Not even the government can shut down Yellowstone! This vast volcanic caldera has always delivered photographically for me. I headed out with some close friends and in a few short days were able to photograph wolves, coyotes, bison, otters, and two horns, big & prong. I caught one otter rolling and gamboling in the snow and sliding across the ice of the Yellowstone River; and there was an energetic young ram who put on quite a show leaping back and forth across a rocky hillside.
Enjoy the photos – more to come soon from Japan. It’s just days away, but two spaces have just opened up. There is also one spot remaining to join me on a trip to India in March to photograph the Holi festival as well as tigers – grab it before it’s gone!
Much has been made of the Kumbh Mela lately because it is such an extraordinary event – a mass Hindu pilgrimage, largest in the world. Each Kumbh, tens of millions of pilgrims descend upon one of four Indian cities to celebrate and bathe in sacred rivers.
The location for the Kumbh Mela rotates each time, roughly every three years, with smaller celebrations occurring at each city during various off-years. These dates are dictated by the Vikram Samvat, or historical Hindu calendar.
I’ve had the pleasure of visiting during this spectacular event multiple times throughout my career:
2001 – Allahabad
This visit to Kumbh Mela ended up producing one of my most popular images – Spiritual Journey.
2007 – Allahabad
I returned in Allahabad in 2007 for the “Ardh” or “half” Kumbh Mela with our Travels to the Edge crew. This trip is featured in Travels to the Edge: Season 1, episode 11.
2010 – Haridwar
2013 – Allahabad
This occasion was a “Maha” or “Great” Kumbh Mela – over 120 million people attended!
If you’re ever able to attend this historic spiritual event, it’s well worth the trip to witness the spirituality and dedication of the pilgrims who attend. Though popularity and exposure has risen over recent years, it’s a sacred event that exemplifies spirituality through the dedication and sacrifice. Rarely seen in the public eye, the Kumbh Mela offers a rare chance to witness the emergence of the sadhus, or holy men, who spend most of their lives in isolated meditation and deprivation who come and further display their dedication through discomfort as they bathe in the melted glacial waters of their sacred rivers.
An upcoming Ardh Kumbh Mela takes place this year in Allahabad (officially known as Prayagraj), and the next Kumbh Mela will happen in 2022 at Haridwar.
One of my favorite things to do when I have a couple extra days at home is to take a quick day trip to the Fraser River Delta in British Columbia. It is a haven for birds and birders and I concentrated on the short-eared owls and harriers that were hunting for rodents in the tall grasses. As I did earlier in the month at Pt. Reyres, I practiced with my new Canon EF600mm f/4L IS III USM lens, shooting mostly with a Canon EOS 5D Mark IV.
In addition to the birds of prey, I captured some of the best bufflehead images I’ve ever taken. Usually they look like little black and white sea ducks floating in dark water, but in the low winter light their feathers become a colorful iridescent rainbow.
The Lake Quinault Retreat that we have put together is fast becoming one of my most popular workshops. The small-group setting in conjunction with accommodations at the esteemed and historic Lake Quinault Lodge sets the stage for the quintessential Pacific Northwest experience in the lush Quinault Rain Forest. I’ve been visiting this location for many years, and yet I always find new experiences and subjects to focus on. There’s simply never enough time! And this is specifically why you visit with an expert – my thorough knowledge of the area will allow us to adjust our shooting plans on the fly, whether it be for weather conditions or simply the group’s desire to explore the various features of this location.
For a limited time we are offering an Early Bird discount on this retreat – save a few bucks and treat yourself to an engaging, instructive get-away in this iconic location on the Olympic Peninsula. Couples are welcome on this trip as well, so if you’d like to roll your photographic excursion into a get-away with a partner, they are welcome to join us for critiques and meals.
It was nice to spend some time at home and breath deep after nearly 7 weeks traveling through November and December, but I can’t stay still for too long. Following the new year, I took a trip down to Northern California to photograph wildlife at the Pt. Reyes seashore with the help of my good friend Daniel Dietrich. With Daniel’s expertise on the location, I was able to put my new 600MM Canon lens to good use photographing bobcat, otters, several bird species and more. It was a quick but fruitful trip, and an excellent way to start the new year as I begin to drill down on new upcoming book projects.
