Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2013 i Outdoor Photographer

Photographer: Russell Bishop Location: Mount Whitney, Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains, California Equipment: NikonD300, 70-200mm ƒ/2.8 Situation: Most landscape photographers rely on wide-angle perspectives to convey a sense of depth in a scene, as well as emphasize an element in the foreground to draw in the viewer. But there are some situations where a telephoto lens is a better choice. In this photo by Russell Bishop, a telephoto was an ideal choice for capturing the grandeur of Mount Whitney and the surrounding peaks. Bishop used the telephoto perspective to show the enormity of Whitney and the reach of its peaks stretching into the sky. Wide-angle photos of the same mountain taken from a similar location render these dramatic, craggy formations as tiny specks that are usually seen through the window of…

SIGMA DP3 MERRILL Sigma’s DP-series digital cameras feature compact size and a built-in prime lens designed specifically for the camera and sensor. Each features the same 46-megapixel (three stacked 15.3-megapixel layers) Foveon X3 Direct Image Sensor found in the Sigma SD1 Merrill DSLR. The latest to join the series is the DP3 Merrill, which has a dedicated 50mm ƒ/2.8 lens (equivalent to a 75mm lens on a 35mm or full-frame digital SLR). The DP1 and DP2 feature 19mm ƒ/2.8 and 30mm ƒ/2.8 lenses, respectively—thus, the DP1 Merrill for wide-angle work, the DP2 Merrill for normal view and now the DP3 Merrill for short telephoto work, all with the same Foveon X3 high-res APS-C sensor. Estimated Street Price: TBA. Contact: Sigma, (800) 896-6858, www.sigmaphoto.com. FAST LEXAR MEMORY With the trend to…

Among the many benefits of mass tourism, there are a couple of lurking downsides. Culture can become commoditized, and while it’s true that traditional societies can benefit from the attention of visitors, they also can be negatively impacted. Then there’s us travel photographers. How are we impacted? Well, we travel photographers can become downright lazy. That’s because there’s not a remote corner of the earth, no arcane cultural festival or celebration, no wildlife hot spot, to which you can’t book a photo tour and travel in the cocoon of fellow shooters under the watchful eye of an experienced professional photographer. The economic downturn and the struggles of publishing have made photo tours a necessity for survival and a very viable source of income for pros. And it’s made getting great…

1 WE’RE INCREDIBLY FORTUNATE to have our National Park System (NPS). For nature photographers, the NPS yields an unlimited number of opportunities to create landscape and wildlife photos. The parks have grown so popular that complaints of overcrowding are frequent topics in newspapers and blogs, but even in the most heavily traveled parks, you can find solitude by venturing just a short distance from the parking lots and campgrounds. The vast majority of people who visit the parks never go more than 100 yards from their cars. And you don’t have to go off-trail to get away from the masses. Put on a decent pair of hiking shoes, grab some water and hit the trail, and within an hour, you can find yourself far from human contact. I buy an…

For the first time since the invention of the medium, photographers are now able to create images that rival our visual memory. For years, we’ve been using high dynamic range (HDR) techniques, combining bracketed captures to extend the range of exposure. Using the stacked focus technique, we can extend depth of field, as well. When we view a composition, our eyes scan the scene, refocusing on every detail, then our brain composites everything we’ve seen into a visual memory with the entire scene sharp. Painters have depicted the world this way for years, but prior to the advent of stacked focus, photographers were limited to what a lens could resolve in a single capture. The stacked focus technique allows us to overcome this limitation by making multiple captures, each at…

Binoculars are often overlooked, yet very useful tools for outdoor photographers, and not just for wildlife specialists. For the latter, of course, it’s a lot easier to pick up a pocketable 10-ounce pair of binoculars to scan for subjects than to pull out a two-plus-pound DSLR with a seven-pound 500mm supertelephoto lens. (Of course, if you do scan with your camera, you can just push the button to record an image when you find something interesting.) The binocs provide a sense of depth, due to their two-eye viewing, as well as a generally brighter image that makes it easier to spot near-hidden critters. But the binoculars also give the landscape shooter a different way of seeing scenes than the usual unaided-eye view—the narrow field of view tends to focus your…

