Our Contribution to Nature

 No photography insights today. As a nature photographer, the overwhelming concern is the environmental destruction we're witnessing daily. We're seeing wildfires beyond those we have seen with horror in recent years. We're learning of ocean plastics killing whales. Polar bears have nowhere to hunt. Indigenous people are being forced from their homes by rising seas.

As we exploit the planet, novel viruses are evolving faster than we are, clearly. and, we have no governmental leadership to help us even survive these times. 

Nothing now is as important as voting to try to inject some sanity back into this world. Trump is the worst thing that has happened to this planet. We need to remove him in a landslide. Maybe the most important landslide of our lives.

Europe 2019

It started with a bike trip to Slovenia. Lida Clauser, who ran great bike trips to the Czech Republic, had expanded to Slovenia, so, of course, we had to go.

Then, on a whim, I decided why not see a bit of Venice on the way? It is so close. So, our first stop was Venice, "City of Falling Angels."
Turns out, it was city of falling rain, which became a bit of a theme for much of the trip.
Venice has a lot of tourists. Too many for its own good. Many Venetians have found it unlivable, or at least unaffordable.
It's a highly unlikely town, especially with rising sea levels. Already, the water is too high for many of the ancient buildings hovering in the canals. The streets are severely narrow. Very charming, but very narrow. So narrow that two umbrellas don't really easily pass each other, and Europeans use umbrellas. Anyone can buy one on the streets of Venice for 5 Euros. Our first rainy, windy day wasn't close to over when we began to notice all the trash receptacles were filled with umbrellas. Turns out, one gets what one pays for, and 5 Euros isn't much of an umbrella.
Venice is fascinating, and I'd like to return in February.

Slovenia is a very small country that has only been Slovenia since 1991. It has a complex history and a variety of seemingly wonderful people living in an amazingly beautiful place. Mountains and rivers and lakes and waterfalls, most of which aren't crowded, at least at the end of May. Of course, the bicycle part is a critical factor. Everything is more intimate from a bike, and bike trips generally include the best of a country. We were in and out and around Triglav National Park, with the Julian Alps defining the terrain. We had snow-covered peaks for much of the trip, but as we approached the Adriatic coast, we noticed palm trees thriving in small towns.
No real lack of rain in Slovenia either, but rain can just add another dimension to a bike trip. We were staying in lovely inns, so being wet was at most a temporary occurrence. It was a good way to test waterproof gear. A backpack that can handle a couple of loaves of fresh-baked bread through a downpour as we ride will be a pack I will use again. (And the Matador packable pack packed down to the size of a water bottle and weighed essentially nothing.)

From Slovenia, we drove to Croatia in a rented car. The car gave us the freedom to make choices about our destinations, but was its own aggravation. Croatia is beautiful too, but less spectacular than Slovenia, at least based on the parts we saw. It's most popular national park, Plitvice Lakes, is amazing, but way overrun with tourists. Way overrun. the Venetian crowds had nothing on the boardwalks of Plitvice.
The phenomenon of the limestone and the crystal clear water of the lakes as they pour into each other via waterfalls is worth experiencing, but maybe there's another way? Winter? Earlier in the day would work if one could enter the park then. Management clearly hasn't caught up with the demand.
Running in the predawn from the tiny village of Korana was soothing and inspiring and a great look at the countryside, likely in a way that the busloads of tourists in Plitvice will never see.
The Adriatic coast to Rovinj was beautiful and calming. Rovinj, at least in May, was great. One could walk into restaurants and have great food and stroll along the shore or through the streets of the oldest part of town. Rain was a factor here too. Golden light was not really to be had.