If you’re planning to be in the area and looking for a knowledgeable guide, check out Daniel’s website!
I hope everyone’s new year is off to to a great start – leave a comment below and let me know where you think you’ll be headed in 2019!
Since they are a niche piece of equipment, not everyone is familiar with what exactly a tilt-shift lens is and what they are used for. Admittedly, I’ve only used them sparingly in my career. Speaking in simple terms, a tilt-shift lens is a lens that allows the optics to tilt and rotate in relation to the image sensor on your camera.
When you take a photo with a standard lens, your lens and the sensor create planes of the same angle. At a wide aperture, everything in front of and behind your focus point will gradually become more out of focus. Using a tilt-shift lens, you can achieve more control over what is or is not in focus by having greater control of your focusing planes, therefore keeping more of the image both in and out of focus, depending on what you’re looking for. It should be noted that there is no auto-focus available on T/S lenses.
You can use this flexibility to achieve a number of desired outcomes. Although on short notice prior to my trip my Canon rep was unable to get me the lens, I was able to rent the Canon TS-E 135mm f/4L MACRO from borrowlenses.com and use to great effect while photographing a king penguin colony on South Georgia Island. By tilting the lens down, you’re essentially moving the plane of lens to be closer to the angle of the the ground and in effect, widening what falls into the range of focus. This allows you to utilize some of the benefits of a relatively lower aperture while still achieving a great deal of detail.
This is just one use and effect achievable with a tilt-shift lens. Even if you’re not familiar with their use, it’s likely you’ve seen photos or even video utilizing the concept. In portrait photography, where a longer lens is ideal to bring attention to the subject and blur the background, a tilt-shift lens can be used to use such a lens in a tight space. In architecture, having greater control over your image plane can be used to combat the distortion that often happens to parallel lines. If you’ve ever seen a photo of a cityscape that looks more like a scale model than an actual city – that’s a tilt-shift lens in action!
I’ll be heading to Japan in February with Gavriel Jecan and no more than 8 other travelers for a special photographic journey. Very limited spaces have recently become available – here are 10 reasons to claim them!
1. Japan in winter is one of the most majestic locations you could ever imagine.
2. Take a tub with the charming Snow Monkeys
No, you don’t have to strip down and commune with the macaques. But this is an amazing photographic opportunity: these furry primates come down from the pine and oak forests and for a couple of hours a day they hang around a natural hot spring where you can photograph from within inches without interrupting their behavior.
3. Explore the wilderness that is Hokkaido.
Hokkaido reminds me a bit of Alaska, full of forests of birch, pine and fir with a back drop of beautiful volcanic mountains.
4. Dance with the endangered Red-crowned Cranes
Leave the dancing to the cranes. These elegant birds have been symbolized in Japanese culture for thousands of years due to their grace and beauty.
5. Fight over fish with the massive Steller’s Sea Eagles
Don’t worry, we’ll have plenty of our own sushi to eat! These majestic eagles don’t want to share anyway.
6. Whoop it up with the cacophonous Whooper Swans
Overwintering from Siberia, these swans congregate in the thermally heated waters of Hokkaido’s lakes, making for ethereal, misty photographs.
7. Take a break from nature and explore buzzing Tokyo
8. Experiential learning at its best. It’s my hope that the lessons you learn on this photographic journey will be referenced on your travel photography adventures in the future!
9. You will be traveling in a small group of 8 participants. Other tour operators are a minimum of 12 or more, so you will get far more one-on-one time.
10. Photograph under the tutelage of one of the world’s premier nature photographers and take full advantage of your time spent in Japan!
