Grand Canyon by Raft Trip Report

On May 13th we completed our ten-day, 226-mile raft trip down the Grand Canyon, that I led with Visionary Wild instructor Jack Dykinga. An amazing group of ten clients plus our superb AZRA boat crew of Randy Tucker and Katie Proctor made the trip one of the best we’ve ever done. Drawing on insights gained on earlier trips down the Colorado River, we were able to pull off a phenomenal itinerary, including some well-known Grand Canyon highlights and some little-known spots that are a photographer’s dream. We’re planning a repeat next year, so stay tuned to the website and our newsletter for details. All of the images in the following gallery were on this trip. Participant Chuck Turner is producing a series of blog posts on the trip, available by CLICKING HERE. Jack Dykinga and I are planning another Grand Canyon raft trip for May 2013, and we invite interested parties to contact us at info@visionarywild.com to be added to the waiting list. We hope you’ll join us! –Justin Black

Expedition Report: Arizona Overland

Around the campfire, Visionary Wild Arizona Overland Expedition. © Justin Black

 There is nothing like exploring sublime landscapes with a group of friends who share a love for photography and wide open spaces. Immediately after the Thanksgiving holiday, Jack Dykinga, Jeff Foott, and I led a week-long overland photo expedition with nine other passionate photographers, visiting some stunning backcountry areas in northern Arizona. As the guest of a gracious Navajo elder, we first explored and photographed a very special location characterized by dramatic red rock sandstone hoodoos and dinosaur footprints 200 million years old. We then traversed over twenty miles of sandy 4WD jeep trails to one of our very favorite Colorado Plateau locations, a photographer’s paradise of swirling petrified sand dunes, intimate abstract designs, and grand vistas overlooking the Grand Staircase leading down to the Grand Canyon. Our merry band was joined by Chris Collard, Editor-in-Chief of Overland Journal magazine, Laurie Rubin of Nik Software, and Tom Hanagan of Four Wheel Campers.

Visionary Wild photographers, Arizona Overland Expedition. © Chris Collard

 The days were so full of photographic opportunities that many of us had to force ourselves to take a break in order to get some food and a nap, and the photography didn’t end at dusk. Working by the light of our headlamps, we set up Nikons with MC-36 intervalometers to shoot five-hour multi-exposure star trail images, the results of which can be seen in Jack Dykinga’s stunning image in the gallery below.  After a week of intense photography and fulfilling camaraderie, we exchanged hugs, said our farewells, and set off toward home.

The Arizona Overland Expedition was a prototype, testing a model for more overland adventures to come. Stay tuned for exciting overland trips in 2012.

–Justin Black

Here are some highlights submitted by the group.

Evening light on hoodoo garden, Navajo Nation, Arizona. © Julie Furber

Colorado Plateau, northern Arizona. © Sean Stuchen

© Sean Stuchen

© Ed Kenney

"The Beast." © Laurie Rubin

© Wally Reichert

Teamwork while photographing 200-million-year-old dinosaur footprints. © Chris Collard

Dilophosaurus dinosaur tracks, 200 million years old. © Jack Dykinga

Hoodoos beneath the Milky Way. © Jack Dykinga

Colorado Plateau details. © Jack Dykinga

Petrified sand dune sculpture, Colorado Plateau, Arizona. © Justin Black

Morning on the Colorado Plateau, Arizona. © Justin Black

Hoodoos in last light, Navajo Nation, Arizona. © Justin Black

Moon over hoodoos, Navajo Nation, Arizona. © Justin Black

Sandstone sculpture, Colorado Plateau, Arizona. © Justin Black

Petrified sand dune detail, Colorado Plateau. © Jeff Foott

Eroded sandstone "fins," Colorado Plateau. © Jeff Foott

Visionary Wild Arizona Overland Expedition. © Chris Collard

Grand Canyon by Raft: Multimedia

This video featuring photographs by Jack Dykinga and Justin Black from previous Grand Canyon raft trips captures the beauty, majesty, and intimacy of a photographic adventure in the canyon. Add marvelous camaraderie and bit of adventure and you’ve got an experience you’ll never forget!

Click here for details about our Grand Canyon by Raft trip, May 3-14, 2012

Daniel Beltrá wins Wildlife Photographer of the Year Award at London gala

At a gala event in London sponsored by Veolia Environnement, Visionary Wild instructor Daniel Beltrá has won the 2011 Wildlife Photographer of the Year Award for his image Still Life in Oil, a striking shot of eight brown pelicans rescued from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in June 2010.

