Author Archives: Dave

Favorite Places: Falkland Islands

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A Black-browed Albatross glides over the churning waters of the South Atlantic on the coast of the Steeple Jason Island in the Falklands. Steeple Jason is home to the largest colony of Black-browed Albatross in the world. Some hundreds of thousands nest there. I guarantee your jaw will fall open when you first look across the expanse of birds. 

There is no place like the Falklands. This small archipelago is a British holding just off the coast of southern Argentina. A fair amount of controversy surrounds the islands and the Argentines regularly grumble over what they call the Islas Malvinas, and how they are rightfully a part of Argentina. However, whatever the Argentines think, the people of the Falklands are unquestionably British. In fact, in a recent non-binding vote, the residents overwhelmingly showed their support for remaining British. That actually puts in mildly, the election had 92% turnout and more than 99% voted in favor of remaining British. Virtually unanimous.

Spend any time in Stanley (the capital), or in any of the many remote ranches on the islands and you’ll quickly sense how British the place is. Tea and biscuits are ubiquitous and Stanley’s one pub pours warm pints of thick, dark beer. Land Rovers are the vehicles of choice. Even the weather feels British as fog and drizzle regularly hang over the water, (though it occasionally is penetrated by a dazzling southern sun).

Getting to the Falklands is easiest aboard a small expedition style ship. Though there are a few trips that only visit the Falklands, most stop into the islands on their way to or from Antarctica or South Georgia Island. It is a pity the Falklands often become a pass-over stop because they offer so much potential. There are numerous excellent cruise companies out there, just be sure they provide substantial shore time before you book what will be a very expensive journey. Alternatively, you can fly into Stanley and work your way to the outlying islands via local outings. Some of the sheep stations provide housing and food to visitors.

For an outdoor photographer, the Falklands are stunning. Penguin, albatross and cormorant colonies are dotted across the rugged shorelines. Lacking mammalian predators (the Falkland Islands Wolf was exterminated many years ago), the birds are remarkably tame. Full-frame headshots of birds are easy to create, meaning that even sharp, clean-background shots, with lovely light, can be run-of-the-mill. And during both my visits to the Falklands, most of the images I’ve come away with are this type. (There are exceptions of course, the top image here in particular is one of my favorites.) I like these shots, some have been published. But when I return (and I will), I plan to concentrate on providing context. Telling stories. There is lot to be told about the Falklands, and I look forward to having a go.

Rockhopper Penguin. I made this image on a drizzly day on West Point Island. This type of image is easy. A long lens (500mm f4) isolated the bird, and turned the background of tussock grass and rock into a clean blur. 

When the sun does emerge, it gets bright and hot. You’ve got to position yourself for the kind of image you want. For this I went with light quartering off my left shoulder, which, I think, threw a nice portrait light across the head of this Black-browed Albatross. In retrospect, I would have liked a bit more of catchlight in the bird’s eye.

This, like the image at the top of the post, is one of my favorites. These Striated Caracaras are endangered world-wide, but they aren’t uncommon on some of the islands in the Falklands. They are generally scavengers, though they will occasionally steal an unguarded chick from a penguin or gull. This shot is from the amazing Steeple Jason Island. I saw a small group of these Caracaras patrolling a patch of rocky ground and lay down with my long lens to make some images. My stillness drew their attention, as they hoped that I might be on the verge of death. This bird landed just feet away, and my long lens quickly became useless. Slowly I reached back into my camera bag, removed my wide angle and swapped lenses. The bird, still hopeful that he might make a meal of me, remained while I shot several wide-angle portraits. After a minute or two of listening to me click and adjust, he realized I wasn’t going to die and flew off down the coast. 

Blue-eyed Shag. Formulaic and easy, but nice.

Wet Rockhopper. The rain had soaked the normally jaunty head plumes of this Rockhopper has he waddled from the ocean up a steep hill to the colony. I suspect he was happy in the rain, though I was not.

