Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2013 i Outdoor Photographer

Photographer: Roger Hostin Location: Mount Assiniboine Provincial Park, British Columbia, Canada Equipment: Canon EOS 5D, Canon EF 17-40mm ƒ/4L USM, polarizer Situation: Mount Assiniboine is one of the highest and most dramatic peaks in the Canadian Rockies. The area offers spectacular vistas. On September 25, 2009, Roger Hostin was there to take this picture. Describing the place, he says, “It’s a remote backcountry area and access is only either by a backpacking trip or helicopter. I just love this area and have traveled here many times. It’s definitely my favorite place to photograph. “Early that morning, I hiked up to a ridge that provided a stunning view of Mount Assiniboine, the surrounding mountains and the lakes in the valley below. The morning light was illuminating the scene, and while photographing…

REBEL EVOLUTION The Canon EOS Rebel T5i has powerful features in a small size, making it perfect when you’re packing light. It has an APS-C 18-megapixel CMOS image sensor, Canon’s DIGIC 5 Image Processor and an ISO range of 100-12,800 (expandable to 25,600), performing well in low-light situations. The 5 fps continuous shooting capabilities combine with a 9-point (all cross-type) AF system to help capture quick action shots. There’s also an improved Hybrid CMOS AF system for Live View and Movie Servo AF. The Rebel T5i has 1080/30p full HD Movie Mode with a stereo microphone and manual audio level capability. The smudge-resistant, 3-inch Clear View LCD touch screen has flexible positioning for tough angles and clear viewing even in bright outdoor conditions. Estimated Street Price: $749. Contact: Canon, www.usa.canon.com.…

If you stumble about believability, what are you living for? Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe? Reason is excellent for getting food, clothing and shelter. Reason is the very best tool kit. Nothing beats reason for keeping tigers away. But be excessively reasonable and you risk throwing out the universe with the bathwater.” —Yann Martel, Life of Pi Is that real? It’s a loaded question that I respond to regularly at our gallery. Many of the images in our gallery were taken during the magic hour at sunrise and sunset, in beautiful locations that many people will never visit personally. People from urban environments…

The Best Of The Assignments Submissions From outdoorphotographer.com 1) PHOTOGRAPHER: Edward Mendes LOCATION: McWay Falls, California EQUIPMENT: Mamiya M645, Fujichrome Velvia film McWay Falls has become one of my favorite places along the Big Sur coast to photograph since I originally visited it eight or nine years ago. I continue coming back in the hopes of finding that perfect moment when all the conditions fall into place and the image I’ve visualized in my mind finally appears. Unfortunately, it hasn’t happened yet. On this particular evening in 2010, the light came and went, but I continued shooting the scene until it was almost completely dark, as I liked the beautiful blue hues the soft-light twilight was providing. I actually worked on the image off and on for almost two years,…

Black-and-white photography has the potential to make any photographer better, even if you mainly shoot color. At the least, it will stretch your creativity and make you see the world differently. It could also refine your way of seeing in some very positive ways. There’s a secret to getting the most out of black-and-white, and it’s not about the newest black-and-white software. Black-and-white is an elegant, beautiful way of photographing nature. Yet, we aren’t necessarily seeing the stunning black-and-white images we might expect today with the superb digital cameras available to everyone. There’s a big difference between a lot of black-and-white work done today, compared to the black-and-white done by the masters from the Ansel Adams era. In that age, black-and-white photos were made from the very start, when the…

Grand Teton, Arches & Canyonlands October & November 2013 Two of the most beautiful areas of the country are the focus of these dynamic workshops conducted by professional Bob Evans, who has been leading workshops for 18 years and has the extensive knowledge and skills to guide you to new levels of fine image making. Workshops include all lodging, lectures, field lessons and daily critiques. Only 10 students per class allow one-to-one instruction. The Teton workshop begins on October 1. It includes locations at Schwabacher’s Landing, Oxbow Bend and the Mormon Row farmsteads, and many others. Arches and Canyonlands has been one of their most popular workshops for six years. The workshop includes five nights’ lodging in Moab, Utah, with daily lectures, critiques and field instructions. It begins November 5…