Beltrá made the photograph at an ad hoc bird-rescue facility on the Louisiana coast. ‘Crude oil trickles off the feathers of the rescued brown pelicans, turning the white lining sheets into a sticky, stinking mess. The pelicans are going through the first stage of cleaning. They’ve already been sprayed with a light oil to break up the heavy crude trapped in their feathers,’ Beltrá explained. A statement from the judging panel described the image as ‘a strong environmental statement, technical perfection and a work of art all rolled into one. The sheer simplicity of this powerful image makes it really beautiful and shocking at the same time’

The international judging panel of respected wildlife experts and nature photographers reviewed more than 40,000 entries from aspiring amateurs and established professional photographers from all corners of the earth. As a sign of the competition’s growing international reach, this year saw first-time submissions from countries as far afield as Cambodia, Moldova, Brunei and Kyrgyzstan. There was also a notable increase in photographs submitted from countries such as India, China and Russia.

Now in its 47th year, the competition is owned by the Natural History Museum and BBC Wildlife Magazine and is sponsored by Veolia Environnement. It is internationally recognised for taking a lead in the artistic representation of the natural world and continues to be held in high esteem with a reputation for being the Oscars of the wildlife photographic calendar.

The winning images will be featured in an international exhibition beginning at the Natural History Museum, London, on Friday 21 October

This important photograph is presently touring as part of Beltrá’s exhibit, Spill, at the Long Beach Aquarium in California, and at Roca Gallery in Barcelona, Spain. Limited edition prints are avaible as follows:

Oil Spill #20 – Still Life in Oil 

2010

Chromogenic Print

Limited Editions:    Mounted Size:    Price: 

 8                                        48 x 60                     $10,250

10                                       40 x 48                     $5,500

15                                       25 x 30                      $3,500

Prices are for unframed, museum quality mounted, archival prints.

Shipping and sales tax not included.  For more information and edition availability, contact Susan Newbold at danielbeltra.studio@gmail.com.

Iceland Expedition Video

Visionary Wild instructor, Polar explorer Chris Linder produced this stunning video featuring his photographs from his latest expedition to Iceland this past August with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute researchers. Chris and landscape photographer Justin Black will lead a photo expedition for nine passionate photographers August 12-19, 2012, which will visit Iceland’s puffin colonies, coastal landscapes, glaciers, iceberg-filled bays, and dramatic volcanic interior. Click here for more information about this exciting expedition!

Photographing with Purpose

The November 2011 issue of Outdoor Photographer magazine features an article by Justin Black about ways to add greater meaning and purpose to your photography. You can read the full text and see the accompanying photos here:

Photographing with Purpose by Justin Black

Snow-covered bristlecone snag in the Schulman Grove, Inyo National Forest, White Mountains, California

Visionary Wild instructor Chris Linder releases new book: Science on Ice!

“Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised,” wrote Apsley Cherry-Garrard of his time with the 1910 Scott expedition to the South Pole. And that’s how most of us still imagine polar expeditions: stolid men with ice riming their beards drawing sledges and risking death for scientific knowledge. But polar science has changed drastically over the past century—as Chris Linder shows us, brilliantly, with Science on Ice.

Chris Linder will join Justin Black to lead Visionary Wild’s 2012 Iceland Photo Expedition, August 12-18.

Review of Science on Ice:

“Science on Ice gives the reader a glimpse into the challenges of conducting field research in the extreme and isolated environments of the Arctic and Antarctic. I came away with a new appreciation of both the risks and adventures scientists experience, the creativity and adaptability they must possess to work in difficult conditions, and most of all, the fact that they are normal human beings with a strong sense of curiosity that fuels their work. This book will help us understand these distant reaches of our world, and] it has enormous potential to spark the minds of future would-be scientists.”—Amy Gulick, photographer and author ofSalmon in the Trees: Life in Alaska’s Tongass Rain Forest

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo8968738.html

Exposure Modes: Is Program OK?

A question recently came in asking if it is ok to use the camera’s program mode, as opposed to manual, aperture priority, or shutter priority. Other than being bound by the laws of physics, there is little or nothing in photography that requires orthodoxy, “right” or “wrong,” “ok” or “not ok.” Shooting in Program mode is fine if that’s how the photographer chooses to shoot and if it doesn’t get in the way of making the envisioned photograph. As with any photographic tool or technique, however, I’d always recommend that the photographer understand what the camera is doing and be able to express the reasons he or she is choosing to use that particular mode over another one.

I primarily do landscape work. Back in the days of shooting color transparency film, virtually all of my work was spot metered and shot in manual mode, because film was unforgiving and that level of careful precision was how I achieved the best possible results. Now, with digital, the way the medium responds to light is different, so calculating optimal exposure is different. The color Matrix meters these days are quite good at evaluating not only overall luminance, but also the tonal range of each color channel (red-green-blue), so they have certain advantages over traditional metering methods when it comes to exposing to match the performance of the sensor in the camera. We are also able to confirm the exposure we want with the histogram, so for many types of photography there is a good argument to be made that shooting in an automatic mode makes the most sense most of the time. It is always possible to bias the exposure one way or the other using exposure compensation, and to shift shutter speed and aperture as desired.

