Posts Tagged ‘photography’
Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010
Last 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.
Tags: award, contest, moth, National Park, Olympic, photo, photography, Washington
Posted in Thinking | No Comments »
Sunday, February 21st, 2010
For 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?
Tags: Conservation, ecotourism, Flathead, Glacier, National Park, photography, RAVE, Waterton
Posted in Conservation | 2 Comments »
Thursday, February 11th, 2010
If 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.
Tags: hd, photo, photography, tip, video, web site
Posted in Photo Tips | 1 Comment »
Sunday, January 31st, 2010
Here 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.
Tags: Conservation, lifestyle, people, photography, tips
Posted in Photo Tips | 2 Comments »
Friday, January 1st, 2010
On his blog yesterday (12/31/09), Vincent Laforet made some interesting predictions for the near future and what it means for photography. Chief among these was that the new upcoming tablets would revolutionize the “print” industry. (Print in quotes because this would rapidly move the industry away from print on paper.) I welcome the idea of paperless publications. Wouldn’t it be great to have a conservation publication without all the environmental costs of the paper production? Not to mention this would eliminate one of the largest costs for the publications.
The problem is will this work? Much of the audience has definitely gotten used to getting content for free in this electronic age. Once folks get used to getting stuff for free, will you be able to get them to pay for it again. One thing I have always found frustrating about this is no one seems to consider the logical conclusion of this modality. If pay dries up for all of the content creators, what will happen to the content in the long run? Sure, I and others love photography enough that we’ll continue, pay or not. However, without the prospect of payment, I won’t upgrade my technology very often, if at all, and major travel will be impossible. Furthermore, I only allow use of my photography for free when it aids a cause that I feel strongly about. Thus, I feel the world of no payment for content will lead to the death of serious content built on research and lots of time. In other words, people will not do the research and other non-fun stuff behind the photography for free.
So, the main question I’m writing about is what will this new technology mean for the world of conservation photography? Well, if Vincent’s predictions hold true, it will be a brave new world leading to an exciting, lucrative, and productive new world for us conservation photographers. The only problem will be that we will need to stay very current on what sort of content is needed from us. The tablets will allow for a wide variety of media to be presented and we will need to make sure that we can provide what is wanted from the major content providers.
I am cautiously optimistic, if publications can solve the problem of monetizing content for the tablets, the near future is bright indeed. That however, is a rather large hurdle.
I suppose there’s also the quasi-socialistic solution; public doesn’t pay for the content, but in return supports the lifestyle of the content creators. Do you think America would like that alternative?
Tags: future, journalism, photography, print publications, technology
Posted in Thinking | 5 Comments »
Friday, December 4th, 2009
I had been thinking about trying some sort of story to use my Fender’s Blue Butterfly pictures together with my horse-logging images. Something about oak savanna restoration here in the Willamette Valley seemed like the perfect idea. Thus, when I went to the 2009 NANPA Summit in New Mexico, this concept was one that I pitched to my portfolio reviewers. Turns out one of them was very interested. So began a very rewarding year in my photography. I have learned a great deal, been motivated to create what I consider to be some of my best work and my career has taken new and exciting directions. For example, this project has been very influential in my decision to expand my career into video. I mentioned to the editor that I now had a 5d MkII and could film the interviews I would be conducting and asked if he would be interested. He was very excited about the idea and through following discussions with him this grew into me producing a documentary short on the subject. I was skeptical if video would be interesting to me at the time, but I now find it exhilirating. It is very exciting to work with the concept of “story” in a way that still photographers normally do not.
So that you might experience this sort of growth in your photographic career, I recommend that you register for the 2010 NANPAsummit in Reno. Have a few reviews, or perhaps contact me and volunteer to help myself and my co-chair Diane Shapiro at the review desk (we always have a blast there). Most importantly, you’ll share a great time with people who hold the same passions.
See my savanna work here.
Tags: Conservation, NANPA, photography, savanna, summit
Posted in Inspirational | 4 Comments »
Friday, November 20th, 2009
 Jim Kakacek with Van Duzer wines, a neighbor to Baskett Slough National Wildlife Refuge, presents Doug Spencer, Project Leader and Willamette Valley Coordinator U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Willamette Valley National Wildlife Refuge Complex, with a bottle of wine. Tonight, a little story about how I got into wine and how my love of wine has been intertwined with my conservation photography.
April 2000, I spent the best week of my life at Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge. There was photographing seabirds at close range, time with like minded individuals, and eating at a really sweet restaurant, The Clipper House. Our last dinner at the Clipper House, I decided to do what was at the time a rare thing for me and have a glass of wine. We were having tuna steaks that night and I decided to have the chardonnay to go with this. Whoa, the best glass of wine I had experienced to that time. I was completely, blew away and instantly decided that I wanted to learn more about wine.
