City Escapes Nature Photography

City Escapes Nature Photography Newsletter - June 2015

noreply@blogger.com (City Escapes Nature Photography) — Mon, 25 May 2015 20:15:00 +0000

CITY ESCAPES

Nature Photography, LLC

Newsletter

May / June, 2015

Thanks For Visiting Us at the Olive and Grape in Greenwood!

For the largest of the Phinney and Greenwood Art Walks, City Escapes Nature Photography paired up with the Olive and Grape, a lovely Mediterranean restaurant in Greenwood, to give you great art and great food simultaneously! We have a number of our large prints displayed on the walls, where you can see them until May 28th, and Jodi was on hand Friday, May 8, between 6 and 9 pm, for the official celebration.

Thanks for all of you who showed up and helped make this event a great success!

How Oil Spills Affect Birds

Lately it seems that more and more oil spills are making the news, especially from the derailment of trains carrying oil tankers. While none have been as dramatic as the Deepwater Horizon or Exxon Valdez spills, all nonetheless have a profound impact on the flora and fauna they touch. A few months ago, I was witness to the cleaning and rehabilitation of some ducks that had been covered – drenched, more accurately – in a tar spill, and I realized that although I know that oil and other spills create dire situations for wildlife, I knew almost nothing about the actual manner in which harm is done. Here is a taste of what I learned. Though it is by no means a comprehensive list of the dangers that oil spills pose to birds, it is at least a primer.

Oil (tar, diesel, etc.) has so many deleterious effects on birds it is difficult to know where to begin. One of the most obvious effects is on the birds' feathers. These amazing little marvels of natural engineering do so much more than enable a bird to fly; they provide waterproofing, regulate body temperature, provide buoyancy for waterfowl, transport water back to nestlings … I could go on and on. Oil causes the individual fibers in feathers to separate, clump, and mat. This releases the air trapped in the downy parts of the feathers next to the birds' bodies, which in turn makes the birds' body temperature plummet, and keeps the bird from being able to regulate it on their own. (Tar, incidentally, can make the birds' temperature soar, as it creates a very sticky, solid matting that does not allow any heat to escape.) This, in and of itself, is enough to kill a bird under the right circumstances. But wait; there's more.

Due to the same matting and separation of the feather fibers, oil also damages a bird's waterproofing. This waterproofing is created by the precise alignment of the individual parts of the feathers, which have tiny barbs on the ends of each fiber that hook together in a manner reminiscent of Velcro. The waterproofing is assisted by a layer of natural oil that the bird itself makes and distributes over its feathers during preening. No waterproofing means greater susceptibility to the elements. Imagine being in a terrible, cold rainstorm with no coat and no warm house to come into and dry off in afterward, and you get an idea of why this is bad.

Oil can also cause chemical burns on the delicate skin and eyes of birds, which can lead to a whole host of additional problems. Keep in mind that birds and other wildlife are usually covered over large portions of their bodies by these spills, and therefore risk having a significant percentage of their skin burned. Shock can set in, which is just as dangerous for animals as it is for humans.

Birds may try to clean the oil off of their feathers by preening, or eat oiled foods (or foods that have themselves eaten oiled foods). This results in the ingestion of oil, which can wreak havoc on the birds' internal organs. Lesions; ulcers; liver, kidney, and lung damage; intestinal poisoning… The list of deleterious effects is quite long.

Tar has a few more effects that I had not initially considered, but that are worth mentioning here. For one, it is heavy. A tar-coated bird must expend significantly greater amounts of energy to simply expand its chest cavity enough to breathe. It may not have sufficient strength to do so. If the bird's head and neck are coated, it may not be able to lift its head. To add an even greater challenge, tar will begin to harden after a while, making breathing that much more difficult. Tar is also ridiculously sticky. Even if the bird has no problem expanding its chest cavity, the tar can seal a bird's beak and nostrils shut, also resulting in a terrible, suffocating death. Tar is more difficult to remove than oil, as well. But as our beautiful, happily back in their natural habitat ducks proved, it can be done.

Now that you are thoroughly depressed, is there any good news? Yes – many birds can be helped. The best way to help them, of course, is to prevent oil spills in the first place. That, however, is a topic for another day and another place. Depending upon the size of the spill, many birds will likely succumb to the dangers, but a good number can be saved with the right rescue teams in place and a quick response. Teams trained in how to clean birds, minimize the effects of ingested oil, and properly care for the animals through their rehabilitation can work true wonders. Meanwhile, other teams are needed to repair and restore damaged habitat, so that the birds have a safe place to return to once their rehab is complete. If you are interested in learning how to help birds, contact your local wildlife hospital or other organization dedicated to the welfare of our feathered friends. You can provide assistance in many forms, from direct financial donations to volunteering to assisting with advertising and fundraising. Seeing a newly-clean and healthy bird waddle its way back to the outdoors is a tremendously satisfying reward for your efforts.

Fun Facts

As mentioned above, feathers do so much more than help a bird to fly. We all know that they can also attract a mate or provide camouflage. But did you know about these lesser-known functions of some types of feathers?

· Feathers can help some bird species escape being the main entrée on a predator's dinner plate. In a process known as a "fright molt," some birds can lose a number of tail feathers when threatened or severely frightened. The predator, instead of a lovely dinner, is left with only a mouthful of feathers.

· Parent birds soak their belly feathers in water as a means of transporting the wet stuff back to their nest. They can then give their young ones a drink, or moisten their eggs to prevent them from drying out.

· It is thought that dark-colored feathers might provide a natural SPF for birds' sensitive skin.

· Ever thought of feathers as snowshoes? In winter, the feet of grouse are covered in feathers. This increases their surface area, and allows the bird to walk on top of snow instead of sinking into it.

· Birds carry their own sun shades in the form of their feathers. On bright, sunny days some birds, such as herons, will cover their heads with their wings while fishing to enable them to see into the water better, while others, such as osprey, will spread their wings above their eggs and chicks to keep them cool.

· When people eat fish, we have to be careful of the small, sharp bones. If we ingest them, they can cause quite the intestinal issues. What do you do if you are a bird that eats fish whole? Why, you eat your own feathers, of course! These feathers then line the digestive tract and protect the bird from those damaging bones.

Many thanks to Arizona State University for this month's Fun Facts!

If you have any questions, or suggestions for future newsletters, please email us at: relationships@cityescapesphotography.com

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City Escapes Nature Photography Newsletter - Mar 2015

noreply@blogger.com (City Escapes Nature Photography) — Sun, 15 Mar 2015 22:04:00 +0000

CITY ESCAPES

Nature Photography, LLC

Newsletter

March / April, 2015

They're So Darn Cute!

The weather is warming, the trees are in bloom, and the allergies are kicking in. (If you're in the Northeast and are still buried in snow, hang in there – spring is coming! It may be coming slowly, but it is coming…) With these changes come critters guaranteed to elicit a few "awwwws" among wildlife lovers: baby animals. Who amongst us does not love to watch the miniature versions of their more majestic elders romping and playing, learning to fly, or following along obediently behind mom? And what wildlife photographer would not love to capture in-camera a few of the more precious moments? Like any wild animal, though, wild babies must be respected as the untamed creatures they are.

The temptation to get right up to a wild baby to get a good photograph is often strong, but is never a good idea, either for you or the baby. Where there is a youngster, mom is sure to be close, even if you can't see her – and if she isn't, you can bet dad or an aunt is. Regardless of the species of animal, rest assured that the adults can hurt you, and will often try to while defending their offspring against the threat that your presence poses. Even setting aside the larger, more obviously dangerous animals, you should not consider yourself immune from attack. Anyone who has ever been dive-bombed by a bird can attest to how unnerving that experience is – especially if you get a set of talons upside your head. Even if mom doesn't attack, baby might. What the little ones lack in jaw strength, they often make up for in super-sharp teeth and beaks. Even innocuous-seeming animals like ducklings can do a number on your fingers: depending on the species, they may have serrations or even a nail-like protuberance on their bills. And just remember those sharp front teeth when you are thinking of sneaking up to a baby squirrel or rabbit. Even little baby bites hurt. (This is one of the reasons why, whenever you do handle a baby animal, such as replacing a fallen baby bird back into its nest, you should always wear gloves.)

The dangers to the babies of you getting too close while photographing them are many. Your presence may cause fear and anxiety to swell in baby animals. Their heart rates and stress levels may skyrocket, though they may barely be able to move on their own yet. In some species, it is actually possible for them to die of fear. Panic can lead to more tangible dangers, too: automobiles in a road the youngster just darted into, the panes of a window it hit while trying to fly away from you. Assuming the absolute best of all scenarios, in which you are not attacked and the baby is not stressed by your presence, there is nonetheless a major issue to consider: many wild parents will not return to their offspring when people or domestic pets are near. Newborns of all species need to be kept warm and fed frequently, and even older offspring depend upon the nourishment and protection their parents provide, though the feedings may be less frequent. Keeping the parent(s) away from a wild baby is a sure-fire way to injure it.

So how do you get that great, detailed shot? In short: telephoto lenses. I consider telephoto lenses among the most important pieces of my gear, because they allow me to get up-close and personal without interfering with the natural rhythm and order of things. The animals are safe from me, and I am safe from them. Whether I am a hundred yards away from a lion or twenty feet from a robin's nest, telephoto lenses allow me to observe the lives of animals without disturbing them. Am I telling you to go out and buy an expensive camera body and an even more expensive lens to go with it? Not at all. I am telling you, however, to make use of your camera's built-in zooming capabilities, which roughly mimic the effects of telephoto lenses. Even smart-phone cameras can zoom now. Give the youngsters plenty of room, use that zoom, and of course, keep a sharp eye out for mom. One of the best rewards for shooting this way instead of getting right up next to the babies is that you will often have the chance to capture images of mom and babies interacting. As in all wildlife photography, if your presence is causing the babies or their parents to change their behavior, you are too close.

Unless you are hiking in bear country and trying to keep from surprising one of the bruins, you should also be quiet when photographing wildlife, whether adult or young. Many animals can hear very well, and trust me, you are not a natural sound. Do not talk to the animal or make sounds at it in an attempt to get it to look your way. Human voices will put most animals on alert. So, too, will many "human" scents: perfumes, aftershaves, even scented laundry detergents can cause distress in wild animals. The human sense of smell is practically non-existent compared to most of the animal kingdom, so don't assume that just because it's a light scent, it won't affect the critters. Both sounds and smells can add to the animals' stress levels, further contributing to the dangers described above.

Um, Where's Mom?

You've kept your distance, been quiet, and not worn anything scented. Your reward is some wonderful images of the youngsters. Throughout, you have watched and waited for mom to return, but she hasn't. You begin to wonder if the babies have been abandoned. After all, it's been at least an hour…

It is very common, when humans find baby animals without a parent near, for us to assume that the little ones have been abandoned or that the parent(s) have been killed. Our own protective instinct kicks in, and we want to help them. After all, we can't just leave them, can we? Yes. We can, and we usually should: very much more frequently than not, the babies have not been abandoned, and they are just fine. They may be chirping, squawking, grunting, or whining, but just like human infants and toddlers making their myriad coos and whines, these sounds do not mean that the animals are in any danger. As for the parents, we seem to forget that they need to eat, and that they need to gather food for their offspring. Lacking grocery stores, this can take a while. It is also imperative when their little ones are still quite small that the adults handle the shopping on their own, without kids in tow. There is often another critter around who would love to put the youngsters on its own shopping list if they were to come into the open. So off the parent goes, in search of nourishment. The hardest thing for us humans to wrap our heads around may be the length of time that some species leave their offspring while on a snack run. Seals, for example, may leave their pups ashore for up to 48 hours before returning to feed them, while sea lions may be away for 72 hours. It breaks our hearts to hear the whining and crying of the little ones, and we feel we simply must do something. This is the natural rhythm of these species, though, and we underestimate the damage we can do in our naïveté. Imagine you lay your own little one down for a nap, then go to the kitchen to grab a bite to eat. When you return, your baby is gone, snatched away because someone thought it was abandoned.

It can be very hard for some of us to control our natural care-giving instincts. Especially if the baby is somewhere you can keep an eye on it for awhile, though, and it is safe from domestic dogs and cats, the best thing you can do is often to wait and watch, educating yourself about the habits of the species in the meantime. You will then be able to make a much better judgment about when to interfere. Contacting a wildlife rehabilitation center is a great way to get guidance. Trained personnel can help you decide what, if anything, should be done. You can find a wildlife rehabilitation center in your area by contacting the National Wildlife Rehabilitators Association at www.nwrawildlife.org or calling your local animal control.

Fun Facts

You know that a kitten is a baby cat, but did you know that it could also be a baby skunk? A calf is of course a baby cow – or maybe a baby manatee. Perhaps even a baby hippopotamus. Here is a small sampling of how the names of the young of diverse species can overlap. Just to keep it interesting, some species have multiple names for their young (because English isn't complicated enough).

