Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2013 i Outdoor Photographer

Photographer: Peter Lik Location: Antelope Canyon, Arizona Situation: Peter Lik is one of the best known nature photographers in the world today. His photos are sold in his signature galleries around the globe. The self taught Australian has won numerous awards, and his work is part of the collection of the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. In the photo on this issue’s cover, which Lik has titled “Eternal Beauty,” he crafted an image from a unique perspective. Most slot canyon shots don’t include the blue sky outside of the canyon. The reasons for that likely have as much to do with the science of photography as with the art. The dynamic range from bright blue Arizona sky to narrow canyon interior is beyond any film emulsion or digital image sensor. There…

MIRRORLESS SHOOTER A compact, 7.5-ounce body with interchangeable lenses, providing RAW+JPEG stills and full 1080 HD video, the Sony NEX-3N makes a great compact backup camera, but it’s easily capable of doing the heavy lifting. The 16.1-megapixel APS-C CMOS sensor boosts maximum ISO to 16,000 for low-light shooting, and a zoom lever on the top of the body gives fingertip control of the lens length. The BIONZ processor provides area-specific noise reduction and sharpness without loss of detail. The 7.5cm LCD screen flips 180° for shooting at difficult angles or self-portraits. Estimated Street Price: $498. Contact: Sony, www.sony.com. SLICK PAPER Recently, the popularity of metallic prints has been growing in the photographic art world. Moab has designed the new Slickrock Metallic Silver 300 for photographers looking for ultra-shine and increased…

Back in the day,” the craft of photography was a lot harder. All the controls were manual. You focused by hand (following focus on a moving subject was an art in and of itself), you used a handheld light meter to take an exposure reading, and you reset the ƒ-stop and shutter speed every time the light changed. Allowing for inflation, the cost of equipment was generally higher, and you had to buy far more lenses as good zooms hadn’t been invented. Don’t get me started; it was just harder. All that difficulty imbued me with a deep sense of lack. My hands were never facile enough, I never had enough knowledge, I never had the right amount of the right equipment, and I never ever had enough FILM. Ever!…

There’s nothing like getting out in the summer when the weather is warm, the days are long and the landscapes are inviting. In this article, we’ve polled several of OP’s top contributors, asking them for their favorite summer hot spots. This brief list of locations is a collection of ideal summer shooting spots, but they certainly aren’t the only good places to go, by a long shot. Furthermore, these should be thought of as places where your quest for special imagery begins, not as an end, because nature photography is best when it’s not just about ticking a series of checkboxes. Sean Bagshaw Samuel H. Boardman Coast, Oregon The Samuel H. Boardman State Scenic Corridor, north of the town of Brookings, Oregon, is one of the most rugged and scenic…

The light level was in the basement, and the wolves were very active. While the D3S was connected to the 600mm, raising the ISO to make a click in horrible light never made sense to me, so I just enjoyed the show. Then I remembered the D3S shoots video! I had been shooting video for a while by this time, but never with my DSLR, so I thought I would push the button to see what would happen. The popularity of that simple two-minute clip was so overwhelming that it caused me to think more about creating videos with my DSLR when I was out shooting stills. My primary mission as a wildlife photographer is stills; it’s how I create the content I use to tell visual stories in books…

Be it shoeboxes overflowing with slides, binders full contact sheets or narrow aisles of shelves loaded with meticulously labeled prints, photographers have always found their craft at odds with organization. Moving into the digital where frames have become even plentiful and storage space is easy come by, photo management is even more important, and losing that one great shot increases in chance. Luckily, photo organizational systems have been popping up in the past several years and expanding their tools exponentially. While at the base of each system is the organizational foundation that photographers hold dear, now these systems come loaded with advanced editing tools, as well as direct sharing and printing capabilities. This means, once you find the ideal photo management software for your workflow, you may skip other editing…

