In June I like to head to the Southwestern United States. The heat of the desert hasn’t quite yet got to the point where it is painful. Moab and Kanab, Utah are close to magnificent national parks. After the wet spring in the Northwest, it is nice to travel to a warm location, and this area offers a completely unique environment. Spectacular land formations and lots of hidden canyons can be found in Arches, Capitol Reef and Canyonlands National Parks to name a few. The Southwest certainly has a lot to offer, and we explored a small corner of it in my latest workshop. Take a look at the wonderful shots my fellow photographers got!
Adam Sabow: “It was a fantastic time – already can’t wait to plan the next one!”
Alan Sund: “We had a great trip to Moab! The participants were great – many (like me) were back from prior trips, and knew we were in store for a wonderful workshop. Art and Jay were their usual selves, always supportive but also determined to help each of us grow in our photographic abilities – and all the prep-work done by your Seattle crew made it all work smoothly. I can’t wait to find another workshop to sign up for in the near future.”
June 30 – November 25, 2012
The Burke Museum will once again exhibit the winners of the International Conservation Photography Awards, a biennial juried competition initiated in 1997 by acclaimed local nature photographer, Art Wolfe.
Over 75 photos were chosen from more than 1500 images submitted by amateur and professional photographers from across the globe. The photographs are conservation-focused, chosen in categories such as Wildlife, Landscape, Underwater, and Community at Risk, which focuses on environmental threats to urban areas. Capturing beautiful moments in the natural world, the photos connect us to the tiniest of creatures and enormous environmental changes. The competition and its award-winning photos inspire, educate, and encourage us all to consider our impacts on the world’s natural resources.
A panel of five judges selected winning photographs in each of the nine categories. The winning photographs will be announced on Opening Day, June 30. Four of the honored photographers will speak about their work, photographic techniques, and passion for conservation on the hour between 11 am and 2 pm on June 30. Judges from the panel will offer visitors guided tours of the exhibit. Check the Burke Museum’s website for a full schedule and details.
For the first time, the Burke and the International Conservation Photography Awards will also collaborate to create a traveling exhibit, which will include the top 25 first- and second-place winners.
The 2012 International Conservation Photography Awards exhibit is organized by the Burke Museum in partnership with the ICP Awards. The exhibit is sponsored by 4Culture and the Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, with support from Kym Aughtry, Hugh and Jane Ferguson Foundation, The Mountaineers Foundation, Carl Skoog Memorial Fund, U.S. Bancorp Foundation, and the Peg & Ric Young Foundation.
ICP Awards sponsors: Art 4 Vision Foundation, Art Wolfe, The Bullitt Foundation, Canon, Epson, Getty Images, Museum Quality Framing, Puget Soundkeeper Alliance, Robert P. Rotella Foundation, and the Washington Environmental Council.
High resolution images available, contact burkepr@uw.edu.
Photo: Caribou Crossing. Photo by Peter Mather. Dalton Highway, Prudhoe Bay Alaska, June 29, 2010.
As I write this, my film Terra Sacra Time Lapses is just passing 100,000 combined views on YouTube and Vimeo and continuing to spread to all corners of the planet. The six-minute short is a compilation of my favourite time lapse sequences photographed during assignments and personal travels between 2006-2012 on seven continents in 24 countries. I’m super thrilled by the overwhelmingly positive feedback but equally humbled and gratified by the many comments which praise the beauty of our Sacred Earth. This was the ultimate goal… To inspire a deepened appreciation for the world around us.
Influenced heavily by Art Wolfe’s vision to care for the planet and it’s diversity, I created Terra Sacra Time Lapses as a a means of sharing the intangible magic I’ve been so blessed to experience on these journeys to famous and remote places.
By far, most of the shots in the film were photographed during the making of “Art Wolfe’s Travels to the Edge” – truly a dream assignment for any filmmaker.
Art and Sean in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
I started experimenting with DSLR time lapse photography during the very FIRST episode shoot with Art in Utah back in October 2005. The technique involves using a DSLR camera and a remote interval timer to capture a series of images that can be processed into a time lapse video. Since the resolution and image quality of each individual frame from a DSLR (up to 5,000+ pixels) is many time greater than a single frame of high definition video (only 1920×1080 pixels), you can zoom and pan within the image without sacrificing pixels. The image QUALITY (colour range, low light sensitivity) from a DSLR is also greater than most professional video cameras. I immediately was blow-away by the creative potential of this new tool and would make a point of shooting these shots as often as possible. I could setup a time lapse with the 5D and use our production video cameras to continue filming all the other elements for the show. The time lapses would eventually become a signature look for the series and often be used as visual transitions between the scenes in each episode. I also employed these techniques on assignments for other television series for National Geographic Channel, Discovery Channel, and personal travels.