Baby Name Species

Poult Grouse, ptarmigans, turkeys

Whelp Otters, wolves, coyotes, tigers

Infant Gorillas, monkeys, baboons, orangutans, lemurs

Joey Wombats, koalas, kangaroos, Tasmanian devils, opossums, wallabies

Kit Ferrets, foxes, badgers, mongoose, beavers, muskrats, servals, weasels, woodchucks

Cub Lions, cheetahs, leopards, bears, aardvarks, woodchucks, badgers, foxes, hyenas, jaguars, tigers, walruses, bobcats, lynx, raccoons

Pup Deep breath: Wolves, foxes, prairie dogs, sharks, otters, gerbils, beavers, walruses, sea lions, moles, armadillos, guinea pigs, seals, raccoons, hedgehogs, meerkats, groundhogs, skunks, coyotes, bats, dolphins, anteaters …

If you have any questions, or suggestions for future newsletters, please email us at: relationships@cityescapesphotography.com

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774-277-9682

City Escapes Nature Photography Newsletter - Oct / Nov 2014

noreply@blogger.com (City Escapes Nature Photography) — Sat, 25 Oct 2014 21:46:00 +0000

CITY ESCAPES

Nature Photography, LLC

Newsletter

October / November 2014

In-Camera Color Control

As the weather cools from the blistering heat of summer, leaves begin their annual, dazzling bursts into full color. Reds, oranges, and yellows decorate the tree lines like wrapping paper on an eagerly awaited gift. The goal of autumn photographers is almost always to capture these brilliant hues before they fade into the dull browns and grays of winter. In the days of film, a photographer would choose a particular type of film to enhance these colors. Fortunately, the digital age has made it very easy for today's photographers to do the same – without ever getting near film or image processing software such as Photoshop. Sure, you can always enhance or change colors through your computer, but if you can get the image you want right out of the box, that leaves you with more time behind the camera and less behind a desk. I have yet to meet a photographer who prefers being behind a desk.

A great many digital cameras today, from high-end DSLRs all the way down to point-and-shoots, allow you to change the intensity of the colors you capture. There are often four different "styles" from which to choose: standard, neutral, vivid, and monochrome. You can consider each a template, generally designed for a particular purpose but able to be utilized in a wide variety of circumstances for creative effects. Standard is often used in product photography when a realistic, not too subdued and not too bright color palette is desired, while neutral is often used for portraiture to help even out skin tones and lower contrast. Monochrome allows you to take those old-fashioned looking sepia images that can be wonderfully nostalgic – and you aren't limited to sepia. Many cameras offer multiple monochrome hues to play with. How about blue, green, or purple? My camera offers 7 different hues within each tone, too… But for autumn colors, vivid is the setting that you are looking for. Vivid does exactly what it sounds like: it makes the colors pop, enhancing strong, bright hues. Many cameras also offer you the option of choosing how saturated you want the colors to be, giving you options from -3 to +3. Some consider +3 to be oversaturated and unrealistic, while others absolutely love the effect. Begin at 0, then work your way both up and down the scale to find the color style that you most like for whatever you are trying to capture. In case that isn't enough fun, you can also adjust contrast and sharpening, and in some models, brightness and hue as well. What a treasure trove of effects, all without leaving the camera!

This option is usually buried in the menu folder somewhere, but it shouldn't be too difficult to find. In Nikon cameras, it is called Picture Controls, while Canon's more recent cameras call it Picture Styles. (They can never agree on anything. Ever.) Other camera brands will call it yet something else; check your owner's manual for the specifics. That being said, if you know what you are looking for, it is pretty easy to locate. The following is how to find Picture Controls in Nikon cameras; other brands should be similar.

Press Menu.

Go to the Shooting Menu (little camera icon on the left).

Push the right arrow to get you into the Shooting Menu options, then scroll down to Set Picture Control.

Push the right arrow again to get you into the Picture Control options.

From here, you can choose one of the four styles mentioned above. Scroll up or down to get to the option you choose, then push the right arrow to get you into that style's options. Choose your settings, then push OK. If you skip this last step, your choices will not be saved, and the camera will revert to whatever its previous setting was.

Now that you know how to saturate colors, go out and capture some autumn beauty. But let's not forget that Halloween is also just around the corner. The range of Picture Control options can help you create eerier, creepier, bleaker images, too. So whether you want to create bright, happy images or dark and brooding ones, autumn provides a great excuse to get to know your in-camera color controls.

PAWSwalk Success

In September, I was fortunate enough to be one of the photographers for PAWSwalk, a fundraising event for my local animal shelter and wildlife rehabilitation center, appropriately named PAWS (Progressive Animal Welfare Society). Every year, hundreds of PAWS supporters come out to the park to show their support, walk with their furry friends (mostly dogs), try the canine agility course, watch training exhibitions, play games, enter contests, and drink beer and mimosas. (Hey, we know how to have fun.) The event was a huge success, surpassing the fundraising goals by more than a bit. The money and resources donated go to helping companion animals find good homes, and to nurturing and mending orphaned and/or injured wildlife that are then returned to the wild. Needless to say, the latter goal is particularly close to my heart. If you are an animal lover and have a little extra time on your hands, I would highly recommend volunteering at an animal welfare group in your area. If you are fortunate enough to have a wildlife rehabilitation center in your neighborhood, so much the better! (Know, however, that at any rehabilitation center focusing on releasing the animals back into the wild, you are likely to have very little hands-on contact with the animals. The goal is to keep the animals from getting habituated, or accustomed to people, as this could lead to big trouble for the animal later.) If you don't have the extra time but would still like to help, I would imagine that most places would be very grateful for donations, and it doesn't even have to be the monetary-kind. Old towels and blankets, cat and dog toys, plastic bags… You would be surprised what is useful to these organizations. PAWS uses lots of empty yogurt containers, hundreds of hot dog wieners, and even bowling pins to aid the animals. If you are cleaning out the garage, kitchen, or linen closet, contact your local agency to see if they can use any of your old stuff. The animals will thank you.

October / November Specials

Get 10% off of boxes of our Holiday Greeting Cards when you order from our specials page. Beat the last-minute panic and order now!

Fun Facts

As Halloween approaches, a particular furry animal serves as a symbol of the season. Who does not associate All Hallow's Eve with the oft misunderstood black cat?

- More black cats are male than female.

- Black panthers are not uniformly black. If you look closely, you can see their spots.

- An Italian black cat named Tommaso made it into the Guinness Book of World Records when his owner left him $13 million in her will.

- Not all black cats are so lucky. Due to the superstitions surrounding them, it is widely thought that black cats have a 50% lower chance of being adopted from a shelter.

- All cats' eyes are huge in relation to their overall head size. This leads to several interesting phenomena related to focusing. First of all, cats generally cannot focus on anything within about a foot of their face. Secondly, their enormous eyes have difficulty adjusting their focus from near to far and back. This leads a cat's eyes to develop based on environment: inside cats tend to be nearsighted, while outdoor cats tend to be farsighted.

- Wonder why your cat is not interested in chocolate? It is one of the few animal species that cannot taste sweet.

- Experts believe that cats were first domesticated somewhere in the Middle East around 9000 years ago as a result of grain cultivation. Cats were welcomed as pest control in the fields.

If you have any questions, or suggestions for future newsletters, please email us at: relationships@cityescapesphotography.com

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774-277-9682

City Escapes Nature Photography Newsletter - July / August 2014

noreply@blogger.com (City Escapes Nature Photography) — Sat, 26 Jul 2014 18:12:00 +0000

CITY ESCAPES

Nature Photography, LLC

Newsletter

July / August, 2014

It's Show Time!

Colorado beckons as we get back to our beloved Rocky Mountains. Come join us for a weekend (or two!) of fabulous Rocky Mountain highs as we join dozens of other talented artists in this year's Aspen and Beaver Creek Art Festivals. Stroll the festivals, enjoy a gelato, and of course, take a hike! If you are like me, you don't really need an excuse to head to the mountains, but we're giving you one anyway. Come say hi!

12^th Annual Downtown Aspen Art Festival

Saturday and Sunday, July 26^th & 27^th, 2014

10:00 am to 5:00 pm both days

Wagner Park (Monarch St & Durant Ave)

Aspen, CO

27^th Annual Beaver Creek Art Festival

Saturday and Sunday, August 2^nd & 3^rd, 2014

10:00 am to 5:00 pm both days

Beaver Creek Resort

76 Avondale Lane

Avon, CO

Forest Regeneration Post-Fire

The effects of a major forest fire, even one that touches no man-made structures, can be awe-inducing, touching off feelings of utter devastation and destruction. One need only remember the immediate aftermath of the massive Yellowstone fires of 1988 to feel the ache in the pit of one's stomach. Or, as it is once again wildfire season, you may only need to go for a short drive to see the blackened skeletons of previously lush forests and grassy fields, depending upon where you are. (Please stay a safe distance from any actively burning fires. There is no need to add to the danger to yourself or anyone who may come to rescue you by getting too close. And remember that wildfires can jump large spans quickly, especially in dry, windy conditions such as we have in Washington State right now. Roads and rivers are not guaranteed fire breaks!) But the devastation wrought by fires is never permanent. Nature always comes back. Indeed, fire has been a part of the natural regeneration cycle of forest and grasslands far longer than mankind has been around trying to control the blaze.

Fire serves several key functions in the forest ecosystem. It can reduce or remove entirely the duff, which is the accumulated layer of dead leaves, tree fall, etc. that covers the forest floor. This enriches the soil by returning nutrients to it, while simultaneously clearing space for new seeds to sprout. Fire also destroys some or all of the crown, the foliage at the top of the trees that makes the forest "roof." This allows sunlight to penetrate to the forest floor, which can help some of those new seeds to sprout. Wait, you say, doesn't the fire destroy those seeds? How can they germinate? Those answers, like fire itself, are complex.

Many seeds are buried deep in the duff layer and in the soil below the duff. The duff insulates the seeds and the soil from both cold weather and heat – including fire. If a fire is not too hot or is fast moving, much of the duff layer can remain intact, replete with lots of eager-to-sprout seeds that now have access to a great deal more water and sunlight. If a fire is slow moving and very hot, however, it can burn the entire duff layer, destroying any seeds within it, and exposing the underlying soil to temperatures that may be so hot that many seeds within that soil are also destroyed. Rarely, though, are all of the seeds destroyed. Some plant species (raspberry, plum, and chokecherry, among others) have evolved seeds that count on fire to germinate them: their seed coats are extremely hard and need the intense heat of a fire to break them open. Other species, like the jack pine, have cones that are sealed by a resin that protects the seeds. Fire melts the resin, allowing the cone to open and the seeds to disperse, often with the assistance of a hungry critter or a blowing wind. (Hypothetically, even if every seed in the forest were destroyed, it would not take long for new life to begin sprouting. The rich soil created by the fire would soon find itself hosting myriad seeds deposited by winds, birds flying overhead, and rodents. They are nothing if not natural seed dispersants.)

Seeds that are still on trees when a fire occurs may nonetheless survive the blaze. The ponderosa pine has long needles that insulate the cone buds to a certain degree from fire. (On conifers, the longer the needles, the greater the chance the buds will survive.) The tough "scales" on a live cone serve as additional protection from heat, as anyone who has ever tried to burn a green pine cone can attest. They only become easily flammable once open and dry, long after the seeds have dispersed.

Depending upon the type of forest, trees can regrow even without the involvement of seeds. Some trees, such as aspen, have an extensive root system that connects all of the members of a stand of trees together. These trees are actually all part of a single living organism, not separate trees, though they appear to us on the surface to be individual trees. When this type of tree burns, the root system is often left unharmed, and new "suckers" shoot up quite rapidly, replenishing the stand in short order. This is also why it can be very difficult to remove such species from an area where they are not wanted. Even if you cut down every "tree," unless you kill the root system, suckers will continue to sprout.

Other trees may survive the fire, though much of their foliage is gone. Along with extensive root systems, thick bark can help protect trees. Between the inner bark layer and the sapwood is what is known as the cambium, a layer constituting the vascular system of the tree's trunk. A healthy cambium is critical for the tree's survival. The thicker the layers of inner and outer bark, the more protected the cambium is. While some tree species have a naturally thicker bark than other species, the age of the tree is important, too. Older trees, with their thicker bark, tend to fare better than younger trees. (Any connection to people "growing thicker skin" is, I'm sure, purely coincidental.)

Okay, so the plant life takes care of itself, I hear you saying. What about the critters? Let's start at the bottom: bugs love burned forests! They have a ton of food, especially those species that are wood-boring or that find the taste of rotting plants particularly appetizing. Life is grand for a wood-boring beetle after a fire! Except for all of the beetle-larvae-eating wildlife that moves in shortly after the beetles do. Many species of birds flourish in burned-out forests precisely due to the fact that they have an abundant food supply and many new nesting holes created by the fire. These nesting holes also create new homes for small animals such as mice, squirrels, and chipmunks. Larger holes, fashioned by hollowed out, fallen logs, create good homes for medium-sized critters such as raccoons and foxes. All of these eventually draw predators such as wolves, wildcats, and birds of prey back into the regenerating forest.

Elk will eat the bark of burned lodgepole pine trees, but not the bark of healthy pines. Live pines produce chemicals that make their bark unpalatable to elk, while fire destroys these chemicals. Fire also makes the bark more digestible, increases its protein levels and concentrates some minerals. Perhaps more importantly, burned bark is a very easy source of food. Wild animals, particularly in winter, cannot afford to work hard to find food. Their calories must be well-spent, not wasted. Burned forests provide a winter buffet for elk trying to survive the lean season. In the spring and summer, elk and other ungulates such as moose and deer benefit from the improved shrub growth after a fire, and their populations often amplify markedly in the years after a major burn.

Bears, also, can benefit from burned areas. Though they are often thought of as vicious carnivores, bears are actually omnivores whose diet consists primarily of berries, grubs, and flowers. Fires regenerate berry bushes and flowers through the mechanisms described above, and the dead trees are grub heaven for bears. Not only are fire-killed trees full of larvae and grubs of all kinds, they are also easier to pull apart than live trees, allowing access to the feast just below the surface with minimal effort. Like elk, bears are in this for survival, and the easiest food sources tend to be the preferred ones.

This is only a short overview of how a forest regenerates itself after a fire. Depending upon the type and location of the forest, the details will change, sometimes dramatically. Nonetheless, fire is often an important component of the life cycle of a healthy forest. It constitutes both an end and a beginning, a transitional phase that allows the forest to restore its nutrients and reset its balance. In the end, the forest will be healthier for it. Even in Yellowstone.

July / August Specials

Get 10% off of unframed, 10x15 prints of "Lounging Around – Lion Cub" and / or 8x12 prints of "Renewal by Fire – Fireweed" when you order from our specials page. As with all of our unframed prints, these prints are eligible for our No Hassle Returns.