Igor Shpilenok has been photographing wildlife on the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Russian Far East for the last seven years. Working as a ranger in the Kronotsky Nature Reserve, the dedicated photographer spent an entire year in the field getting to know a family of foxes being raised near his cabin. The father, who he nicknamed “Mr. Sneaky Evildoer” for several antics like stealing his clothesline, chewing through the cable to the generator and making off with his broom, just to name a few, was quite patient with his offspring. Shpilenok says he spent most of his time with them while the mother went off to hunt. “Foxes are very active and playful, and so are their young. When they play, they imitate a lot of the things they will…

In high school, I was fortunate to have a number of truly outstanding teachers. One of the very best was Mr. Downs, who taught my class in lyric poetry. On the first day of that class, he asked the assembled group of seniors a simple question: What is poetry? The usual disoriented moment of silence ensued followed by embarrassed laughter. We looked it up in the dictionary, but the definition according to Webster’s fell flat (look it up and you’ll quickly see why). No one in the class could describe it fully, yet we all agreed we knew it when we saw it. Mr. Downs offered this, “Poetry is the overcoming of self-imposed obstacles for the fun of it.” One of the reasons why that has always stuck with me…

B&W Saves The Day I recently spent a few hours photographing from a small plane, flying along the eastern escarpment of the Cascades in Central Oregon. The weather was gorgeous, and the volcanic peaks were covered with fresh snow. Unfortunately, it wasn’t possible in this plane to remove the doors or open the Plexiglas® windows. When I reviewed the captures later in the day, I was very disappointed by their distinctly cyan cast, even though they were otherwise of good quality in terms of sharpness, tone and content. While seeking solutions to this problem, I became aware that the image, with the exception of the dark blue sky, was fairly monochromatic in reality; that is, color wasn’t an important factor in the scene. It wasn’t a difficult decision to convert…

Location Starting in the Rocky Mountains of western Montana and referred to as the “Big Muddy,” the Missouri River, the longest river in North America, flows east and south for 2,341 miles before joining the Mississippi River north of Saint Louis. North Dakota offers more than 390 miles of shoreline along the Missouri, most of which are public. The area where this photo was taken, just south of the Steckel Boat Landing, south of Washburn, is rich with history. It’s where Lewis and Clark spent their first winter with the Mandan Indians, and if you look hard enough along the shore, you can still find arrowheads made of flint that the native people used to take down buffalo that once roamed here by the millions. The buffalo are long gone,…

High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography can be an extremely useful technique for bringing out microtexture, enhancing the effect of light and shadow, and creatively influencing the overall tone of an image. All of these elements lend themselves immediately and powerfully to black-and-white photographs, making HDR another viable tool in the monochrome photographer’s arsenal. As an example, look at the following images. Figure 1 is a single-exposure photograph that I converted into black-and white—actually, the “middle,” or 0 EV exposure, in a bracketed series I was taking for HDR conversion. Figure 2 is the full HDR conversion using the steps I’ll outline in this article. Many photographers wonder about the “right” way to make a black-and-white HDR, given that there are numerous possible paths you can take through the editing process…

Crouched in a photo blind near the border between the United States and Mexico, Krista Schlyer heard voices—beneath her. As if checking for a heartbeat, she pressed her ear to the ground to diagnose the source of the sounds. What she got was an earful of squeaks and chirps from a prairie dog family scurrying about in their burrow. “I just lay there for an hour listening to them chatting back and forth,” Schlyer says. “It was an incredible moment.” To untrained eyes, or ears, not much appears to live in the lands straddling the border between the United States and Mexico. And yet this region is one of the most biologically diverse in all of North America. The varied ecosystems include deserts, grasslands, “sky island” mountains and the Rio…

Black-and-white photographs have the potential to be a rich display of tonality and detail, making a scene truly dramatic, be it a somber misty morning or an edgy cityscape. When you take a color image with vibrant reds and greens and then convert it to black-and-white, you may notice that what was once full of life is now a muddled gray with a similar tone. Using color filters in the field can help accentuate contrast, enhance particular tonal shades and infuse more life into each photo. Black-and-white photographers commonly use color filters, covering the basics of red, orange, yellow, green and blue. The general rule of thumb for color filters is that one will make objects of its own and similar colors brighter while darkening objects of other colors. Red.…