As romantic as it sounds to travel with Art for three years and film 26 episodes of the beloved TV series all around the world, it wasn’t always easy!
Here’s five of my worst moments:
• bluff charged and nearly trampled by a camera-shy male elephant in Kenya
The angry male elephant preparing to charge
• nearly run-over by our bush pilot the very next day as he pushed the comfortable boundaries of delaying his take-off for a dramatic shot (Art scolded him for almost killing his cameraman)
In the path of the Cessna traveling at over 100 mph just before take-off
• careening off a highway in La Paz, Bolivia, after a tire separated from the axel (we suspect thieves stole the lug nuts!)
The get-away tire in La Paz, Bolivia
• dodging a massive anaconda dropping out of the trees while cruising the Pantanal in Brazil.
• losing all my clothes to a nun in Peru after a horrendous case of “mistaken luggage identity” (my bag eventually got delivered by dug-out canoe a week later to our filming camp in the Amazon jungle)
On the flip side, here’s five of my favourite highlights:
• being swooped by the 10-foot wingspans of Andean condors after a steep four-hour hike in Patagonia, Argentina.
• that Cessna that almost killed me… I got to fly it from Kenya to Lake Natron in Tanzania (the rest of the crew slept in the back!)
• seeing Antarctica. Period. Filming penguins in Antarctica
• sleeping on the sand beneath the most amazing star scape ever while en route from Timbuktu to Arouane (Mali) to film a caravan of camels in the middle of the Sahara
• photographing bengal tigers in India by elephant back. These felines are the most awesome creatures I’ve ever seen in the wild!
Thank you Art, again, for hiring me as the cinematographer for this amazing series and providing the great memories and adventures I’ll cherish for a lifetime… Hopefully Terra Sacra Time Lapses will echo the spirit of your mission and serve as a lasting showcase of our Sacred Earth.
Sean F. White
Locations:
Shot-by-shot breakdown of each location in the film >>HERE
Technical Notes:
Most of the time lapses were shot with a Canon EOS 5D digital SLR at the maximum resolution using a TC-80N3 intervalometer. A few shots were taken with a Canon 7D and Canon 5D mk II.
All images are single manual exposures, no HDR composites.
Original full resolution images were colour corrected and processed in 16-bit in Adobe Bridge using Camera Raw and exported as JPEG sequences at maximum quality. The rendered JPEG sets were then opened in Quicktime Pro as image sequences and exported at their native full resolution (up to 5K) as Quicktime movies at 23.98 fps with the Apple ProRes 422 (HQ) codec. The ProRes 422 (HQ) files were then edited in Final Cut Pro 7.0.3 on a ProRes 422 (HQ) timeline at 23.98. The master file is ProRes 422 (HQ) 1920 x 1080.
Selected time lapse sequences were also processed using Adobe Bridge and LRTimelapse to smoothen aperture flicker apparent in some shots with large depth-of-field.
Seal. Crazy. 4:00am. I think it has been my ring tone for 15 years now, way before the iPhone was even a concept. It is this song that closely reflects the life of a photographer. I mean who in their right mind would wake up at 4am? The beauty of my current situation is that Art is as much of a morning person as I am. We firmly believe that waking up this early should be minimized on all accounts. Seriously, the coffee shops aren’t even open yet. The flip side is that we have no problem staying up well into the evening to photograph stars. I guess that justifies sleeping in way past sunrise. At least in summer.
We were in Moab. It was the first day of leading ten people around with a certain and much different workshop challenge. Discover the subjects beyond the obvious. Yes, if you have never been to Moab you can shoot those icons, but after that we wanted our participants to move beyond and work not only their subjects, but their minds too. As a participant you are restricted to keeping those iconic images to yourself. We all know that they are already good compositions. During our critiques we want to see the other images. The ones you have questions about. Or the ones you struggled with until you thought you failed. Those are inevitably the ones that are most successful.
