Easter Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly

In defense of the planet...

Environmental Activism and photography have been bedfellows for a long time. From the photographs of William Henry Jackson, whose photographs in the 1870s later influenced the creation of Yellowstone National Park, through the later work of Elliot Porter, whose work in the Glen Canyon did not save the area from flooding but drew national attention to the environmental conflict, photographers have often fought "the good fight" to preserve the earth we inhabit.
Yes, the Earth has a tremendous capacity for renewal, and there are flowers blooming at Chernobyl. But do you ever wonder just how far we can push before we reach the end of Nature's potential to regenerate? If we lose this game, the stakes are very high.
So the next time some political genius asks, "How's that hopey/changey thing working for ya?", suggest that they ask the residents of the Gulf coast how "Drill, baby, drill" is working for them.

Map Treefrog (Hypsiboas geographicus)

Notice anything different about this Map Treefrog (Hypsiboas geographicus)?

How about its eyes? How about the different color of each eye? I can't explain the difference, and if anyone out there can shed some light on this, I would appreciate the information.

And yes, I moved the frog from the leaf to the other location. It was done very carefully, with minimal handling to avoid bruising. Amphibians have very delicate skin, and any bruises can encourage entry by parasites or fungi, leading to the death of the frog.
"Primum non nocere" remains the Golden Rule of responsible nature photography--"First, do no harm!"

Polkadot treefrog on water hyacynth in Peruvian Amazon

This little fellow was carefully placed on the water hyacinth several yards from the place where he was found. This environment is a natural one for him (or her), so the question is: Is this a captive specimen?
I think you could make valid arguments in either direction.
I was pleased with the aesthetics of the image, and was not overly concerned. The frog was free to travel and eventually hunkered around to the bottom of the leaf for the remainder of the day without any additional encouragement.
Technically, I was also pleased--fill flash was used to bring out some of the fine detail, but its effects are unobtrusive, as they should be.

Any comments?

Serendipity...or, "F8 and be there..."

Weegee extolled the value of being at the right place at the right time when he stated that the secret to a great image was "...f8 and be there...".
He was a photojournalist and his income depended upon "getting the shot".
We, as nature photographers, aren't quite under the same deadlines, but can still benefit from the need to
be aware of where we are and what is going on around us. This image is a pretty good example of how luck can trump preparation. Photographed during a night hike in Ecuador, these glass frogs were in flagrante delecto when a passing mosquito stopped for refreshment. Since this was a night shot, full flash was necessary, but I minimized the "black background effect" by filling the frame with leaf.

Leaf Mantis, Revisited

Just another look at the leaf mantis, this time from above.

Fill flash was used in natural light.

Fill Flash--Bring your Own Sun! (Part One)

Assassin Bug, Peruvian Amazon

Photographing from below can increase the sense of drama, especially if the subject is a predator, such as this assassin bug. If done well, it gives the viewer the feeling of being prey.

One of the technical problems, however, may be that light still falls from above, and the lower parts of the subject may be in shadow.

Full flash will light the subject, certainly, but then you have a harsh light, with the potential for those horrible (opinionated!) black backgrounds. A reflector might work, if your subject is dead, sleeping, or very passive.

Solution: Fill flash! Fill flash, when adjusted properly, supplies just enough light to "fill" those areas of darkness just enough to show the detail you want, without being overpowering.

One of the things that I appreciate most about digital photography is the immediate feedback that I get by looking at the LCD immediately after shooting. I can tell right away whether my lighting is effective or not, and make the appropriate adjustments. In the next several blogs, I will share my own techniques for fill-flash.

Islas Encantadas: The Enchanted Galapagos Islands

Yes, I know. It's not really a macro image.
But I really wanted to share some of these images.

ENJOY!!!

Click on the above title link or copy and paste it to travel to SCRIBD and the Enchanted Galapagos Islands:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/8426276/EnchantedGalapagos

FANTASY...

99% of the time, I work in Photoshop the way I used to work in the darkroom--I manipulate contrast and dynamic range with layer masks instead of paper grades. I do my dodging and burning on adjustment layers with a trackball (I must admit that I do miss waving my hands above the print as though I were performing ancient magics...). Every so often, however, I stray from the pure and unpolluted path and lose myself in the creative potential of the program.

This Morpho butterfly was photographed in bright noonday sunlight in Costa Rica. There must have been a 20 stop contrast range and I worked for hours, trying unsuccessfuly to create a reasonable image. Not even PhotoMatix (an HDR program) could salvage this one. So I said, "Let's ignore reality and just play".

And there you have it...

White Balance

Copy and paste the link below or click on the post title "White Balance" to go to a short article about White Balance:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/6455684/White-Balance

Bracketing in the digital age

Growth rarely seems to be one single epiphany, rarely a situation where one is suddenly faced with a new reality and yells, “AHA”!!! Archimedes notwithstanding, I think artistic growth is more often a series of small steps that delivers us to a new way of looking at our world.

When I was a beginning photographer, I would bracket (making multiple exposures at different camera settings) extensively, hoping desperately that at least one exposure would correctly translate my vision onto film. My wastebasket overflowed, but I learned eventually how to create a “good” exposure. (As long as I could remember which settings I had used for each image). As my skills increased, I found myself looking with disdain at the process of bracketing, seeing it as a sign of a shooter not really confident in his or her understanding of light and exposure. It was a great source of satisfaction to “nail” an exposure and having the confidence not to bracket. Seems pretty shallow in retrospect, eh?