Fun Facts

It's hot out there! July and August are typically the most brutal months, heat wise, in the northern hemisphere. But humans aren't the only critters that have to deal with the heat. Here are some fun bits about how temperature affects a few of our fellow creatures.

· Toucans regulate their body temperature by controlling the blood flow to their rather oversized beak. The large surface area allows heat to escape quickly. When they sleep, toucans tuck their beaks beneath a wing, effectively becoming their own blanket.

· Similarly, elephants regulate their body temperature through blood flow to their large ears.

· Wonder how hot it is, but don't have a thermometer? Do you have a watch – and a cricket? Count the number of chirps the cricket makes in 15 seconds, then add 37. You now have the approximate temperature in degrees Fahrenheit.

· Water temperature affects how long sea turtles can hold their breath. Colder water allows them to hold their breath longer – sometimes for hours.

· Temperature determines whether an alligator hatchling will be male or female. Above 93° F means all the hatchlings will be male; below 86° F, they will all be female. Temperatures in between will result in a mixed brood. So there is some truth to "cold-blooded women," at least in the alligator world.

· Think various types of hibernation only occur in winter? Think again. In very hot, arid environments, many creatures go into a state of torpor characterized by inactivity and low metabolic rates similar to winter's more well-known long sleep. In summer, this hibernation is known as estivation.

If you have any questions, or suggestions for future newsletters, please email us at: relationships@cityescapesphotography.com

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City Escapes Nature Photography Newsletter - May / June 2014

noreply@blogger.com (City Escapes Nature Photography) — Mon, 02 Jun 2014 01:47:00 +0000

CITY ESCAPES

Nature Photography, LLC

Newsletter

May / June, 2014

Tying It All Together: Shutter Speed, Aperture, and ISO

Now that we have covered the three basic elements of exposure individually (ISO - November, 2012 newsletter; shutter speed – March, 2014 newsletter; and aperture – April, 2014 newsletter), let's look at how they work in combination to give a properly exposed image.

All three control how much light hits your camera's sensor (or film), and each has its own function. But how do they affect each other? To explain it, let's once again go back to our window analogy, but this time, we need to add an additional element. Instead of simply trying to get a certain amount of air into a room, let's put a tabletop windmill in front of the window. Our goal: to make the windmill complete a set number of revolutions (let's say 10) -- a proper exposure. We know that aperture is the equivalent of how far we open the window, while shutter speed is how long we leave it open. We can throw the window wide open, let in a lot of air all at once and reach those 10 revolutions quickly. This also requires that we close the window quickly, before we reach 11 revolutions (or the windmill gets overexposed). This scenario is the equivalent of a large aperture and a fast shutter speed. Conversely, we can open the window only a little, which requires that we leave it open longer to reach the same 10 revolutions. If we close the window too soon, we will not have reached the magic number of 10 (the windmill will be underexposed). This is the small aperture, long shutter speed scenario. But wait, you say, doesn't the speed of the air moving through the window also help determine how fast the windmill reaches 10 revolutions? Excellent catch! Indeed it does, and this is where aperture comes in.

In this analogy, the strength or speed of the air moving through the window is the equivalent of the strength, or brightness, of the light hitting the camera sensor. The ISO would be the equivalent of the resistance, or sensitivity, setting of the windmill. If there is a very strong wind (a very bright light), you would likely want the windmill's sensitivity to the air current to be low so that the windmill does not spin way too fast (again, an overexposure). But if the air current is weaker (the light is dimmer), you would want the windmill to be more sensitive to what little air movement there is, so that you can actually complete the 10 revolutions (otherwise, you end up with another underexposure). Thus, for a brighter light, you want a lower ISO number, meaning a lower sensitivity to light. For a dimmer light, a higher ISO with its greater sensitivity to light is generally required.

How do all of these pieces fit together? To maintain an equivalent exposure, if you manipulate one setting, you must manipulate another, though which one is up to you. Say your window is open halfway for ten seconds, with a given windmill sensitivity. You want to open the window all the way, doubling the amount of air coming in at once. To maintain a 10 revolution "proper exposure," you can cut the time the window is open in half, to five seconds, while maintaining the same windmill sensitivity. Or you can leave the time the window is open the same and reduce the windmill sensitivity by half. (You can also reduce the strength of the air current coming through the window, i.e. dim the light source, but that is a topic for another day.) As long as the overall total amount of light hitting the sensor is the same, the exposure will be equivalent. The images may be very different, with vastly different depths of field, etc., but the exposures will be the same. Just remember that to get a proper exposure, you need to hit ten revolutions of the windmill. How you do that is entirely up to you.

Does this mean that you will always want a perfectly exposed image, that exact series of ten revolutions, no more, no less? Not by a long shot. But once you understand how the elements of a proper exposure work, you can then work creatively to craft stunning images that do not fit the strict definition of being "properly exposed." Should you decide that any particular image would have a greater impact by being underexposed, you will understand how to manipulate the elements of our window to stop the windmill after only eight or nine revolutions. Similarly, if an overexposure would give your image that pop you are looking for, you will know how to make that windmill keep spinning right on past ten, not stopping until it reaches eleven or twelve (or seventeen…) revolutions. Mastering these three elements, shutter speed, aperture, and ISO, is truly the key to mastering exposure. And once you master exposure, those creative doors fly wide open. Suddenly you are able to construct amazing images intentionally, and not just chance upon them by accident with no hope of recreating them.

Test yourself. Play with the elements of our window and windmill and try to get equivalent exposures with different settings. Then see if you can create intentional under- and overexposures with multiple settings. Finally, and most importantly, have fun!

May / June Specials

Get 10% off of unframed, 8x12 prints of "Grace in Retreat – Mute Swans" and / or 10x20 prints of "Subtlety of a Sunset – St. Mary Lake" when you order from our specials page. As with all of our unframed prints, these prints are eligible for our No Hassle Returns.

Fun Facts

First, the serious side: we are approaching that time of year when nature, when angry, shifts her focus from blizzards and mudslides to violent winds, drenching rains, and unbelievable flooding: hurricane season. Without fail, some of the most arresting photographs to be produced each summer and fall come from areas affected by hurricanes. While we cannot prevent hurricanes, we can prepare for them. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) has designated May 25^th through May 31^st as National Hurricane Preparedness Week. Go to http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/prepare for some great information on hurricanes and cyclones and how to prepare for them. (Perhaps their most poignant advice, especially for photographers, is simple: "The first and most important thing anyone should do when facing a hurricane threat is to use common sense." Sometimes we photographers let our common sense go out the window in our quest for great images. Remember, be safe. You can only create great images if you are alive and well.)

Now the fun side: ever wondered how tropical storms get their names?

* The practice of giving tropical storms women's names began in the late 19^th century, became commonplace during World War II, and was made official in 1953.

* It was not until 1978 that men's names were included in the rotation.

* There are three major storm-naming regions in the U.S.: the Atlantic, the Eastern North Pacific, and the Central North Pacific. On the U.S. mainland, we are most familiar with the Atlantic region.

* You may know that a list is prepared prior to each storm season with names in alphabetical order, and as storms appear, they are given names in that order. Did you know, however, that the list is different for each region, that there are only six lists per region (or four, in the case of the Central North Pacific region), and that they are rotated through? In the Atlantic region, for example, the first named storm of 2016 will be "Alex." "Alex" was also the first storm of 2010, and assuming the 2016 version isn't damaging enough to have the name retired, "Alex" will also be the first storm of 2022.

* If a storm causes significant damage to life or property, its name can be retired, to be replaced by another beginning with the same letter. The most names retired in a single year: five, in 2005. Those names? Dennis, Katrina, Rita, Stan, and Wilma. The following year, no names were retired.

Our schedule is changing

As you may have noticed, we are switching our newsletter schedule to 6 times per year instead of 12.

If you have any questions, or suggestions for future newsletters, please email us at: relationships@cityescapesphotography.com

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City Escapes Nature Photography Newsletter - April 2014

noreply@blogger.com (City Escapes Nature Photography) — Sun, 06 Apr 2014 21:19:00 +0000

CITY ESCAPES

Nature Photography, LLC

Newsletter

April, 2014

Aperture Basics

Ever wondered how a photographer managed to get her subject in sharp focus, while everything behind and in front of the subject is blurred? Or why everything from the very front of the image to the furthest back is clear and sharp? It is all because of my personal favorite control on a camera: the aperture, also known as the f-stop. This delightful feature controls how much of an image (properly focused) is in sharp focus. This is known as the image’s depth of field. The landscape in which you can see all the way to the furthest feature has a large depth of field, while the sharp-subject, blurry-background image has a shallow depth of field. As an example, this month’s featured image, “Buzzed! – Black Bear” has a shallow depth of field: the bear is in focus, but the grasses directly behind it are blurry.

A camera’s aperture works by controlling how far the shutter opens. Think of the shutter as a window: last month’s discussion of shutter speed dealt with how long the window stayed open; aperture describes how far open the window is. If the window is open just a tiny bit, denoted rather counter-intuitively by higher numbers, the depth of field will be great. If the window is thrown wide open, denoted by small numbers, only the subject will be in focus while all else blurs. The “plane of focus” can be quite small; it is not difficult with the right lens to get someone’s eyes in sharp focus while their nose is blurred.

Just as shutter speed is a means of controlling the amount of light that hits the camera’s sensor (or film), so too is aperture. When you change one, you necessarily change the other to get an equivalent exposure. Using our window analogy again, if the window is wide open, it takes less time to get a certain amount of air in than it would to get the same amount of air in with the window less open. Thus, for a given exposure, if you widen the aperture, you should use a shorter shutter speed, while if you close down (or “stop down”) the aperture, you need to use a longer exposure. Clear as mud? Just remember: a wide-open window should be left open for a short time, while a less-open window should be left open longer.

As with everything on cameras, to really get a feel for how aperture works, you should play with it. Most cameras these days, even point-and-shoots, have an aperture-priority mode. This allows you to choose the aperture while the camera chooses the appropriate shutter speed for a proper exposure. Being a wildlife and landscape photographer, this is my default camera setting: it is important for me to be able to isolate my subjects at will, or to show them in their deepest glory.

Once you get a basic understanding of how to manipulate depth of field with the aperture settings, put your camera on manual mode and start experimenting with different combinations of shutter speed and aperture. Getting away from what the camera deems a proper exposure, you can create some very interesting and artistic images, manipulate mood, and capture light in ways that your eyes cannot see – all in-camera, no computer needed. This means more time with your camera and less at a desk. What photographer doesn’t like that?

April Specials

Get 10% off of unframed, 8x10 prints of “Buzzed! -- Black Bear” and / or 8x12 prints of “Renewal by Fire -- Fireweed” when you order from our specials page. As with all of our unframed prints, these prints are eligible for our No Hassle Returns.

Fun Facts

Oh, April, how we enjoy your second half so much more than your first – because, of course, the deadline for filing our Federal Tax Returns falls on April 15^th. As you and thousands of others rush toward the post office (or your computer’s “send” button) as midnight draws near, here are a few interesting facts to keep you amused.

· Moses instituted a tax of sorts on, among other things, domesticated animal herds and flocks. Every tenth animal was to be tithed to the Tabernacle. (Leviticus 27:30-33)

· Your service animal (guide dog, mobility assistance monkey, etc.) is completely tax-deductible, while the expenses related to your company’s (alas, not your home’s) guard dog are also deductible – just not the cost of the dog itself.

· Not only is it good for you, it’s tax deductible! Most of the costs of “wilderness therapy,” used by some medical practitioners in the mental-health field to treat their patients, are tax-deductible as medical expenses.

· Many states offer tax breaks for land owners who maintain their land as “open space.” Good for wildlife AND for your bank account? It doesn’t get much better than that.

· And of course, donations to environmental organizations such as The Nature Conservancy are tax deductible! For more information, see “IRS Topic 506 - Charitable Contributions” at http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc506.html

Disclaimer: we are nature photographers, not tax attorneys or accountants. The above is not tax advice, but rather items of general interest which may or may not be applicable to your situation. You should obtain your tax advice only from trained professionals with appropriate certifications who understand your specific circumstances.

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City Escapes Photography Newsletter - Mar 2014

noreply@blogger.com (City Escapes Nature Photography) — Sat, 08 Mar 2014 22:21:00 +0000

CITY ESCAPES

Nature Photography, LLC

Newsletter

March, 2014

What a Compliment!

Let’s say that you really, really like a particular photograph. For some reason, it just speaks to you in a way that others don’t. You could buy a copy of the image and hang it on your wall -- always a good option. This allows you to see and enjoy it everyday, plus it supports the photographer who made the image. But what if that just isn’t enough? What if it is THE photograph that really captures the essence of something you’ve been looking for? Then, perhaps, a form of appreciation that is a bit more permanent might be what you are looking for. Something like a tattoo. This is precisely what Amanda Abbott had done when she came across our image “Casual Approach – Lioness.” Ms. Abbott honored us immensely when she chose to have our image permanently inked in a prominent position on her right arm. What a way to share your love of our work! Thank you for sharing this with us, Ms. Abbott. We love it!

Shutter Speed Basics

We have all seen those amazing photographs of the football receivers frozen in mid-leap, high in the air, one arm outstretched to grab the slightly-off-target throw. We have also seen the beautiful images of waterfalls pouring down a rock face in a lovely cascade, the motion of the water caught in a still frame. When we try to capture those same images using our cameras’ automatic settings, our results are often less than satisfactory. How do we fix this? Be brave – take your camera off of automatic, and learn how to use shutter speed to create the images you want.

