I built up a little backlog during the month of April so here’s a quick hit series of photos.
Big Four Mountain
Skykomish River Valley near Sultan
Sunset from Monroe
Mount Baker Ski Area Vicinity
I also made this timelapse from my lofty perch above the Skykomish River valley:
I visited Artist Point and Huntoon Point this weekend but was shut out by the weather yet again. Since I have no photos to share, I decided to write this post which I’ve thought about for a little while now. One bit of photographic advice that you’ll hear about in landscape photography is shooting with a telephoto lens. Basically, you’re focusing (no pun intended) on some specific portion of a larger scene. I’ve read this advice numerous times before but I’ve never seen this concept illustrated so here’s my attempt to do just that!
I’ve selected three different examples where I’ve come away with some telephoto photos. For each example, I also have some wide angle shots which will provide some overall context. Let’s start with a photo I took a couple years ago on my first trip to Banff National Park in the Canadian Rockies. This waterfall is located along the Johnson Canyon trail and is situated a bit downstream of the Upper Falls:
This photo is taken at a 24mm focal length (on an APS-C sensor) and a photo that can stand on its own merits. This shot is actually the first one I took when I came upon this scene. As I’m prone to do, however, I sit down and study the scene in front of me. Eventually, I was struck by the complementing colors of the rock and long exposure trails of the white water. Through some iterations, I eventually came across my final scene:
Now let’s look at the original scene with a rough overlay of the area that the telephoto shot covers:
Next up is photo which has been one of my most popular. It was taken one spring at the Mount Baker Ski Area in the North Cascades of Washington State. As you can see, I started out with a wide angle shot of this weathered snag with Mount Shuksan in the background. On the right hand side in the background is a peak which has the local name of Hemispheres:
This photo was taken around 11am and the sun was still rising in the sky. The slopes of Hemispheres attract many backcountry skiers and snowboarders and, in this light, you can see why. The slopes are full of rollovers and undulations. Eventually, I was attracted to one small patch of trees and the combination of light and shadows at the transition to a steeper section of slope. The final scene was this:
Once again, let’s look at the overall scene along with an overlay highlighting the telephoto shot’s extent:
My last example also comes from the Mount Baker Ski Area vicinity. Last spring, I hiked into an overview of the White Salmon Creek valley and Mount Shuksan. I created this panorama and converted it to black and white:
Would you believe I got two additional photos out of the area represented by that panorama? Let’s look at the two additional shots:
Finally, let’s look at the panorama one more time along with the overlays for the two telephoto shots:
So there are three examples of a “wide” landscape scene hiding additional compositions in plain sight. The only thing missing is your vision and your telephoto lens. The key is being able to recognize when a scene in front of you has that depth and finer details and that’s something that I believe you’ll develop with time. Hopefully this post has shed some more light on the concept of using telephoto lenses in landscape photography!
This past weekend I set out to test a few photographic ideas. One such idea I’ve been thinking about is photographing spawning salmon. I think I was partly inspired by some of the work that Seattle photographer Jon Cornforth has done in the past along these lines (link here and here). Now, I’m primarily a landscape photographer so when my thoughts stray into “specialty” areas of photography, I tend to think about how I can accomplish the same goal in a low frills manner. In the example photos taken by Jon, he’s using a $2,000 protective housing and placing his camera down in the water. I can’t possibly justify spending that much on a housing for something I’m going to do rarely.
So how else am I supposed to get these kind of pictures? Would you believe a $15 aquarium?
Well….that’s my bright idea, and that’s what I was trying out this past weekend. I started with a 10 gallon glass aquarium that I picked up at a local pet store for $15. The next thing I picked up was a photo bean bag like this one sold on Amazon for $28. A little steep price wise but I’ll probably be able to utilize this for other things in the future. Another piece to the puzzle is something I already had- a wireless remote for my shutter. The one I’m using is one of those Chinese specials you find on eBay (just search for “wireless remote”). Mine was $15 and it’s supposed to have an effective range of 100 feet which is PLENTY of distance for this endeavor.
