Here is a series of pictures I made a few years ago. These pictures show a monarch caterpillar turning into a beautiful butterfly. These pictures were made over about a two week period. All of the action takes place at the beginning and end of that two week period. You can tell when the butterfly is about to emerge because just before the hatch the chrysalis becomes transparent allowing you to see the butterfly inside. When I came home one day and found a transparent chrysalis, I knew that the butterfly was just about to emerge, so I got my gear ready and kept a close eye on things. As the day went on I could see the butterfly moving inside trying to break free. About ten o’clock I had myself completely convinced that it was going to happen very soon. At midnight, twelve hours in, I’m certain that it is just about to burst . Three in the morning any second now. At five in the morning I certainly could not go to bed. I had already spent fifteen hours waiting for this thing! I could not imagine going to sleep and missing it at this point! Eight in the morning, OK this is just getting ridiculous! In the end the butterfly you see here was ‘born’ at 11:00 AM on a beautiful July morning, after I had spent just over 23 hours on stakeout!
I can tell you that I took a much deserved nap that afternoon.
One of the things that I love about photography is at times I am able to show the viewer something that they would not normally see. When photographing a bird in flight for example, using a fast shutter speed to freeze the action and show the graceful sweep of the wings. Or using a slow shutter speed to allow a moving subject to make an impressionistic blur across the frame. Another technique that I like to use is moving in close and showing the viewer details that they could not easily see with their naked eye. Such as my work with snowflake photography where I use a microscope to photograph snow crystals. Here are a couple of other examples of this close approach.
This first shot shows a closeup of the scales of a monarch butterflies wings.
This next picture shows a closeup of dewdrops on a spiderweb. Within each drop you see a flower, the flower is actually the background of the picture. Each of the drops acts like a lens to bring this flower into focus.
One of the main reasons that I went out west this spring was to photograph the endangered Greater Sage Grouse. In mid April the males gather on leks to dance and call in the hopes of attracting females to mate with.
I want to say a special thanks to Ron Laird an excellent photographer and great naturalist who not only gave me a place to stay, right on the ranch where I photographed these grouse. But also took time out of his busy day to share some of his own work with me and show me many of the other places to photograph in the area. Thanks again Ron.
Here is a series of shots showing the male calling. I checked the time stamp in the metadata for these images and the span of time between the first shot in the series and the last is less than a second (my camera takes 8 frames per second). So this action is happening very quickly.
These next couple images are a little different, the first is shot back lit, with the sun at a low angle coming from behind the bird. The last image was one of my personal favorites from the trip I really liked the background of this picture to me it really has a sense of place.
If you would like to go to Idaho and photograph Greater Sage Grouse I would highly recommend that you checkout Grouse Days, around mid-April, in Dubois, Idaho. It is an interesting festival and they will even set you up in a blind to photograph on an active lek. Dubois is near some other fantastic areas to photograph including the Camas National Wildlife Refuge as well as the Market Lake Wildlife Management area. Here is a link to more information about Grouse Days http://www.grousedays.org/uploads/GD-Brochure_2010.pdf
The other day on a whim I decided that I needed to get some pictures of a Blue Throated Macaw in flight. So I jumped on the next flight out to the Pantanal in Bolivia in order to try and get some good images. Here are a few of the photos that I was able to make.
OK that first part was a total lie, sorry about that. The truth is I was at an art show when another artist came by and asked me if I wanted to photograph her bird. Which she told me was a Blue Throated Macaw that she had trained to free fly very much like a falconer flies a falcon. Well I have to say I was more than a little skeptical, but since I was going to be within twenty minutes of her home in a few weeks I figured what do I have to lose. Fast forward two weeks and I find myself in a field being introduced to “Ingrid”.
After introductions my new friend asks if I am ready to see Ingrid fly. When I say yes she announces, reeeeady, seeet, GO, and Ingrid launches into the sky (part of me is certain that Ingrid is heading back to Bolivia) but she just circles around us keeping my friend within sight the whole time. After a few trips around she lands back on my friends arm, anxiously waiting her chance to do it again, which she does over and over, always returning to my friends arm, or shoulder, or head, or back. After the initial shock wore off I was able to focus on the task at hand and managed to get some good images of this amazing bird.
I have to admit that every once in a while I just get lucky. The following photograph of a pair of dancing western grebes is one of those situations. I was photographing waterfowl on a small lake in northern Idaho from my floating blind, when I noticed a single grebe off in the distance. Since I did not have many good images of this species I started to slowly work my way towards this bird. As I began to get closer, the bird started to call, worried that perhaps I was causing it stress I stopped, and continued to watch the bird through the peephole in my blind. Then I noticed a second grebe swimming into view from behind some reeds. The two birds slowly swam toward each other and then suddenly, without any preamble, the pair rose up and began rushing across the water in their courtship dance. Purely as a reflex I dove behind my camera and swung the floating blind and camera toward the pair, as I swung around I simultaneously opened the lens aperture up to f4 (knowing that I would need as much shutter speed as I could get to stop the action). As soon as the birds appeared in my viewfinder I held down the shutter button letting the motor-drive fire 8 frames per second while the birds rushed across the water. The whole thing lasted maybe five seconds from beginning to end. I couldn’t believe my luck, I had always wanted to see this courtship display, and to witness it from my floating blind, right at the bird’s eye-level, what an incredible treat. My hands were shaking with adrenaline as I nervously checked the back of the camera to see if I had gotten anything usable. To say that I was overjoyed to see that I had a few good frames would be an understatement.