“Shutter speed” is the term used to describe how long the film or digital sensor is exposed to light. There is a diaphragm, or shutter, inside the camera that opens when you depress the “take this picture” button (called the shutter release button), stays open the designated amount of time, then closes again to stop the influx of light onto the film or sensor. Normally this all happens very quickly, literally within a fraction of a second. That is why shutter speeds are often fractions: 1/60 means that the diaphragm is open for one 60^th of a second. A shutter speed of 1 means that the diaphragm is open for a full second, etc. The smaller the number, then, the faster the shutter opens and closes, resulting in a shorter time frame for light to hit the sensor or film.

Why on earth does this matter, you ask? It is this variance that allows you to freeze – or capture the sense of – motion. To get a crisp, sharp image of that football receiver mid-leap, you need to use a very short shutter speed, perhaps as low as 1/3200. (Using a flash can allow for much higher shutter speeds, but that is outside the purview of this article.) At the other end of the spectrum, to capture the sense of motion in that waterfall, you may need a shutter speed of several seconds (and a tripod).

Other factors besides freezing / capturing motion also come into play when deciding upon shutter speeds, most notably how brightly illuminated the subject is. The brighter the subject, the lower the shutter speed can be, because it does not take as much time for the appropriate amount of light to hit the sensor. Think of it as pouring water into a bucket. If you are using a ¼” hose, it will take longer to fill the bucket than if you are using a 3” hose. Dim light (the ¼” hose) will take longer to get the necessary amount of light onto the sensor, while very bright light (the 3” hose), does not take as long. This means that the shutter speeds necessary to freeze the football player in mid-leap may vary from 1/500 in a stadium at night to 1/3200 in bright daylight. Similarly, the waterfall may require a shutter speed of 1/30 in bright daylight to 3 seconds in tree-cover. Night photography can range from 3 seconds to several hours for star trails. One of our featured images this month, “Blue Dusk – Acacias,” had an exposure of about 20 seconds. It was dark enough that my eyes could not pick out the trees, but by allowing the shutter to remain open for an extended amount of time, my camera was able to gather enough light to create a beautiful image.

One note regarding slow shutter speeds: it is generally agreed that we shaky humans can only hand-hold a camera down to 1/60 second and still get a sharp image. If you want to use a slower shutter speed than 1/60, use a tripod. Or brace your camera on a bean bag. Or put it down entirely and use the self-timer. There are many options, but the basic idea is to get your camera out of your hands and onto something much more stable. (And resting it on your buddy’s shoulder is not more stable.)

As you begin to play with shutter speed, take an initial photograph on the automatic setting and pay attention to the shutter speed setting the camera chooses. (It will be the one given as a fraction, not the decimal. We’ll deal with the decimal next month.) Most cameras these days have an option that lets you choose the shutter speed while the camera chooses the appropriate aperture to give a proper exposure. Usually called shutter-priority mode, this is a great place to start, because it allows you to manipulate only this one factor and see how it affects your photographs. As you then manipulate the shutter speed settings, as long as your camera does not say HIGH or LOW where that decimal usually is, you should be able to get a properly exposed image -- which removes your subject’s brightness from the equation, making it even easier to understand shutter speed.

Your particular camera may not have the range of shutter speeds mentioned here, and that’s okay. You will still have enough of a range to give you significantly different images of the same subject, with various gradations in-between. So find that shutter-priority mode and a moving target, and go play. Find out what your camera can do, and more importantly, how to bring the images you want to life.

March Specials

Get 10% off of unframed, 8x12 prints of “Casual Approach -- Lioness” (of course!) and / or “Blue Dusk -- Acacias” when you order from our specials page. As with all of our unframed prints, these prints are eligible for our No Hassle Returns.

Fun Facts

Spring is coming! March 20^th marks the Vernal Equinox, or the first day of spring. Unless, of course, you are in the Southern Hemisphere, in which case March 20^th is the Autumnal Equinox, or the first day of autumn. Here are a few other odd-ball facts about the equinoxes.

· Even though we think of the equinox as the 24-hour period when day and night are equal, that day actually comes several days closer to the winter side of each equinox. Why? The equinox is marked by the day when the center of the sun’s disk is above the horizon for the same amount of time as it is below the horizon. But because we count the first visible top edge of the sun’s disk as “sunrise” and the last visible bottom edge of its disk as “sunset,” the actual length of “day” is longer than “night” by a few minutes on the equinox.

· The earth’s atmosphere makes a difference, too. Our atmosphere bends light, resulting not only in very cool phenomena such as phantom ships and mirages (see our August, 2010, newsletter), but also in the appearance of the sun being higher in the sky than it really is at sunrise. Thus, the sun appears to be above the horizon, when it isn’t actually there yet.

· The equinoxes are the only times that the sun rises due east and sets due west.

· Both the north and south poles will see the sun barely skim over the horizon on March 20^th. This begins the period of six months of light at the north pole and six months of darkness at the south pole.

· Ever wondered how the date for Easter is determined each year? It is always on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the (Northern Hemisphere’s) vernal equinox.

If you have any questions, or suggestions for future newsletters, please email us at: relationships@cityescapesphotography.com

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City Escapes Nature Photography Newsletter - Jan 2014

noreply@blogger.com (City Escapes Nature Photography) — Sun, 02 Feb 2014 19:37:00 +0000

CITY ESCAPES

Nature Photography, LLC

Newsletter

February, 2014

Your Support Helps More Than Our Bottom Line

As many of you know, every January since our inception we have given 1% of our gross sales to organizations such as the Nature Conservancy that work to protect the landscapes and creatures that make our fantastic jobs possible. We get so much joy from the natural world that we feel it is our corporate obligation –- and our honor –- to help protect it. Money isn’t the complete answer, of course, but it certainly helps. It is with the utmost gratitude to all of you that we are able to report that this year, we were able to make the biggest donation we have yet made. As long as we are around, we will be happily writing this check every January, and with your continued support, it will grow steadily larger each year. We hope that you get additional satisfaction in knowing that not only do you get a fantastic image when you purchase from us, you are also helping to provide critical funding that helps these treasured areas survive. We truly, deeply thank you for your support of us -- and the beautiful places of the earth.

Overexpose for Perfect Snow Shots

With the northeast and the southeast taking turns getting blasted by nasty snow storms, and even parts of the country that rarely see snow getting bits of the white stuff, I know that some of you intrepid photographers out there will be venturing out to get that perfect, rare shot of your kids playing in the snow, the car buried up to its windows, etc. Trusting that all of you will put personal safety and the safety of others above all else, I want to remind you that your camera will want to turn all of that beautiful whiteness into a dull gray. (For an explanation of why, and more in-depth tips on how to correct this problem, see our January, 2012 newsletter: “Exposure Compensation.”) Meter off of something in the middle-color range, such as a blue jacket, a brown tree trunk, etc. If that is not possible, or it doesn’t give you satisfactory results, set your camera to overexpose by about 2/3 of a stop. This will allow more light to hit the sensor, brightening up that snow to the white that you see instead of the gray that the camera sees. Just leave the idiotic, likely-to-break-a-bone- (or worse) if-something-goes-wrong stuff to us professionals. We aren’t any more graceful than anyone else, but it’s somehow less tragic if we get hurt. And it will give you something to laugh at as you are nestled all warm and cozy inside by the fire.

February Specials

Get 10% off of unframed, 8x12 prints of “Waiting Out the Storm – Moose” and / or “Alien Landscape – Palette Springs in Winter” when you order from our specials page. As with all of our unframed prints, these prints are eligible for our No Hassle Returns.

Fun Facts

The Olympics are coming! In the spirit of all things Olympia, how much do you know about Mount Olympus?

· Mount Olympus is in Greece, in the Olympus Range. It’s not the only one, though. There is also a Mount Olympus in Turkey, Cyprus, Utah, and Washington State, among others (the latter in the Olympic Range).

· The Greek Mount Olympus has 52 peaks (!).

· Zeus and eleven other gods were believed to live on Mount Olympus, and to have meetings on its highest peak, Mytikas.

· The Olympic Games, held since 776 B.C. in the southern part of what is now Greece, reached the foot of the northerly Mount Olympus at the end of the 5^th century B.C. A nine day festival to honor Zeus was initiated in the town of Dion.

· A full 25 percent of all plant species in Greece are found on Mount Olympus.

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774-277-9682

City Escapes Nature Photography Newsletter - Dec 2013

noreply@blogger.com (City Escapes Nature Photography) — Sat, 07 Dec 2013 19:10:00 +0000

CITY ESCAPES

Nature Photography, LLC

Newsletter

December, 2013

Thinking of Updating Your Gear? Try Renting First

I have a confession to make: I am not a gear head. I use my car, camera, computer, etc. until they die, unless I have a VERY compelling reason to upgrade them (and “ooh, it’s the latest version!” is not a compelling reason. Sorry.). I don’t know much about the details of cameras that I have not personally used, and I don’t read articles on the latest and greatest new gadgets out there. At shows, guests visiting my booth frequently tell me which camera they shoot with and expect that I will automatically know something useful about it. I almost never do, although if they have it with them, I can often help them figure it out.

By some schools of thought, I am severely handicapping myself by not upgrading my equipment every year 1.5 to 2 years. That line of thought holds that technology is improving at such speeds that by not taking advantage of the latest and greatest, I will lose out on the full potential of what cameras can do. To a certain extent, that is true. I counter that once my gear and my photography goals are more or less in line, it is better to spend my time and money improving and expanding my skills, feeding my passion, and directing my funds into other areas (such as photography trips) than to constantly be learning new equipment. Anyone who has had to deal with a software upgrade knows what I mean: unless it was genuinely necessary, an “upgrade” is usually just a euphemism for lost productivity while you try to learn the new system.

There does come a time, though, when that upgrade is indeed genuinely necessary. What do you do then? This question is often most difficult for the amateur photographer who is ready to step into the world of dSLRs (digital single-lens-reflex cameras, which account for the majority of digital cameras today that have interchangeable lenses). Why is this a particularly vexing problem for this category of photographer? Generally, amateurs do not really know enough about cameras or photography to ensure that they make the absolute right choice. This causes a fair number of would-be intermediate photographers to either go into a paralysis of in- or under-action, or convinces them that they need a very expensive, professional-grade camera that they are still a long way from being ready for. The first option keeps them from being able to stretch and grow as a photographer; the second is a colossal waste of money (by the time they are ready for a professional-grade camera, the technology will almost certainly be significantly improved, and the prices much lower), and might even end up intimidating them into not using their gear. The other difficulty that amateurs often face is that they don’t necessarily know what kind of photography they want to do. For example, buying the right gear to become a sports photographer takes a significant investment of funds. Discovering two months later that what you really like is landscape photography could only make your pocketbook, and perhaps your spouse, violently ill.

How, then, does one figure out what to buy? First of all, if you are not sure about what kinds of photography float your boat, pay attention to the work of other photographers: what images draw you in? Talk to someone in the photography world. Let them help you figure out what moves you, what it is that you want to capture or create. They should be able to give you at least a generalized guideline of what gear to look for to create your vision, if not necessarily specific cameras. Finally, before making a purchase, consider renting the gear you are considering.

What? Rent? That’s right, you can rent cameras. And lenses. And tripods, flashes, studio lights, light stands… The list of available items is pretty long. You can rent them by the hour, the day, or the week. This means that if you just need a specific piece of equipment for a single special event, you don’t have to fork out the money to buy it outright. It also means that you can test out and play with your potential new gear to see how you actually like it, instead of just guessing. Think of it as test driving the gear, just like you would a car. This has great benefits, as there are often small things that one doesn’t think to consider when evaluating the equipment that reveal themselves during the actual use of the item. Sometimes these small things turn out to be a great asset; other times, they are enough to make you want to toss the item out the nearest twelfth-storey window. Either way, you have the opportunity to discover them prior to plopping down a bunch of money.

If you do not have a camera shop in your area that leases out good quality gear, fear not. There are many companies that will mail the gear to you (for a fee, of course). When you are done, you simply mail the equipment back to them. While shipping costs can make this option significantly more expensive than picking items up in-store, it may still be cheaper than spending a good deal of money on a piece of gear you quickly realize you will not use.

Finally, if you do decide to go ahead and purchase instead of rent, ensure that you are allowed to return the gear within a certain, specified amount of time. Use that time to really put your new gear through its paces (without scratching or denting it, of course). That way, if you end up not being happy with it, you can still exchange it for something that is more to your liking.

Now then, it’s the holidays. Get out there and capture the magic of it all!

Thanks to All Who Came to Our Last Show of 2013

We’re done with shows for the year, but fear not! We’ll be back in 2014 with more images to make you laugh, sigh, and “wish you were there.” And remember that you don’t have to wait for a show to get your favorite image. Our website is open 24/7 and contains our complete current inventory.

December Specials

Share your love of nature with your friends and family! Get 10% off of boxed sets of Christmas cards when you order from our specials page. Each box contains two each of five different images, with a holiday greeting inside.

Fun Facts

In 2002, Congress declared December 12^th to be Poinsettia Day. Here are a few tidbits to help you appreciate this holiday staple a little more this year.

· Poinsettias were named after Joel Roberts Poinsett, the first U.S. Ambassador to Mexico in 1825, who brought the colorful plant back to his South Carolina greenhouse.

· Despite a long-lived rumor, poinsettias are not poisonous. The story originated in 1919, when a two-year-old child’s death was blamed on the ingestion of a poinsettia leaf. Multiple exhaustive tests of every part of the plant have proven the rumor false many times over, but the myth has been very slow to be overturned. This is not helped by the fact that eating the leaves may cause stomach aches.

· The myth of the poisonous poinsettia even led to a petition being submitted to the Consumer Product Safety Commission in 1975 to require warning labels be put on the plants. The request was denied.

