Wilderness Images

I think this may be the luckiest photograph I have ever made. It was created on a chilly, rainy, September morning at Baxter State Park in central Maine. This moose was feeding in a pond alongside the main road. Being near the road there were a few photographers that had stopped to spend the morning photographing this moose. After about an hour of working in the steady drizzle the sky to the east broke, and the sun peeked out forming the rainbow. Some of the photographers continued to shoot the moose and some started working the rainbow. I took a few steps to my left and realized if I moved enough I could shoot both. I ended up wading out into the water up to my waist to get everything lined up just right. At the time the other photographers thought I was crazy walking out into the pond like that. Once they realized what I was doing they realized I was really “crazy like a fox”! I added a polarizer to the front of my lens to intensify the colors of the rainbow.

Some people like to think there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. This image proves it is actually a moose’s butt! Not to worry, the pot of gold is in fact, at the other end of the rainbow.

Good Luck and Good Light

Steve

I like to tell people that the light more than any other factor influences what and when I shoot. Which is very true, I shoot mostly in the mornings and the evenings not only because that is when my subjects are most active but also because that is when the light is at its best. But I change my plans if the light is not right for what I want to do. If I am going out to shoot birds in flight and I want nice bright light in order to get the fast shutter speeds I need to freeze the action, but it is cloudy. I will change the plan and shoot a subject that works better with the current lighting conditions.

For the next few weeks I am going to talk about the different types of light and how I like to use them. Being an optimist I am going to start off with good light. My favorite kind of light is high bright overcast, nice bright diffuse light. Light that is bright enough to cast a shadow, but a softened shadow that add depth to an image without all the contrast created by bright sun. The image accompanying this post would be a mess if the sun was out, there would be too much contrast. Each of the stalks of bergamot would cast a shadow that would wreak havoc in the image. This type of low-contrast light is great for bringing out the detail in your subject. The other thing I love about this type of light is you can shoot all day, because the mid-day light never gets too harsh.

The drawbacks to this type of light are the sky is usually white, so you really do not want to include the sky in your compositions because it just becomes a big white unattractive blob. Also there may not be enough light to get a fast enough shutter speed to freeze fast action.

Good Luck and Good Light!

Steve

Image: White-tailed Doe in Bergamot, Kensington Metropark, MI

The last direction light can come from is behind your subject. This can create some fun and exciting effects in your images. Most silhouettes take advantage of backlighting. In the shot accompanying this post I manually set the exposure to place the sun as a medium orange, this renders my subject as a silhouette. When setting up a shot like this you will be very surprised by how fast the sun actually moves through the frame. It is much easier to frame the subject a little ahead of the sun and let the sun move into your composition. Another great tip is to use live view to frame things up so you are not looking through your viewfinder at the very bright sun. Thanks to Glenn Nagel for that last tip!

I like to use backlighting when shooting translucent subjects as well. For instance when shooting leaves I will often place the leaf so the sun is directly behind it. This type of lighting really shows of the vein patterns of the leaf. Rim-lighting is also an effect that can be achieved with backlighting. With rim-lighting the main source is often hidden behind the subject. The exposure is then based on the shaded side of the subject. This renders the light spilling around the edges of your subject from behind as a bright halo around your subject. This halo emphasizes the shape of your subject as well as helping to separate it from the background.

Next week we will start talking about the quality of the light.

Good Luck and Good Light

Steve

Image: Dewy Skipper Butterfly and Sun

If you recall we have been talking about lighting and more specifically about how the direction of the light affects your image. This week we are going to talk about side lighting. With side lighting the light is coming directly from your left or right. This type of lighting creates some useful effects. One of the main benefits of side lighting is that it really helps emphasis texture. Because the light is racking across your subject any raised areas in the image will cast a shadow. Our eyes see these shadows and give the impression of depth in your image.

The shot accompanying this post is a close up of a monarch butterflies wing scales. I used side lighting to highlight the texture of the scales. Because of the extreme magnification involved this image it was made in my studio and I used flash to light the shot. Actually two flashes, the first light, the main light was shot at full power from the viewers upper right. This main light racks across the wing causing each scale to cast a tiny shadow. I placed a second fill light on the lower left side of the subject. This fill flash was fired at half power to “fill in” the shadows cast by the first light. The reason I do this is to soften the shadows. Remember we want the shadows. They give the impression of depth in the image. But, I don’t want each scale to cast a dark featureless shadow, but rather a softer shadow. Which will still give the illusion of depth, in our two dimensional image without the harshness of dark heavy shadows. This same thing can be accomplished when natural light by using reflectors to bounce the light onto the shaded side of your subject.

