting and both have extensive filming experience. You are going to think they are know-nothing-animal-handlers but that would be a mistake. Both Logan and Jay have been helping photographers for many years and know what, where and how to get the shots you want better than you do. This applies to me as well. When one of them says, “I think it might be a nice shot from over here” I listen. When they say “that animal works best in the morning or on cloudy days” I don’t argue. Many of my best shots are from times when I have followed their suggestions. Jay and Logan really work hard to try to get you the shots you want. They will never do anything that jeopardizes the animals and in fact they can’t make the animals do anything that they don’t want to do. But Jay and Logan are extremely flexible and will work hard to get the shot you want. You want to start at 5 am? No problem. You want a shot of a standing bear? No problem. You want to photograph a mother wolf and her pups together? No problem. Not only is their approach flexible by they have numerous places to photograph, each one slightly different. You want water reflection shots? Wildflower meadows? Rocky cliffs? Perched on logs? Peeping around a tree? Surrounded by snow? With craggy mountains behind? On a carcass? In a burrow? Howling? No problem. Are you getting my point? Now these animals don’t pose and they aren’t trained to obey commands like a pet dog might. The animals are trained to stay in one general area and are rewarded by pieces of meat if they behave properly. If the animal doesn’t feel like cooperating that day Kathleen or Jay will bring out a back-up animal to photograph so you won’t have to try to get a shot of an animal that doesn’t want to be photographed. Most other places don’t do this and you are stuck often in a bad photographic situation. But this doesn’t make the photography easy by any means. The animals are moving all the time and you have to follow them in your camera all the time. Every so often they will be in the right spot, doing the right thing and looking the right way with the right light and assuming your exposure is correct and your focus is on you will probably get a great shot. Lots of time something is not quite right and you end up with either a very silly looking animal or a great looking animal with a stick coming out of its head or with only its tail in focus. Fifty rolls or 20 gigs aren’t so much when you think of all the things that might go wrong. I have photographed at Triple D for more than 20 years, in every season and have done every animal they have. Still, I will continue to go back every chance I can because I know that I will never get opportunities like I get at Triple D anywhere else. You want to add some sizzle to your presentations? Take a trip to Triple D and your work will never be dull again.
LightroomLab
Hello Everyone! I wanted to give everyone a heads up on a very helpful and well done website for users of Lightroom. It is called LightroomLab and the address is thelightroomlab. I go there often to have find answers to nagging little questions I am having in Lightroom and to read their tips and tricks to learn how to do things better. They also have easy to follow and very useful video clips and importatn aspects of Lightroom. Scott and Dave (the brains behind LightroomLab) are also very good about answering questions that are submitted to them. If you sue Lightroom you should visit LightroomLab on a very regular basis. It can only help.
Pacific Rim National Park
In mid-May I had the pleasure of going to the western coast of Vancouver Island and reacquainting myself with the area around the Pacific Rim National Park. The park lies on a long finger of land that is the western edge of the ocean as well as the eastern edge of a huge, wild, island-studded body of water, the Clayoquot Sound. Altogether the park, the sound and the adjoining mountains comprise the Clayoquot Sound World Biosphere Reserve. It is a spectacularly wild and beautiful place. The black bear was photographed from a small tour boat at low tide on the shoreline of the Sound. We were so close that we could hear the crunch, crunch of the bear eating the crabs he found under the tidal rocks. The captain turned of the motor and let us drift into the shore so we could get close shots of the bear as it hunted the waterline. We saw 4 or 5 bears on the one trip that I took and each one was as unperturbed as this one. I used a 300mm f4 Nikon lens, hand held with my arms propped up on the deck on the bow of the boat. The low tide kelp photograph is an attempt to show the marine richness of the sound. I could’ve spent hours just playing with all the colors and textures of the kelp and seastars. For this picture I decided to use my wide-angle lens and show the marine seascape with the kelp as the foreground. In order to get the feeling that you could step right out on to the kelp covered rocks (what I call participatory landscapes because the viewer feels like he or she could be right there) I got above the closest part and the scene and tilted the camera down. This drew in the foreground and made it a stronger composition. I used my Nikon 12-24mm lens. I am doing a workshop here next year with my workshop company, PAW. I can’t wait to get back up there and revisit these sites and show them to the participants. I think I may go a bit early to just to photograph myself. What a place for nature photographers!
Book Proposal
The Six P’s of crafting a book proposal
Haying
August and it is the middle of the Season to Hay. This is how I think of the year now, in terms of farm chores. There is, as well, the Season to Begin, the Season to Grow, the Season to Calf, the Season to Harvest and the Season to Shovel
Owlet
So I get a call from Roger, the farmer friend who owns the farm I am doing a book on. “Rob found something you ought to see.” “What?” I ask. “Come over and bring your camera.” I will always go over to the farm when I get a call like this because it is always something worthwhile. Rob was out walking and found this owlet perched just as you see in the picture on a stone wall alongside one of the old farm roads. When I got there is was still just sitting there, statue like. So I took its picture. Pretty easy, huh? Well, it wasn’t quite as easy as it sounds. The only lenses I had in my bag were a 12-24 wide angle and a 200 macro. I didn’t want to disturb the little guy so I decided not to use the short lens. The 200 was fine except I didn’t have my tripod with me. I always carry it in my jeep but on this time it wasn’t there and I didn’t check for it before I left. So I handheld this picture, shooting wide up with the ISO set at 1000 to get a high enough shutter speed. It worked out reasonably well but it would’ve been better and more relaxing if I had my tripod. After I was finished taking the picture Rob climbed up into the tree overhead and I handed the owlet up to him. He put it in a protected spot for the evening. We haven’t seen the little guy since.
really random thoughts
How much modesty can you have when you are wearing buttons and thread for a bathing suit?
more random thoughts
Some observations from my recent spat of workshops