There are certainly exceptions, but since going [almost] all digital, I am mostly using aperture priority, auto white balance, and Matrix metering. I shoot RAW 100% of the time, expose for maximum data/minimum noise (biased toward overexposure without clipping color channels, otherwise known as exposing to the right), and set correct tonalities, color balance, black point, etc. in post processing. I could achieve the same results in Program mode, but it would require the extra step of shifting the exposure to the aperture or shutter speed I wish to use.

At the end of the day, it’s important to identify and understand a simple set of camera settings, tools, and techniques that are legitimately helpful in making the images you want to create, and then concentrate your attention on concepts, themes, light, composition, color, and gesture. As a photographer, one of your goals should be to get the camera out of the way of your vision and creativity.  –Justin Black

Being There

A new photography site called PhotographyTalk.com recently recruited me to serve as a professional contributor to their forums, and while browsing recent posts I came across a topic in one of the forums asking which is more important, the act of recording the original raw image or the post-processing necessary to create the final photograph that represents the photographer’s expression of the image. It got me thinking that there’s something more important than either of those options: the experience of simply being there.

Just being present to witness whatever it is we choose to photograph, even if no image is recorded, is of tremendous value. For instance, I tend to be out “in the field” before dawn only when I plan to photograph at sunrise, and I’m incredibly grateful that over the years photography has provided the motivation. The time I’ve spent out in the pre-dawn light watching the first rays of the sun play across the atmosphere and landscape is precious to me. I can’t count the number of places that photography has taken me, and I’d rather have those experiences and memories incorporated into my being than a set of perfect photographs but no memories or lessons learned. One of the greatest things about photography is that it encourages us to get out, look into the world, and be a part of events that we might not otherwise encounter.

Of course, I take for granted that every image for which I have a meaningful application will require some amount of work, be it basic RAW conversion or more involved Photoshop work, to prepare it for publication or printing. I also consider processing essential in terms of my expression of what I am trying to communicate to the viewer. So, yes, it is important, and as Ansel said (and I paraphrase) it’s like the performance of a musical score, but give me the personal memory of an exceptional moment in nature over a perfect finished print any day. In our long rush to master technology and technique, it’s important to remember to live life to the fullest and make the most of every new experience we’re fortunate enough to have.

–Justin Black

First light over the Owens River, Eastern Sierra, California, by Justin Black

Jack Dykinga Interview Slideshow

Jack Dykinga on Mark Godfrey Selects

Nature Conservancy Director of Photography Mark Godfrey recently interviewed Visionary Wild instructor Jack Dykinga for this multimedia slideshow featuring some of Jack’s best work.

Iceland: Expedition Scouting

Polar explorer and photographer Chris Linder traveled to Iceland In mid-August with a group of fellow Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute associates, in part to scout locations for next year’s Visionary Wild expedition, tentatively scheduled for August 19 – 26, 2012. In the following report from the field, Chris has kindly shared his thoughts and a few images from the trip. Watch for details about the 2012 Iceland Expedition in the coming weeks.

Scouting Iceland

or… In the land of Gore-Tex and Speedos

by Chris Linder

As I lounged in a geothermally heated river watching the last rays of sunlight play across tan and maroon rhyolite hills in the Icelandic highlands, I pondered how to characterize a workshop here without resorting to the “fire and ice” cliché.  Even after multiple visits to Iceland’s most photogenic destinations over the last ten years, I was about to concede defeat: the cliché has its merits.

Iceland sits astride the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates are pulling apart.  This causes the “fire”—geothermally active areas comprise nearly a third of Iceland’s land area (including the soothing pool I was relaxing in).  This geothermal activity, manifested in steaming fumaroles, spurting geysers, and bubbling mudpots, is one reason why the Icelandic landscape has such an otherworldly beauty.  Couple this heat with the “ice”—sprawling glaciers like Vatnajökull (the largest ice cap in Europe) and iceberg-filled lagoons, and there you have it…  In my humble opinion, one of the most photogenic countries in the world.

This scouting trip was an intensive journey through nearly all of Iceland’s landscapes, from puffin-encrusted cliffs in the Westfjords to the remote and rugged Highlands.  With our trusty Jeep Cherokee, my companions and I drove many kilometers of two-track and forded more rivers than I can count – most routes through the Highlands are not bridged.

14,000 photographs later, I’m ready to plan out an adventure in August 2012 for a select group of photographers to my favorite places in Iceland.  Stay tuned to the Visionary Wild site for more details.

So what to do about the cliché?  As I watched bathers scamper across the boardwalk to the hot spring under a spattering of cold rain, a thought came to mind: land of Gore-Tex and Speedos?  I think I’ll have to keep working on it….

An Eye-Opening Twilight

by Justin Black

The very American artistic tradition of celebrating the concept of wilderness, associated so closely with photographers like Ansel Adams and Galen Rowell, reached an early zenith in the mid 19^th century with the Hudson River School painters. Their work attempted to capture exceptional qualities of light, topography, and weather to render idealized visions – not always far from the truth ­– of sublime landscapes across the continent, from the Catskills to California, in which humanity is often permitted to be present but never dominates.