· How did poinsettias become associated with Christmas? The tradition dates back to a Mexican legend that tells the story of a poor girl on her way to church on Christmas Eve. Though the details of the story vary by the teller, the basic premise is that the girl was in tears on her journey, saddened that she had no gift to present to the Baby Jesus. She was then told that anything she brought, if truly given with love, would be the perfect gift for the Holy Child. She picked a bunch of weeds that grew beside the road, arranged them into a bouquet, and entered the church, embarrassed and ashamed by her paltry gift. As soon as she laid the bouquet on the altar, however, the ends of the leaves burst into brilliant red flowers, and everyone present knew they had seen a miracle of faith.

· The red leaves of poinsettias are thought to represent the blood of Christ, the white leaves his purity, while the shape of the leaves and flowers as a whole are thought to resemble the Star of Bethlehem.

If you have any questions, or suggestions for future newsletters, please email us at: relationships@cityescapesphotography.com

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City Escapes Photography Newsletter - Nov 2013

noreply@blogger.com (City Escapes Nature Photography) — Sat, 02 Nov 2013 16:04:00 +0000

CITY ESCAPES

Nature Photography, LLC

Newsletter

November, 2013

No, Really, Leave No Trace

The recent toppling by two Boy Scout leaders of a rock formation known as a “goblin” has sparked widespread outrage. For those who may not have heard the details of the event, they are as follows: On October 11, the two men, while leading a troop through Goblin Valley State Park in Utah, pushed over a large boulder that was balanced on a thin ridge of supporting rock. They videotaped the event, posted the video to Facebook, and the video went viral.

The men claim that they were attempting to prevent a future death from the natural toppling of the rock. This doesn’t make sense to me. The likelihood that the boulder would have toppled of its own accord in my lifetime was pretty slim, and even if it had, the added chance that someone would be near enough to it to be injured or killed was slimmer still. But even if it were about to topple, there is another very important point to remember here: they were in a state park specifically created to protect the very types of formations that the men destroyed. The proper course of action would have been for the men to notify the rangers that they felt the formation was unsafe. The rangers could have then assessed the formation, and if they agreed with the men, they could have taken the proper actions to protect the public. This does not mean that the parks department would or should have somehow reinforced the boulder to keep it from falling; they could have simply cordoned off the area to keep visitors a safe distance away. This would have allowed the public to continue to appreciate the formation and observe the natural progression of erosive forces. Had the formation been on private land and the men had the blessing of the landowner, the story would be very different. But because this was in a state park, one specifically dedicated to the protection of the goblins from human destructive forces, I can only wonder at how the men convinced themselves this was the right thing to do.

Everyone who enters ANY natural area should be aware of potential risks, and take the proper measures to minimize their own exposure to hazards. This does not mean that it is necessarily appropriate to remove the hazards, but rather to conduct oneself appropriately around them. Let’s face it, the natural world, just like the man-made one, can be a dangerous place. It is important to be aware of one’s surroundings, and to learn the necessary skills to navigate the area safely.

There is a great deal of beauty and exoticism in the natural world, but in order to continue enjoying it, we must be willing to protect it – from ourselves. There is no other creature on Earth as destructive as man. And it doesn’t have to be all of us doing the destroying; it only takes a few “bad apples” to reduce an awe-inspiring place to rubble. This is why we have state and national parks, so that a system is in place to preserve these choice locations for the enjoyment of all, including future generations. Unfortunately, it is in the nature of some people to destroy things merely for their own amusement. We see it in cities all the time: it is at the very heart of riots and vandalism. Our great outdoors are not exempt from this menace. Often stunningly beautiful places will be marred with spray-painted graffiti. Carlsbad Caverns has begun limiting access to previously open cavern rooms because a number of individuals took to throwing oranges and other items at the formations trying to break them. (Unfortunately, in some cases they succeeded.) The examples are too numerous to recount here; suffice it to say that I could go on and on. While I am not convinced that the two Boy Scout leaders belong in this group of people who destroy things simply for a momentary laugh, having seen the video, I am not convinced that they don’t either. Even if I give them the benefit of the doubt, I am saddened by their lack of common sense, their lack of awareness of where they were, and that they demonstrated such ill-judgment to a group of teenagers for whom they were supposed to be leaders. The admirable tenets of the Boy Scout’s “Leave No Trace” principles were certainly discarded in this very unfortunate incident.

(Since the incident, the men have been removed from their leadership positions with the Boy Scouts, and an investigation into possible criminal charges continues.)

Come See Us at Our Pasco Christmas Show

It’s that time: the holidays will be upon us soon. Now is the time to get that perfect gift for the nature lover in your life. Come see us at Custer’s Christmas Arts & Crafts Show in Pasco, Washington, November 8-10, to choose from some stunning framed and ready-to-frame pieces. Get your shopping done early so you can actually enjoy the season. We look forward to seeing you there!

Custer Christmas Arts & Crafts Show

The TRAC Center

Pasco, WA

Hours:

Friday, November 8: 10am – 8pm

Saturday, November 9: 10am – 6pm

Sunday, November 10: 10am – 4pm

November Specials

Get 10% off of boxed sets of Christmas cards when you order from our specials page. Each box contains two each of five different images. Or, get a five-card pack of Christmas cards free with any purchase of $200 or more at the show.

Fun Facts

On Sunday, November 3^rd, our clocks “fall back” out of Daylight Saving Time.

· In the U.S., DST was first implemented towards the end of World War I as a means to save energy, namely through the conservation of coal.

· DST was enacted and repealed several times before it became widespread during the energy crisis of the 1970s.

· Broadly speaking, farmers and those businesses that rely on evening darkness (such as drive-in theaters) do not care for DST much, while many other retail businesses favor it.

· The original energy-savings of Daylight Saving Time have been nullified by the widespread adoption of cooling systems such as air conditioning. Whereas in the early days of DST lighting was the major energy drain, a problem that DST was able to help alleviate by shifting more light into the evening, now cooling and heating systems use much more energy than lighting. Because of the later evenings, people now keep cooling systems on longer, more than compensating for the amount of lighting energy saved.

· Multiple efforts have been made to get the same benefits of Daylight Saving Time, without having to deal with the hassle of changing the clocks, by getting people to get up and start their day an hour earlier. Needless to say, these efforts have not been successful.

· While a push to rescind DST is ongoing, there is one question that must be asked: if we get rid of Daylight Saving Time, how will we remember to change the batteries in our smoke detectors? ;’)

If you have any questions, or suggestions for future newsletters, please email us at: relationships@cityescapesphotography.com

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City Escapes Nature Photography Newsletter - Oct 2013

noreply@blogger.com (City Escapes Nature Photography) — Tue, 01 Oct 2013 19:43:00 +0000

CITY ESCAPES

Nature Photography, LLC

Newsletter

October, 2013

The Leaves, They Are A’Changin’

Autumn is by far my favorite time of year. My energy levels soar as the sluggishness caused by summer’s heat fades with the cooling of the days. The crispness in the air lifts my spirits high. And my eyes are treated to a glorious display of vibrant hues as leaves prepare for winter.

Have you ever wondered what causes this remarkable transition in leaf color? While most of us know that it has something to do with chlorophyll, we would be hard pressed to come up with any other tidbits of information. So here, in a nutshell, is the explanation for this most interesting of transformations – a transformation that turns most nature photographers into shutter-clicking maniacs every fall.

Chlorophyll, as you remember from junior high science class, is that magical substance that plants use to make food from sunlight and water. More accurately, plants use the energy from sunlight to turn carbon dioxide and water into oxygen and glucose, and they need chlorophyll to absorb that sunlight energy. Chlorophyll is green. In the summer, leaves are so jam-packed with chlorophyll that the leaves themselves look green. Other colors exist in the leaves, even the deepest of green leaves, but the chlorophyll overpowers all of these other colors, masking them.

Then comes the shortening of days and that coolness in the air that so energizes me. It also has an effect on leaves: it signals them to begin shutting down their energy-production facilities, because they will soon be out of sufficient resources to continue operations. (Fortunately trees are like squirrels; during the plentiful summer months, they store away enough extra food supplies to last them through the long winter.) Chlorophyll production diminishes. That is when the fireworks begin: the underlying colors of the leaves come out in full force – as long as those colors are yellow or orange. (We’ll get to the reds, purples, and browns in a moment.)

Orange colors come from carotene – carrots, anyone? – while yellows are caused by xanthophyll; the two comprise the major subgroups of carotenoids. In a leaf, carotenoids capture blue light energy to use in photosynthesis while simultaneously serving as potent anti-oxidants, protecting chlorophyll from damage caused by that light. Chances are you use visible carotenoid levels all the time, too, especially to make decisions in the produce section of your grocery store. For example, the green color of unripe bananas is caused by chlorophyll. As the bananas ripen, chlorophyll levels drop and more xanthophyll is visible, creating that gorgeous yellow of the perfectly ripe banana. (And as the carotenoids degrade, they produce the delicious aromas of ripe fruit. The products of carotenoid breakdown are common components of the fragrance industry – but that’s another story altogether.)

The fabulous reds and purples that adorn the autumn leaves of maples and other tree species are generally not caused by carotenoids, but by another chemical entirely, a group of pigments called anthocyanins. Like carotenoids, anthocyanins are also abundant in the produce section: they are the source of the beautiful hues in such goodies as cranberries, raspberries, beets, blueberries, blackberries, and even eggplants. Unlike carotenoids, however, anthocyanins are first produced in leaves in autumn; they are not “uncovered” by decreased levels of chlorophyll. Like chlorophyll in summer, autumn’s anthocyanins overpower and cover the yellows and oranges of the carotenoids that are also present in their leaves. Glucose trapped in leaves is converted to this potent antioxidant, which seems to serve two major functions: protection of the leaf from photo damage and the lowering of the leaf’s freezing point. Together, these allow the tree to hold onto its leaves a bit longer in order to extract the greatest amount of nutrients from it. And your eyes are not fooling you: those breath-taking reds really ARE more vibrant on bright, sunny days, as sunlight increases the production of anthocyanins.

What about the extremely common browns of autumn? They are caused by waste products trapped in leaves, namely tannin, a substance most often referred to in discussions of wine and the tanning of hides (yes, that is where the process gets its name). Tannins are thought to provide a certain amount of protection from insects and other predators. They have a bitter, astringent taste that is unpleasant to predators, including humans. It is that astringency that we taste when we eat unripe fruit. Tannins seeping from fallen leaves and other plants are also what cause many rivers, streams, and lakes in forested areas to look “root beer brown,” a deep but nonetheless clear brown.

There you have it: not only what causes the fireworks of autumn, but also what benefits these pigments provide the plant. Now go capture a few images of them! Your eyes will thank you for it.

A Short Break from Shows

We are taking October off from art shows, but don’t despair! We’ll be back in November for our last show of the year, Custer’s Christmas Arts & Crafts Show in Pasco, Washington (see sidebar at top). Mark your calendars – it will be an ideal time to pick up a fabulous Christmas gift for the nature lover in your life.

October Specials

Get 10% off of unframed, 8x12 prints of “Elk Yoga” and / or unframed, 8x12 prints of “Path of Tranquility” when you order from our specials page. As with all of our unframed prints, these prints are eligible for our No Hassle Returns.

Fun Facts

Autumn is here (yay!), and with it comes a fun outdoor tradition: the corn maze.

· The first modern corn maze in the U.S., made in 1993, was conceived as a way to raise funds for victims of severe flooding that had swept through the Midwest. The designer, Don Frantz, adapted European-style hedge mazes into a much larger and more challenging maze, and donated all proceeds to the Red Cross. This first maze formed the image of a stegosaurus named “Cornelius, the Cobasaurus”.

· Many corn mazes form an image visible from the air. Portraits, maps, words, and pictures celebrating the local area are all common themes.

· Most farms change the design of their corn mazes every year.

· Mazes offer a variety of activities. Some are simple “Can you get from here to there?” challenges, while others offer additional activities such as finding hidden checkpoints along the way, solving puzzles, answering trivia based upon clues hidden in the maze, etc. Some even have actors dressed in scary costumes that will jump out at visitors along the way.

· Think all corn mazes are razed soon after Halloween? Think again. In Florida, some corn mazes stay open until December 16.

· This year, a 15-acre maze in Alberta, Canada, incorporates a 7-acre, working QR code (those funny squares that you can scan with a smart phone to get more info about products or services, often found on advertising materials). Scanning the code requires an aerial photo.

· A series of four corn mazes in Bellbrook, Ohio, that together form a single image, covers 62 acres and contains 11.5 miles of trails.

If you have any questions, or suggestions for future newsletters, please email us at: relationships@cityescapesphotography.com

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CITY ESCAPES Nature Photography, LLC

www.cityescapesphotography.com

774-277-9682

City Escapes Nature Photography Newsletter - Sept 2013

noreply@blogger.com (City Escapes Nature Photography) — Wed, 04 Sep 2013 20:25:00 +0000

CITY ESCAPES

Nature Photography, LLC

Newsletter

September, 2013

A Hail of a Good Time

Our last show of the season in Sunriver, Oregon, was full of good music, close friends, fun conversations – and hail. Lots of hail. In August. Hailstones the size of marbles blasted the festival on Friday, shutting down the entire festival for about an hour. Fortunately we came through the storm with minimal damage and a fantastic conversation starter for the rest of the weekend. This bit of excitement added to a great experience, and we look forward to showing in Sunriver again next year (though hopefully minus the hail). Thanks to all who came to see us – or to spend the weekend with us!

Staying Healthy While Traveling

While it is never fun to get sick, becoming ill on a trip is especially unpleasant. An illness while traveling can cause you to miss the very opportunities that made you want to travel in the first place. In extreme cases, it can also be quite dangerous to fall ill while traveling. Modern medicines may not be available, you may be far from help, or you may be in a situation of decreased natural immunity due to physically demanding activity. Fortunately, there are steps that you can take to minimize your risk of getting sick while traveling.