Lately it seems I have been photographing a lot of faces. Here are a few of my recent favorites.
These first couple are from a recent trip to Yellowstone, where I shot bighorn sheep and bison.
Next we have some bat face images that I made recently. This first image is of the aptly named leaf-nosed bat.
Next is a shot of a vampire bat, in the standard mouth open, showing those scary teeth pose. While it may look as if the teeth are hollow (in order to suck your blood). Vampire bats really only use their razor sharp teeth to make a painless incision (almost never on the neck). Once this incision is made the bat feeds by lapping up the blood with its tongue. As the bat laps up the blood it is also treating the wound with an anticoagulant called draculin which is found in vampire bat’s saliva. This anticoagulant keeps the blood flowing by preventing clotting, allowing the bat more time to feed. The bat’s leaf-shaped nose has evolved to be able to detect where the blood is flowing closest to the skin on it’s prey, this helps the bat decide where best to bite.
During my last trip out west I was able to spend a few days in Yellowstone. This was the earliest I had ever been in the park (mid-April). In fact they were just starting to reopen the roads in the park. The park is different every time I go, but the changes from season to season are of course more dramatic. I am usually in the park in the fall. At that time of year I rarely see bear because most of them are in the high country feeding on pine nuts, trying to put on weight for hibernation. But in the early spring they are just coming out of hibernation, are very hungry, and can be found down in the low country feeding on the carcasses of animals that have died during the winter, as well as anything else they can find. I saw bear every day in fact one day I found six different bears, four grizzly and two black bear.
Here are some images I was able to make of a grizzly bear that I was able to spend a couple of hours with. This particular bear was feeding on roots along a hillside near the Lamar Valley. As I was going through these images I was surprised to see how the bear’s body position could have a profound affect on the mood of the image.
In this first image we have the quintessential teddy bear, big round face, innocent eyes, and a chubby roly-poly body. This image to me has a nice restful, quiet feeling about it; the bear looks cute and cuddly.
In this next image the bear has risen on his hind legs to get a better look at something on the other side of the next hilltop. For me this image is humorous, the bears vertical body position makes me smile. It also makes me curious about what has captured his attention.
This final image has a completely different feeling. In this image we have direct eye contact, the bear’s paw is raised showing those big scary claws, his body posititon leads you to believe he is getting ready to turn and charge. He looks as if he may be thinking about having a photographer for dinner. (Not to worry Mrs. Z nothing could be further from the truth). It is really just smoke and mirrors, I knew when I made this image that the bear’s body position and direct eye contact would give this image a tension a feeling of impending confrontation. The truth of the matter is that, the bear just happened to glance back at me as he was slowly walking away.
This past winter I took a quick trip up to the Michigan’s upper Peninsula to try to photograph the snowy owls that had been seen hanging around the Rudyard area. I was up there for three days, the weather did not really cooperate I only saw the sun one time right around sunset on the second day. The sun peeked out from beneath the clouds just before it set, the gray background in this images is the dark storm clouds to the east.
Hey everyone I am still alive. Sorry that I have not been able to do a post for a while. But I have been travelling a lot lately, I have only been home three days in the last month. Most of that time was spent out west, where I shot Greater Sage Grouse dancing on their lek, spring bears in Yellowstone, I even hauled the floating blind out there to do some waterfowl. It was a great trip very productive, I shot over 8,000 images, photographing many subjects for the first time.
I do apologize for not being able to post. Moving forward however, I want you to know that I am going to try something different, I am going to try and do smaller posts more often, my goal is going to be, to try and do a post every Wednesday.
For this post I would like to share a couple of images I made late this fall. In November I made an exploratory trip down to Jasper Polaski Fish and Wildlife area in Northern Indiana. Jasper Polaski is a staging area used by sandhill cranes as they migrate south. I think it is one of the best places in the Midwest to photograph these birds in flight. The birds start to gather in late September with their numbers peaking around mid November, when there are usually between 10,000 and 15,000 birds.
I was there one morning and the birds were gathered in the Goose Pasture viewing area. The morning was perfect not a cloud in the sky with winds out of the southeast. I mention the wind direction because it is very important in this type of photography. Birds will usually take off and land into the wind. Winds out of the southeast means that when I set up with the rising sun at my back most of the birds would be flying toward the southeast at a perfect angle towards me. If the winds were out of the west and I had the rising sun at my back most of the birds would be taking off and landing toward the west facing away from me, not very photogenic.
As soon as the sun comes up the birds start leaving the pasture, singly and in small flocks. The birds are heading out to the surrounding farm fields to feed for the day. It took about three hours for all of the birds to leave the pasture, at which time I packed it up. I suppose I could have worked them feeding in the fields during the rest of the day, but I had somewhere else I had to be. In the evening the cycle reverses itself and you photograph the birds as they fly back into this same pasture.
I took hundreds of pictures here are a couple of my favorites.
Just in case some of you missed it on my seminars page I will be teaching my one day nature photography seminar “The Art of Nature Photography” in Grand Rapids, MI on Saturday March 27th from 9:00 until 4:00
Grand Rapids, MI
Park Congregational Church, 10 E. Park Ave. NE, Grand Rapids (downtown)
Saturday March 27th 9:00AM to 4:00PM (doors open at 8:30)
Cost $79.00 per person
$10.00 Discount for members of a Camera Club