If this sounds like a duality of common sense, it probably is. Those images that you struggle with force you to work, and when you work at your composition, you put thought into it. This thought process always comes through in the images you produce, even if you don’t realize it at the time.
The desert is a magical place. The colors are extremely brilliant and complimentary. Unbelievably clear and dry blue skies complimented with deep reds and oranges as the sun comes up. This time of year though, it only lasts about an hour after sunrise, so timing is of the essence. And lesson number one is to illustrate this on morning one, day one, without any prior instruction. The forthcoming discussions will change this ideal and then we will progress to make you think even harder. Once you are challenged with trying to find subjects beyond the icons, we are going to take you an abandoned town. At Noon. With one request, find us subjects.
We continue by highlighting specific techniques. Specific ways of processing images utilizing Adobe Lightroom 4. Adding in creative options here as well, so that you realize that every image shouldn’t be super-saturated color, a perfect blend of multiple exposures, or even produced in the 2 by 3 format. This is were your ideas are taken into reality. The creative juices are beginning to flow at this point and you are beginning to see. To see less like a recorder and more like an artist. You begin to realize that you are in control of what your viewer perceives and almost understand that the image you create becomes your viewer’s reality.
Then we add different perspectives into the mix. How to create composite panoramics, star trails, and nighttime compositions. We do this by taking you to different eco-systems and different environments continuously throughout the day. The main rule here is if you can find something of merit to photograph at high noon in the summer desert, you can find a subject just about anywhere at any time. And then, all of a sudden, everything clicks, (figuratively and literally) you become a creative. The word photographer only has meaning to you because you choose that as your mechanism to display your vision.
You in fact become a little crazy and like the song says, “But we’re never gonna survive, unless, we are a little crazy.” Now you want only one thing. MORE. Stay tuned we will give you that real soon. — Jay Goodrich
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is one of the world’s great natural wonders & now it is going to be part of the largest marine park encompassing 1.2 million sq miles of ocean surrounding the continent. In this age of economic peril, it is such good news to hear of a preservation of our planet of this proportion.
There are a ton of articles out there on it. Here are a few links to follow:
As always, it is always great to spend several days in Olympic National Park with such enthusiastic photographers! This workshop continues to be the gold standard of my learning program. Be sure to check out the blogs & websites of the following photographers!
Alan Augustine: “I really enjoyed the workshop. Art and all of his assistants were very helpful with my attempts to progress from simply documenting a scene to creating a work of art.”
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Cory Kitzan: “I had a GREAT time at this workshop. I came home and told my wife that it was the best three days of my life! It was very mentally and physically challenging. It took me two days to recover! I loved every bit of it.
Art has so much energy and passion, and seemed to really care about the quality of the workshop experience for each member of the group. He was a lot of fun to be around. His lectures and candid comments during the critiquing session were invaluable. I learned so much!
I also learned humility when I viewed my results. I’ve been taking photographs as a hobby since I was a kid (35+ years). I understand the technical side, and can take good “vacation photos”, as Art described them. I have loved Art’s photography ever since the first time I saw “Travels to the Edge”, but I didn’t know what it was that appealed to me, or how to replicate it myself. At the workshop, those questions were answered.
I now have many fun years of practice ahead of me. What I learned in those three short days will impact my photography for the rest of my life. I would highly recommend Art’s workshops and lectures to anyone interested in photography.
Facebook: www.facebook.com/Cory Kitzan
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Dan Rosen: “I had a great time at the workshop!”
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Darrell Sano: “I’ve always admired Art Wolfe, ever since watching his “Travels to the Edge” PBS series. He is far more than a landscape photographer, and his fascination with people and culture attest to his multi-faceted interests and skills. Aside from looking at his work and hearing first-hand explanations behind his images, the class afforded me the opportunity to visit someplace I’ve never been. And sharing the experience with fellow attendees, especially those who I drove in our car pool, was utterly enjoyable.”
Web: www.dksfoto.com
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Ella Hudson: “Earlier in my life I have worked as a college photographer and a medical photographer. More attune to a PR and photo journalism style, I have never really explored nature as a photo subject. The grand landscape has always been too broad and vast; my photos never came close to Ansel Adams! But I enjoy others’ nature photography.