As in your day-to-day life, one of the most important steps to staying healthy while traveling is good hygiene. Hand washing with soap and water is not always an option, however, and even when it is, the water may not be safe – and don’t for a minute think that you don’t accidentally touch your eyes, mouth, and nose at some point after washing. Hand sanitizer can play a crucial role in fighting off the bugs that like to live in non-potable water, so wash, dry (but don’t use a communal towel; if that is your only option, just let your hands air dry), and douse your hands with hand sanitizer. You don’t have to be in some exotic locale for this to be a necessity; even large cruise ships are notorious for getting people sick from contaminated water. Consider hand sanitizer to be as important as toothpaste on your travels.

So much of staying healthy revolves around water. Unsafe drinking water is one of the major causes of illness for travelers, from hikers to beach-dwellers on the world’s coastlines. Most of us are familiar with the concept of Montezuma’s Revenge, and those of us who have experienced it will never forget it. In extreme cases, the dehydration and diarrhea that comes with water-borne illnesses can be life-threatening. Clean drinking water is an absolute must. Hikers have long carried water purification tablets with them, and these work very well, though they can sometimes leave the water with an unpleasant taste. In recent years water purifiers that use ultraviolet light to kill the nasties have become popular, and they don’t change the taste of the water. Be sure to follow the directions for both the tablets and the UV purifiers carefully; improper use will render them ineffective. Boiling water is still a tried and true method, but travelers at elevation must be careful – water boils at a lower temperature at higher elevations, and it must be boiled longer to kill the bugs. Be certain to have the water at a full, rolling boil for at least a minute at sea level, and add another minute for every 1000’ above sea level. Drinking bottled water is another common way to ensure clean water, but depending upon where you are traveling, you should be careful with it, too. In some places, water bottles that have simply been refilled with the local water are common. Be certain that any bottled water you drink is properly sealed before you imbibe.

If you are in a place where the water is unsafe, do not eat any vegetables or fruits that you do not peel yourself. Use treated water not only for cooking and drinking, but for brushing your teeth, making ice cubes, and anything else that may put the water in contact with your mouth. Make a point to keep your mouth closed in the shower, and don’t swim in contaminated rivers or lakes. If you do get sick, try using Pepto Bismal or a similar over the counter medication to treat the symptoms, and, ironically enough, try not to let yourself get dehydrated. If these measures are not sufficient, a prescription strength antibiotic may be required – visit your doctor or your local travel clinic and fill the prescription before you leave, so you have the medicine available when you need it. Be sure to complete the entire course of medication – you don’t want the strongest bugs surviving in your gut to make you ill again.

If you are traveling internationally, visiting a travel clinic before you leave is always a good idea. Not only can they provide you with a prescription for the appropriate antibiotic, they can also provide most other immunizations you may need. Some vaccines are simply suggested (sometimes very strongly suggested), while others may be required. For example, yellow fever vaccinations are usually required to travel from one country to another in Africa, while antimalarials are not (they fall into the strongly suggested category). Travel clinics can also give you up to date, location-specific information about any current health risks that may exist at your destination. It is a good idea to check with the clinic at least six months prior to your departure. Some of the common vaccinations are in a series that take up to six months to complete, and your immunity will be strongest once the full series has been concluded.

Of course, ensure that you carry with you whatever medications you need for any specific health conditions you may have. If you are flying, keep these in your carry-on bag rather than in your checked luggage, just in case your checked luggage decides to visit a different destination than originally planned. Keeping your medications in their original packaging and carrying a copy of the prescription with you will help to minimize any difficulties you may encounter while crossing borders.

Finally, having a basic first aid kit with you can keep many small issues from becoming large ones. Cleaning cuts and scrapes with an alcohol wipe, then covering them with an antibiotic ointment and a bandage will keep them clean and help to keep them from getting infected. Moleskin can help prevent blisters. Basic medicines such as aspirin and anti-itch creams (and / or Benadryl if you have any allergies) can soothe otherwise day-ruining aches and irritations. These kits are readily found at a wide variety of stores, or you can easily make your own. We have used ours many times – as often to help others as for ourselves.

We wish you many happy – and healthy! – travels.

September Specials

Get 10% off of unframed, 8x12 prints of “Masquerade – Sea Lion” and / or unframed, 8x12 prints of “Peaceful Motion” when you order from our specials page. As with all of our unframed prints, these prints are eligible for our No Hassle Returns.

Fun Facts

The fourth Saturday of September marks International Rabbit Day. How much do you know about these adorable critters?

· Female rabbits are called does; males, bucks, and babies, kits or kittens.

· There are approximately 30 species of rabbits.

· A jackrabbit fleeing from a predator can reach an impressive 45 mph.

· Rabbits have a remarkable range of vision that encompasses almost 360°, having only a single blind spot – right in front of their noses.

· Coney Island is named after the rabbits, called coneys in Middle English, that were once quite numerous in the area.

If you have any questions, or suggestions for future newsletters, please email us at: relationships@cityescapesphotography.com

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CITY ESCAPES Nature Photography, LLC

www.cityescapesphotography.com

774-277-9682

City Escapes Nature Photography Newsletter - Aug, 2013

noreply@blogger.com (City Escapes Nature Photography) — Sat, 03 Aug 2013 20:20:00 +0000

CITY ESCAPES

Nature Photography, LLC

Newsletter

August, 2013

Last Chance to See Us at a Show This Summer

Our show season is winding down, with only one show left this summer. The Sunriver Art Faire, held August 9-11 just 15 miles south of Bend, Oregon in the planned community of Sunriver, is your last opportunity to see us at a show until we return to Pasco in November. Come by and say hi, and bring all your friends and neighbors. With a Saturday street dance, Sunday breakfast, and all kinds of activities for kids in addition to fantastic artists and professional entertainment, it should be a great time!

Hours:

Friday, August 9 -- 9:30am to 7:00pm

Saturday, August 10 -- 9:30am to 7:00pm

Sunday, August 11 -- 9:30am to 4:00pm

Plus we would like to give a huge thanks for all who came to see us in Aspen on such short notice. (Hi Crystal and the Dans!) We had a fabulous weekend, despite the rain, and look forward to doing the Aspen show again next year.

Our Favorite Hiking Accessories

Getting the kinds of images that we like to capture often requires a wilderness hike (oh darn!). In addition to good hiking boots, sunscreen, and bug repellant, there are some hiking accessories that can make the journey a bit more pleasant. Here are some of our favorites:

Walking sticks. An often under-appreciated piece of gear, walking sticks serve a myriad of purposes. They allow you to use your upper body to assist in uphill jaunts and help protect your knees while going downhill. They can be used to move slightly-out-of-reach plants to one side for a clear photograph. If necessary, they can be used to splint a leg or form the basis of a shelter. And they make great – if somewhat challenging – clubs for a rousing game of acorn golf. Just be careful not to lean on them overly much; they can and will break, and that can send you tumbling if they were supporting too much of your weight. They are meant to be an assist, not a primary weight bearer.

Refillable water bottles. Regardless of what terrain you hike in, adequate water is a must, especially in the summer (though dehydration occurs just as easily in the winter). Since we both carry packs on our hikes, Camelbacks and other water bladders are not necessarily a good option for us, though they might work very well for you and are worth looking into. Our favorites are simple, refillable water bottles with some sort of loop through which a carabineer will fit. We attach them to the outside of our backpacks and, if the hike is long enough, stash a few more inside the packs. Terence likes the aluminum ones because they can take a bit of a beating, while I prefer those with attached straws so that I can quickly and easily take a sip without having to unscrew the lid or remove the bottle from my pack. After the hike they are easy to clean and refill for the next hike, and good ones will last for years.

Gaiters. For those who may not know, gaiters are pieces of fabric that wrap around your shoes or hiking boots and go part of the way up your leg, effectively sealing off the spaces between laces, boots and pants. Gaiters are a fabulous invention. Not only do they help to keep pebbles, sticker burrs, ants, and mud out of your shoes, they also help to protect your pant leg from things that would rip and tear them open. And when they are in dire need of a good cleaning, you can usually just toss them in the wash (though putting them in a mesh delicates bag first is always a good idea in order to keep their hooks from catching on other garments).

Carabineers. One of the classic all-purpose hiking tools, carabineers come in handy in all kinds of ways you cannot imagine until you need them.

Bear spray holsters / tear away strips on hiking shirts. Our hikes often occur in bear country, which means we are usually carrying bear spray. One of the fundamentals of bear spray is that to be effective, it must first be accessible: no burying it in a backpack or tucking it away in a hard-to-reach pocket. On the rare occasion that you might need to use bear spray, you must be able to reach it, remove it from its carrying spot, and get it aimed quickly, usually under circumstances that have your adrenaline going and your hands less than steady. (This is one situation in which carabineers are not ideal.) Holsters attach to your belt and keep the can easily accessible at your waist. Tear away strips on hiking shirts are simply little strips of fabric that are sewn onto the shirt at one end and attach with Velcro at the other end. By threading the strip through the handle of the can of bear spray, you can keep it at its most accessible: even in a panic you can rip the can away from your shirt for immediate availability. None of this is meant to frighten anyone who would like to go hiking in bear country. Bear spray is very similar to fire insurance: you will likely never need it, but when you do, you are sure glad you have it.

Don’t forget your small first aid kit to care for the blisters, bumps, and bites that are common accompaniments to treks through the wilderness. Make sure you know where you are, and have a plan for how to find your way again should you get lost (GPS, map and compass, etc.). Most of all, find what works for you, and get out there and hike!

August Specials

Get 10% off of unframed, 8x10 prints of “A Quiet Lunch” and / or unframed, 8x12 prints of “Early Evening on the Amnicon River” when you order from our specials page. As with all of our unframed prints, these prints are eligible for our No Hassle Returns.

Fun Facts

August 24^thmarks Vesuvius Day, of the infamous Mount Vesuvius that buried Pompeii on August 24^th, 79 A.D. A few things you may not know about that legendary volcano:

· Pompeii was only one of three towns destroyed by the massive eruption. The towns of Herculaneum and Stabiae were also buried. Pompeii was buried 10 feet deep, while Herculaneum found itself under a staggering 75 feet of ash.

· The 79 A.D. eruption is among the most powerful volcanic eruptions ever recorded.

· Vesuvius had another major eruption in 1631. Over a century later, during ongoing reconstruction, the ruins of Pompeii were discovered in March of 1748, rocketing the dead but perfectly preserved town to stardom.

· Though the Italian peninsula boasts several active volcanoes in seas and on islands, Vesuvius is the only active volcano on the mainland in all of Europe.

· The last eruption of Vesuvius was in 1944, toward the end of World War II, when it created havoc for the Allies by destroying some of their planes and forcing airbase evacuations.

· Today an estimated 3 million people, including all of the citizens of Naples, live within Vesuvius’ reach.

If you have any questions, or suggestions for future newsletters, please email us at: relationships@cityescapesphotography.com

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CITY ESCAPES Nature Photography, LLC

www.cityescapesphotography.com

774-277-9682

City Escapes Nature Photography Newsletter - July 2013

noreply@blogger.com (City Escapes Nature Photography) — Mon, 01 Jul 2013 21:05:00 +0000

CITY ESCAPES

Nature Photography, LLC

Newsletter

July, 2013

Protecting Your Gear in Hot Weather

We are only in early July, yet temperatures are already soaring well above 90°F in much of the country, with more than a few locales topping 100°F. And it’s only going to get hotter. Assuming you are one of those intrepid souls who does not let this kind of heat keep you locked behind air-conditioned doors, how should you protect your camera gear? The rules are fairly straightforward: try to keep it cool, and don’t shock it.

There are various tricks to keeping your gear as cool as possible that don’t involve keeping it in an ice chest (a bad idea by the way, just in case you were wondering – see the next section). The first should come as no surprise given all of the warnings we hear every summer about how hot the insides of cars get: don’t keep your gear in a closed vehicle in the sun. I used to go to work in the mornings with an apple on my dashboard, only to have a beautifully baked apple waiting for me when I left at five o’clock. Imagine what that kind of heat could do to the sensitive electronics in your camera. It is literally like putting your camera in the oven, something we would never even consider doing. Above and beyond frying the electronics, the extreme heat can also cause the various seals to dry out and crack, necessitating another expensive visit to the repair shop.

The golden hours of dawn and dusk become especially appealing in hot weather, not just for their magical light, but also because they are among the coolest parts of the day. (Yet another reason to get up early and / or stay out late.) Try to avoid mid-day sun, the hottest part of the day. And when the temperatures are high, try to keep your gear in the shade. Trees, buildings, even cars or people can provide adequate shade, as can canopies fashioned from any number of nearby objects. If you must shoot in direct sunlight, cover your camera with a light-colored towel or shirt to minimize heat absorption. Additionally, minimize the amount of heat generated by the camera itself. This means limiting the amount of time you use the “live view” function in your digital SLR, and either limiting or altering your use of video recording. If possible, use an AC adaptor to eliminate heat generated by batteries, and use a separate monitor to decrease the heat created by the view screen. If your camera’s overheating-warning light comes on, always and immediately turn the camera off and allow it to cool down before continuing.

Not shocking your camera means not taking it from one temperature to a significantly different temperature quickly, especially if there is high humidity involved. In other words, don’t take your gear that has been in a 70°F house out into 100°F weather – or vice versa – without properly protecting it first. Ideally, your gear should be able to transition slowly from one temperature to the next over the course of 30-60 minutes. In the real world, however, that rarely has a chance to happen, so you need to protect your gear from the condensation that often accompanies drastic temperature changes. The easiest way to do this is by sealing your gear (body AND lenses) in a resealable plastic bag, with as much of the air compressed out of it as possible, before changing temperatures. This will allow the condensation to form on the outside of the bag rather than on – and more importantly, in – your gear. This prevents not only fogging and spots, but also rust, mold and mildew from forming on the internal components of the camera and lenses, potentially saving your gear from complete destruction. Once the condensation has evaporated, the gear can be safely removed from the bag.

