Garden for Wildlife Month
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Art’s Yard – Images by Art Wolfe
May is Garden for Wildlife Month!
Get your yard certified as wildlife habitat through the National Wildlife Federation. Mine is!
Art of Composition Coming to Boston & NYC!
Art will be giving his one day seminar, The Art of Composition, in Boston on Saturday, May 12th & in New York City on Sunday, May 13th.
Sign up now using coupon code 050512BL and get a 15% discount!
The Pantanal Brazil
It’s no secret that I absolutely love international travel. For the past 30 years, I have spent 9 months of each year on the road. I have met some amazing people and seen fascinating and varied cultures in my travels. It reinforces my belief that we are all connected.
I became hooked on international travel in 1984, when I was asked to join the first US Everest Expedition allowed in through Tibet. I didn’t go to climb Mt Everest, or even to just stand on her flanks. I went to see the magical city of Lhasa. I had learned about such incredible places in school and had always wanted to see one with my own eyes. I was instantly hooked and I’ve been traveling the world ever since.
The Pantanal offers a wetland environment like no other on the planet. At 54,000 square miles you could hide the whole of the Florida Everglades in the center and never find them. It’s no secret that I love photographing wildlife and the Pantanal offers some of the best avian photography anywhere. While the Amazon rain forest may be larger, the Pantanal has a concentration of wildlife that allows you to see (and photograph) 100 times more birds and animals than you ever would in the Amazon. I chose the Pantanal for my “Travels to the Edge” TV show for this very reason.
You will have the chance to photograph capybaras and caimans and many of the 400 species of birds that live in the Pantanal. Nearly a quarter of these birds weighing in at over a pound (1.6kg) – which is a pretty big bird when you stop to think about it. We may even get to see Giant Otters (big as a grown man) and Giant Anteaters. If you’ve seen the episode of “Travels to the Edge” from this region you have some idea of what you’ll be in store for. But don’t worry, when it comes to the caimans, we’ll keep a respectful distance (this time).
Through traveling to photograph wildlife, I have been blessed with getting to know some of the most interesting and diverse cultures around the world. For this tour, I have scheduled visits to two working Brazilian ranches so we can get a taste of what it is like to pull a living from this land and call it home. To visit a country without getting to know the people is an incomplete story for me. There is so much to be learned from others who share this earth with us but have different perspectives and unique viewpoints. Seeing the challenges they face can bring a new perspective to our own lives.
And if you’re not hooked yet… on my previous trips I have stumbled across a very remote corner of the Pantanal where there is an incredible opportunity to see Jaguars in the wild. This particular group has become habituated to seeing people much like some of the lion troops you would see on safari in Africa and they no longer
instinctively retreat and hide in the dense forest. It may take a while to swallow your heart back down from the middle of your throat, but seeing a Jaguar in the wild is a experience you will never forget.
I hope to see you there in July. – Art Wolfe
Click Here for More Details and to Register.
Wondering What to Photograph This Weekend?
How about a million shorebirds for starters!
Along the Washington coast we have many species that migrate past our shores both above and below the water. For just 2 to 3 weeks in late April and early May, up to a million shore birds can be found near the town of Grays Harbor on their way to nesting grounds in the arctic. Some of the commonly seen birds include: Killdeer, Black-bellied Plover, Semipalmated Plover, Greater Yellowlegs, Wandering Tattler, Whimbrel, Marbled Godwit, Ruddy Turnstone, Surfbird, Red Knot, Sanderling, Western Sandpiper, Least Sandpiper, Dunlin, Short-billed Dowitcher, and Long-billed Dowitcher.
The birds will take a much needed rest in the mudflats of Bowerman Bay on their long flights from South America all the way up the Pacific Coast until the reach the Arctic where they will nest and prepare for the next generation. Your best chance at seeing the birds comes at high tide when the incoming ocean waters concentrate the birds on just a few points of land where they can still find food and safe harbor. This is a most remarkable region for birding because of its varied habitats: rocky seashore, sandy beaches, large estuaries, rivers, meadows and mountains.
You won’t be alone of course, like the tulip fields of the Skagit Valley which bloom just in front of the migration this phenomena attracts hundreds of bird watchers and nature loves alike. The town of Greys Harbor even sponsors a shore bird festival each year giving you some clue as to when you might want to migrate to the coast yourself.
UW Timeless Awards
On May 4th, 2012, the University of Washington officially honors a 150 distinguished alumni with their first-ever Timeless Awards and Art Wolfe has been selected. The Timeless Award is given to alumni based on their outstanding service and achievement since graduation.
To see a list of past, present, and future award winners, check out http://www.artsci.washington.edu/150/timeless.asp
What to Do on a Rainy Day?
