I’ve added a new page to the site, one documenting travel and culture, rather than strictly widlife or landscapes. As of right now, the page includes images from the Huntington Library and Botanic Garden near Pasadena, California, as well as images from the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, California. Other pages and images will be uploaded soon, I hope!
Hope you enjoy them!
Leafy Sea Dragon, Aquarium of the Pacific, Long Beach, CA, October 2009
Despite my childhood fears, I’m confident that Mothra will never try to take over the world. Mothra first appeared in the novel The Luminous Fairies and Mothra (Takehiko Fukunaga), but she has since appeared in several films. A fictional Lepidopteran, Mothra has characteristics of both moths and butterflies, and while I cannot find any references as to how large she would have been, you can see her next to Godzilla at the right, suggesting she was quite large.
So, how can I be confident a moth this large could really never occur? Moths and butterflies are arthropods and arthropods have a unique method of growth. Because they have a rigid exoskeleton, they essentially are wearing a suit of armor that will not grow with them. You and I have an endoskeleton that grows with us. For arthropods, growth occurs in several steps:
During the period between steps 2 and 3 above, the animal is not only helpless, laying as a ‘blob’, but it also has nothing to support its weight. Its likely that a bug the size of Mothra would have been crushed and killed under her own weight.
So, how big can arthropods get? The largest terrestrial arthropods are probably the Giant Weta (Deinacrida spp.), found in New Zealand; the largest one documented was ~70g! However, because water is more buoyant (and supportive) than air, aquatic arthropods can get much larger. The Japanese Spider Crab (Macrocheira kaempferi) can reach a width of up to 13 feet, and a mass of 20kg (44 lb)! I had a chance to photograph this crab last week at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach.
Japanese Spider Crab (Macrocheira kaempferi) Aquarium of the Pacific, October 2009
Despite the fact there was a lot of glare on the glass, I rather like this photo. Somehow I can’t help but think these crabs are planning a Mothra-like reve….
My Grandma is a wonderful, no nonsense, “my way or the highway” sort of woman. I remember once when I was little, working on a puzzle with her, and she was determined that a particular piece fit where she had it (it didn’t). She just forced the piece in until it fit. Needless to say, the rest of the puzzle didn’t go together correctly, but that’s my Grandma for you.
One of the things I’ve learned over the years is that photography isn’t like putting a puzzle together–if something doesn’t fit, the shot isn’t going to come together for you. One of my biggest struggles as a photographer is to think outside of my pre-conceived box. In my mind’s eye, I visualize the shots I may want on an upcoming shoot, and if things go south, I’ve learned that forcing that proverbial puzzle piece simply does not work.
Our recent Sierra Nevada trip was a perfect example of that piece not fitting, and having to look elsewhere for the proper fit. Because I was going to the Sierra for the specific purpose of fall color, I envisioned spending 3 days in aspen groves, with perhaps a short side trip or two to some of my favorite places. However, the grand display of colors never materialized, and in the groves I was able to find it felt chaotic…like I was forcing that puzzle piece into a place it simply didn’t fit. So, I was forced to look elsewhere. On the second day of our trip, I abandoned aspens, and had some lovely hikes at Mono Lake, Yosemite National Park, and in Devil’s Postpile National Monument. The hike in Devil’s Postpile was especially neat because they essentially closed the gates behind us for the year. Having the feeling of being the year’s last visitor was a special one.
So, I’m getting better at stepping outside of my comfort zone, and making the best of things. I guess I have my Grandma to thank for that lesson.
Minarets at sunset, Sierra Crest, California, October 2009
Since returning from our Sierra trip, I’ve been editing photos, and have some new ones up on the website. In true banzai* fashion, a friend and I made a run up to the eastern Sierra over the weekend. We left after work on Thursday, and arrived in the Alabama Hills outside of Lone Pine about 11pm. I shot some star trails of the now famous Mobius Arch (also called Galen’s Arch, after Galen Rowell). After sunrise, we headed north, and shot up Bishop Creek to hunt for some fall colors. In my last post, I summed up the difficulty we had finding fall color. That night, we headed north and shot the Minarets at sunset. The next morning, we visited Mono Lake at dawn. At the South Tufa parking lot, I counted 28 cars when we arrived, one hour before sunrise. Figuring on a minimum of 2 photographers/car, I bailed and went to the Navy Beach parking lot; we were the only ones there. In my opinion, Navy Beach has tufas that are waaayyy cooler than the “regular” ones at South Tufa. After sunrise, we went to Lundy Canyon, in hopes of finding fall colors there, then to Tuolumne Meadows for a hike to Cathedral Lakes. Sunset at Olmsted Point, then to the Whoa Nellie Deli for dinner. The next morning, we went for a hike in Devil’s Postpile, then shot home.
I’ll share some of the images from this trip in the next few posts. However if you can’t wait, I’ve updated my Sierra Nevada page with new images, as well as Mono Lake. I’ve added a new page for Devil’s Postpile National Monument as well.