A final note about condensation: “weather sealing” does not stop it from forming, and should not be counted upon to protect your gear.

Happy shooting, drink lots of water, and keep cool!

Thanks to All Who Came to See Us in Spokane and Blaine

Each time we go to a show, we meet new people and make new friends. Our two shows in June were no exception, and the people we were lucky enough to meet were wonderful. I love hearing all of the great stories that our visitors share with us when they see our images, from the truly funny to the sentimental to the downright odd. This time around we heard gut-busting stories of a very clever moose, learned that the national bird of Botswana is the lilac-breasted roller (featured in one of our favorite images, “Neighbors – Lilac-breasted Roller & Elephant”), and saw a gentleman grin broadly as he announced that he proposed to his wife under one of the waterfalls we featured. Memories of trips taken and dreams of trips not yet experienced were shared with us in abundance, and I loved it all. I love transporting people to another place through our images, and inspiring in them not just a passion for photography, but for travel and experiencing the world. Thanks to everyone who came to share a bit of their time with me; I hope to see you all again soon. I would like to give a special shout-out to Lily, a very engaging and delightful young lady in Spokane who made my weekend a little brighter. The world is waiting for you, Lily. Go get it.

July Specials

Get 10% off of unframed, 8x12 prints of “Beguiling Beauty” and / or 8x9 prints of “Late Afternoon Blues” when you order from our specials page. As with all of our unframed prints, these prints are eligible for our No Hassle Returns.

Fun Facts

July 2^nd is World UFO Day, commemorating the discovery on July 2, 1947, of strange wreckage on the ranch of Mac Brazel near Roswell, New Mexico. A call to all of you talented photographers out there: get us some better photographs, please!

If you have any questions, or suggestions for future newsletters, please email us at: relationships@cityescapesphotography.com

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CITY ESCAPES Nature Photography, LLC

www.cityescapesphotography.com

774-277-9682

City Escapes Nature Phototgraphy Newsletter - June 2013

noreply@blogger.com (City Escapes Nature Photography) — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 18:29:00 +0000

CITY ESCAPES

Nature Photography, LLC

Newsletter

June, 2013

Two Shows to Choose From in June

We’re back to Spokane this weekend for Artfest Spokane 2013. Come see us and swap a few stories about great places and fun critters. There will be lots to see and do in this outdoor art and music festival about a mile west of Spokane’s city center. Come to Coeur d’Alene Park (don’t let the name fool you – it’s in Spokane), in Browne’s Addition. We’ll be there all weekend, May 31 through June 2. We hope to see you there!

Hours:

Friday, May 31: 1pm – 8pm

Saturday, June 1: 10am – 8pm

Sunday, June 2: 10am – 5pm

Or come visit us in Blaine, WA, later in the month. We’ll be there for the International Art Festival at Peace Arch Park on June 22 & 23. The festival opens with a Tai Chi demonstration – you can’t get much more welcoming and relaxed than that. We’ll be in booth #48, but you don’t really need to know that – just come look around, take in all of the cool artists, music, food and performances, and find us in your meanderings. Don’t forget to practice your “Eh?”s; you’re bound to run into a plethora of Canucks here!

Hours:

Saturday, June 22: 10am – 7pm

Sunday, June 23: 11am – 5pm

Using Flash Outdoors

As summer nears, plans for family bbqs, camping trips, and outdoor sports kick into high gear. How often have we excitedly taken photos at such outings, only to discover that the sky is bright and beautiful, but the faces of our subjects are much too dark? One solution to this is quite simple, though perhaps a bit counter-intuitive: use your flash. “Use a flash in bright sunlight?” you might ask. “Are you crazy?” Believe it or not, no. To understand why, you need to know a bit about how your camera works.

Unless you are shooting in the manual mode, where you control absolutely all of the settings, your camera will evaluate a scene to determine the proper exposure. Most cameras will evaluate ALL of the scene and create an exposure that results in the median values (or sometimes, the brightest part) of the image properly exposed. Also, a camera can only “see” a limited range of tonal values, much fewer than the human eye can. This means that while we can see both the beautiful blue sky and the pitcher’s shaded face under his baseball cap, the camera can see only one or the other: to see one extreme, it loses the ability to see the other well. When you combine these two aspects, you end up with an image that has the bright sky properly exposed, but no detail in the faces. The answer: either darken the sky, or brighten the faces. (To read a discussion on the sky-darkening options, see our March 2013 newsletter.)

There are several techniques to add light to faces or other dark areas of your scene, but this month we will only discuss the simplest: popping that flash up. Most cameras, now even some smart-phone versions, have some sort of built-in flash. Turn it on, and fire away. That’s it. The added light hitting the foreground elements of your image will bring the tonal values between the foreground and the bright sky closer together, allowing your camera to see and capture them more accurately. If you have the ability to control the output of your flash, i.e., the amount of light it produces in a single flash, experiment with turning it down from full power. Lower flash outputs often end up providing a more natural look to the image while still contributing sufficient light to do the trick. You might only have the option to switch between full-powered flash and what is known as fill flash (not counting the red-eye reduction setting). You’re in luck; this entire process of adding light, via a flash, to the shadowy areas of an otherwise bright image is called using fill flash. So set your flash on fill flash and voila! You’re set.

There is an entire art (and a bit of physics) to properly placing flashes for the most effective results, and it almost always involves using off-camera flashes rather than the built-in versions. But for now, to dramatically improve your summertime shots, put this simple tip into practice. You will find that your family portraits with that gorgeous sunset in the background will be much closer to what you wanted to capture in the first place.

June Specials

Visit us at one of our shows, mention that you subscribe to our newsletter, and receive a free 5x7 greeting card of your choice!

Fun Facts

June 5^th, 2013, is the 41^st anniversary of World Environment Day. First created by the United Nations General Assembly in 1972, a different theme is chosen for WED each year, with the goal to not only raise awareness of environmental issues, but also to educate people about actions that they can take locally to support a healthy environment and alleviate environmental problems.

The theme for 2013: Think.Eat.Save. According to the United Nations’ website, “every year 1.3 billion tons of food is wasted. This is equivalent to the same amount produced in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa.” It is estimated that worldwide, a third of all food is wasted, while in the U.S. that percentage rises to 40%. 40%! Even if you don’t care about the environment, think of how much more money you would have in your pocket if 40% of your food bill vanished.

If you have any questions, or suggestions for future newsletters, please email us at: relationships@cityescapesphotography.com

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CITY ESCAPES Nature Photography, LLC

www.cityescapesphotography.com

774-277-9682

City Escapes Photography Newsletter - May 2013

noreply@blogger.com (City Escapes Nature Photography) — Wed, 01 May 2013 17:35:00 +0000

CITY ESCAPES

Nature Photography, LLC

Newsletter

May, 2013

The Flowers are Blooming!

Following up on last month’s article on how to photograph butterflies, this month we focus on another of spring’s glorious welcoming signs: flowers. We’re not talking about staged shots of flowers in vases or other controlled environments, gorgeous though such images may be. Instead, this month is all about capturing the beauty of the explosion of colors that come with the warming of the earth and the air, without pulling a single stem from the ground. Get ready to get low!

The first thing to concentrate on is composition. Very few images shot from above, framed dead center, and with busy backgrounds show off a flower to the height of its beauty and interest. Look for unusual angles and vantage points, ways of looking at the flower that are not part of our normal, everyday experience. Try framing the flower off-center to add visual interest. Don’t feel like you need to include the entire flower in the image; experiment with cropping out parts or entire petals, or even most of the actual flower in order to focus on a small portion. Pay attention to the background. Is there something lurking back there that will detract from the image? If you can’t move it out of the way, move yourself to a new angle.

Flower photography is often about getting tightly cropped images of a single or only a few flowers, frequently with a very shallow depth of field. The shallower the depth of field, the more critical it is to have your focus spot on. Pay careful attention to precisely what is in the focal plane: very slight adjustments can make a huge difference. If you are including an insect on the flower, the same rules apply as to other critter photography: unless the major focus is something like the colorful wings of a butterfly, ensure that the insect’s eyes are in sharp focus.

Wind and breezes can be a problem when trying to capture striking images of flowers not in a controlled studio environment. Sometimes the motion of the flowers can be incorporated into the image to give a sense of motion or to lend an abstact feel. At other times, even slight movement will drive you batty while you try to capture a sharp image. There are three major options to deal with wind if you want to leave the flower in place. The first is, of course, to shoot only on still days. Because that may be an overly restrictive constraint in some locations, having other tricks up your sleeve is always a good idea. Building some sort of wind break is often very effective. This can be as simple as draping a jacket over some brush next to the flower. (Be careful that whatever you use to deflect the wind does not adversely affect the light falling on your subject.) Use your imagination. Cardboard, gray cards, even your camera’s owner’s manual may serve as great wind breaks. The third option is to actually hold the flower still. Keep in mind that humans have a tendency to shake ever-so-slightly, so hand-holding the flower stem is not likely to give you the most rock-solid steadiness. Depending on your shutter speed, this may not be an issue. There are also various contraptions that are made to hold flower stems still for you, removing the unsteadiness of the human hand. Basically, they are small clips attached to either end of a thick, stiff coil of wire. One clip attaches to something that doesn’t move, such as your tripod, and the other is clipped onto the flower’s stem. I have never personally used one these clips, but I have heard good things about them. I imagine that a homemade version would not be difficult to construct, and would be just as effective. Be careful that the clip does not crush the stem, which will kill the flower. And of course, make sure that your composition does not show the clip or the wire coil.

Lighting is another important consideration when photographing flowers. Backlighting can be gorgeous on flowers, and sidelighting can bring out a stunning dimension to the petals. When getting in close, take care to not get in your own light; it is easy to cast a shadow over your subject. If fill light is needed and you decide to use a flash, try diffusing or bouncing the light rather than using it straight on. This will give you a more natural result, without the harsh effects of direct flash. You can also use a reflector to direct more light onto your subject. Reflectors can be anything from fancy, purpose-made professional rounds to a sheet of paper –- anything that will reflect light. They don’t have to be white, either. Given the enormous range of hues that Mother Nature dyes her flowers, colored reflectors will often provide a much more intriguing feel to the image. Got a red jacket? Try it. A baby blue T-shirt? It might be just the color needed to give that extra zip to your image.

No matter how you photograph flowers, don’t forget to enjoy the process. Flowers are little bursts of petaled fireworks, whose immense variety of colors is rivaled only by their fineness and delicacy. It would be a shame to capture the image without truly appreciating the physical thing.

Come See Us In Spokane

We’re back to Spokane this month for Artfest Spokane 2013. Come see us and swap a few stories about great places and fun critters. There will be lots to see and do in this outdoor art and music festival about a mile west of Spokane’s city center. Come to Coeur d’Alene Park (don’t let the name fool you – it’s in Spokane), in Browne’s Addition. We’ll be there all weekend, May 31 through June 2. We hope to see you there!

Hours:

Friday, May 31: 1pm – 8pm

Saturday, June 1: 10am – 8pm

Sunday, June 2: 10am – 5pm

May Specials

Get 10% off of unframed, 8x10 prints of “Ahoy, Blue Bill!” and / or 10x15 prints of “Yellow Lilies” when you order from our specials page. As with all of our unframed prints, these prints are eligible for our No Hassle Returns.

Fun Facts

May 18^th is the anniversary of the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980. Do you remember where you were when you heard about it?

· Two months of earthquakes emanating from the volcano, including a magnitude 5.1 quake, preceded its massive May 18^th eruption.

· In the week prior to the eruption, eight earthquakes of magnitude 4 or above were recorded daily.

· Ash clouds rolling down the mountainside prior to the eruption created static electricity, which in turn created lightning bolts -- some of which reached two miles in length.

· Another magnitude 5.1 earthquake triggered the eruption, causing a landslide at a magma bulge that had formed on the north face of the volcano.

· The release of pressure over the bulge caused the eruption, which had an energy equivalency of 24 megatons of TNT.

· Flying rock from the blast reached 670 mph.

· The ash column reached 12 miles in altitude in less than ten minutes.

· 230 square miles of forest were flattened.

· Eleven states had significant ash fallout, with visibility in Spokane, Washington, over 350 miles from St. Helens, reduced to 10 feet within 3.5 hours.

If you have any questions, or suggestions for future newsletters, please email us at: relationships@cityescapesphotography.com

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CITY ESCAPES Nature Photography, LLC

www.cityescapesphotography.com

774-277-9682

newsletter-2013-04

noreply@blogger.com (City Escapes Nature Photography) — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 01:17:00 +0000

CITY ESCAPES

Nature Photography, LLC

Newsletter

April, 2013

Photographing Butterflies

It’s spring! If they are not already, butterflies will soon be flitting about the green areas near you, perhaps even at your house. Most of us have an appreciation for these insects’ delicate beauty, and many of us want to try to capture that beauty in a photograph – only to be thwarted by the butterfly’s flitting ways. They just won’t hold still long enough for us to focus and snap that shutter. Luckily, there are a few tricks that make the job easier – and they are pretty easy to implement.

The first thing to remember is that butterflies are basically solar-powered: their wings work best when they receive heat from the sun. In the mornings and evenings, when the sun is lower in the sky and not as strong, and the air temperatures are cooler, they are much more sedate and still. The magical quality of light at those times of day is just an added bonus. Conversely, in the middle of the day when the sun is overhead and stronger, and the air is warmer, those wings work just fine and the butterflies often flit about like crazy. If the weather is generally colder, you will likely have better luck than when the weather is warm. Of particular note at any time, however, is that the insects will actively seek out sunlight. That means that if you cast a shadow over the butterfly while trying to get close enough for a really good shot, it is likely to fly away. It is important to ensure that your movements never put the butterfly in shadow, whether it be from your body, hat, or camera.