Overnight in the White Mountains

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Old friends returning for a visit to Fairbanks make a great excuse to get outside. In this case, it was a reason to escape for an overnight cabin trip into the White Mountains National Recreation Area north of Fairbanks. The small group of us (4 adults and an 8-year old) headed up Tuesday. I was riding my fat-bike the 7 miles into Lee’s Cabin, while the others would venture in on skis. The trails were superb, hard packed and smooth. I sailed into the cabin in well under an hour and got the little place warmed up with a blazing fire in the barrel stove, and had the chance to explore a bit nearby, while I waited for the others.

The sun was bright and some high clouds flattened the light, so the camera did not escape its case until the evening. Just after dusk, when blue still hung thick in the sky, a band of aurora appeared to the north. It was a quick display, lasting only a few minutes before fading, but I managed to make a few images during the narrow window. I was hoping for a great booming display, but despite many checks over night, it didn’t reappear.

It doesn’t really matter, time in the backcountry with friends was the real reason for the trip.

Wow.

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Last night held the best display of northern lights I have ever experienced. Huge curtain of green and purple rippled across the sky shifting first south, then north, then back again. This alone would have put the display among the best I’ve seen, but for a few brief moments, something remarkable happened.

I was focusing on a very bright streak of light, using some overflow ice as a reflective foreground. I was getting some good images and was was enjoying the show. To the north, a small curtain appeared, and then for 15 or 20 seconds, it went ballistic. Pillars of light erupted, and popped like flash bulbs, red fading to purple, green and white. Pop-pop-pop! It was so bright that each flash was like a strobe on the snow around me. The popping created spirals in the sky, moving so fast, that photography could never adequately capture the phenomenon. And then, in just a few seconds, it faded leaving behind a red in the sky, that turned scarlet in the images.

If you didn’t see it, I’m sorry. I’m afraid my photos are a poor representation of what happened. Still, enjoy. 

Sometimes, It’s good to just kick back and watch the show. Which I did for about a half hour. Perhaps the best moments of the night.

Experimenting at the Open North American Championships

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Under bright blue skies and intense sun, huge mushing teams took to the trails around Fairbanks this afternoon. I headed to Creamer’s Field where I could position myself to watch the teams race by on their way out, and then again as they headed back in toward the finish. I tried for variety, telephotos and wide-angles, backlit and front-lit, cropped and uncropped… After my first glance and early post-processing, these are my favorite. Thoughts?

Lenses and the aurora: Is Wide and Fast Necessary?

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I zoomed in on the active portion of the display to get this image. I’ve never shot tight on the aurora before, but apparently it can work under the right circumstances. Canon 24-105 f4L @70mm, f4.0, 8sec, ISO3200.

Last night we had a good forecast for the aurora. I stayed up a bit beyond my normal bedtime to watch the alerts roll in and to check the local aurora web camera. About 10:30 or 11:00, the green haze that had been lingering to the north expanded and resolved into multiple curtains, so I grabbed my camera and tripod and stepped outside. As usual, my primary aurora lens, a 14mm f2.8 was on the camera, but as an afterthought, I pocketed my Canon 24-105 f4L. I wandered down to the open area on the lower portion of my property and stared northward, where absolutely nothing was happening.

I waited and thought that I could probably see a pale haze. I snapped a long exposure. The LCD showed me that yep, sure enough, there was some faint aurora. I waited. And waited. The cold wind blew and I tucked my nose into my parka and pulled up the hood. Then a single well-defined pillar of aurora appeared to the NW. I snapped a few images. The wide angle, showed just a starry sky and a small flash of green in the bottom of the frame. Boring. Then an arc of aurora appeared and I snapped a few more. The lights still insignificant in the wide-angle.

I’ve never before used the 24-105 for the aurora. It’s slower and less wide, and I couldn’t think of any time when I’d want a 105mm telephoto for shooting the northern lights. But out of curiosity, and to fend off rising boredom, I swapped out the 14mm for the 24-105.

