"...Why do they shoot for short pay.."

With apologies to Michael Burton, an Arizona rancher who wrote a wonderful cowboy song called Night Rider's Lament. I've stolen one of the lines and changed it to suit my purpose. It's a beautiful song about a cowboy who left the city life and a woman for who knows what reason. But he's wrangling cows and his city friends can't for the life of them understand why he does what he does. He explains it in the most loquacious of terms which I'll get to in just a while.

I've been thinking a lot lately about why photographers do what they do. Why do we crawl out of a warm bed or sleeping bag 3 or 4 hours before sunrise and stumble through the woods or drive significant distances at a high rate of speed to photograph a sunrise where the magic light may only last 3 or 4 minutes. Why do we sit shivering near the edge of a meadow in pre-dawn darkness waiting for the bull of the woods to grace us with his presence only to be disappointed a great deal of the time. Why do we stand knee deep in glacier fed streams to get just the right angle for our composition?

Some do it for the money. There are quite a few folks out there that make a living as photographers. Some live check to check and some are very successful. I don't have statistics to back it up but I'd guess that maybe 1% of 1% of all the photographers out there have gotten wealthy because of their craft. I spent a little less than 20 years making my living from photography though it mostly came from the periphery of the business, not from shooting. I did manage to make some money shooting weddings and portraits and I've sold some stock photos over the years but mostly I was working in photo labs or some such nonsense.

Some do it for the glory. There are photographers out there who publish scores of books. Some conduct workshops all over the world. Some have huge displays of their images in airports or restaurants and some even have their own tv shows. There's a lot to be said for the ego rush that comes from seeing your work displayed. Even more to be said for knowing that people are willing to pay to learn what you know. It's a rush that's hard to beat. I had one of my images displayed at the company where I work for a year and every time someone said "Bill, is that your photo hanging across from the elevators in building 1?" it made me warm and fuzzy all over.

I can't really pretend to know why my friends do what they do. Most of the photographers I associate with these days have "day" jobs in fields other than photography. We toil by day so we can get out on the weekends and create images. Some make some pretty good sales of their photos and with any luck, I'll be able to parley some of my images into cash to supplement my upcoming retirement. But that's not one of the main reasons I do what I do.

It's the rush...the fun...the therapy..the zone. Yeah, I said zone. When I go on a photo trip most of the time my family declines every invitation. They've been around me too long and been on too many excursions with me and they realize it's not usually fun or entertaining for them. When I'm seriously shooting, concentrating on creating images, I get into a "zone." I lose all my social skills and give little or no thought to the comfort or even the presence of the people around me. I might wait hours at a location for the light to get right. I might go back somewhere again and again at different times of the day to see how the light looks at different times. I don't care if my family has been sitting in the car for a long time and are tired and hungry and bored. When I'm working at my craft I'm there for me, not for them.

Sounds stressful, doesn't it? Well, I suppose it could be but amazingly enough, even though I'm zoned in to what I'm doing, photography is very theraputic for me. I come back from photo trips feeling very calm and peaceful even though I may have had limited sleep due to rolling out of bed for sunrise several days in a row. Despite sleep deprivation I feel tanned, rested, and ready for anything when I come back from a trip.

And then there's the rush. When I see a sunrise color the surface of a mountain lake. When I hear 6X6 bull elk bugle during the rut and see his frosty breath in the morning light. When I put a blank sheet of paper into a tray of chemicals and watch an image magically appear or even when I see a print come out of the ink jet printer. When I've been sitting in a hotel room for 36 hours waiting for the blizzard to stop and when it finally breaks and the sun comes out and gives me the best hour of light conditions I've ever seen. It's all about the rush and it's something non-photographers will never quite understand. And also something I can never truly explain. So I'll let Michael Burton's lyrics say it for me. (The correct lyrics this time)

"But they've never seen the Northern Lights...they've never seen a hawk on the wing. They've never seen spring hit the Great Divide..."

