Castle Mountain Reflection 1

Castle Mountain Reflection 1

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I created this dramatic image of Castle Mountain on the first night of my recent Banff National Park Photography Tour. Unlike many of the famous viewpoints in the US National Parks, we had this beautiful vista all to ourselves. This location is right next to the road, making this view from along the banks of the Bow River one of Banff’s most iconic landscape photos. Many landscape photographers seem to be over-infatuated with the orange-red light at sunset. I don’t blame them, but I often find my most successful images earlier during the golden hour before sunset or after sunrise. This image is a perfect example of this early sunlight still at a high enough angle above the horizon to illuminate the entire scene. Any later and the trees are all just dark silhouettes (which they were and I have pictures of). The ominous clouds above the mountain add drama and help focus the viewer’s attention onto the mountain in the middle of the scene. I created this image with my Canon 5DmkII, Carl Zeiss 28mm f2 ZE lens, Singh-Ray LB Warming polarizer, and 4-stop Soft Graduated Neutral Density filter. On a tripod, of course.

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Sockeye Salmon 1

Sockeye Salmon 1

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I spent last Thursday and Friday photographing the sockeye salmon migration on the Adams River in central British Columbia. It was a miraculous sight to behold! Every 4 years the salmon return in huge numbers. However, they had not returned in as great a numbers as this year since 1910. The relatively short life cycle of the salmon is amazing when you consider that when they are born they swim in Shuswap Lake for a year before descending the Fraser River, migrating to the North Pacific Ocean, and finally returning to the river of their birth by swimming past orcas, fisherman, and the city of Vancouver to lay their eggs before dying. Though the young salmon never meet their parents, the accumulated biomass of their decaying parents nourishes the lake and thus the young salmon in their first year of life. The epic journey of the salmon is a story about determination and rebirth.

During my previous visit to the Adams River in 2002, I was just beginning my photography career. I had no idea what I was doing with an underwater housing. Plus, I was limited to only 36 exposures on a roll of film, which made it a real pain getting out of the water to change film. Using my Canon 5DmkII and 17-40mm f4 lens in my Ikelite 5DmkII housing with an 8″ dome port and dual DS 160 strobes, I am now able to create over 600 exposures on my 16GB Sandisk Extreme cards. My recent shoot was no longer limited by technology, but more by my patience and willingness to sit on my knees in the middle of the river while wearing my drysuit for hours at a time. I perfected my technique of shooting “blindly” by positioning myself in the river so that an eddy formed downstream of my body where the salmon could congregate and then I lowered my housing into the water to fire away at 4fps without looking through the viewfinder. Clearly, there was a lot of room for error in my positioning of my camera in this manner, because I had to delete a lot of images. I was inspired to create this image as the sun was just starting to rise over the tops of the trees in the late morning. The salmon were backlit, so I used my strobes for a bit of fill-flash. I did not have all my correct strobe arm parts with me, so I attached one strobe to my housing in the vertical position on the left side and hand-held my other strobe against my knee with my right hand. I was able to push the shutter release button with my left hand while balancing my housing against the river bottom. My strobes were set to -3 and the rest of this image was just pure luck that I guessed correctly of how to angle my camera. I do not like to do very much post-processing, but I had to digitally remove a significant amount of backscatter that was caused by my strobes illuminating the particulates in the water. My overall point in this long description is that there was a lot of technical challenges as well as blind luck required to create this beautiful image.

Update on 10/23/10-For anyone who might be concerned about my photography interfering with the salmon, I had a permit from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) that allowed me to be in the water.

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2010 ICPA Poster

2010 International Conservation Photography Awards

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Tonight is the awards ceremony for the 2010 International Conservation Photography Awards at the UW’s Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture. The exhibit opens to the general public tomorrow. My image of a Steller sea lion underwater won 2nd Place in the Underwater category. It is featured on most of the promotional materials, including this poster that is currently displayed all around Seattle. I also received an Honorable Mention in the Landscape category for my “Badwater Salt Crust Sunrise 1″ image from Death Valley National  Park. I am really looking forward to seeing some of my friends, like Stuart Westmorland & Sean Bagshaw, and meeting a number of photographers that I only know online, including Todd Mintz, Jim Patterson, & David M Cobb.

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Tonquin Valley Sunrise 3

Tonquin Valley Sunrise 3

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Here it is!  My favorite photo from my backpacking trip into the Tonquin Valley last week. Out of 500 images from 2 days of getting up at 5am for sunrise, backpacking over 40km while carrying my 50lb pack, & driving 1280 miles round-trip, this is the one that caught my attention the most. I can probably process and edit about 20 more images for my stock & publishing needs on top of the 4 that I have already posted here, but this is the one that I am most proud of. Why you ask?

1. Amethyst Lake was almost completely calm from where I was standing all the way across to the Ramparts, giving me a perfect mirror reflection.

2. The clouds were particularly symmetric above the Ramparts, but also in the reflection. I also like the way that the summits of the peaks are just barely in shadow, too. Very mysterious.

3. I like the dark gray color of the clouds and the direct front light on the mountains. This combination of yellow light & gray skies always looks very ominous and dramatic. Also, I find that publishers & art clients prefer blue skies, white clouds, & earth tones over the neon red/orange/yellow images that are more popular with photo contests.