Still Learning Nikon's Settings

I've been using digital Nikon cameras since the D70 and, for the most part, have been a serious student of the controls. Still, as I became more and more used to the settings, and each camera wasn't that different from the last, I've definitely let the finer points slip, especially if I wasn't using that setting much.
Enter "Auto ISO." I read Steve Perry's excellent book about Nikon autofocus and listened to his video  extolling the virtues of auto ISO with manual exposure, but it wan't until Arthur Morris, having plunged into a Nikon setup only recently mentioned the sticky setting of exposure compensation that I decided to look into this combo a bit deeper. I could find nowhere in Nikon's documentation where it was stated what actually happened with Auto ISO and exposure compensation, and no one writing on the web had clearly spelled it out. So, I decided it really isn't that hard to figure it out. All I needed was a few minutes with my own D850 and adjusting the settings while in manual plus auto ISO.
Here's the thing: Auto ISO and manual exposure adjusts the ISO to give a standard histogram, within the limits that it can, based on the upper and lower limits the user sets. If exposure compensation is dialed in, the the ISO is adjusted upward or downward to match that instruction. shutter speed and aperture are as set in the manual settings, but ISO varies not just to maintain a normal histogram, but also to allow for the extra brightness or darkness dialed in by "exposure compensation.
I remain cautious about auto ISO and manual. Certainly it can be useful for rapidly changing light when I really need to keep a minimum shutter speed for moving targets. However, it may negate some interesting light features that manual setting allows me to accentuate. If I add the "exposure compensation," auto becomes even more "auto." I's rare that this is actually contributing to whatever unique quality of light I was seeking.
Granted, this is coming from a photographer torn between landscapes and wildlife. If I ever figure out that I should just stick with one or the other, then perhaps these dilemmas will be resolved. On the other hand, great light is great light, and I may never really want it "compensated."

The Trouble with Lightroom Mobile

Lightroom mobile is a great idea. Photographs made on the iPhone automatically connect with desktop Lightroom, in theory. This is especially desirable since the new iPhone 7, via Lightroom, can make photos in DNG format.
I've read everything I could find from Adobe and LR gurus about the process, but I couldn't get the upload to happen with my system. Every instruction was followed precisely, repeatedly checked. Nothing.
Turns out, a Google search reveals lots of people with this problem. Lots of advice that doesn't produce the desired result.
The problem is bandwidth, folks. The upload doesn't happen directly to one's desktop or iPad. It is all processed via the cloud. If it doesn't get to Adobe's cloud site, it doesn't get to the desktop, even if the desktop is sitting next to the phone. It's easy to send photos directly via Airdrop, but the photos are first converted to jpg. If one has a slow internet connection, as I do with DSL, the phone always says it's syncing, but it never syncs. A reasonable broadband connection, via cable, and magically it happens, just like all the instructions say. But they never tell you it won't work without adequate bandwidth.
So, I live in a rather remote spot. Remote enough that the cable companies aren't interested, and DSL is the best I can do. The only way I can get the transfers to work is to visit friends with better internet. This considerably blunts the convenience of using the phone as a camera. For me, the process is way easier if I just use a camera and transfer the files via memory card.

Is Landscape Photography Political?

Short answer from my hero, Robin Morgan: "There is no atom that is not political."
Longer answer: when the planet is in danger from climate change, and when the post powerful man on earth can detonate nuclear winter, of course it is. Especially when we have overwhelming evidence that that man has the emotional maturity of a 12 year old boy.
How can we care about our beautiful places, lit by the best of special light, without concern that they, and we, are in grave danger?
Is there anything we can do, living in a "democracy" where only some votes count?
Is it enough to photograph the special places?

Tablet Challenges

I've used a pen tablet by Wacom for years for my photo processing. It makes everything more precise. My old tablet lacked features of the current models, so I got a new Intuous Pro model for Christmas.
It seemed to work as I gradually learned the features and customizable keys, but I was not convinced that the pen pressure sensitivity was working, supposedly a default characteristic when using Photoshop. Then, one day, the lights defining the perimeters and keys no longer stayed on.
A call to Wacom was an exercise in frustration. While the tech support representative agreed that something wasn't right, she had no idea how to sort it out or solve it. Send it in for repair, she said, a feat made more difficult by the fact that I never got the follow-up email with instructions to do so. For a product that was malfunctioning 2 weeks after being unboxed, I could only wish there were another maker of tablets that had any credibility.
Amazon seemed the easiest route to return, but I decided to give a software approach another look. I uninstalled and re-installed the same current driver. It's working properly now, and I'll give it another couple of weeks to prove itself functional. Failing that, it's back to Amazon and a quest to find another company with real support. Does such a thing exist?