Stay in your warm bed for as long as you like. If you're looking for me I'll be out chasing sunrises like the one here of the Grand Tetons. See you out there.

Anticipation........

A famous football coach once said "..Luck is where preparation meets opportunity." This is one of my favorite quotes of all time. Maybe not the favorite but certainly top 3. And the images accompanying this post are examples of just that..preparation meeting opportunity. But there's a third element that I tossed in with the other two. Anticipation..one of the key elements of being a successful sports or nature photographer.

So you've learned everything there is to know about your camera gear and how to operate it in every conceivable situation. You know the critical elements of exposure, composition, and the physics of photography. You know that telephoto lenses compress perspective and wide angle lenses stretch perspective. You know the techniques for stopping motion or for increasing or decreasing depth of field. In short, you're prepared.

You've come to a dream location. Alaska, the Rocky Mountains, any pro sporting event you can think of. You have researched where to go to photograph the scenes or critters you're interested in. The time of year is right, you're in the right place, and you've been blessed with ideal weather by the photo Gods. This is opportunity.

So what now? Do you just run out and point your camera at your subject and hope it works? Well, maybe. Some photographers think if you shoot enough you'll get a few useable images and they're probably right to a certain degree. But let's take a little less haphazard approach.

The images that accompany this post are all results of 3 elements: Preperation, Opportunity, and Anticipation. I didn't just get lucky to get the images. I worked hard doing my research so I'd know where I had the best chance to get the shot. I knew my camera and lenses inside and out so I could change settings in my sleep and I knew what lens would work in what situation and what lenses wouldn't work at all. And I was able, through my research, to be in the right place at the right time to get the image. Here's how.

Let's take the middle image first. Simple shot...a black bear crossing a creek. Easy, right? Not so fast! I had a chance to visit Yellowstone in 1991 for a few days. I'd driven all night Friday night after work to be at the Oxbow Bend on the Snake river for sunrise before heading north into Yellowstone. I found a campsite at Indian Creek campground and headed out to scout the territory. Before I left I had a conversation with the campground host. Upon learning that I really wanted to photograph bears and moose he gave me the usual fisherman's answer. "You should have been here earlier this morning. We had a black bear come right through camp." Over the next 3 days I was to hear this several times but somehow the bear and I had conflicting schedules. Finally, on my last day in the park before heading home, I was sitting in front of my tent eating lunch when some people came running past headed for the meadow just over the hill. When I asked what the hurry was they said "It's a bear...headed for camp!" Sandwiches and chips were forgotten. I grabbed my camera, bolted it up to the 400mm lens and tripod, and headed to the top of the hill. It was a sight to behold, typical of Yellowstone. 1 bear, 50 tourists with instamatic cameras trying to get close to the bear. The tourists would move inside the bear's circle of comfort and the bear would move away. They'd come closer and the bear would move. I had spent the previous afternoon fishing Indian Creek and knew it a little bit so I put on my thinking cap. The bear was headed in the direction of a shallow ford where he could cross without swimming. Figuring that is where he would be, I beat feet back down the hill and headed for the ford. I got my tripod set up and set the exposure data on the camera and sure enough, 10 minutes later the bear appeared exactly where I thought it would. Preparation, Opportunity, and Anticipation. I got the shot.

The whale tail came about in a similar manner but for a much different reason. While visiting the Pacific Northwest in 2006 I had a day to kill while Judy went shopping with an old friend of hers so I booked passage on a whale watching cruise out of Anacortes. We cruised for a couple hours before finally finding some whales off the waterfront at Everett, Washington. The mode of operation is to spot a whale, try to guess where it's headed, and put the boat in the path of the whale. The first couple of times it was a fiasco! The captain pointed the boat at the whale, everyone raced to the front of the boat, and it was impossible to see the thing, much less photograph it. After watching the pattern of one of the whales I noticed that it was surfacing closer to the back of the boat than the front so I thought it might be a grand idea to move away from the crowds and hope the back of the boat would be the place to be. Sure enough, the next time the whale surfaced it was 10 feet from the stern of the boat and I was the only one to see it. It was a simple matter to get the shot. Preparation, Opportunity, and Anticipation. I got the shot.