Good Luck and Good Light

Steve

Image: Monarch Butterfly Wing Scales

When I think about lighting there are two main things that I like to consider before making an image, the direction and the quality of light. For the next few installments we are going to discuss how the direction of the light affects your images.

The most basic direction of light and the lighting I use for the vast majority of my work is front lighting. With front lighting the light is coming from behind you and falling directly on your subject. I like to tell people that when using front lighting you want your shadow pointed directly at your subject. The reason for this is if your shadow is pointed directly at your subject, guess where your subject’s shadows are going to be? That’s right! Directly behind them! This makes for very easy, very even light, with little contrast and no distracting shadows.

Because the shadows are behind your subject this is very easy light to expose for. Mainly because there is usually little dynamic range or contrast in the image. You do remember dynamic range from last week don’t you? Everything is in the same even light. Usually this makes for very easy exposures.

The other thing to know about front lighting is it is the very best light to get really good reflections, as in the image accompanying this post. The best reflections occur when your subject is lit by low angle front lighting. This light bounces off your subject onto the water creating the reflection.

Good Luck and Good Light

Steve

Image: Drake Wood Duck, Chagrin Falls Park, Ohio

As promised this week we are going to start our discussion on light. The first thing you need to know is that your camera cannot record the same range of light that your eyes can see. As you look around whatever environment you are in you will likely see a whole range of tones from the brightest brights to the darkest darks. This range from bright to dark is called dynamic range. Our eyes are capable of seeing a dynamic range of about 24 stops! So for instance, you can make out the detail here on your relatively bright computer screen and at the same time see the detail in a heavily shadowed area of your room.  Your
camera’s sensor is capable of recording about half the dynamic range your eyes can see, or about 10 to 14 stops. You should feel very fortunate back in the days of slide film we only had a dynamic range of about 5 stops!

What this means is that if you are looking at a scene with a lot of dynamic range (more than 10-14 stops) it might look good to your eye but make lousy a picture. Because your camera will not be able to record all of the dynamic range, so you will either loose the detail in the highlights or in the shadows. You can see when this happens by looking at your histogram. If you are off the scale on both the left side and the right side there is too much range. Generally when I am faced with this situation I wait for a cloud or different, softer light. If that is not an option I will expose for the highlights and let the shadows block up.

Another option if you are faced with a scene that has more range than your camera can record is to create a high dynamic range (HDR) composite image. This is when you create a series of images at different exposures to record all of the range and then use special software to combine them in the computer, using the highlights from one image the mid-tones from a couple of others and the shadow detail from yet another. One of the advancements camera manufactures are working on is creating sensors that are able to record a greater dynamic range.

Good Luck and Good Light!

Steve

Image: Grizzly Bear, Yellowstone National Park

For the next few weeks I am going to talk about light and how it affects our images. Light is everything in photography. It is in fact, what creates our images. When we release the shutter, the mirror flips up and the shutter opens. This allows photons of light to pass through to the sensor where they are converted into electrons which are then used to create the image. Of course this is a very simplified version of what happens. But in essence the light coming through the lens paints the scene onto the sensor.

Light is everything in photography. How is the direction of the light affecting the look of the image? Is it good light, or bad light? Is it warm light or cool light? Is it the best kind of light to photograph our chosen subject in? Is there enough light? Is there too much light? Do we need to modify the light with reflectors a diffuser or fill flash? These are just some of the factors about light we should consider before releasing the shutter. I will talk about all of these subjects and more in the coming weeks.

Great photographers are always aware of the light, its subtle moods and variations. They live and die by the light it dictates what and when they shoot. They know how to use light to their best advantage. They know how and when to bend the light to their will. The best photographers are patient and wait for the light to get just right.

Good Luck and Good Light!

Steve

Image: First Light, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula

I am writing this as I sit on the plane on my way home from a great trip to the Galapagos Islands and the Ecuadorian cloud forest. As usual I was lucky to have a great group of friendly, fun loving, easy going, photographers, which was good because living on a boat working hard for 14 to 16 hour days can test a person. As on all my trips we worked very hard from dawn to dusk to create great images. Alan and Todd two veteran participants with many of my workshops under their belts knew what they were in for. Everyone else adjust quite nicely to the schedule. We were up for breakfast at 0:dark hundred and on the islands at sunrise every morning, we were able to take our time exploring. Everyone had plenty of time to get excellent images. In fact we spent at least twice as much time on the islands as any of the other groups that were in the areas we visited. If you go to the islands as a photographer I really urge you to get on a tour designed for photographers. I can’t imagine anything more frustrating than being herded past all of the great photo opportunities without having the time to shoot.