                                                              Night Photography

My latest effort is to work on night photography. Everyone seems to have a slightly different take on the best practices, with some common themes.
1. Darkness is essential. In general, this may take a bit longer than one would hope. If you're after stars, wait until it's really dark.
2. Some daytime work is also essential. It's just too hard to come upon a good plan when the world is pitch-black. Plan the photo in the day. Make the photo in the night.
3. Care and deliberation are essential. Recently, I did the first 2 photos of the night sky with my lens cap on. That didn't work so well. Take time setting up. This involves knowing the location ahead of time, bringing a headlamp, going slowly (it's dark).
4. Composition is just as important at night as in the day. This goes back to the daytime work and the planning. Think foreground.
5. Equipment:
1. tripod with good head. My preferred tripod is currently a Feisol carbon fiber. I recently upgraded by ballhead to a RRS BH-55, and I couldn't be more pleased with the ease of use and steadiness.
2. camera that has decent high ISO results. I'm currently using a Nikon D800E.
3. Cable release is most helpful, although a timer or shutter delay will work for photos that have less than a 30 second duration.
4. Headlamp. It is really helpful to set up and take down and check your level and get back to your car without tripping.
Settings:
1. f-stop of 2.8 allows shutter speeds of 20 seconds. Longer times will result in obvious star movement. If you want pinpoints, stay under 20 seconds. And, that varies with focal length.
2. Wide angles give a more expansive sky and show less movement. I'm using 14mm currently.
Lenses are not created equal. Some expensive lenses still show a distorted star. This is known as coma. It is an optical imperfection related to certain lens designs. I'm using a Rokinon 14mm manual focus lens, which is quite inexpensive. Nikon makes a 14-24mm f2.8 lens that is widely felt to be the best wide angle lens available for the 35mm format. Neither of these lenses demonstrate coma.
3. ISO of at least 3200 and up to 6400 is needed generally to get the dimmer stars without movement blur. This is why the good high ISO performance of the camera matters. There is a way of getting around this, which is another subject, but it involves the use of a tracker which electronically moves the camera with the stars, allowing much longer exposures.

Here's a look at the sky on September 20th around 10 p.m. in McCall, Idaho.

And, here's a link to the gallery with more night shots:
http://www.bearbasinphotography.com/Recent-Work/Night-Sky/i-MCFp54R

Polarizing

Polarizing filters are used routinely in landscape photography. There are many examples of how much they can contribute to a scene, by removing reflections, intensifying colors, and darkening skies.
Light coming from the sun is vibrating in multiple directions. The filter basically blocks light in one direction, allowing parallel beams of light to get through in the other direction. This is called "polarization by transmission," and is described further here: http://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/light/u12l1e.cfm
To complicate matters, light is actually polarized by reflecting off water, and the interaction of the two kinds of polarization can be interesting. By rotating the circular polarizing filter, one can see the different effects of the light altering characteristics of the filter in any given direction. Some of the most dramatic variations can be seen by rotating the filter while pointing the camera at a rainbow. It can become much more intense or almost invisible. Here, we're again dealing with light polarized by more than one factor.

Sometimes, the polarizing effects can negate some of the benefit of the scene.
Example: After a long hot hike to a mountain lake, facing about 90  degrees from the sun, I might assume that a polarized photo is the one I want, particularly if I'm wearing my own polarizing filters in the form of sunglasses when I make that decision.
One problem with that thought is that it is usually wise to consider all options when making a landscape composition. The view isn't likely to fly away after all.
Here's the photo without a polarizing filter:

and with the filter:

The critical difference here is the lack of reflections of the partially snow-covered mountains and the trees in the water, making a photo that has much less impact. Same location, camera and lens.

Is Memory Cheap?

There is a lot of talk among photographers that "memory is cheap," referring to the ever decreasing cost   of memory cards and hard drives. The thought being, since memory is so cheap, photograph anything and everything and keep it forever. Sometimes we find that a long overlooked photo is really good, and, years later, uncover its true potential. OK. That happens. But, much more commonly, good photos never get discovered in the morass of all those unedited files kept because we made too many photos in the first place and then didn't delete them when we had the time and energy.
Memory may be cheap, but our creativity isn't. For me, choosing to work on a few really good photos is much more likely to happen if they aren't buried in hundreds that should have been deleted months or years ago. If I cannot bring myself to search through thousands of files to find what inspires me to move ahead, then I'm seriously impeding my own progress.
There are limits to how messy a desk can be before we just give up trying to find anything. Even well organized piles become obstructive when they get too high. Same with photos. I am much more productive when I can look through a few good images to find the one that I want to process than when I try to plow through hundreds. I just lose the motivation. Motivation and creativity are not cheap. To me, that's what matters.

Thoughts on Photographing Wildlife

Much has been written already, and I’m not sure I can add greatly to points previously made about certain approaches to wildlife. Unbelievably dramatic photos of action are so striking, it’s certainly hard to argue against impact. There are good points on both sides of the argument for using captive animals as subjects, and in between the whole captive vs wild discussion, and then there’s the baiting issue. It’s much easier to get exactly what you want when you arrange for the raptor to come to you.