4. The foreground rocks have a pleasant warm tone to them. Behind me, the sun was blocked by a large cloud which acted like a giant soft-box in the sky. During these few minutes, the sun would occasionally pop out and cause my shadow to be cast on the rocks, which I found distracting.

So, what do you think?

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Tonquin Valley Sunrise 5

Tonquin Valley Sunrise 5

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This spectacular image from the Tonquin Valley was taken about 15 minutes after I took what I consider to be my best image from my backpacking trip in Jasper National Park last week. About an hour and a half after sunrise, the light, clouds, & shadows gave me a brilliant series of images to choose from. I was so enthralled by the scene before me, that I had to remember to shoot, let alone switch from horizontal to vertical compositions. Most of the time the reflection was ideal with only small ripples, but at some moments it was absolutely still giving a mirror image of the Ramparts! What an awesome place to shoot without a single other photographer around. Keep that in mind next time you are taking pictures at a popular national park viewpoint!

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Tonquin Valley Sunrise 8

Tonquin Valley Sunrise 8

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As promised, here is my second image of the week from my backpacking trip into the Tonquin Valley in Jasper National Park. (As long as I have internet access in Whistler this week, I’ll be able to post the next 3 images after today.) This images was created an hour after sunrise on the same morning as my previous post. The sky was a brilliant blue, but there were almost no clouds to add any drama. I learned long ago that anytime I have a perfect mountain reflection in a lake, I SHOOT IT!!!!! (Especially when it requires a 40 km round-trip backpacking adventure, and 1280 miles of driving.) Luckily, a couple of wispy clouds on the eastern horizon began to block the sun, casting some pretty fantastic shadow patterns on the Ramparts. It was amazing to watch the shadows dance across the face of this enormous escarpment. This is my favorite image from the second morning’s shoot. My next few posts will be from the first morning when I had some clouds!

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Tonquin Valley Sunrise 6

Tonquin Valley Sunrise 6

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I’ve been working on an initial edit of my images from last week in the Canadian Rockies. My plan is to post 1 image each day this week of my favorite images from the Tonquin Valley. Here is the first one! This is from the second sunrise that I spent at Surprise Point. I got up that morning to perfect calm conditions on Amethyst Lake for a reflection, but there were no clouds at all. So, I did my best and this is a beautiful image from about 30 minutes after sunrise.

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Berg Lake Sunrise Reflection 1

Berg Lake Sunrise Reflection 1

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I just spent 4 days earning this spectacular sunrise image of Mount Robson. I drove all day last Thursday from Seattle to Valemont, BC so that I could catch a helicopter ride on Friday morning to Berg Lake. The weather started out OK, but quickly turned lousy. I spent all day Saturday & Sunday in the campers shelter next to the wood stove, reading my book, and trying to stay warm while it was miserable outside. Both nights I experienced some terrifying thunderstorms that deposited fresh snow on the mountains down to an elevation not too far above the lake. I was getting grumpy and frustrated to say the least. I called my dad using my Iridium satellite phone for reassurance about the weather. The forecast said that it was going to be nice by Monday. I kept my fingers crossed. Sure enough, when my alarm went off yesterday morning, it was almost totally clear! I probably should have set my alarm for 15 minutes earlier than I did because the first light was already hitting the top of the mountain. I threw on my clothes and took off running to my “secret spot”. I arrived just in time to set up my camera to capture this perfect reflection of Mount Robson with a lenticular cloud on it’s summit.

In case you do not keep up with me already on Facebook & Twitter, I posted a bunch of iPhone photos & videos yesterday from my trip. I’m having a lot of fun and hope that you enjoy following my adventures.

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Steller Sea Lion 3

Steller Sea Lion 3

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Here is another great image from my recent Steller sea lion shoot. This sea lion is biting the front of my dome port. Even with the dome and a +2 diopter, you can still see that it is a little soft around the mouth, but is that close or what? This images was created with my Canon 5D digital SLR in an Ikelite underwater housing with 2 Ikelite DS160 strobes set on Manual to -4, at f4 and 1/125 second.

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Steller Sea Lion 22

Steller Sea Lion 22

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For any of my regular visitors, I have to apologize for not keeping up with my promise to try and post more the past few weeks. The economic uncertainty that we are all facing has started to demand my attention, as well as some personal family issues. I canceled my trip to return to Argentina this week, and am trying to work on some other projects for the time being as I try and sort everything out that is going on. It might be awhile, so I am just trying to regroup and focus on what I can do for my business and family at this time. Some of the bigger concessions that I am trying to make include selling my boat up in Alaska and eliminating my film expense by going all digital. I’m looking into trading in my Pentax 67 and Canon 5D so I can upgrade to the new Canon 5D mkII. I’ve got some new projects in the works to lead more photography workshops next year, so it only makes sense that I should shoot digital so that I have something to show to my clients, rather than waiting for my film to get processed after the trip. I think that I will keep my Fotoman 612 panoramic camera to still shot some film once in awhile, because I really like the detail I get in my larger prints.

I’ve got some more editing to do from my recent dive trip with the Steller sea lions, but this is one of my favorite images. I shot about 2600 images over 3 days during 8 hours of diving. I deleted at least 1800 in my first cut. Now I need to process the top 40 or so images from the shoot. This images was created with my Canon 5D digital SLR in an Ikelite underwater housing with 2 Ikelite DS160 strobes set on Manual to -4, at f4 and 1/125 second.

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