MIRRORLENS SCENICS As photographers, much of our struggle is to capture what our eyes see better than the camera. The excitement of macro photography is its window on the miniature world that’s less accessible to the naked eye—burrowing into the petals of a flower, going eye to eye with the Martian face of a dragonfly. I feel much the same way about the opposite end of the magnification spectrum: the extreme telephoto. The 19th-century painter Gustav Klimt, famous for his sensual portraits of women of the wealthy class in Vienna, was much lesser known for his experiments with telephoto perspective, or compression. I’m told he used binoculars to paint his village and lake scenes around the Attersee. As a photographer, I’m fascinated by this use of optical inspiration, as I’m…

Some things aren’t decided; they happen. I’m pretty much an NPR addict by accident. In Los Angeles, where a group of highly educated, thoughtful people can have deeply meaningful conversations about traffic, I spend a few hours every day contemplating the vicissitudes of freeway dynamics while sitting in an incredibly slow-moving car on “The 10” (in Southern California, we call the freeways by their number preceded by “The”; somehow it just sounds more proper than using an “I” or just the number itself). But freeway dynamics can only occupy one’s brain for just so long before madness sets in, so at some point about 15 years ago, I scanned the dial and I came to KCRW, a local NPR affiliate and NPR’s “Morning Edition.” During my average drive, I can…

Lenses That Get You Close Q I want a macro lens to capture close-ups of spring wildflowers. There are several choices, however, and I’m not sure which type of lens to purchase. What are the pros and cons of each available type? Seattle, Washington A When choosing a macro lens, it’s not just about magnification. You need to consider also the type of sensor your camera has (full-frame or APS-C), the kind of working distance you need and the variety of uses you plan. Once you have a macro lens, you’ll be photographing more than flowers with it, I guarantee. Standard-focal-length macros in the 50-65mm range for full-frame and APS-C cameras have been around for a long time. They usually offer magnification to 1X, but with limited working distance—that is,…

Zion National Park, UTAH Location Located to the south of Cedar City (57 miles north on Interstate 15) and the east of Saint George, Utah (40 miles to the south), Zion National Park is found on State Route 9 surrounding Springdale, Utah, to the north. The easy Canyon Overlook trailhead lies just east of the 1.1-mile-long Zion-Mount Carmel Tunnel, with steps that have been carved into sandstone above the tunnel. The 1-mile round-trip hike unveils a scenic view of lower Zion Canyon and the winding Zion Switchbacks, as well as West Temple, East Temple, the Beehives, Towers of the Virgin and the Streaked Wall. If you’re looking for a high-elevation viewpoint the whole family can enjoy, the Canyon Overlook Trail is awesome! Weather With elevations ranging from 3,666 to 8,726…

After a long winter of bare trees and monochrome landscapes, the cornucopia of colors that erupts in spring is visually overwhelming. We easily can start snapping away haphazardly at anything and everything in a quest to take in all the vivid hues. Here are some tips to consider that will help you gain focus and produce stunning photos that take full advantage of what nature serves up this spring. Go Full Tilt 1 Having everything perfectly straight and parallel can be perfectly boring. Look for scenes where you can have dramatic angles in the shot. This hillside is ideal. The horizon line created by the hill adds a dynamic quality to the photograph. A note of caution: Don’t just tilt the camera to create angles. It seldom looks like anything…

Think Differently… Most people think of wide-angles when they think of landscape photography, and much landscape work is, indeed, done with them. But perhaps for that very reason, you might want to try some telephoto landscapes, as well: By virtue of their relative rarity, tele-landscapes are different. Long lenses isolate small, distant portions of a scene, and in the process, flatten perspective. These two aspects are so different from the wide-angle grand vistas that they tend to stand out from the crowd (assuming they’re good photos, of course—light, composition and detail are important no matter what lens you use, or what your subject matter is). Using a long lens for landscapes requires different thinking—and that can be refreshing in the field, as well as for the viewers of the images.…

Russ Burden Workshops 2013 Join Outdoor Photographer Tip Of The Week columnist Russ Burden on one of his nature photography tours across the U.S. Burden will demo the techniques used to capture the photos he posts on the OP website. Burden’s enthusiasm is contagious. Experience his unrelenting energy and desire to share his knowledge and passion. He’ll bring you to the best locations at the best times of the year and share the insight he has built up over his 30-plus years of teaching. Do you want a tour leader who’s intimately familiar with every location and loves what he does? Do you want a tour leader whose return rate of past participants is off the charts? Then join Burden for an experience of a lifetime. He’ll teach you how…