I have followed Art’s work since becoming aware of him through “Travels to the Edge.” His obvious love and passion for animals and nature’s beauty is what makes these episodes. My husband encouraged me to sign up for the Olympic Peninsula workshop as a gift to myself. This was the first real photo workshop I have ever attended. Even though I felt a little out of my comfort zone, I promised myself that I would be open to all the possibilities, no matter what. I really had no expectations; I planned to attend and see what happened.
Well, what happened was more than I could have ever expected. Photography, photography, photography morning to night with a lot of other people at times feeling out of their comfort zones, too! But that’s how you learn! Here was an opportunity to just soak it all up!
Eric Schoch: “This was a terrific workshop in a great locale. Art and all the instructors were supportive and had excellent suggestions. I learned a lot and had a great time!”
Web: ericschochphotography.com
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Kashif Izhar: “What an exhilarating experience it was to be with Art Wolfe at the Olympic Peninsula Workshop. 3 days full of great advice and ample chances to implement it in the field with first hand feedback from Art and his team. The critique session was by far the best, where Art looks at each photo for a moment and then with live Lightroom implementation, transforms it to its true potential. Wish to join Art once again at a more exotic location for a longer trip.”
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Kathryn Mead: “Art is a great teacher in lecture, field and critique. His enthusiasm is boundless as is his knowledge, which he shares freely. This was my 3rd workshop with Art. He takes us to places that offer a variety of shots. Since he’s thought out where to go, all I have to do is think about shooting. I really enjoyed shooting with a group. I got to make new friends and learn even more about photography from talking to them and seeing their work. Art’s personality sets a relaxed atmosphere. I would recommend a workshop to anyone who would like to learn more about how to see an environment in a way that allows them to create more compelling images. For me, this class is not (mostly) about f-stops and ISOs. It’s about how to see a composition. My photography has improved tremendously as a result of learning from Art.”
Nick Monkman: “Art Wolfe is a fantastic teacher and and enjoyable person just to be around. Not only did I improve my photography – I also had a fun vacation. Art’s rich background in painting and art history really help drive home his main teaching points about effect compositions. Lectures were well-organized without being oppressive and the image critique at the end of the workshop was especially rewarding. Well done…and when’s the next one?”
Blog: nickmonkman.zenfolio.com/blog/2012/6/okay-that-was-fun
Web: nickmonkman.zenfolio.com/
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Timothy Lindsay: “I learned a lot about composition and the technical aspects of photography on this workshop. Both during lectures from Art Wolfe and his helpers in the field. I recommend atttending one near your home first so you know what kind of equipment you need (and what you don’t need) when traveling with your photography equipment.”
I was asked to be part of the judging of the King County Parks container camping structure competition.
Architecture firm, HyBrid, was recently named the winner of a competition sponsored by the King County Parks department to create a camping structure from re-purposed cargo containers. The 8’x24′ structure incorporates recycled glazing and mess kitchen and can accommodate up to 6 overnight guest. Funding is secured for the prototype unit and should be camp ready by Summer 2012.
Visitors to King County’s Tolt-MacDonald Park will be able to spend the night in a comfortable and ecologically sound camping structure – thanks to the creative vein tapped by King County Parks’ Little Footprint/Big Forest contest.
The challenge given to designers was to create an overnight camping structure from a used cargo shipping container that could be placed in select areas of King County Parks’ 26,000 acres of open space.
The winning design – selected from 12 entries by a panel of judges that included King County Executive Dow Constantine, plus architectural and sustainability experts.
“Re-Tain” features an adaptable floor plan complete with queen-sized bunk beds, a table that can be moved outside for more floor space inside, and a multi-purpose mess cabinet made from recycled and reclaimed materials that allows for use from inside and outside the structure.
See the winning design and other entries at: http://www.kingcounty.gov/recreation/parks/partners/littlefootprint.aspx
“The contest provided us with an exciting and replicable design, and we hope to install these camping structures at appropriate sites within our open space areas,” said King County Parks Division Director Kevin Brown. “I want to thank the judges for their thoughtful analysis of all the entries.”
Design competition judges said they were impressed with the overall design concepts and the creative approach to the second use of storage containers.
“King County is home to wonderful parks and outdoor experiences, and the Little Footprint, Big Forest contest shows that we have the creativity to meet the challenge of preserving our environment and adopting sustainable practices,” said judge Andy Wappler.