Interesting that now as a digital photographer, I find myself bracketing probably more than ever. I no longer bracket for general exposure, the histogram having pretty much eliminated that worry. I do bracket for very specific exposure, such as the images I placed on the blog previously, in which the color range could not be captured with one exposure. I also bracket for dynamic range, where image contrast far exceeds what I can capture with one exposure. I also bracket for depth-of-field, using layer masks in Photoshop to blend images together in order to increase apparent depth-of-field. And of course, I bracket composition, often choosing my favorite image after the fact, on the computer screen.

“What goes around…”

P.S. The attached image has nothing to do with bracketing. I'm just having trouble letting go of summer. Sorry.

The End of Summer...

The second official day of autumn and I couldn't sleep, not ready for summer to end. In a futile attempt to hold it back, I share the above haiku/photograph combination, which is actually a late summer haiku, according to haiku master and friend Bill Higginson, who is responsible for the original translation of the Japanese poem as part of the Butterfly Dreams project.
The truth is, all things end. All we can do is hope for spring.

Butterfly House Photography:Tips and Techniques

Well, that last one worked so well, I thought I'd try it again.
Click on the title above to go to a pdf:

Enjoy!!

and thanks to Jeanine Leech (http://www.doubleplaydesigns.com/) for layout assistance!

Thought I would try something a bit different this time. Click on the link

Photography on the Peruvian Amazon

to go to a pdf about my favorite photographic place. Please let me know if it works.
Thanks.

End of...the Season

our garden,

long past prime...

bleeding hearts

Grasshopper--a Haiku Photograph

I don’t think of my photographs as being “minimalist” necessarily, but I can’t deny that I look for simplicity. Two of my earliest influences were Japanese ink block artists Hiroshige and Hokusai.

What I learned:

• Not every square millimeter of image space needs to be filled.

• Space that contains nothing may make a significant contribution to the impact of the image; it sets off the subject as a beautiful setting sets off a diamond. It gives the subject a space to move into, thus aiding in establishing a story— establishing potential for future movement.

• Negative space is not the same as empty space. Empty space is merely empty space--it contains nothing, contributes nothing. Negative space has no content but offers possibility, and contains potential.
  

Back to haiku:
While my son Ben was living in Washington D.C., we went to an exposition of prints by Hokusai at the Smithsonian. I recall an image which showed a meticulously drawn branch, leaves, and flowers, but nowhere to be seen were the birds after which the painting was named. Perhaps the birds were sitting on the branch when he began the painting; perhaps he could simply hear their songs as he was painting; perhaps he simply imagined that branch as an ideal roosting place for the birds; perhaps…
See what I mean? Haiku photographs are all about possibilities.

Color Problems: Part 3

I then take a second exposure, using values that bring the red histogram back within reasonable range. I say reasonable because there may be spikes of red and yellow which are simply NOT capture-able (is that a word?) by your sensor. This looks like a pretty under-exposed image on the LCD, but I take it anyway.

When both images are opened in Camera Raw (or whatever software you use), there is visible detail in the darker one within the areas of red that were blown out on the original exposure. When I blend those two together, I have one image which maintains detail throughout.

Color Problems: Part 1

Yes, I know it's not a bug, but I will use it anyway to illustrate a point that I stumbled over recently while photographing birds with Matthew Studebaker, who is a superb workshop leader and an encyclopedia of avian knowledge.

The luminance (black-and-white) histogram for this bird read just fine in the field, with no obvious burnt-out highlights. Imagine my surprise when I opened the image in Camera Raw and found that there was a color highlight burnt out to the point where it was not even retrievable! The yellow on this bird's chest and throat contains NO detail. I could not even use my trick of bringing over two images and blending them--even grossly underexposed, sorry, NO detail in the yellow. Ray Klass, Photoshop Guru extraordinaire, showed me an another technique, an old printer's trick called "plate blending", which has to do with bringing detail from one channel back into the original image. The problem is that there has to be detail in one channel to begin with. In this image there was none. A potentially interesting shot, but unusable.

This image awakened me to the purpose of the RGB histogram which Nikon has so kindly included in most of their newer cameras.

Crab Spider on Datura

Two items of interest here. One is the neat way that the spider's arm recapitulates the curve of the datura's petal. This is pure serendipity--you can move some insects around to pose them--the arachnids generally are not amenable to that type of manipulation and will usually head underneath the flower.

The second issue is the white flower. For hairy insects (yes, I know--a spider is not an insect), I like to use fill flash to help the little hairs stand out a bit more. It is very easy to over-expose whites, and I rely heavily on my histogram to prevent this. With whites, the luminance histogram (black and white) is quite adequate. With colors, particularly reds and yellows, the luminance histogram may not tell the entire story, as we will see in the next post.

Another Dragonfly...

Yes, another dragonfly picture. I like this one a bit better than the first I posted. This has a softer entry into the frame--the triangle of grasses doesn't come in quite as abruptly from the lower edge, allowing the insect to float upwards. The stem on which the dragonfly is perched is angled in the opposite direction as the grass stems in the background, lending a bit of tension to the image. And I like how the two dewy strands of spiderweb recapitulate the dewy whiteness of the wingtips.
What I don't like--I wish I had used a shallower depth-of-field, so the background grasses would be just a bit less distinct and distracting. Often a change from f8 to f5.6 will be enough to give you a softer background. Of course, I know that in theory--I just wish I had thought of it in the field. This would be difficult to blur in Photoshop because of all the interacting lines, some foreground or subject, some background.