Back to Banff!

I have been reliving my experience in Banff National Park for years. I didn't think I would be going back so soon, but guess what. It's happening! Actually it's happening in just about a week. Banff is a special place for me for several reasons. It was where my wife and I went on our honeymoon 4 years ago. We stayed in the town of Banff and at the Chateau at Lake Louise. It was an incredible experience.

It was also the first time I had seen the rocky mountains. Seeing those mountains was a life changing experience. I live on the flat plains of Minnesota. We have a beautiful landscape in our own right, the land of 10,000 lakes. Northern Minnesota has similar beautiful conifer forests that surround beautiful lakes. But we don't have the MOUNTAINS. It was a beauty like I've never seen before. That mixed with water that is impossibly blue, it's a beauty I will never forget.

It will only be a short trip, four days and three nights, but we plan to make the most of it. A friend of mine will be joining me on the trip and it should be an incredible experience for him as well. Like me, four years ago, this will be his first trip to the rocky mountains. Also, he is new to photography. What a unbelievably photogenic place to learn. Although this location will be tough to beat, it might be all downhill for him after this!

Lesson Learned: Time Lapse Part 1

Time Lapses have become very popular over the last couple of years. Today there is easy to use software, built in time lapse or interval timers and plenty of online tutorials. All of this has made making time lapses more accessible to the hobby photographer. As soon as I realized this was something that I could do with my current equipment, I was ready to go.

Well almost, there was a bit of a learning curve and I had to do my research. I did some tests and some more research. This isn't a time lapse tutorial, I don't think I'm quite ready to be writing one of those yet. When I become more proficient, then maybe I will write one. In the meantime, I thought I would share a couple of lessons I've learned along the way.

1. Buy a battery grip or at least extra batteries. On my recent trip to Yosemite NP, I brought my brother's (Derek) D7000 camera as a second body. He had a battery grip and 2 batteries which, as it turns out, are the same batteries as my D600. The two extra batteries were very important.
2. Buy an external intervalometer. My D600 has an interval timer built in but I found it to be unreliable. This issue is maybe a blog post of it's own, so I won't go into detail. But I found at times it wouldn't take the right amount of photos. For example, I set it to take 300 photos, but it counted down by 5. It went, 300, 295, 290, 285 etc.. On a couple of occasions it just stopped completely despite having plenty of battery and memory space. I've heard plenty of good things about the generic intervalometers and I'll probably go with the Satechi MTR-M. But I haven't tested it yet, so don't quote me on that.
3. Buy extra memory cards. I had a 32g, two 16g and two 4g cards with me. I also had a 32g in my GoPro which I could pull if necessary. Derek's camera had another 16g card which I ended up using as well. This was a pretty short trip, so if I plan a longer trip next time, I will need more cards. I could have formatted, transferred to my Macbook and kept going, but I prefer not to format anything until I get home if I can help it. 32g & 64g SanDisk  are cheap next time I'll bring some extras. I found that on a 32g card I could get about 1000 photo's with my D600 in RAW mode. I tend to go for 300 image time lapses which gives me 10 seconds of video at 30fps. So you can see how just a few time lapses will fill a card.

I know this turned out to be a list of things to buy. But the good news is none of them are that expensive, especially compared to what we are used to when comes to photography gear. If you do decide to buy these products please purchase them through amazon via our links in the page or the search feature to the right. It help support Natural Vision Photography. Thanks!

Back from California

Nikon D600, Nikkor 70-700 VR, 6 shot vertical panorama

It was my first trip to California and I have to say I was blown away by it's beauty. The diversity of beauty is what really has me jealous though. My wife and I did a kind of a mad dash across California. It was great to see the great diversity in landscape, but I really want to take a more focused approach next time.

We started in Yosemite and saw the great valley cliffs and mountains which included vast wilderness. Then we went to Monterrey and saw the coast as we drove through Big Sur down the Pacific Coast Highway 1. I have to say I was very surprised by the epic drive on Highway 1. I knew it would be a nice drive, but it was down right insane. We had clouds rolling in off the ocean which then made a steep climb up the mountain and over the road. We saw this rising of the clouds for most of the drive and it was awesome. I have to say that Yosemite was beautiful, but I knew it would be. I was surprised by Big Sur though, it's beauty was unexpected.

The next leg of the tour was to Los Angles which was not photography related but still an area in which a photographer could enjoy a wealth of subjects.