Shortly thereafter I moved to Oregon. Now as many of you may know, Oregon is known for Pinot Noir. Thus, it wasn’t a surprise when my aunt and uncle had a bottle of pinot at dinner at their house given to them by a business contact. I found this particular bottle rather unpleasant and a few subsequent bottles furthered this opinion of pinot. Thus, I preceeded to fall in love with syrah for how well it goes with Creole cooking – nothing quite like a glass of syrah with a plate of jambalaya.
In the meantime my photography was diversifying from just wildlife into conservation topics and I got involved with the Friends of the Willamette Valley National Wildlife Refuge Complex. Then a huge event for our fledgling group suddenly came up on the calendar. One of the trails on our refuges was to be designated as the 1000th National Recreation Trail and renamed in honor of Rich Guadagno, a former manager of Baskett Slough NWR and one of the victims of the 9/11 attacks on United Flight 93. My mother took the responsibility of organizing this event and investigated the idea of having local wineries serve wine there. This led to her contacting Jim Kakacek of Van Duzer. Turns out Jim knew Rich personally and was very excited about participating in the event. Eventually, it was decided that we shouldn’t serve wine at the event but Jim still attended and spoke and gave wine to the VIPs of the event. To our surprise, he gave my mother a bottle as coordinator. A few weeks later, my parents popped the bottle and I tried some too. Here was a pinot that did not have the overpowering, unbalanced acid that I had tasted in my earlier experiences with pinot. I was ecstatic, this was awesome. We then arranged some more events with Van Duzer and our family has joined their wine club and I attend most of the events. Between Jim’s influence and drinking wine with NANPA friends (I remember a really late night in Albuquerque that is one of the best socializing nights in my adult life) I am totally a pinot convert. Pinot Noir is now my favorite all around wine, although I still really like syrah with creole. In fact Van Duzer’s ‘07 estate pinot is my all-time favorite so far.
Anyhow, how the wine continues to intertwine with my nature photography is that Van Duzer is currently restoring oak savanna on their land. I have been working with them in my documentary and article about savanna restoration. This effort is being coordinated by Rebecca Sweet, the wineries new vineyard manager, a young woman whose intellectual mastery of her vocation has me in awe.
Take a look at the critters these efforts can help here.
Tags: Conservation, Midway, photography, pinot noir, Van Duzer, wine
Posted in Conservation | 9 Comments »
Saturday, October 17th, 2009
I am currently involved in expanding my photo career in two directions. I am getting involved in HD video (will begin editing on my first project when my editing workstation arrives) and I am acquiring the skills and gear for location portraiture, etc. I like expanding my career in these directions because it both allows me to expand the opportunities to me while acquiring skills and gear that will help me with my core interest of conservation photography.
What I am currently doing on the location portraiture front is reading Joe McNally’s Hot Shoe Diaries. This is an excellent book that I highly recommend for anyone interested in getting complicated lighting effects from small, hot shoe mount flashes. Joe’s writing style is humorous and approachable, so you can have a little fun while you learn. Those who know me well know I always think that sort of multi-tasking is a good thing.
Next step will be a workshop.
Tags: book, books, flash, photography, skills
Posted in Inspirational | 15 Comments »
Tuesday, July 14th, 2009
Hello folks, this is my very first blog entry. Welcome to what I hope will be an informative and fun-filled journal.
For my first entry, I wanted to talk a little about a book I am currently reading and how it might influence my future photography. I am currently reading The Beak of the Finch.This is without a doubt a fantastic book. It is a rare wonderous thing when a science book leaves you with that edge of the seat feeling wondering what will happen, or what the scientists ultimately discover.
In general the book is about gathering evidence of evolution by natural selection occurring right now. The writer concentrates on work done with Darwin’s Finches by the Grants and their various graduate students, thus the title of the book. It is utterly fascinating to see how availability of food drives evolution of the beak of the finch and at a speed that is recordable by modern scientific techniques.
Upon flipping through the book, I noticed that Red Crossbills here in North America are discussed for awhile. This is where this book might have a profound effect on my future photography. Being able to illustrate the sort of evidence of evolution that the Grants have recorded would be a thrill for me. In Red Crossbills, scientists have recently discovered that there are at least nine types with different songs and different bills. It is suspected that they are either separate species or are currently in the process of speciating. I would love to illustrate this event. Thus, I will be brainstorming on ways that this might be possible and finding out if anyone is currently doing Crossbill research.
Tags: Beak of the Finch, biology, bird, crossbill, evolution, photography, science
Posted in Inspirational | 51 Comments »
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