It is hard not to characterize the light captured with oil on canvas by the likes of Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Church, and Sanford Gifford as “photographic” while we often refer to comparable light in photographs as “painterly.” We still see and photograph similarly sublime scenes in wild areas across America today. A key difference is that the Hudson River School artists experienced a view of nature and our place in it that was entirely new, but our vision still works the same way theirs did 150 years ago.

In fact, this piece by Gifford once helped to open my eyes to the way we see and go about capturing images of the world around us.

His painting depicts three tiny figures on a frozen pond, with a fence line and shrubbery in the foreground, and a row of trees in the background. The trees’ bare branches are silhouetted against a colorful evening sky. Something about the way the artist rendered the highlights and shadows in the image seemed oddly familiar…

Back in the film days, frustration with the limited range of tones that photographers could capture led to the development of solutions like graduated neutral density filters that enabled us to easily balance differences in brightness between two or more areas of a composition. The apparent flaw of grad ND filters, however, has always been that when an object is itself entirely in shadow but crosses over from dark to bright backgrounds within the composition, the filter gives away its effect because the section of the object that is against the brighter background (the area being darkened by the dense part of the filter) ends up going black, while the part of the same object that falls against the shaded background (not being effected by the filter) shows good mid-tone detail.

In Gifford’s painting, objects in the area of shade at the bottom of the painting displayed good shadow detail, while the tops of the trees against the brighter sky and were painted as black silhouettes – exactly the sort of rendering I had seen time and time again in color slides made using a graduated neutral density filter. But the painter had never seen a color photograph, much less the effect of a grad ND filter, so why would Gifford paint the tops of his trees black when good detail is readily apparent in similarly illuminated subject matter within the scene?

Without resorting to complex darkroom masking, a film photographer attempting to render good color saturation in the bright sky behind the trees would have had no choice but to force the silhouette and the accompanying loss of detail in the branches. Gifford on the other hand, with the unrestricted palette of artistic freedom at his command, chose to paint the trees this way. It’s the way he visualized them and what looked most natural to him as he applied paint to canvas.

To put it simply, the silhouette of branches against the sky is precisely how he saw it – and how any of us would see  – despite the fact that the light source for the illumination of the treetops is the same as that in the shadowy parts of the scene that he chose to paint a bit lighter and with good detail. This makes sense: when we look at an object illuminated by diffuse indirect light against a dark background, our visual system sees good detail in it. The same object illuminated by the same light but against a sufficiently bright background will look black as our visual system responds to the increased overall brightness. This is precisely the reason why, when used carefully, graduated neutral density can make an image look more like what we saw with our own eyes.

Fast forward to the present day. Finally, digital technology empowers photographers in the early 21^st century with a degree of control and creative freedom comparable to that of a 19^th century oil painter. In comparison, however, photographers have it easy – no need to sketch numerous detailed studies in the field for use as artist’s references in the creation of the final piece later, and no need to labor for weeks on end to complete a single finished work.

The tradeoff of course for our powerful digital tools is a greater burden of creative and aesthetic judgments. As wonderful as they are, all the array of technological tools at our disposal are only as good as the eyes and brains used to apply them. High dynamic range processing (HDR), for example, can create visually striking images, but the lure to routinely over process can be seductive. When technology guides the creative process rather than serving as a tool under the thoughtful control of the artist, we can experience more difficulty in aesthetically and intuitively accepting an over-manipulated photograph of a real scene than we do a naturalistic 19^th-century oil painting of a scene that only ever existed in the artist’s mind.

HDR and other new tools are not the problem, but we are faced with an broader array of decisions that influence the quality, relevance, and character of our work. We take for granted the immense power of post-production tools that enable us to radically lighten and enhance detail in a shadow area – that back in the film days might have been rendered as pure black by default – while simultaneously rendering finely detailed bright highlights. We have the technology to do it, but one has to carefully consider when, how, and how much to use the tools in the digital toolbox, and whether each modification really serves the image. We can boost saturation and contrast of the most banal composition to the point that it grabs visual attention, but will it mesh with our visual intuition and actually hold up aesthetically over the long term?

Finding ourselves with complete and easy control over the color and tonal value of every pixel in every photograph we produce, photographic artists can enjoy the freedom of total creative license. Like a painter, we have the option to render the treetops as silhouette, or instead can choose to depict them as richly detailed mid tones against the same bright and vibrant background. Gifford conspicuously chose the approach that is more in accord with naturalistic visual perception despite his ability to have depicted it any way he wished.

In the context of a world filled with high-definition digital animation and fantasy photo-illustration, it is truer than ever that the most meaningful nature photographs will be those that inform us in some way about real nature and our relationship to it. These images may be spectacularly beautiful; they may reveal situations, phenomena, and juxtapositions in nature that seem unbelievable, uplifting, or devastatingly depressing; but the greatest power of nature photography stems from the trust that the image we find so compelling is also representative of another human being’s authentic experience.