In coming posts I'll share some photos as well as time lapses that I took. I'm new to time lapses and will share what I learned. I also did a bit of work at night for the first time. I ran into some unexpected problems there as well and will share my experiences. So stayed tuned!

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Photo of the Week! Bow Falls, Without the Falls!

This amazing view is from Bow Falls in Banff National Park. At the urging of Derek I went back through my Lightroom catalog in search of some photos that I overlooked. Well here it is... I overlooked this one! This was an incredible place. The falls were off to the left and there were fisherman off to the right. Of course the water color is amazing and the highway of rocks takes your view to the distance mountains.

Photo of the Week! Loon Part 2!

Nikon D7000, Nikkor 500mm f/4 AFS @ ISO 500, f/7.1, 1/2500

This is the next photo in the loon series that began last week. I like this photo because of the head and beak angel and the clean background. It also shows some great behavior from the loon. It's also noteworthy that this is one of the very few wildlife photographs that I have where you can't see the eyes.

Photo of the Week! Gull Gone Fishin'

Nikon D90, Sigma 150-500 OS, ISO 320, f/8, 1/1600

With all of the fishing Derek have been doing ourselves lately, this only seemed fitting. This Ring-billed Gull doesn't need a pole, lures or hooks though.

Photo of the Day! Tree Swallow!

Nikon D7000, Nikkor 500mm f/4 AFS @ ISO 320, f/5.6, 1/800

This was from this week while photographing bluebirds. The tree swallows made it a point to harass the bluebirds and their nest boxes whenever possible. The bluebirds were vigilante though and fearlessly chanced them away each time. This tree swallow was much more relaxed soaking up some sun.

Behind the Image: Field Sparrow

Nikon D7000, Nikkor 300mm f2.8 w/TC-14E II @420mm, ISO 500, f6.3, 1/2000, +1/3ev, SB800 for fill

Chad and I were out on Friday April 29th, 2011 looking for eastern Bluebirds in a field filled with bird boxes. The key to any wildlife photographer is to know your subject that you are photographing. Chad and I watched the male bluebird chase away any incoming threats to his nest (mostly tree swallows). As we were watching the male bluebird and tree swallows chase each other around I noticed the familiar sound of a field sparrow calling. There were multiple field sparrows calling back and forth all morning long.

While photographing a male eastern bluebird, Chad saw the field sparrow calling from underneath the bluebird's box. Since the field sparrow was on the ground, I took my camera on the tripod and crawled on my belly down a slight hill towards my target.

Once I was in place, the field sparrow was busy calling for a mate and was unaware of my presence. The field sparrow hopped along the ground only landing on low laying perches. After a few minutes of shooting, I got the shot posted above. What I like about the photo is the intimate setting. The setting of the photo is this is were the field sparrow lives and spends most of his time. I was able to capture a small portion of this field life and how it looks and calls for a mate.

Chad and I as wildlife photographers capturing this moment is only part of what we love to do. The other part is showing other people that may not want to lay in a tick infested field a shot of a field sparrow calling in the grass.

Photo of the Day! American Goldfinch!

Nikon D7000, Nikkor 500mm f/4 AFS @ ISO 320, f/5.6, 1/1600

Late post today, Derek and I just got back from photographing song birds this morning. We saw some more eastern bluebirds, field sparrows, goldfinch and some other regulars. This is my favorite from the morning.

Photo of the Day! Eastern Bluebird!

Nikon D7000, Nikkor 500mm, f/4 AFS + TC-14E II @ 700mm, ISO 320, f/8, 1/500 

Derek and I went to a local wildlife area yesterday in hopes of finding some migrating water fowl. It was our first trip this year to this spot and unfortunately the water fowl was non existent. But we did notice some very active eastern bluebirds that were protecting their nest box from some harassing swallows. The bluebirds followed a pretty consistent pattern of perching locations in the area. The male made use of this perch several times so we decided to set our cameras up and wait. Of course as soon as we did, he decided to go elsewhere. After a couple of hours of waiting and the activity levels decreasing, we decided to pack up for the day. As we were about to leave Derek said, look at your perch! Would you know it, there he was. Fortunately my camera was still on the tripod. I quickly got back into position and fired a few off before he flew away. This is actually one of my first bluebird photos so I was very pleased.

Photo of the Day! Clark's Nutcracker!