So that’s the basic list of items I purchased for this. In terms of my camera, I used my 12-24mm wide angle at 12mm with a circular polarizer to help eliminate any reflections off of the aquarium’s glass. As for a location, I chose a side channel of the North Fork Skykomish River, up valley from the town of Index. The lack of any rain over the last 2 months has dropped the water levels quite a bit. This fact meant that there weren’t any spawning salmon to photograph right now. It did, however, provide some stable conditions for my experimentation.
The first thing I learned was that an aquarium without any weight in it will float. I grabbed a couple pieces of river rock which helped add some weight and finally allowed the aquarium to sink down into the water. It wasn’t too difficult to level the camera thanks to the bean bag and my flash hot shoe bubble level. Setting a focus is a different matter. Attempting to select a focus point & then autofocusing just doesn’t work. Before I head out to attempt this again, I’m going to experiment with close range focusing to give me a better idea of where focus should line up on my lenses indicators.
I fumbled around in the main part of the side channel, trying to compose a shot which was roughly 60% underwater / 40% above water. The scene underwater is naturally darker and sunlight reflecting off the forest’s canopy made for an extreme contrast. The best way to combat this would be to use a graduated ND filter. Unfortunately, space inside the aquarium was limited so fitting a filter holder for my 4×6 ND filters would have been tough (assuming I had one of the Z Pro sized filter holders which I don’t). Eventually I settled in to a backwater side channel to the side channel which I believe will have spawning fish when the river levels rise.
I was taking test shots and finally getting a handle on things when I realized that there were small salmon fry swimming around in front of me. For a while, I stood back and stared intently at the frys as they swam around. Every time one would happen to cross through my framed area, I would click my remote to take a picture. I knew I would have to freeze the motion of the frys so finding the right settings were a bit of a chore. I bumped my ISO up to 1600, my aperature to F7.1, and my shutter speed to about 1/20th of a second. My RAW files were a bit on the dark side but the huge dynamic range of my Pentax K-5 allowed me to brighten up my photos back home in Photoshop. I felt pretty good and finally packed it in after about a half hour of test shots.
Once I got home, I noticed some additional things I need to correct before I try this again. First, a thin layer of foam would be a good thing to have to protect the glass bottom from any weight you put into the aquarium (in my case, river rock). Second, I also need to pick up some black fabric to drape over my weighted bottom and the glass side of the aquarium behind the camera. In my shots with the small frys, you can just make out the reflection of my wireless remove in the upper right corner. In the above/below water shot, you can also see the reflection of a white-ish river rock. Whoops! Finally, I need to be a little more conscious about water drops on the outside of the aquarium glass. I didn’t pay attention to that and the end result looks like water drops on the lens. I’m encouraged by my initial tests and will hopefully have some more to share in the coming weeks when the salmon start returning!
To close off this post, I want to include a couple photos I was fortunate enough to take of a bobcat (Lynx rufus) I happened to stumble upon while hiking in the hills above Sultan earlier that same day. I turned the corner of this logging road and the bobcat was loping up the road 20 yards in front of me. I instantly froze but the cat sensed my presence fairly quickly. Instead of running off, it decided to sit down in the middle of the road and watch me. I quickly took an iPhone photo. It still sat there. While talking out loud to the bobcat, I slowly put down my backpack and fished out my camera and zoom lens (it never fails that you will ALWAYS have a wide angle mounted when you need a zoom and vice versa).
The bobcat laid down and seemed to take a quick cat nap (pun intended). I took more photos, trying to use my treking poles as a crude monopod. I moved up slowly a couple yards. The bobcat moved back a couple yards and sat down again. This time I extracted my tripod and set it up. By now the bobcat was losing interest in me and turned and continued to walk slowly up the road. I snapped a few more shots while it eventually stopped and sat down at a bend in the road. I tried to slowly get closer but the bobcat finally turned the corner and disappeared. A cool experience and a complete accident! This PDF will give you a nice primer about bobcats.