The elk was maybe the best illlustration of anticipation. I was in Rocky Mountain National Park and found this guy running himself ragged trying to keep his harem of cows together. They were moving back and forth across the Moraine Park road near the main road intersection. I photographed him for about 30 minutes moving back and forth across the road before deciding to move on. As I was walking the 50 or so yards to my car I saw the lead cow of the harem start heading up the hill right towards my vehicle! Knowing the pattern of this group I knew that I'd watched them cross 3 times exactly where the lead cow crossed so instead of putting my camera away I thought I might just wait a few minutes to see what happened. I felt confident that I knew where they were going to cross so it was a matter of just picking the background and distance I wanted. I set up and waited. Sure enough after about 10 minutes the lead cow crossed right where I thought she would. One by one the other cows and calves followed her in single file. Finally, the bull came across the road and passed right in front of my camera, exactly where I predicted he would. Preparation, Opportunity, and Anticipation. Again, I got the shot.

Was I lucky to get these images? You bet I was. But I worked my butt off to be able to execute the shot when preparation and opportunity put me in position to anticipate the outcome and get the image I wanted. Try it...it works!

You don't have to outrun the bear......

There is no telling what might inspire a blog post. It might be something I see or something I hear. One blog entry came to me when I was mowing the lawn at my daughter's house. It sparked a memory of a conversation I'd had years before with my Dad about what kind of lawnmower to buy then progressed to how much I missed him and wishing I'd talked more with him. You just never know what's going to tickle my fancy.

This one, though, came to me in a little more arcane fashion. As a photographer I like to keep up with what other shooters are doing. There are several blogs I monitor regularly and a couple of those recently got me thinking. Bret Edge posted about photographing at an iconic location in the Rockies and his experience finding a marvelous image away from the crowd of photographers who were all shooting Maroon Bells near Aspen on a hum drum morning. Then another photographer named Greg Russell posted a couple of links to his blog on Bret's blog and when I started digging through his blog I found one entry about using new skills to process older images. In the midst of this all I was thinking about upcoming photo trips I may be taking including a cruise to Alaska next June that's also going to be a photo workshop cruise conducted by my old acquaintance Rick Sammon.

So where am I going with this? Well, let's see...lots of people trying to accomplish the same goal in a relatively small area...reprocessing older images....Alaska....I've got it! Combat fishing at the confluence of the Kenai and Russian Rivers in Alaska. Duh...makes perfect sense to me, hence the image. But what about the title? Be patient dear reader.

In 2005 Judy and I decided to celebrate our 30th anniversary by taking an Alaska cruise. One of the things we did was set up a trust for our special needs kid in case something should happen to us and during that process we found out that with net worth, retirement plans, and mostly life insurance, we are worth a ton of money..dead. Well me being me, I started talkling about how this would be a perfect plot for a romantic mystery novel. A couple finds out how much the other is worth dead just before a cruise and they spent the bulk of the trip trying to figure out how to do away with the other one. For the most part, Judy was unamused and for some reason when we were taking our evening walk around the Promenade deck on the cruise ship she always made sure I was closest to the rail. But that's not where the title came from.

When we were talking about some of the things we wanted to do after reaching Alaska we talked about how, during her youth, Judy's family would go fishing on the Russian River and catch lots of salmon. I started doing some research and saw some images of the Russian River Falls and salmon jumping up there but there was also a warning about bears being there. When I told Judy I wanted to see this sight she said "what if we run into a bear?" Answer? "No problem, hon...I'm pretty sure I can outrun you." The saying in bear country is "You don't need to outrun the bear, you only need to outrun one of your buddies."


Thanks Dad. You did pass on your Smartass chromosone.

So here you have it. An older image revisited. Lots of people in a small area trying to accomplish the same goal. And a trip to Alaska. Simple progression, right?