Join three nature photography masters, Frans Lanting, Thomas D. Mangelsen, and Art Wolfe, for a unique weekend of photographic inspiration
LOS ANGELES, CA, July 18, 2012. For the first time ever, three of the world’s most renowned nature photographers–Frans Lanting, Thomas D. Mangelsen, and Art Wolfe–are teaming up to present a series of unique weekend events that will change the way you look at photography and what you can do with your own camera.
Frans, Tom, and Art will draw from their wide-ranging experience with subjects and locations around the world to inspire attendees, show them new ways to see, give them tools to create more compelling images, and empower them to use photography to benefit conservation causes and other personal interests. Presentations from each photographer will be mixed with panel discussions, Q & A sessions, and reviews of images submitted by attendees. Photo industry expert Patrick Donehue will share strategies used by successful photographers to get the attention of editors, art directors, and other photo buyers.
The first Masters of Nature Photography Seminar will be held Friday November 9through Sunday November 11, 2012, in San Francisco at the InterContinental San Francisco Hotel. For more info or to register, please visit www.MastersofNaturePhotography.com.
About Frans Lanting
Frans Lanting has been hailed as one of the great photographers of our time. His influential work appears in books, magazines, and exhibitions around the world. The recipient of many honors, Lanting has been commissioned frequently by National Geographic, where he served as a Photographer-in-Residence. His mission is to create leverage for conservation efforts and to promote understanding about the Earth through images that convey a passion for nature and a sense of wonder about our living planet. For more, visit www.lanting.com.
About Thomas D. Mangelsen
Thomas D. Mangelsen’s limited edition prints have been collected by more people than have those of any other living nature photographer. His images are known for their exquisite composition and for conveying a strong sense of place and a keen understanding of animal behavior. Sensitivity to his subjects and reverence for their surroundings is a defining mark of his work. Mangelsen has received many awards for his photographic and conservation work and has been profiled frequently on television. For more, visit www.mangelsen.com.
About Art Wolfe
For four decades, Art Wolfe has worked on every continent, in hundreds of locations, and on a wide array of projects. His unique approach to photography is based on his training in the arts and his advocacy for the environment and indigenous cultures. Wolfe has published more than 80 books and is the recipient of numerous awards. His work has also been featured in traveling exhibits, galleries, and the award-winning television series “Art Wolfe’s Travels to the Edge.” For more, visit www.artwolfe.com.
Perennial favorites, the oversized European calendars are in! Mountains, The Art of Camouflage, and Wolves–it’s like buying a folio of thirteen prints for a fraction of the price!
Long-time Art Wolfe associates Jay Goodrich and Gavriel Jecan have just posted a terrific selection of tours starting in August & running through next summer:
Dear Art Wolfe – I have long admired your images of stars and star trails and have tried in vane to take some images like this myself but just can’t seem to figure it out. Can you share some of your secrets?
Chris B.
Nebraska
Chris – I’d be happy to and it’s really not a big secret. When you are photographing stars and star trails at night, first figure out which type of composition you are looking to create – pin points of star light or the long streaks of star trails.
For pin points, set your shutter speed to 30 seconds, any longer and the points of light start to become ovals and the image takes on a blurry look-especially if you are including the Milky Way. Set your lens to it’s widest aperture, ISO 1600 or higher and expose. Noise in an image is most prevalent in the darkest areas, in photographing stars you will have a lot of deep dark areas between the stars so turn on your long exposure noise reduction to help minimize what gets transmitted to the image.
If you are shooting star trails, the elongated streaks of light that arc across the image, you will need much longer exposures than 30 seconds, namely 10 minutes on up to several hours, just exactly how long depends on the focal length of your lens and the effect you wish to create. Just as longer telephoto lenses will “magnify” movement, such as camera shake when you are trying to hand hold your camera, the longer the lens the less exposure time needed before you start to see effective star trails. Essentially the telephoto lens is zooming in making small things larger, so in as little as 5 minutes of exposure a 400 mm lens will yield short but definite star trails. With a wide angle lens, say 16 mm, you will need at least 30 minutes of exposure before you will begin to see decent star trails in your final image. For arcs of light that traverse the majority of the night sky you are generally looking at exposures of 2-5 hours.