The Cove Rod Hanchard-Goodwin took this photo at a little-known spot in Scotland where the tide plays a key role in revealing the rocks. Too high a tide, and they disappear, and too low, and the leading line is lost amidst the clutter of the surface below. Because the photo was taken in bright sun, he had to use a 10-stop ND filter to get the shutter speed he desired. Hanchard-Goodwin submitted this photo to OP after seeing a call for images we had sent out to our Facebook fans. Like us at www.facebook.com/outdoorphotographer to stay abreast of similar calls for photography. Canon EOS 6D, Canon EF 17-40mm ƒ/4L, Lee 0.9 ND graduated filter, B+W 10-stop ND filter South Sister At 5,400 feet, 400-acre Sparks Lake lies beneath the Three…

There’s a revolution happening right now in the world of quality pocket digital cameras, and I’m digging it. I carry my DSLR cameras most places I go and usually have no problem slinging one around my neck for any job. But when it’s pure adventure fun and not an assignment, I have to balance my photography with being a participant and moving efficiently through the country. This is where a smaller compact camera will fit the minimum baggage requirements perfectly. But, sadly, by the time I pack a compact or small DSLR camera for harsh environments, the padded bag or waterproof case turns the camera into a cumbersome package. I guess the ideal micro-adventure camera would be one where you could just blink your eye to capture an image—nothing to…

For much of his 25-year journey through a few careers—from photojournalist to commercial photographer—Chuck Kimmerle’s love of landscape photography simmered quietly on the back burner. After he found the right place, though, it came roaring to life. “Throughout my career,” he says, “I photographed the landscapes near where I lived. It was a way for me to explore and appreciate my surroundings. I wasn’t serious about it. It was, at the time, simply a hobby—a way to relax. In retrospect, I guess you could say there was a small spark of love for photographing the landscape, but it was far from a raging fire.” Since his discovery of photography—before newspapers, before assignments, before the landscape itself—photography always came first. Kimmerle knew above all that he wanted to take pictures, and…

Photography is digital. Even the few photographers who continue to work in film take their negatives and prints in the digital arena at some point in their workflow. Black-and-white digital tools and controls provide you with far more control than a purely film-based workflow ever could. The black-and-white digital darkroom essentials are a computer, software, a good printer and appropriate paper. In this article, we’re not looking at computers, but we’ll take you through the necessities to get you on the way to making your best possible black-and-white photographs through digital means. Software For B&W Assuming you shoot RAW, you can process your image as black-and-white with whatever RAW converter you normally use for color: the one provided by your camera’s manufacturer or a third-party product like Adobe Camera Raw…

Most of us use automatic white balance, letting our cameras choose the proper color balance for our photographs. Your camera is actually pretty smart, and probably gets it “right” more often than not. The reason I say “right” in quotes is because color balance is in many ways subjective, and what you determine to be the best color balance for your photos will depend in large part on your personal tastes and artistic goals. Accordingly, there’s no reason to feel constrained by the settings your camera chooses, especially when shooting RAW format, which allows penalty-free white balance adjustment during the image-processing phase. In fact, white balance is an important creative tool for photographers, one that too often gets overlooked. I’ll often deviate from the choices my camera makes to more…

Over the past year, we’ve seen some interesting dedicated black-and white cameras that have been introduced by Leica and RED. These are very high-end cameras, and the RED camera is part of that company’s DSMC(Digital Still&Motion Camera) philosophy. As you may know already, the image sensors in our digital cameras are really black-and-white sensors. To create color images, most manufacturers apply a grid that has red, green and blue filters over the image sensor so that each photosite (or pixel) will record that color information. The camera’s onboard processors then decode the information and use some very clever interpolation algorithms to assemble a full-color image. Dedicated black-and-white cameras like the Leica M Monochrom do away with the Bayer filter and its accompanying onboard computational requirements. Each photosite on the sensor…