Nikon D90, Nikkor 300mm f/4 AFS + TC-17E II @ 500mm, ISO 1000, f/6.7, 1/250, handheld

This was the first time I had seen a Clark's Nutcracker. All I knew is it was a pretty and interesting bird. As it turns out the Clark's Nutcracker is well known for it's ability to cache huge amounts of pine seeds for later consumption. The Clark's Nutcracker can cache as many as 98,000 seeds per year. This image was taken in the Lake Louise area of Banff National Park in Alberta Canada.

Lightroom 3 Tip: Option/Alt

This is a quick and dirty tip, but I thought it might help some folks if they weren't aware of it. Press and hold the "Option" button on the Mac or "Alt" on the PC to display alternate options. This can be very handy at times. For example.

When using the Sharpening tool. There is a slider for masking. If your want to know what is actually happening when you move that slider, press and hold the "option/alt" button. This will display exactly what is being done.

If you use the "option/alt" button while adjusting the detail, it will look like this.

 

The "Amount" of sharpening will look like this.

This is an important tool to use in Lightroom 3. When making any adjustments press and hold the "option/alt" button and see if any other options exist. They make using some of these arbitrary sliders much easier and more visual.

Photo of the Day! Cedar Waxwing 2!

Nikon D90, Sigma 150-500 OS @ 500mm, ISO 320, f/6.3,1/1250

This goes along with yesterday's post. I didn't quite get the super clean background like on yesterday's post, but I still liked this image.

Photo of the Day! Cedar Waxwing!

Nikon D90, Sigma 150-500 OS @ 500mm, ISO 500, f/8, 1/800

For this image I applied a basic rule in bird photography. Find a clean background first, then wait for the bird to come to you. I saw a flock of Cedar Waxwings along a walking path. So I set my camera up and pointed it at this nice clean branch. The waxwings kept landing on branches all around. After a lengthy wait, one finally decided to give me a break.

In the Midst of Migration

Reports all over the upper midwest have shown that the spring migration is underway! After going an entire winter seeing the same species of wildlife, it's exciting to see the migrants sweeping north. Just yesterday I saw bluebirds and robins as well as ring-necked ducks, goldeneye, bufflehead, hooded merganser, american kestrel and various hawk species that I could not identify.

Whats interesting about seeing this waterfowl is that all of the lakes and ponds are still frozen. But with all the snow we got this winter, there is massive flooding. Bridges are closed and my commutes is much longer because of it. But there is also flood ponds all over the place. These flood ponds are the only open pools of water and thus the waterfowl has been attracted to those areas.

This week I also saw both sandhill cranes and great blue herons in a snow storm. Probably not what they were expecting when they decided to head north. I'm still waiting for my first loon of the season. I think we will need actual lakes to thaw before I see that. So until then, I'm still waiting for spring to officially arrive!

Photo of the Day! A Cautious Deer!

Nikon D7000, Nikkor 500mm f/4 AFS @ ISO 200, f/5.6, 1/1250

This is a somewhat plain image, but it caught my eye because of the cautious look of the deer and the deep woods feel. Let me know what your think!

Photo of the Day! White-tail Deer!

Nikon D7000, Nikkor 500mm f/4 AFS @ ISO 200, f/5.6, 1/800

This white-tail was from our shoot last weekend. We had some very cooperative deer, some even inquisitive. The snow is melting and spring is coming. It will be interesting if we can continue to locate the deer and watch them loose their more dull beige fur in favor of their brighter summer reddish color. Maybe we can even find some fawns to photograph!

Photo of the Day! Red-tail Hawk Portrait!

Nikon D40x, Nikkor 70-300VR @ 300mm, f/5.6, ISO 800, 1/1600

This beautiful light phase red-tail hawk. The white feathers make this hawk unique but it's the eyes that make the photo. The dark green background also helped.

Photo of the Day! Juvenile being Juvenile! White-tail Deer

Nikon D7000, Nikkor 500mm f/4 AFS @ 500 ISO, f/5.6, 1/1600

From our white-tail deer shoot. I just thought this was too funny not to post! I usually only post my best work, and while this is maybe not my favorite shot technically. IE the shadow on his face and the twig in front of his body. But this shot gave me a smile, so I thought I'd share it with you all!

Photo of the Day! Juvenile Peregrine Falcon!

Nikon D40x, 70-300VR @ 300mm, ISO 800, f/5.6, 1/3200

This is the same juvenile peregrine falcon as yesterday. This is another great display of the juvenile coloration and pattern.