In the Rio GrandeValley, Dave Welling was photographing for a Texas wildlife photo contest from a blind close to a tree where a Cooper’s hawk had just landed. “I had been in the blind for several hours,” saysWelling, “and the hawk had been flying around. Finally, it landed in the tree and began watching me; looks like I provided some great entertainment for the guy. Anyway, he couldn’t figure out the big eye—the front element of a 500mm f/4 lens—sticking out of this funny-colored material in a beat-up stack of lumber, not the best blind I ever put up. I captured this image when he tried to see me in a ‘different light,’ so to speak.” Nikon F5, AF-S NIKKOR 500mm ƒ/4G ED VR, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film…

There’s a common misperception that a certain amount of nature photography is done by rote. You make a list of locations, plan the right time of year, make sure you’re set up for early or late light, get the shot and move on. The reality is that the best nature photographers might have a list, but they seldom follow it on autopilot. That’s because nature has a way of throwing you a curve, and if you’re not prepared to improvise, you’ll miss out on special, once-in a lifetime opportunities. This spring, a perfect example of one of nature’s curve balls occurred in the Mojave Desert. Joshua trees, those odd-looking sentinels of the high desert in the Southwest, suddenly came into amassive profusion of blossoms. It’s not unusual for plants to…

AI feel your pain. In these days of the expensive, exotic, fuel-consuming field workshop, it might be a good idea to look more often for photo opportunities near home. As you rightly note, every exotic location is beginning to look familiar because all have been over exposed. Your only hope, and mine, is to look for new approaches to familiar subjects. You can do that anywhere, but the “loca-grapher” has the advantage of working (or playing, depending on what you and/or your partner call your photography) at less cost, and with much less stress, than the world traveler. And becoming familiar with and following a subject offers opportunities to capture unique perspectives and action. Summer is a great time to explore most everywhere in North America. Ironic note: Photographers from…

Arrowhead Region, MINNESOTA Location Named for the distinctive shape of its borders along Canada to the north and Lake Superior to the southeast, the Minnesota Arrowhead region offers spectacular views of Lake Superior as well as valleys, rivers, lakes and numerous waterfalls as they tumble from inland waters and empty into Lake Superior. Starting at Duluth and stretching west to Highway 53 and then north to the Canadian border, the Arrowhead area encompasses several large swaths of wilderness, including the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) with more than one million acres, Voyageurs National Park and Superior National Forest (wherein the BWCAW lies), established in 1909 by Theodore Roosevelt. The BWCAW contains more than 1,200 miles of canoe routes, 15 hiking trails and approximately 2,000 designated campsites—not to mention primitive…

Antelope, Little Wild Horse, Peekaboo, Secret. The Colorado Plateau region of the southwestern United States is home to one of the most interesting and photogenic features in the natural world, the slot canyon. The plateau has captured the imagination of thousands of photographers and geologists alike, with its weathered and exposed rock formations, which were sculpted, twisted and cut into rock layers millions of years old to only hundreds of years old. But, for us, it’s the narrow and often deep canyons that cut into the various layers of sandstone that provide an adventure and photographic opportunities that are second to none. We’ve been hiking and photographing slot canyons for many years, spending weeks each year in the Colorado Plateau region. Each slot canyon is quite different and beautiful from…

When putting together a lens kit for outdoor photography, there are three basic ways to do it. You can get one “superzoom,” several shorter-range zooms or a number of fixed-focal-length “prime” lenses. Each offers its pros and cons, and that’s what this article covers. Of course, your lens choices will vary depending on the type or types of outdoor photography you do. So we’ll break down the article into four segments: landscape, wildlife, travel and sports-action. Most photographers take it on faith that costly pro lenses are “better” than the more affordable “consumer” ones, but where a given lens is better is frequently misunderstood. Pro lenses may produce better image quality across their entire zoom or aperture range, but that may not be as important to a landscape photographer who…

Molokai, Hawaii, With Dewitt Jones & Jonathan Kingston November 30 to December 7, 2013 Join Dewitt “Basic” Jones and Jonathan Kingston on the island of Molokai for a seven-day seminar that teaches both the technique and the spirit of photography. Photograph from the highest sea cliffs in the world, wander through the stunning Mo’omomi Nature preserve and photograph hula dancers at sunset. Dewitt Jones (“Basic Jones” of OP) will be your guide into the soul of photography. The “why” of taking pictures that’s so often overlooked. Joneswill inspire you to create extraordinary visions in your photography and in your life. Jonathan Kingston, a photographer with the National Geographic Image Collection, will be your digital guru, teaching you techniques that will enhance every photograph you shoot. The seminar will take place…