Interestingly, A Winter Twilight doesn’t depict an actual event in time and space. Concealed by Gifford’s masterful rendering of light and tone is the fact that it is an imagined composite of real situations that he sketched in various locations and at all hours of the day rather than during the fleeting twilight depicted in the final painting. His highly tuned ability to see and visualize a final composition, however, enabled him to create a fairly convincing illusion of reality back in his New York studio. Though we photographers work on location and in the moment, we can still learn a great deal from the impressive visual intuition, understanding of light, and thoughtful aesthetic choices demonstrated by Gifford and other painters like him. As fast as the times, technology, and tastes may change, we share a profound connection with our antecedents through the human visual system.

Pro Tip from Jeff Foott: “Shooting the Scene”

There’s a story behind every image. A combination of visual cognition, emotional response, thoughtful investigation, composition, technical judgments, and timing (among other factors) play into the creation of the best photographs. It’s a process of purpose.

Visionary Wild instructor Jeff Foott recently shared with us a series of teaching images that he uses to as part of a lecture designed to shed some light on the process of, as he calls it, “shooting the scene.” While walking along a stream near his home in Moab, Utah, Jeff’s attention was captured by this frozen puddle among the rocks. His first reaction was to make a record photograph of the scene as he saw it at first glance – “frozen puddle among rocks” – isolated within the broader landscape.

Recognizing that it was the graphics, tones, and textures of the puddle itself that were what appealed to him visually, Jeff chose to make it a close-up, isolating the frozen puddle from the rocks.

The scene then became the puddle itself, and Jeff sought out compositions within it. He points out, “This is the kind of thing that you can shoot all day, looking for the new compositions and treatments. If you’ve got a great scene to work with, stick with it.” We would add that when looking for abstract close-up compositions, it can help to let go of preconceived notions of what the subject is supposed to look like. Be open to reframing the nature of the subject in new ways.

A good exercise in this sort of situation is to speak out loud what it is that you want to make a picture of, and then gradually modify that statement through a series of images. In this case, that statement started with the very literal “frozen puddle among rocks,” and ends with “abstraction of form, tone, and texture.”

All photos © 2010 Jeff Foott

Bioluminescence on the Sonoma Coast, by Jerry Dodrill

Bioluminescence

For years I’ve heard unbelievable stories about people’s surreal night time experiences in the ocean with glowing plankton blooms, but until recently I’d never seen it myself. The tip off came from Ellen Cruz, a friend from Bodega Bay who sent a note about an experience she’d just had on the Sonoma County coast: 

…the ocean was illuminated as if under a black light…so awesome, cannot describe in words…no need to drop acid on this one…every white particle of wave was iridescent, florescent, glowing like you can’t believe…step on the sand and your footprint glows and sparkles… there were banks of waves coming in, white caps in the distance just glowed, and when the waves connected it was elongated strips of fluorescent green stripes across the water… whew…

This strange oceanic occurrence is likely the root of ghost stories told by early sailors who saw the mysterious green fire in the water but failed to comprehend what they were seeing. Documented as far back as 500 B.C., most bioluminescent light occurs in tiny plants called dinoflagellates which live in the sea and gain energy from the photosynthesis of sunlight. In darkness they emit a blue light in response to movement within the water. The intensity of the light peaks about two hours after dark and is simply amazing to watch. During the day they turn red and can be the source of the neurotoxin that poisons shell fish during Red Tides.

After receiving Ellen’s note, and being somewhat fascinated by natural optical phenomena, my mind immediately began pre-visualizing how I could make an interesting photograph. I often try to imagine best-case situations that might occur in nature. The trick is to carefully consider the conditions which would be necessary for a scenario to occur and then consciously reverse engineer it and attempt to put yourself on location at just the right time while being prepared to capture the moment. Something magical often ends up happening, even if it is somewhat different than what you had imagined.

As I pondered the complexity of making an evocative image of the psychedelic tides I felt that the images would look very alien if there wasn’t an earthly land form with which the viewer can easily identify. I started piecing together two ideas that I thought I could achieve in the same night. I’d seen the first sliver of a moon the night before, just after sunset, and knew that the next day it would be about fifty minutes higher in the sky. So I wanted to first make an image of the crescent moon setting at twilight above the breakers and Arched Rock near Jenner. The second image I was visualizing was a long exposure at the cusp of night where I would have just enough light to see the arch, and enough darkness for the dinoflagellates to show up in the water.

I checked the wunderground.com weather satellite which showed crystal clear skies, then double checked the angle of the moon relative to the arch by using a very useful software for such things called The Photographer’s Ephemeris. All the elements seemed to align and it looked like a promising evening.