The lights began to brighten and move south so I bumped my ISO from 1600 to 3200 (the fastest I generally feel comfortable on my 5D III) to compensate for the slower lens. The display was centralized low on the horizon to the NW. The rest of the sky was dominated by a pale arc of green, little of interest.

So, I zoomed. I shot from 40-105mm, concentrating on the active area of aurora. The lights were moving quickly and the 8 second exposure at f4 and ISO 3200 was still blurring the auroral movement so, I took a chance and bumped it all the way up to ISO 5000 and was able to get 4 sec exposures, just right to catch the pillars and curtains with some detail. But how much noise was this going to create?

I shot for another hour or so, finally growing too cold in the persistent wind. This morning I downloaded the images from the camera into Lightroom and got a look at how the 5DIII did at 5000 ISO. Turns out it, it did OK. The 5D has always been famous for its very low-noise images but I was amazed at how good these looked. Definitely some noise, but Lightroom was able to minimize it very well. Makes me wonder if I could go to 6400 or faster? Any photogs have experience shooting so high? I’d love to hear some thoughts.

But this did raise a question: Is the need for fast lenses a myth? With the low noise and high ISOs capable in today’s high end cameras, how much do we really need f1.2, 1.4, 1.8, or 2.8 lenses for night photography? Sure, if I’d been using an f2.8 I could have gone even faster, taking my exposures down to the 2 second range, but would that have made a tangible difference in the final images? I’m not sure. As cameras produce better and better image quality at high ISOs, are we really going to continue to need fast and extremely expensive lenses? Sure, there are aesthetic uses for the compressed depth of field of fast lenses, and that isn’t going to change. But for most photographers and landscape and nature photographers in particular, we are usually looking for more depth of field, not less. If we can compensate for slower lenses merely by pushing the ISO another stop or two, without loss in image quality, why should we invest thousands in fast glass?

It’s not a rhetorical question. I’d love to hear some opinions.

Canon 24-105 f4L @ 67mm, f4.0, 4 sec, ISO 5000

Canon 24-105 f4L @105mm, f4.0, 8 sec, ISO 3200. (Note the blurring in the aurora to the speed of the light’s movement and the 8sec shutter speed).

Canon 24-105 f4L @105mm, f4.0, 8sec, ISO 3200.

Canon 24-105 f4L, @40mm, f4.0, 10sec, ISO 3200. The aurora was very dim when I made this image. Check out the almost yellow color near the horizon, I haven’t seen that before.

 

My Favorite Places Part II: Arctic Alaska

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Flowers bloom on the bench above the Sagavanirktok River. 

Alaska’s North Slope is a broad, rolling, alluvial plain. It sweeps down out of the Brooks Range in a long, descending ramp to the cold and icy waters of the Arctic Ocean. It’s a huge area extending the width of the state and varying from 30 or 40 miles deep to a couple of hundred in the west. It isn’t an easy place to summarize in brief. Alaska’s Arctic is just too big, too diverse, too wild and varied, and, quite frankly, I haven’t seen near enough of it. 

Despite the increased pressure from oil and gas developers, the arctic is still a very big, and very wild place (at least for now). And thanks to a recent decision by the Department of the Interior, the biological heart of of the enormous NPRA, is now unlikely to be drilled in the near future.

I’ve had the chance to explore the arctic on a few occasions. I’ve visited the contested coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on a few trips and spent some time doing field work in oil fields, and driven the Haul Road. I haven’t yet made it out into the NPRA, (though that will change this summer when I lead a June float trip down the Kokolik River). Summer is clearly the best time to visit, and certainly the most hospitable, and all my experience there has taken place during the brief warm months of June, July, August and early September.

From a photographer’s standpoint it is not a place of dramatic vistas and rugged mountains. The mountains, when they are visible, are distant on the horizon, a world away from the rolling grasslands of the plains. Not unlike the Great Plains of the lower 48, it is a landscape easy to dismiss. Also, like the Great Plains, it is full of potential for those who don’t dismiss it so easily.