Desert Bouquet, Autumn, Alabama Hills, California, October 2009
*See Phil Colla’s definition of a banzai photographer.
How much do you use social networking to promote your photography? Is it useful to you? Jim Goldstein wants to know. He’s compiled the 2009 Photographer Social Media Survey. It only takes about 10 minutes (I took it last night), but hopefully the results will give some insight into usefulness of tools such as Twitter and Facebook.
Inge Fernau has returned from what must have been an exhausting marathon trip to the eastern Sierra. Here’s a detailed status report on the fall colors. Also, G. Dan Mitchell updated us on Inge’s, as well as many other fall color reports (as well as some great shooting tips for the aspens). As I said last week, its reports like this that make this a great community of photographers. It looks like peak will be sometime around the weekend of Oct 3/4; I’ll be there Oct 9-11, which will probably be on the tail end of peak, but it will still be pretty, and maybe not quite as busy. If anyone wants to meet up to shoot that weekend, send me an email.
I saw this blog post months ago, and am glad Phil Colla reposted it this week. He describes a very useful technique for getting the most out of your RAW images.
Gary Crabbe shared a great story about Galen Rowell this week. I’m still smiling from it.
The Ansel Adams Gallery announced their first National Parks Photography Contest, opening October 1. It looks like there will be many great entries.
The Santa Ana winds have been blowing this week in southern California, and true to form, we had fires this week. I’m hoping the firefighters get a break this fall. Because we’ve been baking in 100+ degree temperatures, today’s photo is from Death Valley National Park:
Crossing Paths, Death Valley National Park, California, March 2009
Have a great week!
A friend of mine in Laramie Wyoming reported snow yesterday; here in southern California we’re baking in nearly 100 degree temperatures, but that means that insects are still out, and I can still photograph them! One of my favorite insects is the sphinx moth. Sphinx moths are a family of moths (Sphingidae) comprising about 1,200 species; the white-lined sphinx moth (Hyles lineata) is very common here in southern California.
White-lined sphinx moth, 2009
I caught this individual flying around in my garage one evening (they’re nocturnal). After catching it, I did what any good biologist would do: I put it in the fridge. Why? Because I wanted to do what any good photographer would do: take pictures of it.
After letting it cool down, I placed the moth on some vegetation in my front yard. Using my 300/4 lens with a 1.4x teleconverter, I was able to fill most of the frame with the moth at the minimum focusing distance. I used a flash with -1 2/3 stops compensation to act as a fill flash.
Moths–like all insects–are ectotherms, meaning they are “cold-blooded”. In other words, they have to derive their body heat from somewhere other than metabolic sources. You and I are endotherms–we produce our own body heat via our metabolism. So, as this guy warmed up from being in the fridge it started to move around more and more. But, it still needed more heat to be able to fly. That’s when things got interesting.
Ectotherms have to derive their body heat from external sources (usually the environment–this is why you see lizards and snakes sunbathing), but sphinx moths display something called ‘periodic endothermy’–they flap their wings at a very rapid pace to build enough body heat to be able to fly:
White-lined sphinx moth beating wings in a display of ‘periodic endothermy’, 2009
Beating the wings in this manner generates a large amount of heat, which can then be used for flight. This moth displayed this behavior for about 3 minutes, then took off. It was a great interaction, a good physiology lesson, and I got some great pictures out of it!
As photographers, we strive to make the sharpest, most crisp images we can. We spend thousands of dollars on the best lenses to help us achieve this, and there are many websites and articles devoted to helping make images very sharp (examples here, here, and here). However, sometimes it can be fun to make images that aren’t sharp at all.
Last spring, we were enjoying a beautiful spring afternoon at the Huntington Library, near Pasadena, California, and I was completely drawn in by the bamboo groves that they have:
Bamboo, April 2009
I really like this image, but when you have to stay on the path, your compositional choices are pretty limited! That said, the vertical lines (and long exposure times) gave me a great idea: vertical pan blurs:
Bamboo pan blur, April 2009
This gives the scene a completely different feeling. Not to sound too dark, but for me this image conveys an almost “nightmarish” feel–one of running away from something through the woods. What does it evoke for you?
Another example of “alternative” techniques is when I was shooting lupine on a freeway offramp near San Diego this spring:
Lupine, San Diego County, CA, March 2009
This time, leaving the camera on my tripod, I zoomed in as I exposed the frame:
Lupine zoom blur, San Diego County, CA, March 2009
This shot has a very “smashing” feel to it. It also screams, “Don’t look at me right after eating lunch!” I guess it might be a bit vertigo-inducing…
My point is that abstract nature can be just as fun to shoot, and just as evocative, as the sharp, crisp nature.
Incidentally, I saw a magazine spread once of shots like this, but they were all taken by people tripping the shutter, then tossing their camera into the air. Anyone who played basketball with me in the 4th grade knows I should NOT be doing that with my digital SLR. However, if you’re a little more confident in your skills, then go for it!