The week of Labor Day marked my first ever trip to Yellowstone National Park. I’ve actually wanted to incorporate a little more wildlife experiences in my photography the last few years. Heck- if you’ve ever looked in my “fauna” gallery on my site, you know it’s pretty bare! Anyways, my girlfriend stopped through the park back in June and was all too eager to make a return trip. Away we went!
Unlike most of my blog posts where I typically write up a journal or narrative for my outings, this time I just wanna rattle off a list of random thoughts-
Trip Research / Prep!
There are a couple of traditional print books about photographing Yellowstone such as this and this. I have both, and they’re not too bad (but a bit light on wildlife). Prior to my trip, I came across an eBook put out by photographer Dean Sauskojus (website here) called “The Ultimate Photo Guide to Yellowstone National Park” (and you can access the eBook info page here). Dean’s photography is wonderful, and his locational write-ups seemed to be fairly spot-on. I found it handy to be able to refer to the PDF on my tablet while out in the park. Anyways, I would definitely recommend the eBook.
Another tidbit of advice I had been told prior to my trip which I found true was that the distances between points takes a lot longer to travel than you might think. You might want to estimate up to 1.5x the amount of time you think needed in order to get between places by the time you want. You hear about “bear / buffalo jams” but we didn’t experience anything severe during our stay. It could just be the tendency to gawk as you drive, or just being extra defensive to avoid being surprised by something on the road. Case in point, we were driving back to Tower Junction after sunset on our last night and seemingly out of thin air, a small herd of bison was partially in the road, including a young bison nursing off mama.
I’m here! Now what?
One thing I’ve learned to do over time is to scale back expectations of what you can accomplish during the course of a day. Every day I had a sunrise and sunset spot selected but only a very loose plan to connect the two together. Let your hunches and curiosity tell you when and where to stop. Tangentially related, get some bear spray for your safety and protection. It’s designed for use against an attacking bear but any large wild animal can suddenly turn aggressive towards you. This video shows a bunch of teen and pre-teen jack-asses who have a run in with a bison (I would hope most of you wouldn’t be that foolish, though!). At one of my stops near Grand Prismatic Spring, we passed a solitary bison laying down near the Fairy Falls trail. As it turned out, the bison had a wound in it’s side from a sparring match with another bison. A wounded animal can be a dangerous animal and the bear spray was a reassuring item to have.
If you do happen to stop someplace, be prepared to draw a crowd. I’d like to tell you that the crowd will be animals but more often than not, it will be your fellow tourists. They end up deciding that you MUST be seeing something! After all, why else would you have stopped?? I was photographing Soda Butte Creek and Barronette Peak from the highway bridge over the creek when a car stopped on the bridge behind me. I initially ignored them but then a voice asked, “you looking at an animal of the view??” I answered “the view” and they immediately drove off.
Now, sometimes where there’s smoke, there *IS* fire. A few times, we pulled over (into an accepted parking spot) when we came up on a scene with dozens of other people park and gawking at something. The first time in the Lamar Valley, it was the appearance of a black wolf; the second time was in the Hayden Valley and there were up to four wolves in a chess game with a herd of bison. I guess my moral of the story is to let small groups of people enjoy themselves, if you can.
When you are out driving around, be sure to have your camera immediately available. Getting stuck in a bear or bison jam may give you an opportunity to get a nice close shot that you might otherwise
miss. We were stopped in one brief traffic snarl and off to our right was a fox hopping and hunting some prey in the field. While we were stopped, my girlfriend was able to snap a couple shots of it. Another time, we were driving back down from the Beartooth Highway and we passed a fox, happily trotted up the road with a fresh meal in its mouth.
Some Closing Thoughts
I came home from Yellowstone with about 1,400 photographs. Most of these were rapid “bursts” in order to capture some sharp shots of wildlife. After reviewing them, I still have some work to do with my use of a “wildlife” lens like my Bigma (the Sigma 50-500mm lens). This week I came across a few sites which discuss what’s known as long lens technique (this, this, and this) and I’ll be working to incorporate these techniques before my next visit to Yellowstone.