I pulled up at Goat Rock Beach in Sonoma Coast State Park right about sunset, (which-oops!- is when the Park closes), geared up in rubber boots and wind gear and headed south down Blind Beach in gorgeous light that I would normally have been shooting. This time I was on a mission for something more mysterious than a sunset but at one point I did stop and made a few exposures of boney rocks protruding from the sand with crazy beams of light coming over the horizon. This was an early and unexpected bonus shot. As the light diminished I came to where the convergence of the setting moon and the sea arch were just perfect.

The first set of images were exactly what I expected. In years past I’d made similar images here with the full moon setting at sunrise into the Earth’s shadow. What I didn’t expect this time is that my camera’s sensor was picking up the Milky Way directly above the Arch! This added a layer of intrigue to the image that was far beyond what I’d imagined. Soon the starry night was fully visible to the naked eye.

If the moon had been larger or higher I believe its light would have polluted the clear, cold night sky and blown out the reflection in the water. But it was just slight enough that the relative contrast between the starlight and reflections fell into a range which could be handled if I was careful. But it was the bioluminescence that was most incredible. Each waved rolled in looking like a million neon glow sticks had been dumped into them. The blue-green light shot across the breakers as they crashed, the more wave energy released, the more light emitted. The backwash on the beach left momentary trails of light which resembled a million little galaxies.

I was in “the zone” watching wave sets, adjusting exposures as it got darker and darker, moving south down the beach as the moon traversed to the north, trying to keep my juxtaposition with Arched Rock in alignment. It was a bit ridiculous to realize a shot like this had come together: crescent moon shining through the arch under the Milky Way with the glowing ocean. Then as if in a nod to affirm all was okay in the universe, I watched in awe as a brilliant shooting star streaked across the sky above the arch while I had the shutter open. All the while I was very aware that I should not have parked my car in the heavily patrolled parking lot.

The moon was finally setting so I packed and hiked across the beach toward the car, arriving just as two park rangers stepped out of their cruiser with spot lights on. “Hello!” I called out of the darkness in attempt to not get myself Tazed as I stepped into the blinding beams with a big tripod on my shoulder. I received the full lecture from them (the park closes at sunset…we don’t want to have to come looking for you…) and apologized sheepishly. They wanted to know what I was doing out there. Still buzzing from an incredible experience, I pulled out the camera and offered to show them. The three of us huddled in the wind with our heads close to the back of my Nikon’s LCD and looked through the entire image set frame by frame while dispatch ran my plates and ID. The officers have one of the best office views in the state out their front windshield and were excited to see my photographic interpretation of what they see every day. As it turns out we share mutual friends and a deep connection for preserving California’s wild coast. I didn’t get a ticket that night. Instead I walked away with a couple of new friends, some images with which I’m really happy, and the good info on where to park the car for my next outing.

-Jerry Dodrill

Sebastopol, CA

Visionary Wild instructor Jerry Dodrill will co-lead two workshops on the California coast with Justin Black in 2012, at Point Reyes National Seashore in March and on the Sonoma Coast in September. We hope you can join us.

http://www.jerrydodrill.com

More info:

Bioluminescence: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioluminescence

Sonoma Coast State Park: http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=451

Pocket Light Meter App for iPhone

My light meter of choice for close to two decades has been the Pentax Digital Spot. My first act when setting out into the landscape to photograph with my old 4×5 view camera was invariably to hang the pistol-gripped device around my neck. It went everywhere with me, and determining exposures with it, including filter factors, reciprocity failure of film, and camera bellows extension became second nature.

Though today’s digital cameras make hand-held meters unnecessary for most landscape photography, from time to time I still encounter situations when it would be handy to be able to take a meter reading independent of the camera. Incredibly, the iPhone delivers a solution that is very practical, effective, and free!

Nuwaste Studios has developed a spectacular light meter app for iPhones. It will read down to EV -1.78 and can be used to calculate accurate exposures longer than you would ever need (hundreds of hours). It can be calibrated as well if necessary, though in comparison to both my Pentax meter and my Nikon D700, it is right on the money. The correction factor comes in really handy, however, for film users who need to account for filter factors or reciprocity failure. In addition to shutter speed and aperture, it also reads out in EV, Lux, Foot Candles, and Cine shutter speeds. If this were a stand-alone digital light meter, it would cost $200 or more.