My perspective on these matters may change with time, but so far, the more I contemplate the options, the more I look at what gives me personal satisfaction and meaning as I photograph. For me, even if all the other issues were equal, I believe I would still find more delight in being out there in the moment with the wildlife and just being privileged to witness what they will show me of their world. I am not naïve enough to believe that I can be there and have no effect on the animal I’m watching, but I do think there are ways to observe relatively unobtrusively, and in that observation, I get the spontaneity of not directing my “model,” but of being allowed to see what I have never seen and couldn’t precisely have predicted.

For me, the experience is maybe more valuable than the product. I love the product, but I really love the experience. Great work is done in all sorts of studios, but my best pleasure comes from being in as close to the natural environment as possible, even if that means hours and days and weeks and months of less than I’d hoped in terms of the finished photos. This is a choice of style of work, and it seems to fit my style. It’s not the best choice for everybody, and just maybe, it won’t always be the best choice for me, but it is for now.

Here's a bird who flew by as I was observing other snowy owls in their winter location in Ocean Shores, Washington:

Here's a scene that I had visualized for months before I actually captured it with my camera. It took multiple trips and hours of waiting, but I learned so much about osprey behavior by waiting for those moments:

I watched the bird on the right from days after hatching to seeing it fight with it's nest mates over food and space. Minutes before this photo was made, it had tumbled out of the nest in a struggle with a seemingly stronger sibling, only to recover and get back at the moment dinner arrived.

In each case, I was allowed to observe the birds in as close to their natural habitat as possible. Coming to a better understanding of their behavior, to me, is more fun than setting up the exact shot I want.

Depth of Field: There will be math.


Most of us learned that one increases depth of field in a photograph by stopping down, which is the same thing as increasing the aperture of a lens. (This is one, but not the only bit of confusing terminology in photography.) That's the simple part. Actual depth of field is a function of the focal length of a lens and the lens diameter.

Focal length? Focal length is all about converging light on the plane of "film," or usually sensor. To simplify, focal length is the distance from the optical center of the lens to the point on the sensor where that light converges. If one thinks of the light from a given scene shaping into a pyramid as it converges in the aperture of the lens, and then is projected onto a sensor, it's not too hard to visualize that a long lens will narrow the field of view (the amount seen of the scene). Long focal length = narrow field of view.
For example, a 500mm lens will have a field of view that is tiny compared to a 20mm lens. That's why the 20mm is called a "wide angle lens." That angle is the field of view.

Lens diameter above really refers to the diameter of the "pupil" through which light passes. F8 in a 25mm lens produces a pupil that is much smaller than that produced by a 500mm lens at f8. The trick is that both of the f8 settings will result in the same light on the sensor. That's because in the long lens  that light travels far longer than in the short lens, and with that travel, the light's intensity decreases (actually, it decreases by the square of the distance). The light is the same as far as the sensor is concerned. The fields of view are much different.

Which brings us back to depth of field...depth of field is proportional to the aperture (f stop), the subject distance², the circle of confusion and inversely proportional to the focal length². Circle of confusion? Circle of confusion refers to the size of the sharp area projected on each pixel, or the largest blurred area that we can still see as sharp. Why is the sharp part called confusion? We're now getting back to at least the early 1800's, and it just may not be worth going there for this discussion.
What is worth considering is that for any given focal length, the smaller the aperture (the larger the f #), the greater the depth of field. The farther away the subject of focus, the larger the depth of field. The longer the focal length, there is a major decrease in depth of field (as the denominator above is squared).

So, from a practical standpoint, if I want the greatest depth of field, I use the widest angle lens available, and I focus on something that is not close to me. OK, that sounds simple enough, but it is not quite that simple. How could anything that involves a circle of confusion be simple?
Older lenses came with depth of field scales on their barrels, but this isn't the case with newer lenses made for digital cameras. Many DOF charts are available online, as are calculators, but the easiest approach may be to download an app that is a DOF calculator (simpleDOF is even free).

Here, the focal length was 25, f16, focus was on the leaves in the middle bunch of flowers. When examined at the pixel level, the rock in the foreground is tack sharp, as are the mountains in the background.