This week I received some good news! I’m happy to announce that my photo shown here, “Brilliance at Boundary Bay” was selected to be part of the juried art show at this year’s Edmonds Arts Festival. The festival runs Father’s Day weekend (June 15-17th) in downtown Edmonds. The festival has close to 240 artist booths in addition to the juried art displays. It’s really a great time so come visit!
This past weekend found me in Bend, Oregon attending two workshops put on by Oregon based nature and landscape photographer Sean Bagshaw whose work has long stood out to me amongst the deep pool of talent here in the PNW. Last fall, I discovered he was offering classes in processing of digital photographs and I became curious about the classes. Sean is based out of Ashland in Southern Oregon and so the timing and distance prevented me from signing up.
More recently, Sean announced that he was going to offer the same classes at the new Cascade Center of Photography in Bend, Oregon. Being much closer, I decided to sign up. The first class was “Fine Art Digital Workflow For Nature Photographers” and focuses on the entire process from import to printing of your digital photographs. The second class, “Processing For Extended Dynamic Range” was focused on how to process scenes which are beyond the ability of digital SLR sensors to capture in a single image (such as shooting into the sun at sunset).
Class size was capped at a maximum of 18 students (my classes actually had 10 people Saturday and 14 people Sunday). The format of the classes is presentation style, where Sean works through specific examples using Lightroom and Photoshop CS5. Since people learn at different paces, Sean provides each attendee with a CD containing several hours of video tutorials covering the material he presents. The CD also includes the same sample images so you can follow along and perform the same tasks.
In the Digital Workflow class, Sean lays out a checklist style process for editing of photos. This is something that I’ve tried to look for in the past. At best, I have only managed to find random thoughts in photography forums so I found this very useful. Prior to diving into the workflow, Sean explained the benefits of using RAW photos instead of JPEGs along with strategies for organizing and prioritizing your files.
A good discussion of adjustments and options found in Lightroom/Adobe Camera RAW definitely helped me better understand all of the various possibilities and which ones to tweak (and which ones NOT to). From this introduction, we moved onto the heart of the matter- working with your images in Photoshop. The concept and use of layers is critical in Photoshop so Sean spent enough time explaining the various types of blending modes and how they affect what you create. Once again, I learned that I wasn’t doing anything “wrong” per se but that there are more efficient ways to get certain tasks done.
Layers bring with them the concept of adjustments. Before you are able to creatively apply adjustments, you need to learn how to specify where to apply them. Sean went through the various methods of making selections along with the pros and cons of using each. Now that we had a basic knowledge of moving around Photoshop and using its tools, it was time to learn how to tackle the situations we face as nature & landscape photographers.
Using the right blending modes and scene selections, Sean showed us that it can be fairly easy to balance photos with a bright sky and dark-ish foreground. I used one of these techniques to darken the sky in the first photo of this blog post and it was easy! I should note that Sean is a big advocate if non-destructive editing, which, simply put, are edits that do not permanently alter the original pixels of your photo. The advantage is that you always have the original photo to fall back on should something go wrong.
From here, we moved on to a few different ways of working along complex edges (such as trees against a sky), addressing color casts, dodging and burning, and adding “glow” effects using techniques such as the Orton Effect. The day ended with the use of vignettes to subtlly emphasize parts of a composition. Sean threw A LOT of information and techniques but it paid dividends. I could immediately think of several photos in my library which I could re-work into a better image simply by using these techniques.
The second day (Sunday) was entirely devoted to Extended Dynamic Range (coined XDR by Sean). XDR has become quite a fad throughout photographic circles thanks in large part to HDR software such as Photomatix, HDR ProStudio, and HDR Efex. While some people are able to get great looking photos out of these HDR programs, Sean feels they haven’t quite matured and still are more using a gun to kill a fly. The adjustments they make are too broad and often you end up sacrificing one part of an image for another. The total control offered by using custom masks in Photoshop produce a much better, MORE NATURAL photograph and Sean’s photo galleries are proof of that.
Once again, Sean starts small and simple by discussing methods of working single exposures such as using the adjustment layers, layer masks, and blending modes (all of which was reinforcing what we were exposed to the previous day). From here, we got deep and really spent a lot of time learning about using channel (or luminosity) masks. There are times when targeting specific color channels can help you focus your adjustments on specific features such as the sky.
