First Video BlogAugust 24th, 2010Here’s my first video blog entry, an introduction to the XF300. Still need to improve on the video blogging, primarily an issue of learning to take the right amount of footage to begin with. The XF300 is awesome though. Easy to work with and beautiful looking files.
Blog 8-23-10 from Rick Brown on Vimeo. Video Blogs!July 10th, 2010Well, folks things have been exciting lately. July 4th weekend brought many great photos of unusual subjects, including chorus frogs and PhD horticulture students doing their work with raspberries. There’s been good news that I’ll tell you more about when it hits the presses. But the main point of this post is that very soon many of the entries will be video. I am adding a dedicated camcorder to my mix soon. To all those dslr video enthusiasts, don’t worry, I’m continuing to do that as well, but will use the 5d for things that it is best suited to and the camcorder for that which it is best suited. When I have someone on location with me willing to do so, I will have them recording behind the scenes sorta stuff, for the blog. Olympic WeekendJune 22nd, 2010Last Friday, 6-18-10, I went to the members preview of the 2010 International Conservation Photography Awards at the Burke in Seattle, Washington. It was truly an inspirational evening. The site was fantastic, the wine was good, the company was good, and of course all of the images were beautiful and moving. That’s right, every last one of them. You can see all the winners here. I especially suggest you check out the winner in the Community at Risk category. It’s certainly not a cheerful image, but it left a permanent impression on me and I couldn’t help but look at it over and over all night. Of course, I couldn’t go all the way to Seattle without going over and shooting a few images at Olympic NP. This is the site that is the Northwest as the rest of the world sees it in their dreams. (Honestly, more of the Northwest was like this before the arrival of us Europeans than currently.) Well, I did have a very limited time; need to return to the day job on Monday and all that. (Damn end of quarter. Career transitions take too long if you ask me.) Well, it got to be Sunday around noon and I had to get going. I was planning on leaving in about five minutes. At this time, I was feeling a little bit down about what I then felt was an unproductive weekend photographically. I was photographing some bunchberry at the time when someone pulled up behind me and parked. Their pickup was uncomfortably close. It was an NPS employee. He says to me that I sees I am doing some nature photography and he knows of something that might be of interest to me. Their was one of the giant silk moths on the wall just outside of the ladies’ room in the campground, Heart o’ the Hills. I walked over there and photographed this truly beautiful moth (photos to be on my site soon.) I don’t know the species yet, need to research that, but I was incredibly excited because, this is the first giant silk moth I’ve ever been able to photograph. Most of these moths are declining due to their reliance on old forests. I regret that I did not get this guy’s name, because his gesture of kindness made my shoot. Finally HereMay 19th, 2010
Woodpeckers, Fire & Acorns from Rick Brown on Vimeo. I finally posted my first documentary to Vimeo. It’s been a long and at times trying experience. Furthermore, there’s the frustration that always comes from knowing that you could do better at the process now. Overall though I am very excited about posting this movie. Certainly video is a fun and challenging experience. A New World for Intellectual PropertyMarch 21st, 2010I just wrote my letter to the White House that many photography organizations were alerting me about the opportunity to do so. This was about the current intellectual property climate and possibly improving this for content creators. The current climate worries me greatly. Content – photographs, video, writing, etc. – is losing value rapidly right now. A very large portion of society today feels they should be able to get this material for free. I feel that the internet has contributed greatly to this. The internet has brought us many great things, but there are definitely corrosive elements too. Eventually, I think it will become obvious to a larger group of people how detrimental culling the ranks of professional content creators so dramatically will be. I particularly worry about the loss of serious journalism. As it gets harder and harder for newspapers etc., to make money off serious journalism the field rapidly dwindles. As this field rapidly dwindles, the void will be filled with regurgitated press releases from government and big business. What state will our democracy be in when the press is only telling us what the big corporations and government want us to hear. For recorded history, hasn’t the most important things the press has done been when they alert us to when big business and/or government is hurting us. As important as news of the quake in Chile is, to me it doesn’t compare to the older story of the Cuyahoga burning. The Chile story tells us of a natural disaster that we can respond to by sending charity, but there’s nothing for us to do to end the problem. The Cuyahoga on the other hand warned us of how industry, unconstrained in what they threw into our waters, was poisoning us all. There was definitely something for us to do, lobby for the Clean Water Act. If the only news we were getting is regurgitated press releases… Of course, that was a burning river, we probably would’ve heard about it on Twitter, but what about Watergate? Woodpeckers, Fire and Acorns – the TrailerFebruary 23rd, 2010
