I'm spoiled

The sign showing where you turn off the highway says "Call of The Canyon" and it's aptly named.  I've heard the call....more of a Siren's song capturing me and pulling me closer.  It's the West Fork of Oak Creek north of Sedona and I was fortunate enough to spend a few hours creating images and just generally being awed by the scenery. 

The feeling here is very similar to what I've experienced in Antelope Canyon.  Every step, every creek crossing, every turn around a bend in the canyon presents you with another image, each more impressive than the one before.  And when you're headed back to the vehicle it's the same.  You see compositions and lighting conditions that you missed on the trip in. 

I've never seen fall colors so vibrant or varied.  I commented in an earlier blog that I've never seen so many orange and red leaves as this year but this puts the aspens of Colorado to shame.  The oaks and other trees have banded together to produce a kaleidoscope of colors. And now I'm spoiled.  I'm not sure I'll ever be able to photograph fall colors in Colorado again without feeling somehow deprived.  I guess next fall we'll see.  For now, I'm pretty happy with this set of images.  Check the website gallery titled "New Work" in a few days to see the whole collection.

To Shoot, or not to Shoot...

Those of you who know me or have read previous blogs know that I'm a research junkie.  When I'm planning a photo trip to a place I've never shot before I spend untold hours online searching for information.  Looking at previously shot images, looking at maps, booking hotels and airline tickets, generally making myself as familiar with the location as I possibly can before arriving.  Most of the time I get some good data that makes my trip successful for the most part.  But sometimes it's a problem.

There are a lot of locations in the West that are very iconic.  They've been shot by tens of thousands of photographers over the years and you've seen images of them all...Delicate Arch, Mesa Arch, Yellowstone Falls, Old Faithful, the Grand Tetons, all the famous views in Yosemite.  The image accompanying this blog is another of the icons, The Mittens in Monument Valley.  I could show you hundreds of images online shot from this particular spot in all sorts of lighting conditions.  I think mine is a bit unique but like many of the icons, if you look hard enough you can find a set of holes from thousands of tripod legs in this spot.  And there's the problem.

I'm heading out Friday afternoon for Arizona.  Flying into Phoenix and spending some time with my daughter and her family before driving north to Sedona for a couple of days shooting.  I've been doing my usual research and in this case, I'm just about sick to death of seeing Cathedral Rock reflected in Oak Creek.  It seems if you google or bing up Sedona and images of the area, 99 out of 100 will be images of Cathedral Rock reflected in Oak Creek.  So the challenge is there for me....create some unique images of an iconic location.  Yes, I'll probably make at least one exposure of Cathedral Rock reflected in Oak Creek.  You can't visit an icon without photographing it even if your image will be number 10,000,000 in a series.  But I'll be spending my time searching for images I haven't seen before and who knows, I may get lucky.  I may run into some unusually spectacular light like I did at Monument Valley.  Check back in about 10 days and see.

What was once old is new again

I am always looking to become a better photographer.  I look at other shooters' websites, read their blogs, and monitor a few photographic bulletin boards where my peers post their images for critique and accolades.  And I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm not above stealing a good idea and adapting it to fit my own thought process.  So a few weeks ago when I ran across a blog post by Greg Russell about using newly acquired skills to process older images it struck a chord. 

Don't misunderstand me, I'm not a Photoshop or Lightroom wizard.  There are many thousands of folks out there that have forgotten more about processing images in the digital darkroom than I'll ever know.  But I'm always trying to improve.  I go to seminars...I read books...I follow Lightroom on Facebook for tips and tricks.  I also talk to other photographers and in the past year I've become much more active in a group of Colorado based nature photographers and have even gone shooting a few times with other photographers.  (My wife tells me I probably shouldn't go shooting with Richie V anymore cause he has lots of cool toys and I always want to buy some new stuff after a shooting excursion with him)  Mostly I'm just trying to get better and I think that though I have a long ways to go before I can truthfully say I'm pretty good at it, my skill level is higher than it was 5 years ago.  The software is also better and much more powerful than in years past. 

So with apologies to Greg for stealing his idea, I've assigned myself a project.  I'm going through my older images and reprocessing them with better software and more skill.  This will be an ongoing project and I'll probably try to post some of the more dramatic improvements here.  Which brings us to the photo above.  Combat fishing on the Russian River in Alaska.  This is an image I shot in 2005 when we took a cruise then spent some time on the Kenai Penninsula after the cruise.  At that time I think I was using Photoshop Elements 2 or 3, can't remember which one but it was a much less sophisticated version than Lighroom 3 which I use for most of my processing today. 

The top image is the original version, processed from the RAW file shot in 2005.  My technique then was even more primitive than the software I was using.  About all I did was adjust the black and white points, crop a little, and sharpen the file.  There was a little bit of burning and dodging but that's about it. 