There’s a lot to digest on this topic and it all leads to a greater appreciation for someone like Tony Kuyper who figured out how to automate the creation of channel masks (and makes them available for a fee through his website). It was really good to walkthrough the process manually in order to understand and appreciate the photoshop actions that Tony has developed.
From here, the class gets more elaborate with processing a single RAW twice (once for highlights and a second time for the shadows), double exposure blends, and even triple exposure blends. It got even crazier with a four image blend of a night scene. The last thing Sean showed us was a comparison of output from various HDR programs compared with Sean’s manual blend efforts. It really does show you that the total control of a manual blend produces a much superior image!
So were the two classes worth it? Without hesitation, I can say YES. From the minute you first meet him, Sean is friendly and engaging without any elitism or arrogance. He is just a guy who is passionate about nature and photography and who doesn’t love that? Before becoming a “pro” photographer 8 years ago, Sean was a middle school teacher and that really shows in his ability to teach and explain concepts. I know that from my own experience, it can be difficult explaining technical topics to an audience that may not be as technically savvy.
Sean would be the first to acknowledge that he doesn’t know everything and is still eager to learn new things and that was evident by our interactive discussions during the course of the days. Even during the two lunch breaks, Sean graciously joined us for lunch allowing us even more time to pick his professional brain. If all that isn’t enough, now throw in copies of the video tutorials he has available on his website and I think you have one heck of a value!
Is there anything I would change about the classes? Yes- but these would be relatively minor things. For this particular weekend, both classes were offered as independent classes. Now, many people decided to take both classes but the second class about processing for XDR had an additional 4 or 5 folks. There were a few instances where our overall progress was slowed due to questions from the XDR only class attendees about topics that were addresses quite thoroughly during the preceding day’s class on digital workflow. This is naturally bound to happen and my suggestion was to offer future classes as a bundle instead of ala carte. I’m convinced of this because I strongly believe that the XDR class really builds off of everything that is taught during the digital workflow class.
My only other “nit” was a desire to see an image processed all the way through from first steps to final save. I felt I understood both day’s instruction individually but would have benefited even more from the integration of both into one example. Now, in the interest of full disclosure, the tutorial videos he provides do offer an example that basically does this. In the end, there really isn’t enough time in the day to completely address everything. I believe that Sean hasn’t offered these classes for very long so I have every confidence that he will take our suggestions into consideration and further refine the future offerings.
I left Bend armed with a lot of valuable information. I’m not completely sure how I will implement much of it but I feel very strongly that I will look back a year from now and recognize that my decision to take these classes helped push my photography up to the next level. Currently Sean does not have any future dates planned for his classes but I would keep tabs on his website news and announcements for future dates. I don’t think you’ll regret it!
Links:
Sean Bagshaw Website
Sean’s Video Tutorial Info (including sample videos)
[NOTE: In the interest of full disclosure, I’d like to mention that prior to taking these classes, I had never met Sean before. I did not receive any compensation for this review and the opinions given here were mine and mine alone]
Here are a few photos I took today from a gravel bar along the North Fork Nooksack River….
Labor Day marks the traditional end of summer but our weather must be “gifted” since signs of fall have been noticeable for as week or two. Weekend forecasts had been called for gray and showery conditions so a return trip to Bagley Creek with a friend was penciled in. My first visit was a quick one a couple weeks ago but the scenery was stunning and seemed to have potential for even more. During that first visit, it looked like there were some drops and waterfalls just out of sight so some more thorough exploration was in order.
On the way to Bagley Creek, I decided to visit a location I discovered in an old out-of-print book. The location is a rock outcrop which contains fossilized imprints of plant leafs. I’ve never heard of something like this in the Cascades and the ease of access makes it pretty incredible. Through the years, I suspect that most of the quality examples (such as what was in the book’s photo) have been taken home by careless individuals. In order to preserve what remains, I’m electing NOT to reveal its location and simply share some photos.