There is one more thing. Diffraction. Too much effort towards maximum depth of field, can lead to blurry images. This will be discussed as it's own topic in the near future. Nikon discusses it here for the new D800: http://www.nikonusa.com/en_US/o/Y6wrkA9OU_z04IreazIXl_22UII/PDF/D800_TechnicalGuide_En.pdf

Nikon D800 Camera: exploring the limits of ISO


No question the files from the D800 are great at low ISO's, but I haven't had too much chance to explore just high far I can go with pushing the low light limits. Photographing in overcast conditions with Auto ISO and a teleconverter, the lens combination was stopped down to 6.3. My shutter speed of 1000 resulted in an ISO of 2800. I have certainly produced good files on the D700 to ISO of 2000, and at times to 3200, but this camera with its increased pixel density?
Here is a major crop of a photo of a western tanager male done at those settings:

I did a a little noise reduction only in Lightroom 4 (using Luminance=18, detail=94, contrast=60, and leaving the color noise reduction at default). I don't yet know what the limit is. I don't think I'll have that until I have more full-frame shots at high ISO, but right now, I'm thinking I can be close to matching the D700 high ISO performance, and that is far better than I would have thought.

Camas Prairie


Overcast or rainy days are my favorite for photography, giving the most freedom of time. One can be on the edge of the ever-changing light for hours at a time. The harsh sunlight is not a concern.
Yesterday seemed to offer promise, and I had been anxious to photograph the canola fields in full bloom. So, off I drove into the rainy morning, following a lead from my friends who had reported good fields near Grangeville.

                               Nikon D800, ISO 200, F 8, 1/250 (handheld, as I had to climb a bit to get here)                               

No one was around, this being Tuesday following the Memorial Day weekend, and the countryside was showing spring in greens and yellows and emerging blue lupines. Perfect day for photography.

                                            Nikon D800, ISO 100, F8, 1/100 on tripod

Later, I checked out a place I'd heard of but never visited, Tolo Lake, a small obscure spot that several species of birds seemed to love. I was delighted to find Eared Grebes happily feeding there.

    Nikon D800, 700mm (500 + 1.4 TC),  ISO 1000, F 6.3,  1/640, exposed manually This is close to
    a 100% crop of the image, as the grebes were quite a ways from me.
This is a place I would like to revisit to see if I can get closer to the birds and to try to photograph harriers hunting in the nearby fields.

Equipment report: Nikon D800

I received a new Nikon D800 from Levines (http://www.eplevine.com/, but don't rely on their website. Call them. They're great.) at the end of April. Since that time, I've mostly resisted the paranoia that is associated in the forums at the release of most new high-end equipment. I've just used the camera.

The decision was a bit of  a struggle in itself, as I was torn between the D4 and its 10 fps and amazing low-light capabilities and hoping for a camera that would actually fit in my small hands. As a wildlife photographer, it's not like I don't have enough to carry with a 500mm lens, teleconverters, and associated gear. The other concern was a seemingly in-bred belief that a camera with that many megapixels could not possibly have good low light capabilities. The edges of the day always seem to present the best photographic possibilites, a fact so well illustrated when I spent a blissful morning in the pouring rain at Damon Point in Ocean Shores, WA photographing snowy owls :

                                Nikon D700, 700mm (500+1.4TC), ISO 1600, f5.6, 1/180sec


At the same time, as Nikon was not providing an 800mm lens that I'd been admiring on the Canon front for the past few years. So, I had the choice of a camera with decent cropping possibilities or totally switching systems, a seemingly daunting task. Enter the D800.
At this point, with about a month of use, I can say that I am quite happy with the D800. I haven't pushed it's low light abilities to any limit. Previously, I used my D300 whenever possible for birds, because of the smaller field of view, but I was never really happy with anything beyond an ISO of 800, and that was stretching it. Now, with the D800, I have fine examples of images at 1600, and I will test its ability to go higher.
For the first time since I've owned the Nikon 1.7 teleconverter, I have decent images made with it and the 500mm lens.Overall, the speed of focus is perhaps my favorite feature. The file size and phenomenal amount of cropping possible while still leaving a reasonably sized image has to be number 2.
It's hard to separate the detail preserved in the D800 images from the improved detail that one can get from Lightroom 4, as I added LR just a bit before the camera, but the combination is impressive. I've experimented a bit with Nikon NX again for processing, and I can't really see a difference in the finished product of NX vs LR. As LR is at this point easier for me to use and integrated with Photoshop, I doubt I'll be using NX much.

                                                        Nikon D800, 28-70mm lens @ 70mm, ISO 100, F11, 1/80 sec