The next time I need to do an exposure longer than 30 seconds, or if I’ve got my camera all locked down on the tripod and don’t want to move it to take an in-camera meter reading, I’ll just grab my iPhone! –Justin Black

Download here: Pocket Light Meter by Nuwaste Studios

New Work: Jack Dykinga

Monsoon storm lightning strikes hillside silhouetted saguaro cactus, Carnegiea gigantea, Sonoran Desert National Monument, Arizona. © 2011 Jack Dykinga

Shooting lightning is easy.  Finding a situation where an active lightning storm completes the composition is really hard. In order to get this image, I trailed and passed through the storm front, continually finding potential cactus subjects…only to reject them as the storm continued to push onward.  Finally, I got far enough ahead to let the storm transition into my frame.  Focusing became the hardest problem to overcome.  Finally hung my headlamp on the tree and focused  on the beam.  Lots of very hard, wet work with no sleep! –Jack Dykinga

Technical details: 7.5 seconds @ f/9.0, ISO 100, Nikon D3X, Nikkor AF-S 70-300 VR, Really Right Stuff BH-55 ballhead, Really Right Stuff tripod

Photo Salon: The Value of Critique

by Justin Black

The lone-wolf photographer is a concept with which we are all familiar. Many of us like to think of ourselves as self-reliant and passionately free-spirited, driven only by an innate creative vision. In my experience, however, most of the people I know who have mastered anything haven’t done it on their own. They’ve done it through interaction with others.

One of the most important experiences in my formative years was in George Washington University’s small but excellent photography program, founded by a landscape photographer named Jerry Lake. Professor Lake treated his students like family and regularly joined us on weekend photography outings, an act of “above and beyond” generosity to be sure. Back in the studio, students and professors alike would regularly pin up prints in a common area and critique each others’ work. The atmosphere was open and supportive, and everyone felt free to share their work and honest opinions. We all benefitted tremendously from the process of peer review and constructive critique.

One of the many prints that benefitted from critique by my peers in the GWU Photo Dept. "Dawn at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers, Harper's Ferry, West Virginia." © 1994 Justin Black

In the early days of my photography career, I began to miss the honest and constructive feedback of other photographers, so a friend invited me to participate in Photo Salon, an informal group of serious photographers who met each month at a photo studio outside Washington, DC. Work prints were spread across a huge table, everyone would circle around, look them over, ask questions, share impressions, and offer suggestions.  Each of us would have the opportunity to say a little bit about what we were working on and what challenges we faced as we developed our body of work. There was a documentary photographer following the stories of cancer patients, a portraitist doing a book project on transvestites, a fellow who created beautiful abstracts in abandoned industrial sites, and my landscapes among several others. With so many different genres coming together in one place, we each left our comfort zone and benefitted from the insights of professional peers who were all sophisticated visual communicators despite coming from differing interests and backgrounds.

These experiences taught me the art of constructive critique that I regularly apply to this day as a workshop instructor, and they drove home the tremendous value of gathering with other serious photographers in a spirit of camaraderie to discuss aesthetics, themes, techniques, ethics, potential outlets and markets, and myriad other topics. As much as I value creative independence and cherish solitude when I can find it, it seems to me that engaging with a community of passionate and insightful peers is one of the most personally and artistically rewarding activities any photographer can undertake. It is with this knowledge that I look forward eagerly to every workshop critique session and the happy déjà vu experienced every time a participant tells me that they learned far more from the critiques than they ever imagined possible. I have indeed been there before.

On Assignment: The Dragon Run

by Justin Black

The Dragon rippled as I slid the kayak out into the swamp’s caramel-brown water. The still quiet of pre-dawn was broken only by the song of a prothonotary warbler, a croaking bullfrog, the sudden splash of a jumping sunfish. Gliding along on the glassy surface past lush swamp plants – arrow arum, water lilies, swamp rose, the lovely purple poker-like blooms of pickerelweed – and under the spreading branches of bald cypress, their conical “knees” emerging from the water in rows like the Dragon’s teeth, I felt completely removed from the Tidewater Virginia farmland that encircled me beyond the forest. Entering this place was like time-travel.

I had come to photograph the landscape of Dragon Run Swamp, the wild centerpiece Virginia’s Middle Peninsula, on assignment for the The Nature Conservancy which had recently protected the watershed in a Manhattan-sized conservancy, Virginia’s largest at 20,000 acres (80.9 square km). As one of the healthiest and cleanest wetlands in the Chesapeake region, this exceptional conservancy serves as a model for other watersheds around the Bay, making it an interesting point of reference as the International League of Conservation Photographers (iLCP), where I was serving as Executive Director, prepared to send a team of photographers on a Rapid Assessment Visual Expedition (RAVE) in summer 2010. This unique ecosystem has been ranked second in ecological significance among 232 areas investigated in a Smithsonian Institution study covering 12,600 square miles of the Chesapeake Bay region. It’s easy to see why.

The water teems with fifty-five species of fish, including the young of several anadromous species – striped bass, American shad, alewife and blueback herring among others – that migrate here from the Bay or the Atlantic in the spring to spawn. Chain pickerel, warmouth sunfish, and white catfish are some of the native fish species that call the Dragon their year-round home. The watershed is a birder’s paradise as well, with various songbirds, bald eagles, osprey, heron, and egrets in abundance. It’s an important stop for migratory waterfowl as well, and shy wood ducks are particularly fond of the cover provided in the swamp. In the forest, wild turkeys are frequently seen… or only heard.