It was very cool to see and touch some of the history of the Cascades. We cut our time short and made our way to Bagley Creek. I wanted to check out two things- the stretch of creek immediately upstream of a forest service road & then a second stretch of the creek further upstream which had a nice sized waterfall. Before wading upstream, we checked out the scene just below the bridge:
Looking upstream from the bridge, one can make out a nice 6′ drop so it was time to wade upstream to investigate it further. As it turns out, a nice amphitheater contains the drop. Just below the drop, however, a plunge pool at least 6′ deep prevented any further travels. After a few more photos, I headed back to the bridge to move on to the second location.
The second location is basically just around the corner. Accessed off of a decommissioned logging road, the forest is dense and makes travel difficult. The waterfall proved elusive yet again due to steep sidewalls and deep waters. We were there and had more time so we followed the old road which paralleled the creek downstream.
We would walk down 50 feet, then pop over to the water’s edge to survey the scene. Our first location provided some really interesting rock formations:
The next location downstream had one of the deepest plunge pools I’ve seen. I believe this location is roughly where Razor Hone Creek joins Bagley Creek. I managed to get some nice photos despite the sun’s off and on appearances.
We reached one of the bridges used as part of the winter cross country ski trails and then turned around. We now know that this area is accessible during the winter so it might be on the list of places to visit this coming winter!
I’ll be taking a break for the next two weeks to attend to some other commitments so look for a new post later this month!
I’m VERY excited to announce that my photo, “Forest from the Tree” has been selected for an Honorable Mention for this year’s Banff Mountain Photography Competition! There were 2,500 hundred submissions and only 17 photos total were selected. The exhibition will take place from October 30th through November 7th at the Banff Centre in Banff, Alberta. In addition to this showing, the photographs will also tour selected cities across North America.
I plan on attending this event in person so expect a report from it as well as updates about the touring aspect of this competition!
For more information about the taking of this photograph, you can read my original blog post here.
I will be out of town this coming week so there won’t be a new post until after next weekend!
I spent the day before July 4th traveling around the North Fork Nooksack River valley. I was primarily interested in several waterfalls but I also revisited a small creek that I haven’t been to in a while. The weather was perfect for photography (cloudy and dry) and was a mixture of success and setbacks. I had hoped to find a possible vantage point across from Nooksack Falls but that did not pan out on this trip. I also had hoped to photograph Wells Creek Falls from creek level but that also did not happen due to high water and too many water crossings to gain entrance into the falls’ amphitheater. The last setback was getting cliffed out while bushwhacking up Deadhorse Creek to Deadhorse Falls. If the falls are your goal, follow the LEFT (or east) bank upstream. The right side is easier travel initially but becomes a very steep cliff face as the falls come into view.
On to the successes..
I made a quick stop at Nooksack Falls to shoot a summer version of a photo I took a few winters ago. I’m very happy with the end result:
I’ve shot a particular creek that flows into the Nooksack immediate above Nooksack Falls a number of times throughout the winter but have rarely visited the stretch of creek located upstream of the Mount Baker Highway. The higher flows right now made conditions more conducive for a visit:
And now…..Wells Creek Falls. It’s somewhat visible from Wells Creek Road and located just 1,000 feet upstream of the road. How hard can it be? Well……….VERY. Photographing the falls from creek level can be done but is best suited for fall when the water levels are lower. On this day, the water was running deep enough to discourage fording since the hike would require several fords across the creek to gain entrance into the waterfall’s amphitheater.
From about the halfway point between the falls and the road, my friend and I looked up and weighed my options. Both sides were steep walled ridges but we decided to go with the right hand side. We huffed it back out to the road and then crashed into the forest. I’ve crashed through some huckleberry dominant understories before but this was unreal. The huckleberry was thick and 6 feet tall. Negotiating this was a huge drain on energy. On the flip side, the floor of the forest was quite prolific with bunchberry in bloom (no photos, though!).
After a lot of scratches and brush crashing, we arrived at the location of the falls. Unfortunately, there isn’t a clear vantage point due to the thick forest. Here’s what I was able to capture:
If I didn’t believe it before, I do now- the Wells Creek drainage bites back!