Capturing a wildlife photo that’s head and shoulders above the rest takes patience and often quite a bit of planning. Sometimes it also requires stretching your neck out to get the shot. Photographer Daniel Schreiber and his newlywed wife Laurie had spent the day excitedly awaiting the famous annual wildebeest migration that follows the end of the African rainy season only to find themselves stymied for good photos as the herd of animals came to a resting stop along the crocodileladen Mara River. “I suppose you can lead wildebeest to water, but you can’t make them cross,” laughs Schreiber. Having waited somewhat disappointingly for as long as they could, the couple had to dash for the reserve’s entrance by closing time, a deadline strictly enforced by park rangers. When they…

OP’s 5th Annual Nature’s Colors Photo Contest was made possible thanks to sponsorship by Sony and cosponsors Duggal, Gitzo, LumiQuest, Manfrotto, PNY and Tamrac. Their generosity enabled us to make the contest one of our best thus far. On these pages, we spotlight the Grand Prize and First Place winners, as well as the Honorable Mentions. You can see all of the finalists, as well as the People’s Choice winners, at outdoorphotographer.com. Grand Prize Photographer: Hua Zhu Mount Assiniboine “This photo was taken in Canada’s Mount Assiniboine Provincial Park. Located on the border of British Columbia and Alberta, Mount Assiniboine isn’t accessible by road, leaving its natural beauty and unspoiled wilderness well preserved. In order to find the best view of the majestic mountain, we hiked for two hours to…

Probably 90% of my images live on my hard drives and never manifest themselves in the non-digital world. However, every now and then I get an image that I feel should be printed and shared. Taking an image from the realm of the digital to the physical can be a complex undertaking. It has taken me about a decade to hone in on what makes a great print and what display techniques work best for prints in homes and offices. The good news is that printers are getting better every year. In the early days of prints from desktop inkjet printers, you could almost watch prints fade before your very eyes. The dye-based inks didn’t have the longevity needed to make fine-art prints. When the Epson pigment ink-based printers were…

Capturing The Annual Sardine Run Every year around June, a mass migration takes place along the southern and eastern coasts of South Africa that draws an unprecedented abundance of predators of fin, fur and feather TEXT AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRIS FALLOWS/APEXPREDATORS.COM Between the months of May and July, the annual Sardine Run along the southern and eastern coasts of South Africa is an eastward exodus of billions of sardines that follow nutrient-rich cool water while being followed themselves by a veritable caravan of predators. A unique aspect of the Sardine Run is that you can capture great images of the action from both above and below the water as predators dive toward the shoals of sardines from the air, as well as attack upward from beneath. To paint a picture…

Road trip! Just about the sweetest two words you can hear if you’re a photographer. Add in national parks, and you’re talking about the official playgrounds for readers of Outdoor Photographer. They range in size, scope and variety and, of course, geographically they’re dispersed throughout the country. Most of us have significant time pressure, and we try to pack a lot into weekends (long weekends, if we’re lucky), so before we head on down the highway, a little prep time will make the “looking for adventure” part go down a whole lot better. Research Research is key to versatile and nimble travel in and around national parks. Be a geek for a few hours and get your facts. Research your subject on Google images, Flickr and iStock. Get to know…

From the thunder of the herds storming across the Great Plains to the elusive, but endangered mountain gorillas to the ancient tribes of the Omo, East Africa is a tapestry of dramatic ecosystems and ancient cultures. From the minute your feet hit that rich red soil, this magical world offers unparalleled diversity contained in a relatively small corner of the continent. We all see things differently. It’s why we pick up the camera, after all—to seek out places that we’ve probably viewed through another’s eyes. A great photograph doesn’t have to be new; it has to be you—your vision and your experience. As you travel through East Africa creating stories for the rocking chair, consider also the opportunity to be in the moment. Where do you want to see the…

Spring and summer are prime time in the National Park Service. That goes for photographers, as well as just about everyone else in America, which means the parks can get crowded. Don’t let the crowds deter you, though. Once you’re inside the park, it’s easy to get away from the throngs of people simply by hiking a little distance from the parking lots or main roads. Making the effort is a win-win since you’ll be able to find more unique images away from the low-hanging fruit of the scenic overlooks anyway. A few years ago there was a sudden uproar in the photo community about regulations for photographers. Fear drove the conversation and whipped nature photographers into a frenzy as people commented in forums about being hassled for simply setting…