Is it that time already? 2018 started off a bit slow with a foot surgery that kept me home to “kick off” the year (pun entirely intended) but definitely picked up pace as time went by, culminating in a nearly seven-week trip around the world! This year’s travel starts off rather quickly with a trip to the Northern California coast next week. Here is a brief rundown of this past year’s highlights:
•All year long, we’ve been aiming to bring useful educational content to the masses via Technique Tuesday posts on the blog.
•Spiritual Journey won a Graphis Gold Award for their 2018 Photography Annual.
•I had a fantastic time traveling to the East Coast and presenting to the Carolina’s Nature Photographer’s Association, as well as a trip across the pond to Birmingham, UK to present Earth Is My Witness at the Photography Show.
•Mitch Stringer and myself got together to create a special extended episode of Where’s Art – check it out if you missed it!
•More books! A trade edition of Human Canvas is in the works, as well as my collaboration with Dr. Sam Wasser, Silent Giants: Elephant Conservation in an Age of Extinction.
•More Workshops! Sign up today to reserve your spot!
•I’ll be presenting at Wildspeak in Washington D.C. in November
. . .and much more to come; currently I’m awash in calendars trying to strategize – stay tuned for updates and have a wonderful new year!
On the heels of spending time at South Georgia Island & the Falklands, I headed off from Chile to eastern India. After a day to rest we departed Kolkata for Nagaland in the northeast and photograph the colorful Hornbill festival, where the region’s many tribes gather to celebrate their culture, art, athleticism, and much more. The cloudless skies and throng of festival-goers made for a frenetic and challenging environment to photograph in, but I did come away with many of the shots I was seeking.
From there we went north to Kaziranga National Park where we were treated to dozens of Rhinos and an abundance of other wildlife including elephants, water buffalo, great hornbill, and more – and then to Kanha in search of tigers. Unfortunately during the time we had allotted to seek them out, a cold heavy rain fell and kept them mostly out of view. We were, however, treated to the playful Indian wild dogs and other denizens of the area.
Enjoy the photos, but most importantly – Happy Holidays! Ill be spending mine with friends in Thailand, before finally heading home to Seattle for the first time in nearly a month and a half. . . and then it’s off to the next adventure!
The nature of the photo:King penguins are second only to emperor penguins in size. Mostly they live on islands north of Antarctica such as South Georgia Island, rather than on the continent itself. They feed on fish and squid from the ocean nearby which is known for its diversity of life. Canon EOS-1N/RS, TS-E 90mm f/2.8 lens, f/16 for 1/125 sec., Fujichrome Astia
South Georgia Island is a great place for penguin photography, but it is an extremely remote island in the South Atlantic that is difficult to get to. While working on my book, The Living Wild, I worked out a way of getting onto South Georgia Island and camping for six days. My assistant, Gavriel Jecan, and I were dropped off by an American tour boat then picked up six days later by a German passenger ship coming from Cape Town, South Africa.
During our stay, we faced all sorts of weather, but primarily wind and snow. This can be miserable for the photographer but such weather is often stunningly beautiful for the pictures. I love atmospheric conditions and blowing snow is one of those conditions that convey a sense of the primordial and timelessness to the image. Still, it made for difficult shooting.
You can see all of the penguins are hunkered down to withstand this turbulent weather. We were trying to shoot videos as well as stills. The wind meant we had to stabilize the image with a heavy tripod. A small f-stop of f/16 kept all the penguins in focus. One thing a still photo doesn’t convey are the sounds and smells of the moment. Certainly the smells of hundreds of thousands of penguins is something I’ll never forget. The sounds of the birds, the trumpeting of the adults is a sound that is forever etched in my brain. Simply put, it’s one of my favorite places to visit on earth.
Photo tip:
A simple tip this technique Tuesday, but an important one to consider – If you suspect challenging weather, be sure you are prepared for it with the right clothing, boots, gloves and hats. If you are too uncomfortable, you are not going to stay outside for the unique possibilities that weather might bring. When conditions get tough, dramatic and unusual photographs are often possible then.
For more stories, technical details and tips relating to some of my most well-known photos, check out the book this excerpt was taken from in my online store – Photographs from the Edge.