Even though this weekend is predicted to be the best weekend of the year here in Seattle, the Pacific Northwest is ever changing and it shouldn’t be long until things change.
Rainy days are some of my absolute favorite days to photograph. Sure it would be a lot easier to shoot through fog to create that soft mysterious air to your images, but fog is unpredictable and typically rather temporary lasting only for an hour or so in the early morning. However rain in the Pacific Northwest is both predictable and persistent.
People are often surprised that I don’t run outside with my camera on a beautiful blue sky day. The clouds on an overcast day act like a huge softbox to soften the light, reduce contrast, and open up the shadows to details that would be completely lost on a bright sunny day. Falling rain diffuses and evens out the light even more. Some of my favorite images have been captured on gray rainy days.
You’ll need to check your lens frequently for spots but with a little care you can use the rain to your advantage. Use a tripod, polarizer, small aperture and long shutter speed to keep from recording individual falling drops of rain and maximize atmospheric softening. Additionally, the polarizer removes the shine from foliage for the richest colors possible. It’s rare that I don’t have a polarizer on the front of my lens. With standing water in your frame the falling rain will ripple the surface. The long shutter speed will blur movement the same way a waterfall can be rendered as a soft ethereal white drape over rocks.
On Location: Bowerman Basin Shorebird Migration
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May Tips: Shorebird Migration – Images by Art Wolfe
Early May is a great time to catch the migrating shorebirds as they fly up the coast from California, or the Pacific Flyway as it is called. Sanderlings, dunlins, and other assorted shorebirds pause for a couple of weeks at Bowerman Basin in Grays Harbor on the Olympic Peninsula. Boardwalks provide great access. When the tides are high, and there are no exposed mud flats, all the birds are densely packed together. It is quite the spectacle to see a million birds in a tight area. Also, if there happens to be a bird of prey near, they fly around in tight bundles turning in all directions with great precision. It looks like many bodies, but one brain operating them all. It is definitely worth a trip out to the coast if you are in the Pacific Northwest in those two weeks.
The Grays Harbor Shorebird Festival is May 4-6 this year:
Art of Composition Coming to LA!
Art will be giving his one day seminar, The Art of Composition, in Los Angeles on Saturday, May 5th.
Sign up now using coupon code 050512BL and get a 15% discount!
Sponsored by:
On Location: April Showers in Oregon
BLOG: April Showers in Oregon – Images by Art Wolfe
What to do with April Showers? – Get an umbrella, grab your camera and get outside.
I spent 2 days photographing in the Columbia Gorge and along the Southern Washington Coast, in the rain, and I couldn’t have been happier. The previous 2 days were beautiful. Blue skies, sunshine, unseasonably warm temperatures – and I wasn’t at all interested in getting outside with my camera.
While I’m always open to any subject, on this trip I had very soft, high key, moody images in mind that I could render in black and white. The coastal and inland waters of the Columbia Gorge in addition to having one spectacular waterfall after the next are littered with old pilings from a bygone era of wealth and prosperity from the timber barons of the late 1800 and early 1900s. I have photographed these subjects in the past and knew they needed the right atmospheric conditions, namely fog, to be successful. Here in the NW fog isn’t all that predictable or persistent, but when you don’t have fog, rain can be an excellent (and even better) substitute.
The overcast skies provided the perfect soft box to light the subject, the falling rain softens the image and disturbs the water such that the long exposures necessary with my smallest apertures render the image as a high key, mysterious and quiet, yet powerful image. I knew I would be rendering these in black and white and positioned myself to maximize the white background where the sky was indistinguishable from the sea. I could have stayed with these as a subject for the entire day working different angles, focal lengths and exposures. It was food for my soul and I felt like I was at an all you can eat buffet.
I wasn’t going to overlook the waterfalls as this was the perfect time of the year to photograph them through the fine lines of the trees. The leaves have only just begun to come out adding a touch of color while not obscuring the view of the falls. Most people would say I was “too early” to shoot the falls but you’ll find in about 2 weeks time the trees will have leafed out to where the shots I was able to create with patterns of lines and positive and negative space would be impossible to replicate.
Lastly I met up with friends early in the morning to photograph the Portland Japanese Gardens. With an annual pass you can visit the gardens 2 hours ahead of the general public and photograph largely unencumbered. Again the time of year allowed for some subtle color in the maple trees as they had only begun to leaf out while not obscuring the fine details and patterns of the intricate under-story of their branches. Yes it was a bit too early for bushels of blossoms but when you look at the patterns in nature, the energy contained in a balance of positive and negative space, you’ll find there is rarely ever a bad time to photograph areas like the Japanese Gardens. And when you realize the potential you may never look at a rainy day the same way again.
New Roommate!
The other evening I was enjoying my hot tub, and saw I had a new house mate! A screech owl has taken up residence in a bird house I hung in a large tree.
