Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2017 i Outdoor Photographer

I never thought I'd have the patience to photograph wildlife. Then I went to Africa. This isn't a story about Africa, but rather how I found my style of wildlife photography and the patience for it. I grew up traveling the west and all the wild, off-the-beaten-path locations. I learned at an early age the importance of our farmers, truck drivers and entrepreneurs who had set up shops, farms and businesses in the middle of what seemed like nowhere. We frequented small family owned motels, restaurants and farms all to gain access to the places just beyond their businesses or land. These were the places not many at the time wanted to go, or even knew existed. It was in these early years that I inherited my love of the…

Exploring new photographic techniques and teaching them to others is one of the most rewarding aspects of being a professional wildlife photographer. This motivates me on a constant journey to experiment with new and innovative photographic styles. Over the last several months, I experimented with creative blurs on a diversity of wildlife subjects. Not only have I learned a lot, but I've had a blast practicing. Here are four images from my recent photographic adventures around the world and the techniques I used to capture them. There are hundreds of ways to produce creative blurs. My intention isn't to give you a comprehensive study of the concepts. Rather, my hope is that you'll enjoy viewing these images as much as I enjoyed creating them, and that they'll inspire you to…

In 1579, English sea captain Sir Francis Drake’s ship was in need of major repairs. He steered the tattered Golden Hind into Drakes Bay on the Point Reyes peninsula. After making the necessary repairs to his ship, he nailed a brass plate to a tree claiming the land for the queen and sailed away. Today, that land represents one of the most wildlife-rich areas in the country. Jutting 10 miles out into the Pacific Ocean, Point Reyes National Seashore sits just 30 miles north of the bustling activity of San Francisco. Yet when you sit on the cliffs of Drakes Bay, you feel like you have the place to yourself. I first discovered this national treasure nearly 25 years ago. Needing a reprieve from the grind of my job in…

Denali Grizzly By Carl Smith “It was ‘road lottery’ day at Denali National Park in Alaska. It's a rare gift to get drawn, and if you do, you can drive your own vehicle into the park as far as you dare. This was Sept. 17, and we were already feeling the first bite of winter that far north. We were just past the Eielson Visitor Center when we came upon this massive sow grizzly bear. She was rooting around in the tundra for late berries. This is one of the finest bears I've seen in Alaska, with no marks on her fur and ready for winter.” ➤ Canon EOS 7D, Sigma 150-600mm f/5-6.3 DG OS HSM Contemporary. Exposure: 1/180 sec., ƒ/5.6, ISO 400. See more of Carl Smith’s photography at…

I visited my first refuge, the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum, about 20 years ago, a few years after I finished college. The approximately 1,000-acre refuge is located on the southwest side of Philadelphia about 20 miles from where I grew up in southern New Jersey. It was also the first urban wildlife refuge in the United States Refuge System, a fact that I was unaware of during that visit. Back then, I didn’t know what a refuge was or that land was preserved so close to a city of more than 1.5 million people. The refuge sat next to U.S. Interstate 95, and it was noisy but it was a refuge—a refuge from the hustle and bustle of city life, a sanctuary for wildlife and a great…

Lake Martin and Cypress Island Preserve in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, is a haven for a variety of species of birds, reptiles and amphibians. A nature lover’s paradise, if you’re a nature photographer, this is the “it” spot in southern Louisiana. On one foggy morning this past January, serendipity allowed me to capture this magical moment. My original intent was to practice landscape photography in the fog. There’s an isolated tree in the lake that’s rather iconic, as almost everyone who has ever been to the lake photographs it, and it was the subject I had in mind. However, upon arriving, the fog was so thick over the lake that I knew it wouldn’t produce the image I had envisioned. I decided I’d wait for the fog to lift enough so…

“I never thought I would have the patience to photograph wildlife,” begins Marc Muench , explaining how he, raised in landscape photography, found a second passion in wildlife work. “I grew up traveling the west and all the wild, off-the-beaten-path locations … It was in these early years that I inherited my love of the land. And not just any land but wide open spaces.” A trip to Africa for the “Canon Photo Safari” television series on ESPN in the late 1990s (of which Outdoor Photographer was a sponsor) first exposed Muench to the practice of wildlife photography. He shares his approach to telling the stories of animals in the context of the landscapes that they inhabit in his article “Where Wildlife Runs Free.” The landscape is an essential element…

SONY’S a9 IS BUILT FOR SPEED Just in time for this wildlife-focused issue, Sony announced two products that will be especially interesting for wildlife photography: a new flagship camera in its full-frame mirrorless range, the a9 , and the fifth lens in its premium G Master lens line, the FE 100-400mm F4.5–5.6 GM OSS telephoto zoom. "The most technologically advanced, innovative digital camera that Sony has ever created," the a9 offers very impressive capabilities for all outdoor photographers and will be particularly advantageous for wildlife photography. It features an all-new 24.2-megapixel stacked CMOS sensor, which Sony notes, "enables data speed processing at up to 20x faster than previous Sony full-frame mirrorless cameras." Combined with a new 693-point focal plane phase detection AF system—which covers approximately 93 percent of the frame…

Location The southwestern United States is home to many natural arches and bridges. Terrestrial arches with present-day watercourses are uncommon. A notable exception occurs in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument at Coyote Gulch, where one can see several stages of arch development in Jurassic Navajo Sandstone adjacent to a perennial stream. Going down the canyon, you first see a curving, overhanging wall that’s similar to a typical arch. Next to it is an archway through a rock fin that’s bordered by the stream. There’s reason to believe that this arch will be enlarged in a geologically short time and that the stream will eventually flow under it. A third phase of development can be seen a short distance downstream, where erosion through a rock fin has progressed to the point that…

Photographing eagles at their nest is always challenging. Over the course of a recent summer, I was privileged to observe a pair of bald eagles as they raised two chicks on a lakeshore in Adirondack Park in upstate New York. FINDING PERSPECTIVE Apparently eagles, like humans, prefer high-rise waterfront views and pick their nesting tree accordingly. Since their nest, 100 feet up in an eastern white pine, was mostly visible from the water, I developed (after some experimentation) a shooting approach using a canoe. A friend made me a “legless” chair for the bottom of the canoe so I could sit in comfort and use the canoe like a kayak. This gave me an easily maneuverable and stable platform—most of the time. The biggest problem was drifting due to current…

Robin Moore's Night Frog Photography By SD Biju The 12.2mm-long Robin Moore’s Night Frog (Nyctibatrachus robinmoorei), pictured here sitting on an Indian 5 rupee coin (24mm diameter), is one of seven new species of night frogs discovered from the Western Ghats mountain ranges in Peninsular India. The frog, discovered by amphibian biologist SD Biju, was named for wildlife photographer and conservationist Robin Moore. “I honestly never imagined having a species named after me—it seemed too self-indulgent a thing to wish for, but I am humbled and honored by the fact that this beautiful frog now bears my name,” says Moore. “Biju has done so much to raise the profile of frogs in the land of the tiger, shining the spotlight on the plight of this most threatened group of vertebrates,…