In the days of slide film you would simply leave your shutter open for the entire exposure using the bulb setting to manually open and close the shutter and your wristwatch to time the event. However in the age of digital you can not leave the shutter open for that long without risk of damaging the sensor and an ever increasing build up of noise in the image. Rather than exposing for 2 hours straight, you shoot 240 thirty second exposures (to equal 2 hours) and then later “stack” them using any variety of software tools such as Adobe Photoshop or Imagestacker.
So how do you take 240 pictures over the course of a couple of hours? You could sit there with your cable release and click the button every 30 seconds, and if you only ever plan on trying this once perhaps that’s what you would do. However if this is something you would truly like to explore (and you won’t “get it” just trying it once) you should invest in a cable release called an Intervolemeter. This is essentially a computer that allows you to program the camera to shoot those 240, thirty-second exposures through the night while you get a little bit of sleep before setting up for the next shot.
The most important part of shooting stars is to pay just as much attention to what is on the ground as to what is in the sky. You will want to incorporate some interesting elements from the landscape around you, mountain peaks protruding into the sky, whole trees or tree branches, rock formations, saguaro cactus, etc… you need to tell the complete story so the viewer can appreciate not only the stars but where you were when you created such a striking image.
When including the foreground elements you have several choices as to how to handle them. First you can allow them to be silhouettes by simply photographing the scene after the sun has set using their forms as artistic elements in the image – this is perhaps the easiest and most common approach. The second approach is to begin creating your photograph prior to the setting of the sun, at dusk. Capture your lower foreground elements in an image at sunset and then leave the camera undisturbed on the tripod. Once the sun has completely gone and you are ready to shoot the star trails as before. Later in post processing when you are stacking your images together you will have the dimly lit view of the landscape to include in your overall composition. Now is this cheating? No. This is simply the same technique I have used for years with slide film when I would create a dual exposure on the same slide, one at sunset followed by a several hour exposure later in the night without moving the camera. Stacking is simply how you achieve the same result in the digital age due to the delicate sensor.
The last technique I have used involves artificially lighting the foreground elements in your landscape. Using a light source such as a flashlight, powerful search light or even a flash unit you can manually paint light over the foreground images during your 30 second exposures. It takes practice to go over the foreground elements just right, if you pass over an area too many times you will create a hot spot, miss an area and it will be dark, but when all you have is a flashlight to “paint with” there is nothing to tell you where you’ve been and where you have yet to go. So practice with this and over time you will be pleased with what you are able to paint in the dark. Here in the northwest snow camping is a popular winter time activity and lights inside of your tent or igloo make for wonderful glowing foreground elements in these compositions.
When shooting star trails you have two basic choices for where to point the camera. You can either create concentric circles of light around a single point in the sky by aiming at the the North Star (Polaris) for those photographing in the Northern Hemisphere, or arcs of light by pointing your camera in any other direction. Be aware of which you are choosing to compose and include your foreground elements for framing and balance accordingly. Unfortunately there is no convenient star in the southern hemisphere to point your camera directly towards so you’ll need to find that magic spot some other way.
Lastly there are some atmospheric conditions to be concerned with when photographing all night – namely condensation on the lens. I have shot start trails in many areas of the world such as the dry deserts of Utah and Namibia where condensation is not a concern but if you were to shoot them with say the sea stacks of the pacific coast you’ll be battling fogging on your lens throughout the night. One approach is to use a small battery operated fan to blow a steady wind across your lens to keep it dry. A second, perhaps easier approach, is to tape hand warmers around your lens, the kind hikers and skiers use. You’ll need several and they are only good for one night worth of shooting but they will help keep your lens warm and dry.
Lastly it goes without saying you need really dark skies. Pick a time when there is no moon or just barely a sliver and choose a location as far away and sheltered from the lights of near by cities as possible. For the pacific northwest where I live this means heading into the mountains, which make for great foreground subjects to include in the composition.
Enjoy your adventure – Art Wolfe
If you have a question for Art that you would like to see answered in an upcoming Newsletter email us putting “Ask Art” in your subject line: info@artwolfe.com
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