Woodpeckers, Fire and Acorns Trailer from Rick Brown on Vimeo. This is a very exciting thing for me. I am publishing the trailer of my first documentary short. This documentary was shot entirely on a 5dMkII and edited in Premiere Pro. Success on the Flathead!!!February 21st, 2010For those of you who have been reading my blog you know that I was very worried about some possible resource extraction activities harming the Glacier/Waterton International Peace Park and I was closely watching the ILCP and their RAVE on the Flathead Valley to fight this. Well folks, it worked!!! The Peace Park is a designated UN World Heritage site and the UN sent an investigation team and expressed their displeasure with the proposed plans. Earlier this month, the British Columbian government prohibited industrial development in the valley. I will not talk about this success in much detail here, but refer you to ILCP’s story, a story in the Missoulian, and NPCA’s coverage. However, I want to thank all of you who took action to protect the Flathead and the Waterton/Glacier International Peace Park based on my pleadings here in this blog. Now on to the meat of this post. My response to this issue illustrates very well an issue that is critical to the field of conservation photography. That is the old cliche “you love what you know, you protect what you love.” Just how my response illustrates this, is that ILCP has done quite a few RAVEs at this point, but the two I got the most enthusiastic with my support were the two locations that I have enjoyed in person; the Flathead and the Borderlands. This issue defines the very reason for the existence of conservation photography. Photos will never be a substitute for intimate knowledge of a landscape, but they are much better than nothing. So one of the primary jobs of the conservation photographer is that first step in the cliche; help your audience get to know the landscape, the critters in it, and the beauty of the symbiosis between the two. Many argue that too much ecotourism, resulting from people knowing just how wonderful a place is can be very destructive. I acknowledge this possibility, and some of our most popular and most fragile places are dealing with a little of the “being loved to death” syndrome. However, ecotourism is almost always better than development. Which do you think would be harder for say a gopher tortoise to deal with, having a bunch of tourists stick cameras in its face or its home and food put under a parking lot and mini-mall? Video InfoFebruary 11th, 2010If you’ve been reading this blog, you know that I am currently very much involved in expanding my business into hd video. The current focus is deciding on a camcorder as I am currently using the 5dII and with the work I do, I think a combination of the two would be the best solution. Use a dedicated camcorder for the bulk of the work and the 5dII for sequences where depth of field control is important, or perhaps shooting in very low light, etc. Having been a still photographer most of my life though, I had no idea where to look for info. With Canon’s recent announcement that their next camcorder is going to use a 50Mbps 4:2:2 codec, I went wild trying to find more info. Well, recently I came across two very useful sites. DVInfo and MacVideo. Ok, I’m a PC guy, editing on Premiere Pro, but MacVideo is still incredibly useful for information about the cameras. There’s this guy there, Rick Young, who breaks it down exactly the way I think of it; proof is in the pudding and when you’re talking expanding your business into hd video, pudding=picture quality and can you market the footage. So, if you too are looking to do these sorts of things, I suggest you check out these sites. Expect a big post within a week or so about NANPA. The summit is next week, I’m very excited. Now to think up what my next conservation oriented documentary will be. Photograph PeopleJanuary 31st, 2010Here I’m going to give a tip that is a painful one for many of us conservation photographers; if you want to maximize your impact, photograph people. Yes that’s right, Rick, the guy many think can only photograph ducks, is telling you to photograph people. Magazines are often looking to engage the reader in the article through the photographs and apparently many think humans can’t feel connected to a member of the species Anas acuta. Personally, I find this both sad and shocking. However, the fact remains that if you want to maximize the impact of your photography for conservation, you should probably also be photographing people doing the conservation work and enjoying the fruits of their labors. The latter are called “lifestyle” or “outdoor lifestyle” images, a genre that I myself am now pushing myself to get into deeper. Another tip with lifestyle images, if you want to maximize the versatility of the images, make sure your models are wearing modern and stylish clothes. This increases the odds of them being useful for advertising as well as editorial. You can see some of my work in this field in these galleries; lifestyle and conservation. Partay!!!January 17th, 2010Just got back from a party at Van Duzer that the Friends of the Willamette Valley National Wildlife Refuge Complex threw as a membership builder. It was a great deal of fun; the food and of course the wine, were excellent. We presented small little speeches about the most important projects we’re involved with; our invasive species project, our gift store and a new partnership with Van Duzer about oak savanna restoration on their land. This project is largely intended to provide a corridor for the expansion of the population of the Fender’s Blue Butterfly, a highly endangered species. Van Duzer went well above and beyond the call of duty to make our evening a success. This combined with the excellent quality of their wines is why I urge you to both agree to help us with the plantings and other conservation work that the Friends will be helping with at Van Duzer and to buy some wine. Please contact me about helping with the conservation work and either visit the winery or their website for the wine. And if you need some excellent catering, I highly recommend Michael Sullivan, our chef for the evening. |