The bottom image was processed in Lightroom and then exported to a plug in called Topaz Adjust where I was able to brighten and enhance the color without increasing the contrast too much.  I also cropped out some distracting elements and I have to admit, I really like it quite a bit better than the original. 

My goal is to work my way through the Alaska images at the rate of 1 image per week minimum so it may be a while before I make my way through the archives.  And by then this year's images will be old so I can process them with whatever software and skills I acquire in the future.  So keep checking back and please leave comments to let me know what you think. 

"...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?

When Icons have feet of clay

The debate has been around since the inception of digital photography and will probably still be raging long after I'm gone. It centers around the difference in "enhanced" digital photographs versus "manipulated" photographs. It's been written and discussed ad infinitum. I've even written about it in previous blogs but some things have happened recently that put a new twist on it for me.

I'll begin by stating my views on the subject. When I upload an image to my computer and launch it in Photoshop or Lightroom I almost always only perform tasks I did in the darkroom. I'll crop the image if necessary, adjust the contrast, adjust the exposure, maybe increase the saturation, and use minimal sharpening. Some of these are necessary because of my technique and some are necessary because of the characteristics of the RAW format that I shoot in. I consider these images to be "enhanced" and they are always my attempt to render the image the way I saw it. There are 2 images on my website currently that have been "manipulated" using Photoshop magic but I knew when I shot them that I would be creating a surreal image in the computer. But the main thing for me is to present the images how I saw them. Not how I imagined them or how I wish I'd have seen them, but what I saw that moved me to create the image.

In that spirit I've always stayed away from filters that alter the perception of colors. Things like color enhancing filters, warming polarizers, or a combination of the two. The results produced by them just doesn't look real to me. I loved Velvia film when I was shooting film but only used it for certain low contrast scenes because of it's not always realistic reproduction of colors. In short, I tend to shy away from anything that changes the faithful reproduction of an image and I'm not a big fan of folks who produce those kind of images.

I also have no respect for photographers that are deceptive in describing their work. For many years I admired the work of Art Wolfe. His Nature and Wildlife photography was an inspiration to me. Then it came out that some of the images in one of his books were manipulated to the point where more animals were added to a herd of zebras to make the patterns look like there were more animals in the herd. I'd just about gotten over it until recently Outdoor Photographer magazine ran a cover shot by Art Wolfe of the moon showing through Delicate Arch in Utah. After much debate it was disclosed that yes, the moon had been added to the image of the arch. In essence, he was portraying things that simply had not occurred.

Not long ago a photographer was disqualified from a prestigious international competition when it was disclosed that his image of a supposedly wild wolf jumping over a fence was, in fact, a shot of a captive animal obeying it's trainer's commands. Again, deceptive.

Now there's the whole debate over HDR (High Dynamic Range) photo processing. I'm no expert but my understanding is that HDR is used to make adjustments in an image where the contrast is naturally too great to render a usable image. But people are getting carried away with it. Most of the time HDR images look pretty good but a lot of HDR's have a strangely unrealistic look. The colors are too saturated or the image is too crisp for what are professed as the conditions.

A recent image by Tom Till falls in this category. In one of his most recent collections of images Mr. Till displays some HDR images. One in particular is unrealistic to the point of being disturbing. His image looking through the window of an abandoned building near the ghost town of Alma is just downright unrealistic yet he declares that the images were reproduced the way he "saw" them. If he truly saw this image in the manner it's presented I'd really like to discuss his point of view. When I first looked at it I felt like I was having an acid flashback. It's simply too crazy looking.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not the Photoshop police and I'm not out to bust anyone who uses the tool to it's complete capability. All I'm asking is for people to be honest. If you saw 50 zebras in a herd, show me 50 zebras, not 100 zebras. If you didn't see the moon in that particular place in relation to Delicate Arch, don't tell me you did. If you've photographed a captive animal, don't tell me it's wild. And finally, if your vision of a scene is so ridiculously false, don't portray it as how you saw the image unless you're having an acid flashback. BE HONEST with me.

I mentioned earlier some of the actions I use when processing my digital images. The image accompanying this blog is a perfect example. Here's what I did and why I did it. As I said, I shoot in RAW format which does require some adjustments. The image was cropped to a more panoramic format because I feel it suited the subject. I increased the contrast slightly since RAW files tend to be low contrast. The only thing I did after that was to sharpen the image a little since RAW files are always a bit less than optimum sharpness. Basically I made 3 adjustments to this file. One because of the format I visualized when I saw the image, and the other two to compensate for the RAW format. It really does represent what I saw in the field. And if you have questions about any of my images I'll be happy to disclose my work flow and the reasoning behind it at any time.

In the meantime, anyone know of a couple of incredibly talented photographers out there that I can admire?