4TH ANNUAL GREAT OUTDOORS PHOTO CONTEST WINNERS We received over 11,500 entries to Outdoor Photographer’s 4th Annual Great Outdoors Photo Contest. It was one of our biggest contests of all time! Thanks to our lead sponsor, GigaPan, and our cosponsors, we were able to offer outstanding prize packages. Special congratulations to Grand Prize winner Jason Heritage and First Place winner Frank Comisar. You can check out all of the finalists and look through the full gallery—all 11,500+ photos—at www.outdoorphotographer.com. Grand Prize Danger Approaches |Photographer: Jason Heritage | www.jasonheritage.com On July 23, 2012, after leaving Badlands, my brother and I were headed west to see Mount Rushmore and Wind Cave. Little did we know we were heading into a forest fire that was raging out of control. Wind Cave was shut…

I first started teaching photography way back in 1980 for The Ansel Adams Gallery. In what seems like a blink of an eye, it’s now 33 years later! Recently, I’ve started teaching again in Yosemite Valley after a long sabbatical. Since my last workshop, it seems that every inch of the valley has been mapped for photographers online and with apps, and I wondered if I could still find fresh image possibilities and quiet locations to share with my students. In other writings, including in this column, I’ve attested to my faith in the never-ending beauty of nature and creative photographic potential in Yosemite; guiding students would be a great test of that belief. Last autumn, I worked with small groups or individuals in the field through the early and…

Originally from the Smoky Mountains area of Tennessee, Colorado photographer Tad Bowman thanks many long “adventures” as a boy hiking through the neighboring wilderness for fostering a love of nature, but it was a family trip to colorful Colorado that first inspired the landscape photographer’s true passion: the towering and plentiful peaks of Colorado’s mountainous terrain. “It’s the peaks, I mean, hands down!” the photographer laughs when asked what it is that attracts him so much to his home base. “I grew up in the South; I’m not used to seeing these majestic peaks. I came out here a few times with my family on summer vacations and seeing that was very impressionable. You just sit there and say, ‘Wow! Those things are so tall and there are so many…

Serengeti. The Maasai call it siringet, which means extended or endless, a place that goes on forever. The United Nations call it a World Heritage Site. Photographer Boyd Norton calls it The Eternal Beginning, the title of his recent book. But he also calls it threatened. Africa’s Serengeti ecosystem, a region in northern Tanzania and southwestern Kenya encompassing an area the size of Massachusetts, is home to the largest terrestrial mammal migration in the world. Each year, some two million wildebeest, zebras and other herbivores make a 300-mile round-trip journey that has come to be known as the Great Migration. The grazing animals move in search of fresh water and grasses. Predators like lions and hyenas feed on this massive smorgasbord of moving prey. Photographers from all over the world…

Perhaps you were channel-surfing with me a couple years ago when I stumbled across a fascinating special about a team of underwater photographers working to document the prolific underwater habitat surrounding Cocos Island off the coast of Central America. The first 15 minutes of the program dealt with all the camera and diving gear the team would need on location. The camera slowly panned across an enormous pile of equipment assembled on the floor of the chief photographer’s studio. It was enough to fill a shipping container. That image leapt to mind in the summer of 2012 as I debated how much gear to bring on an expedition to the Sierra Nevada Mountains. My climbing buddy, Ken Bilak, and I were looking to tackle a rugged 30-mile section of the…

The key to light hiking as a photographer is paring your gear down to the most essential tools that will help you get a great shot in the most conditions. A 70-200mm f/2.8, which is large and weighs over three pounds, can be a viable piece of gear if you plan on shooting telephoto images at the f/2.8 aperture all day. On the other hand, a 28-200mm f/3.6-5.6 do-it-all zoom is a much better choice if you don’t really know what the subject, and therefore the focal length of the day, will be. Set your priorities and be efficient. James Kay recently hiked the John Muir Trail with a point-and-shoot camera instead of his DSLR in an effort to both lighten up and free his creativity. That’s pretty extreme, and…