My favorite time of year in the Arctic is June. June is spring that far north, and the tundra is alive with nesting birds, blooming flowers, and migrating caribou. If bird photography is your thing, there is no other time of year that can compete. July can become so buggy that it can drive the most tolerant of individuals to the brink of insanity. August is beautiful, full of changing colors, and the first sunsets in months. September is full-on autumn and the cold encroaches rapidly. Polar Bears begin to congregate along the coast, particularly near the village of Kaktovik, and bear photography becomes the name of the game. By October, winter, and the accompanying darkness is settling in.

The Arctic is not a place easily appreciated from a distance. It is best to get out on the tundra. Spend, hours, or better yet, days. Sleep on it. Walk on it. Breathe in the dry odors of the grass, and dig your fingers into the soil to feel the lingering cold of winter. Take the time to appreciate the arctic for what it is, and you’ll learn a lot. Plus, you’ll come away with far better images.

This pair of Long-tailed Jaegers did not appreciate it when I stumbled too close to their nest. I snapped this shot over my shoulder with wide-angle as I backed away.

American Golden Plovers are a common species in dryer tundra. I found this bird, along the Haul Road last summer. I’d never before seen such a riot of colors in the wildflowers.

I photographed this Stilt Sandpiper beside a tundra pond, of which there are tens of thousands in the Arctic.

On my first trip to the Coastal Plain of the Arctic Refuge, I photographed this male Rock Ptarmigan still bearing its (now dirty) winter plumage. This image was made on a gravel bar along the Canning River.

This is also a male Rock Ptarmigan. This bird was incredibly tolerant and allowed my clients and I to approach very close late one sunny night.

The coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge is justifiably famous for its caribou. This band was part of the Central Arctic Herd. We woke up one afternoon after a long night of photography to thousands of caribou passing across the coastal plain, and splashing through the waters of the Canning River. This image was made within spitting distance of the Arctic Ocean looking South across the plains to the distant Brooks Range. 

Lens Review: Rokinon 14mm f2.8

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Aurora image made using the Rokinon 14mm f2.8.

A year ago, I’d never heard of Rokinon. But, like wildfire, the Rokinon (and their lenses marketed under other brand names) spread across the internet. Statements like “extremely sharp”, “great for the price”, “solid”, and other affirmations caught my attention. I’ve been looking for a fast wide-angle for aurora photography for a number of years, but have been consistently kicked down by the outrageous price tag of comparable Canon lenses. Not wanting to invest money in a substandard lens, I kept putting off any purchase. However, when a friend and respected photographer told me about the Rokinon he’d recently purchased, I was intrigued.

(Photo from Rokinon.com)

Turns out, at $386 it wasn’t too painful to pull the trigger on the 14mm. And in the few months I’ve been shooting with it, I feel like I’ve got enough experience to draw some conclusions.

First, the lens is fully manual. Meaning no autofocus, no auto-aperture. The aperture is controlled by a ring near the base of the lens, and is quick to shift back and forth. Because the aperture is a mechanical feature in the lens, if you adjust it down, the viewfinder will darken substantially. Wide open, no problem to focus and compose, but stop it down to f11 and it will get tricky. This means that you must compose and focus wide open, then stop it down to reach the depth of field you want or the exposure you need. This isn’t a lens that can used quickly.

That said, slowing down is not a bad thing. In fact, I like it about this lens. It brings me back to my early days in photography when I shot with an old manual, film, Minolta SLR. The Rokinon forces me to think about things like aperture and manual and not just trust the camera to make the right decision.

The lens is sturdily constructed. It’s hefty in the hand, and seems durable (though I’ve not yet banged it around enough to know this for certain). It has a fixed, petal style, lens hood that protects the curved objective lens from bumps when the lens cap is off. The lens cap itself, is cup shaped to protect that bulging lens. I suspect replacing it might be a hassle, as your local camera store is unlikely to stock them, so don’t lose it.