Ebony jewel-wing damselflies with bodies of metallic blue and green warm themselves in the sun’s first rays and then flit from leaf to leaf. Water beetles cruise narrow channels between green stems, and large crayfish take refuge in burrows scattered along the banks of the swamp.

I went out three consecutive mornings and evenings in a flat-bottom kayak, generously loaned by Frank Herrin of Friends of Dragon Run, that had been custom-built for navigating over fallen logs and other obstacles in the swamp. Searching for compositions that seemed to capture the spirit of the place in a single vision, my brief was to come back with one great iconic picture: a horizontal landscape for a double-page spread. Working out of the kayak, and with no dry ground for my tripod, I found myself wading in water sometimes as deep as my chest, to get to the positions I needed for photographs. In the process, I managed to confirm a warning offered by Andy Lacatell of TNC, who kindly guided me on a scouting tour the first day. Andy, there are indeed leeches in the swamp, though I didn’t encounter a single mosquito.

After scouting the river sufficiently to find compositions that were well-oriented in relation to the sunrise, the second and third mornings were very productive. Indeed, early morning is in the Dragon is idyllic – the air is calm, animals are active, and the quality of light is crisply atmospheric. Standing there in the cool water, with birds filling the air with song, juvenile bald eagles on a branch above me, the rays of the sun streaming in between cypress branches illuminating thick clusters of flowering pickerelweed, I felt privileged to be in this extraordinary place.

Before me was a view that Captain John Smith could have seen in 1607, and it would have been essentially unchanged for millennia before. Today, on the east coast of the United States, landscapes as wild as Dragon Run are not simply rare, they are absolute treasures. Thanks to The Nature Conservancy, the Friends of Dragon Run, and the Commonwealth of Virginia, the Dragon Run watershed provides a unique window into the past, and one that – if we embrace its lessons – will help lead us on the path to a sustainable future.

Photos © 2010 Justin Black. All rights reserved.

Technical details (both images): Nikon D700, AF-S Nikkor 24-70 f/2.8G ED, Singh-Ray LB Polarizer, Really Right Stuff BH-55 ballhead, Gitzo G1348CF tripod.

Visiting Dragon Run: The swamp is located on Virginia’s Middle Peninsula, near the town of Saluda (Urbanna is just a little farther away and offers good accommodations and dining). It can be accessed from bridge crossings on State Routes 602 and 603. To enter the swamp, you will want a small flatwater kayak to negotiate the swamp’s narrow, twisting channels and shallow sections.

Link to the Friends of Dragon Run website for more information: http://www.dragonrun.org/

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Scouting the Olympic Peninsula

Last week, I joined my good friend, photographer Pat O’Hara, to scout locations in Olympic National Park in preparation for our Advanced Workshop in Port Angeles, Washington in July 2012.

With 200% of normal snowpack for this time of year, the Olympic mountains were positively stunning. Though Mt. Olympus, the tallest, is under 8,000 ft. in elevation, it seems like a much bigger mountain, supporting large glaciers and towering above the surrounding landscape. The old-growth temperate rainforest, lakes, waterfalls, driftwood strewn beaches on the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and dramatic weather make for tremendous variety of landscapes in a compact area. It would be obvious to anyone why Pat and his family have chosen to live in this exceptional place.

Time was tight and I was there for logistics more than photography, but I managed to make a few images at some of the field locations that we will likely use during the workshop, like the one above at Sol Duc Falls. It will be a great pleasure to return for the workshop with Pat during the height of wildflower season next summer.

For those interested in technical details, the Sol Duc Falls image is from a 25-megapixel file created very easily using an old manual focus, manual aperture 35mm f/2.8 PC shift lens on a Nikon D700. A polarizing filter was used to cut glare on the foliage. Without moving the camera, the lens was shifted to expose three frames for the top, middle, and bottom of the composition. Toss the files into Photomerge in Photoshop, and voilá, you end up with an extremely high-quality image file with a field of view close to that of a 24mm lens, and format proportions close to 4×5.

My traveling camera kit on this trip consisted of my D700, 20mm f/4 AI , 35mm f/2.8 PC Nikkor, 50mm f/1.8 AF Nikkor, 135mm f/2.8 AI-S Nikkor, and Gitzo G1028 with Really Right Stuff BH-25 ballhead. Using the power of three-frame stitching to increase resolution, I could effectively cover a focal length range of 14mm to 90mm at a level of quality that equals 200MB drum scans from 6x7cm medium format transparencies, with the benefit of the D700′s excellent high ISO/low-noise performance. The fact that this level of quality can be achieved so easily with such a limited array of compact, affordable gear is truly astonishing. The total weight of my photo kit including the tripod was  3.046Kg, and the camera and lenses all fit inside a small waistpack that stashed neatly into my carry-on. I was able to travel for a week with only a Patagonia shoulder bag and a slim laptop case, and still make landscape photographs that could produce top-quality prints without feeling like I was hindered by my lens selection. What a wonderful time we live in.