As I said we had a great group, a couple of mentions though. The great attitude and all-around good guy award goes to Todd Bielby an excellent photographer who is always helpful with great tips and tricks for his fellow participant. The tough-gal award goes to Diane Bodkin who took a nasty spill on day six and seriously injured her foot. After taking the fall she promptly rolled over to a sitting position and continued shooting not wanting to miss the shot of the Waved Albatross courtship dance, what a trooper! Mary Colliflower gets the eager student award. Mary was relatively new to photography and proved to be a quick study. Her excitement and enthusiasm when she “got the shot” was fun and contagious. Although, I think there were a couple of times she might have wanted to wrap that @%^#% tripod around my neck! I would also like to extend a special note of thanks to Patricia Salano and Glenda Callender whose excellent Spanish speaking skills were hugely appreciated.

We were fortunate to have one of the most knowledgeable and patient guides in all of the Galapagos with us on this trip, I actually set a bounty for anyone who could stump Roberto with a “Galapagos related” question. His great attitude and encyclopedic information were simply amazing and appreciated by all. He was also very patient with us when we would get distracted by “something shiny” that really needed it’s picture taken, right in the middle of him telling us another interesting fact about this amazing place.  But my favorite thing about Roberto was that he started and ended every adventure with a smiiiiile.

After the Galapagos ten of us travelled up to the Tandayapa Bird Lodge in the cloud forest. For a more relaxed time, the main focus at this lodge is the hummingbirds. The feeders are simply swarming with hummingbirds. It really must be seen to be believed. I brought along my high-speed flash system and everyone got to spend some time getting flight shots of these striking jewels of the avian world. We also did a day trip down to see the Andean Cock of the Rock on the lek, and a remarkable local fellow who over the course of 7 years has trained antpittas, which are very elusive birds, to come when he calls. Absolutely amazing!

The final night in Quito started out with Jeff and Glenda sharing some wine with everyone. Jeff is a chef and sommelier and has great taste in wine. Then the whole group went out for a traditional Ecuadorian dinner, where we continued to get our party on, it was a very fun and special night, a perfect ending to a fun and special trip. Thanks to all!

You can see a gallery of some of my favorite images here : http://www.facebook.com/steve.gettle#!/media/set/?set=a.490005754373403.118690.103798062994176&type=1

I just returned from a great trip to Peru where I visited the Tambopata National Reserve, a reserve the size of Belgum with 600 species of birds, 1300 different butterflies and 300 species of mammals. Not only was this trip productive photographically but it was also an epic adventure. After the flight into Lima it was just a short flight to Puerto Muldonado where I boarded a bus for the ride to the Tambopata River, where the real journey begins.

Once on the river I traveled by motorized canoe deep into the amazon jungle.  The destination is a series of three lodges which are located along the river, these lodges served as my base while I explored the area.  The last lodge deep in the jungle is actually a research center and arguably the most remote lodge in all of South America!

The main attraction here are the macaws. The Tambopta contains 10% of the world’s macaw population. And the world’s largest clay lick. Macaws gather at clay licks to ingest the clay where they get minerals that are not available in their jungle diet. While I was there I was able to not only photograph them at the clay lick but also to photograph them as they flew back and forth. Since they usually fly together as mated pairs, this is exponentially harder than shooting a single bird in flight.  Now not only do I have the shadows from the other bird to deal with, but I also have two sets of wing positions to worry about getting right.

In addition to the macaws there were tons of other birds as well as lots of amazing insects and amphibians that I shot on our nightly jungle walks.  You can see a gallery showcasing some more of my favorite images from the trip here:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.481231298584182.116785.103798062994176&type=3

I will be leading a photo tour to the Peruvian Amazon in the fall of 2013. In addition to duplicating this amazing adventure there will be an optional 4 day extension to Machu Picchu as well. More information will be coming in an upcoming newsletter.

A special note of thanks to Jeff Cremer of Rainforest Expeditions who served as my host and guide on this trip. we had a great time and an epic adventure.