The only physical aspect of the lens that has shown some weakness is this small, black plastic protector near the mount. I presume this piece keeps dust from the inner workings. This little plastic ring has fallen out a couple of times, but was easily replaced. Still, I wish it would stay put.

Optically, I’m going to fall back on the words of other reviews I’ve read: It’s great for the price. There is a slight loss of sharpness, light distortion and darkening towards the edge of the frame. But at 14mm, I would expect this of any lens at any price. The sharpness loss is not enough to cause problems in the image overall, the distortion is minor (see the detail shot of the stars below), and the darkening can be easily adjusted in post-processing if a vignette look is not desired for the final image.

Night sky. Notice the dark vignette around the outside of the frame.

I’m not an expert in optics and I’m not going to present a bunch of optical tests. I’m much more interested in how the product performs in the field. I’ve now used it on more than a dozen shoots of the aurora. It is fast enough at f2.8 to allow quick shutter speeds in dark conditions, and the center of the frame is as sharp as any lens I own, including several Canon L series. The narrow band of vignetting at the edges is tolerable and correctable, but I’ve rarely found it necessary to correct. (If you shoot with APS-C size sensor, I suspect that you won’t even notice the vignette).

Detail from the upper left corner of the image above. Optical distortion stretches the stars into lines instead of points. This is not generally noticeable except when viewed at 100%.

Stock agencies have accepted my images made with this lens without question, and I’ve had several accepted for publication in national magazines. Editors, do not seem to flinch despite the very affordable price tag.

In summary I recommend the Rokinon 14mm f2.8, as an affordable alternative to comparable lenses offered by Canon and Nikon. I like it enough that I may add another Rokinon to my lens quiver in the future. If I do, I’ll be sure to let you know if it lives up to my expectations.

 

My Favorite Places: Bhutan

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Today, I thought I’d start a new series for the blog on some of my favorite places in the world for photography. And very close to the top of that list is the remote, Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan.

Bhutan is spectacular, in so many ways, that it’s difficult to describe. I hardly know where to begin when I reflect on my three weeks in Bhutan back in 2008. But rather than wax lyrical about my experiences (which I could do at length) I instead want to discuss the photographic experience.

First Bhutan is culturally remarkable. The government has dictated strict rules to limit the impact of tourism, on their culture, and environment. Famously, about ten years ago, the king stated that in Bhutan “Gross National Happiness” will be more important than Gross National Product. Basically saying that is better to be happy than rich. (I couldn’t agree more).

All tourists to Bhutan are required to be on a guided tour, and pay substantial daily fees. This limits the impact of tourism, and can ensure that tourist dollars go to the right places (environmental protection, infrastructure, and cultural facilities).

The people are friendly and open. Never did I feel anything but welcome. A smile and gesture toward my camera indicating I’d like take a portrait was always more than enough to gain permission. (Like anywhere, its extremely important to get permission before putting an camera in someone’s face).

The landscape is a mix of high Himalayan peaks, forested valleys, clear rivers, and ancient cities. No where else in the world have I visited do the farm houses and villages blend so perfectly into the landscape. The people here just belong.

I would love to return to Bhutan, and perhaps someday I will. In the mean time, I look back on these images and recall the thin mountain air, the fields of rice waving in the wind, and the sound of the tumbling rivers.

This young monk was walking down a windy corridor in the dzong (the political and cultural center of the city) in the town or Paro. 

Bhutan is a buddhist nation and prayer flags are everywhere, blowing in the breeze and shedding their prayers into the world. 

I made this image on a covered walking bridge over the Paro River. It was windy and the hundreds of flags flapped wildly. I leaned against the rail, and waited for the next person to come through the far side, then snapped this exposure. 

This is a slope of Jhomolhari, the second tallest mountain in Bhutan. As part of my trip we trekked for 10 days from the town of Paro to the base of this mountain, high in the Himalayas. 

These prayer flags were strung from the ruins an ancient forest at Jangothang at our high camp at the base of Jhomolhari. 

Share your thoughts and leave a comment. Been to Bhutan? Want to go?