For the last couple of Fridays, I’ve been welcoming the arrival of fall, and the last couple of weekends have felt very autum-like. However, today its supposed to be 100+ degrees at my house, so its a not-so-gentle reminder that summer is still alive and kicking. I am looking forward to my Sierra fall foliage trip in a few weeks though. Many thanks (already) to G. Dan Mitchell and Inge Fernau for their advice on locations, and timing. While I’m fairly familiar with the eastern Sierra, having never been there in the fall it is very nice have people like Inge and Dan who are willing to share what they’ve learned. It helps greatly with the visualization (but not pre-visualization!) of compositions in my mind’s eye.
Having gone through a couple of rounds of image editing with the input of other photographers over at Naturescapes.net as well as having been interacting with photographers about my trip to the eastern Sierra, I have to say that I feel very fortunate to be part of a photographic community who is willing to share as much as they do. Guy Tal recently wrote about NOT feeling threatened by others’ amazing work, but rather feeling inspired and fulfilled to be able to see it. I have always felt the same way, and I’m glad so many others share the sentiment.
Here’s the image I worked so hard on this week (special thanks to Bret Edge and Jens Peerman for looking at re-works):
Sandstone detail, southern Utah, August 2009
Have a great week!
Another Friday is already upon us, and the photographic community seems to be abuzz with the impending arrival of fall. There is something about the feel of a chilly fall day that invigorates my senses.
In addition to all of this anticipation of fall’s arrival, we celebrated the birthday of the wilderness act this week! September is national Wilderness Month, so try to get out there an enjoy one of your favorite wilderness areas. Incidentally, one of the most moving things I have ever read is Wallace Stegner’s Wilderness Letter, written on December 3, 1960 to the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission in support of the Wilderness Act.
Finally, as an avid canyoneer, I bring up one final point. Zion National Park is considering permanent parking restrictions on the Canyon Overlook parking at tunnel east, after a park ranger who was directing traffic was hit by the side mirror of an RV. These parking restrictions would also coincide with further restrictions on backcountry permits given out for canyoneers wishing to descent Pine Creek and Spry Canyon, who use this parking area. My position is that this would be a mismanagement of the resources available to recreationists (photographers included!) in the park; I’ve written a letter to Jock Whitworth, Zion National Park superintendent indicating my position as a photographer and canyoneer. If you would like more info, email me, or visit the Zion Canyoneering Coalition’s website.
West Temple, Zion National Park, Utah, June 2009
Have a great week!
In hindsight this seems like a no-brainer, but since its come up in a few threads recently (e.g. http://www.naturescapes.net/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=162031 ), I thought I would address the question of whether its better to feed a TIFF or RAW file into Photomatix for HDR generation. For this comparison, I chose to tone map only one image, not several. Although you probably already know the outcome, the end images are only subtly different, but getting there was quite different.
I started with a base image, shot in Zion National Park last weekend:
This is the RAW image; all I did before feeding it into Photomatix was adjust the white balance to “shady” in DPP. The TIFF image looked identical; all I did was save it as an uncompressed TIFF with no other change. As soon as I opened the RAW image in Photomatix, it underwent a process of demosaicing and decompressing. I could already tell that it would be taking advantage of the “extra” info in the RAW image. It opened the image as a “pseudo-HDR” image, and I was able to obtain some stats on it:
The TIFF image opened simply as the TIFF image, and there was no more information associated with it than with a regular image. I first tonemapped the images using the Details Enhancer algorithm, and saved them as TIFF files for use in PS. There wasn’t much difference between the two:
Here’s the RAW file tone mapped with DE:
And the TIFF file tone mapped with DE:
Then I did the same thing using the Tone Compressor algorithm:
The RAW file:
And the TIFF file:
Whoa! I can only assume this funky-looking image is the result of the loss of information during conversion from RAW to TIFF early in my workflow. So, now I have 2 tone mapped images obtained from the original RAW file, and 2 from the original TIFF file. My workflow for each of the 2 final images was slightly different although not much:
For the RAW-derived images I used the DE tone mapped image as the base image in PS, and pasted the TC image over it. I used the Overlay blending mode at ~30% opacity, and the image looked pretty good. I did levels and curves adjustments (and also a desaturation of about -15), noise reduction with Imagenomic Noiseware, then some sharpening and I called it good:
For the TIFF-derived images, I again used the DE tone mapped image as the base image, and pasted the TC image over it. This time, because of the extreme nature of the TC image, I used a “Linear Burn” blending mode at about 25% opacity, and the image looked pretty natural. After normal processing (including noise reduction), here is what I got:
In the end the differences between the images are subtle, and I like them both for different reasons. The RAW-derived image looks more “natural”, but I sort of like the reddish “glow” that’s present in the TIFF derived image. The no-brainer here is that you certainly lose a lot of valuable information by using TIFF instead of RAW for this sort of application.
I doubt anyone cares as much as I do (haha), but this was an instructive exercise to go through.
