This was my first day going out on the water with Elkhorn Slough Safaris. I will be going out for the next 3 days to shoot in the golden late afternoon light. A photographer friend from San Diego drove up and one of my workshop clients has flown in to join me. We had a pretty good first day on the water. This is my favorite image from this afternoon’s shoot. Please visit more of my Sea Otter Photography.
I do not often have access to the internet during my trips, so I thought that it would be kind of fun to post some images from my short adventure down to Monterey this week. The main purpose of my trip is to photograph sea otters at Elkhorn Slough the next few days, but I got up this morning to try and photograph the California sealions that rest on the breakwater at the entrance to the harbor. The sunrise light was pretty nice, but it was hard to find a sealion that was faced the right direction. It is pretty amazing to be able to watch these animals from only a few feet away. The sealions are always growling and barking and each other just like this image.
These are my first images taken with my new Canon 50D. The files look pretty good. I figured out that Aperture does not yet support the new files, though. I did some Google searches and discovered that I need to covert my RAW files into DNG files until Apple comes out with the update for the new camera. Hopefully, that will not be too far in the future.
This is another one of my favorite images from my recent trip to photograph great white sharks down in Mexico. As I mentioned in my previous post, it was a tough trip, but I did come away with a few new images that are worth sharing.
I have been working on updating my website and moving some of the galleries and pages around. The new layout is a work in progress, but it should be all straightened out by the end of the month. The major change that is coming to my site is the e-commerce update. Soon you will be able to order and purchase fine-art prints directly from my website. Please visit more of my Great White Shark Photography.
During one of the cloudy mornings that I experienced at Guadalupe Island we took a shore tour of the seal colonies. I had brought my telephoto lenses along just in case we got just such an opportunity to photograph the pinnipeds. The Guadalupe Fur Seal was almost hunted to extinction but a few survived and have now repopulated the island. This composition is actually my favorite from the entire trip. Please visit more of my Guadalupe Fur Seal Photography.
I recently returned from my second trip to remote Guadalupe Island to photograph great white sharks. Guadalupe is located in the eastern Pacific Ocean 180 miles west of the central Baja Peninisula. I first visited Guadalupe in 2002, shortly after my first daughter was born. Maddy is now 6 and in 1st grade. Time flies. I was hoping to greatly improve my coverage by joining a 7 day trip, which would allow me 5 full days at the island. The weather and sharks did not cooperate as much as I was hoping they would. Most of my better images were taken on the first day at the island, including this one. Please visit more of my Great White Shark Photography.
I just took a repeat client on a week long backpacking photography workshop into the North Cascades. Nick really wanted to do a long backpacking trip with a spectacular photography location at the end. I decided to take him to Tapto Lakes above Whatcom Pass deep in the North Cascades. It is almost 20 miles one-way in to the lakes. We took a few days to hike in with incredibly large packs including 2 cameras each and a weeks supply of food. Last Sunday, we got a break in the weather and the wind stopped blowing long enough to shoot a pretty nice reflection image of Whatcom Peak in the late afternoon light. The next day, we decided to try and do the entire hike out in 1 day. We succeeded in doing all 19 miles in just over 11 hours, but we were exhausted and unable to walk the next day! My future backpacking photography workshops will not involve quite as much hiking. Please visit more of my North Cascades National Park Photography.
I got out hiking and camping a bit the last few weeks now that the summer is coming to an end and I am no longer flying up to Alaska to get rained on and not take any pictures while spending a lot of money. Yes, summer in Southeast was tough this year. Also, my last trip to use my boat got interrupted by a house fire back home! My girls were out of the house and safe when it happened and my slides and hard drives were not destroyed, but we had to move and re-buy all of our second floor bedroom furniture and clothes. My daughters started back to school last week. We are doing fine, but what a pain. Anyway, I went down to Mt Rainier 2 weekends in a row to try and photograph the summer wildflowers. Spray Park is one of my favorite locations in the park, so I always enjoy the hike. I do it int the afternoon, shoot the sunset, and then hike back to the car in the dark. The flowers were very late this year, but they were pretty good. Please visit more of my Mount Rainier National Park Photography.
One of my most spectacular images of humpback whales bubble-feeding in Southeast Alaska is included in the 2008 International Conservation Photography Awards exhibit at the MOHAI in Seattle, WA. The exhibit has gone by several different names over the years but it’s main sponsor has always been Art Wolfe. I’m friends with Art and talked to him the night of the exhibit about the direction the ICPA was taking in the years ahead. The next competition will not be until 2010, and it will go on display at the Burke Museum at the UW in Seattle. It is getting harder to get an image into the exhibit as the competition is getting much tougher. I still feel proud that I was able to be part of it. Please visit more of my humpback whale photography.
If you happen to be on an Alaska Airlines flight this month, take a look at the in-flight magazine and the feature on Hawaii. This recent image from an encounter with a humpback whale is featured in the article. This large male came incredibly close to me, with his pectoral fin coming within a foot of my camera moments after this images was taken! Please visit more of my Humpback Whale Photography.
My image “Wailau Beach Rainbow” from the north shore of Molokai, HI is featured on the homepage of Pixcetera as part of the 2008 Nature’s Best Ocean Views Competition.
I’d like to say thank you again to everyone who has enjoyed my photography and sent me many complimentary emails and print orders! Unfortunately, a lot of people have commented that they thought this image has been digitally manipulated and is a fake. As a professional photographer, I find it to be a sad state that we are in when people just assume that something so beautiful has to be a fraud. I spend almost 6 months each year traveling the world to capture spectacular images using professional camera equipment. I shot this image with a Pentax medium format camera using professional Fuji slide film, which I still use for all of my landscape images. Most of the time, I come back with at least 1 photo from each trip, but often I come back with nothing at all. This incredible rainbow image was just shear luck on the second day of a week long sea-kayaking trip on Molokai. Fortunately, I was able to set up and compose the image in the pouring rain fast enough that I came home with the shot. As often as I put myself out in nature, I still only witness a rainbow like this on average of every other year. If you would like to learn more about rainbows, please visit atoptics.co.uk/bows. Please feel free to email me if you are interested in ordering one of my fine art prints. Thank you.