Next, move slowly. Butterflies are skittish creatures, easily frightened into flying off. Another wise approach (that admittedly takes a good bit more patience) is to not move at all: find a flower that looks like a likely candidate for a butterfly visit and set your gear up in advance. Especially if you use a remote shutter release, the butterfly will never have to see you move, though you may be sitting only inches from it (you are using a tripod, right?). This approach could require anywhere from a few minutes to a half hour or more to get a proper opportunity to snap a shot, but the results could be dazzlingly worth it.

We often use shallow depths of field when photographing butterflies to isolate them from the background. The shallower the depth of field, the more important it is to have the wings in a single flat plane so that they will be in focus from tip to tip, as it is usually the beauty of the wings that we are trying to capture. If you are trying for a head-on image, keeping the entirety of the wings in focus will likely not be possible with a shallow depth of field. In such a case, the tried-and-true rules of all wildlife photography come into effect: focus on the eyes. If you are relatively new to working with depth of field, begin with a deeper one (a higher f-stop number) until you get more experience. Having more in focus than absolutely necessary is far better than having a razor-thin plane of clear focus in the wrong spot.

And finally, use a fast shutter speed. Even if you go out on a cool morning in the spring, a butterfly is not likely to give you a long period of time to get that perfect image with the wings fully spread and the brilliant colors and patterns shown off in all of their glory. Plus, the insect will very likely be perched on some sort of flower or greenery – which moves with every slight breeze. To freeze the image, start with your camera’s ISO setting at 400 and a shutter speed of at least 1/125 sec. Then adjust as necessary to get the image you are looking for.

Now that you know how to start, get out there and celebrate the arrival of the butterflies!

Thanks to All Who Supported Us at March’s Shows!

The two arts and crafts fairs we participated in last month in Spokane and Pasco were great experiences for us. We made the acquaintance of some wonderful new people, had the unwavering support of old friends, heard great wildlife stories, and got a lot of new leads on places we should check out. A tremendously heartfelt thanks to everyone who came to see us. We hope to see you again at another show. In the meantime, enjoy the blooming of spring!

April Specials

Get 10% off of unframed, 10x15 prints of “Iridescence -- Butterfly” and / or 8x12 prints of “Amity Blossoms” when you order from our specials page. As with all of our unframed prints, these prints are eligible for our No Hassle Returns.

Fun Facts

In the Spirit of April Fool’s Day, this month we focus on the currency of fools: Fool’s Gold.

· “Fool’s Gold” is the common name for the mineral pyrite. It got its name from its similarity in color to gold and its classic metallic sheen.

· Pyrite was used to provide the spark that ignited the gunpowder in firearms of the 16^th and 17^th centuries.

· Gold has no odor. Pyrite smells like sulphur – that unforgettable stench of rotten eggs.

· When hit with a steel hammer, gold will flatten or otherwise deform (but not break). Pyrite will spark – thus its use in firearms – and / or shatter.

· Remember those Energizer (non-rechargeable) lithium batteries you recently bought? They contain pyrite.

· Early Native Americans polished pyrite and used it as mirrors.

· In a phenomenon known as dust explosions, the oxidation of iron pyrite (the reaction of pyrite when it comes into contact with oxygen) can produce enough energy to create explosions and incidents of spontaneous combustion in coal mines. Mitigating steps must be taken to keep this from occurring.

If you have any questions, or suggestions for future newsletters, please email us at: relationships@cityescapesphotography.com

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CITY ESCAPES Nature Photography, LLC

www.cityescapesphotography.com

774-277-9682

City Escapes Nature Photography Newsletter - March 2013

noreply@blogger.com (City Escapes Nature Photography) — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 20:49:00 +0000

CITY ESCAPES

Nature Photography, LLC

Newsletter

March, 2013

Upcoming City Escapes Events

Spring Arts and Crafts Show – Spokane

Custer’s 36^th Annual Spring Arts & Crafts Show

March 8 – 9 - 10, 2013

Spokane Fair & Expo Center

404 N. Havana Road, Spokane

Spring Arts and Crafts Show – Pasco

Custer’s 14^th Annual Spring Arts & Crafts Show

March 22 – 23 - 24, 2013

TRAC Center

6600N. Burden Blvd, Pasco

International Art Festival at Peace Arch Park - Blaine

June 22 – 23, 2013

Peace Arch Park, Blaine, WA

Two Must-Have Filters for Landscape Photographers

Many of us enjoy playing with our photographs after we take them, applying in-camera or in-computer filter effects to make our images sepia, black & white, have ragged borders, look like they came from the Old West, or any of hundreds of other effects. This tinkering can be a lot of fun, and one can end up with some impressive images. But for sheer usefulness, two filters in particular stand out, and they aren’t applied after the shot is taken, but before. Yep, they are actual physical filters, not computer alterations of the photograph – and they belong in every landscape photographer’s gear bag.

The first is a polarizing filter. Light rays generally enter the camera lens from many different directions and bounce around like crazy once inside, resulting in haziness, reflections, and washed-out colors. Polarizing filters block stray light rays, allowing in only parallel rays. The effect can be dramatic: colors are richer and more saturated, reflections vanish, the surface of water becomes see-through. Anyone interested in photographing lakes, waterfalls, tidal pools, or pretty much anything else with water will find this filter tremendously useful. Its ability to reveal things under the surface of water adds a tremendous depth to images, often adding just that needed element to turn an okay image into a spectacular one. Likewise, a photographer dealing with other reflective surfaces will find a polarizing filter good for reducing or eliminating bursts, reflections, and flare. Want that sky just a bit bluer, but don’t want your entire image to have a blue cast? This is the filter for you. (Know, alas, that even the beloved polarizing filter is not quite perfect: it will make rainbows vanish right out of your image.)

Polarizing filters come in linear and circular versions. To determine which you need, determine the age of your camera or – gasp! – read the manual. Linear polarizers only work well with older cameras. Because of changes in modern SLRs’ reflex mirrors, linear polarizers will often negatively affect the metering and autofocus abilities of the camera. Have no fear, however: a circular polarizer is but a linear polarizer with a second element attached to compensate for that change in the reflex mirror, so circular polarizers work beautifully with modern SLRs. As a bonus, they will also work perfectly well with older cameras, so if you have more than one camera and aren’t sure which version to buy, go for the circular. They are a bit more expensive, but their universality makes the extra cost worth it.

The second must-have filter for landscape photographers is a graduated neutral-density (GND) filter. (Who comes up with these names?) This is a filter that is dark on one half and clear on the other. It is used to even out the light in a scene which exceeds a camera’s dynamic range, or the range of light in which the camera can accurately record detail. The scene perhaps most commonly photographed using a GND filter is a landscape in which the sky is very bright. Without the GND filter, if the foreground is properly exposed, a bright sky often loses all cloud detail. The GND filter darkens the sky, allowing the camera to capture more of the elements in it, deepening the color and increasing the contrast, all without changing the exposure or values of the foreground.

The transition from dark to clear can either be abrupt (“hard-edged”) or more gentle (“soft-edged”). Hard-edged GND filters are used for scenes in which the transition from bright area to darker area is well-defined and on a single plane, such as a flat prairie and the sky. Soft-edged GND filters are used where the transition is less clear, such as a scene including a mountain and the sky. GND filters are available in a variety of densities, allowing photographers a great deal of freedom in determining just how much they want to tame down a bright area. They can also be stacked to create even more options.

Graduated neutral-density filters are some of the best things around for nailing the exposure of some of Mother Nature’s favorite challenging lighting situations. Your camera cannot process the same range of light that your eyes can. A GND filter or two will go a long way toward helping it out.

March Specials

We want to see you! Spend $200 or more at one of our spring shows (see sidebar) and get a five-pack of our beautiful Christmas cards!

Fun Facts

Ah, March – a time to celebrate all things Irish!

- Up for some tongue twisters? The prize for longest township name is split three ways: Muckanaghederdauhaulia, Glassillaunvealnacurra, & Illaungraffanavrankagh. Each has 22 letters.

- The Guinness brewery, begun in 1759, originally had a 9,000 year lease – at £45 per year. (Since then Guinness has bought the property outright.)

- In 1800, the population of Ireland was almost twice that of the United States.

- A few famous Irishmen:

· The playwright Oscar Wilde. His full name: Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde.

· Ernest Shackleton, Antarctic explorer.

· Hollywood movie director John Ford. (Born Sean O’Feeney in 1894.)

· James Hoban, designer of the original White House in Washington, D.C.

· Dracula. Okay, maybe not. But Dracula’s creator, Bram Stoker, certainly was.

If you have any questions, or suggestions for future newsletters, please email us at: relationships@cityescapesphotography.com

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CITY ESCAPES Nature Photography, LLC

www.cityescapesphotography.com

774-277-9682

City Escapes Nature Photography Newsletter - Feb 2013

noreply@blogger.com (City Escapes Nature Photography) — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 20:26:00 +0000

CITY ESCAPES

Nature Photography, LLC

Newsletter

February, 2013

Mark Your Calendars and Come See Us in March!

City Escapes Nature Photography will be exhibiting at Custer’s Spring Arts & Crafts Shows in Spokane and Pasco next month. From metalworks to gourmet food stuffs to candle making, these shows have something for everyone – now including some really cool critter photography! Be sure to set aside some time to come say hello -- and bring a friend!

Spokane Pasco

March 8-9-10, 2013 March 22-23-24, 2013

Spokane Fair & Expo Center TRAC Center

(404 N. Havana) (6600 Burden Blvd.)

Hours: Hours:

Fri: 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Fri: 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Sat: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sat: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Sun: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sun: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Prime vs. Zoom Lenses

Similar to professionals in many other fields, photographers are prone to arguing passionately amongst themselves about various aspects of their trade. Film purists argue that digital will never be able to capture the depth and quality of their medium, while digital users argue that film has long since been surpassed. Canon users and Nikon users are sworn arch enemies. And don’t even get them started on whether Photoshop is a godsend or just makes photographers lazy.

This division of opinions reaches all the way to the most basic of photographic materials, including lens types. Forget brand competition; the debate reaches into much more fundamental aspects, including (but certainly not limited to) whether prime (fixed focal length) lenses or zoom lenses are better. The most truthful answer is, as it usually is, “it depends.” (Don’t you just hate ambiguity?)

First off, I should make it clear that to get accurate results, you should compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges. In other words, ensure that any set of lenses you are looking at are within the same class (i.e., professional, hobbyist, etc.) Otherwise, you might just confuse yourself more. Broadly speaking, anything professional-grade will beat anything hobby-grade – and will come with a commensurate “professional” price tag. But even among a single class, there is a great deal of variation between the different types of zoom and prime lenses. To make a truly informed choice about which will suit your needs the best, you must pay attention to the specifics of the actual lenses you are considering. Having said that, here are some general rules about primes and zooms to get you started on your search.

Primes tend to be smaller and lighter than comparable zooms. Because they only need to deal with a single focal length, there is less glass and less material in the actual body of the lens. If weight is an issue, which it is on almost any long location shoot, the lighter weight might be a real advantage, especially if you tend to shoot at a single focal length. On the other hand, if you need multiple focal lengths, you would need to carry multiple prime lenses to accommodate them all. This would likely mean a greater total weight, and almost assuredly more bulk, than a single zoom that incorporates the range of focal lengths needed.

Prime lenses tend to be faster than zooms, both in terms of aperture and focusing. Their simpler construction allows many primes to open up to 1.8 and 1.4, while most zooms cannot get anywhere near that wide open, bottoming out in the 3.5 range (or higher). However, with the 1.8 and 1.4 apertures comes an absolutely razor-thin focal plane, making them a somewhat specialized range to work with; not useful to all photographers, despite the low aperture’s increased light sensitivity. Primes tend to focus faster than zooms as well, due to a more limited range.

As a HUGE generalization, among a class, primes tend to be cheaper than zooms. They are simpler in design, have fewer moving parts, and have less complicated components. Fewer materials are required for their construction. As with the weight issue, however, whether primes remain cheaper in the aggregate depends entirely upon how many –- and which -- focal lengths you need. While it is possible to buy three good primes for less money than a good zoom in comparable focal lengths, it is also possible to spend a significantly greater amount of money on those three primes. So, as usual, it depends.

It is “common wisdom” that primes are sharper than zoom lenses. While that “common wisdom” was accurate ten years ago, zoom technology has advanced so far in recent years that a number of zooms have equaled and even surpassed primes in sharpness. This is one area in which the particular lenses in question are of fundamental importance, as it is no longer possible to say with any certainty that one style is better than the other.

The single biggest advantage of zoom lenses, of course, is their ability to take the place of several different prime lenses. As mentioned earlier, this could come into play in weight and bulk issues, as well as price concerns. But it has its greatest effect during the act of making a photograph. The photographer is able to change focal lengths quickly, easily, and silently. As a nature photographer, this trait comes in very handy: animals appear quickly at unexpected distances, they don’t hold those adorable poses for long, and they certainly aren’t going to hang around waiting for me to change to the appropriate prime lens. (They’re very similar to small children in that regard – another subject that can make good use of zooms.) Also, because I am not changing lenses as frequently, there is less opportunity for that bane of all photographers – dust – to get to the camera’s sensor. Unless of course I have one of those zoom lenses that actually moves air in and out, and thus itself becomes a source of dust. Sigh. Like I said, it all depends.

While there are definitely purists on either side of the prime / zoom lens debate, most photographers that I know use a combination of the two to cover their range of photographic needs. Finding the best combination for you will require paying close attention to your shooting style, and let’s face it, your budget. Compromises will likely need to be made, and you might even find that making those compromises enriches your technique.

Here’s to always improving!

February’s Monthly Specials

Get 10% off of unframed, 8x12 prints of “Winter Wind -- Bison” and / or unframed, 8x18 prints of “Castle of Blue Fog -- Iceberg” when you order from our specials page. As with all of our unframed prints, these prints are eligible for our No Hassle Returns.

February’s Fun Facts

So you think congress is a bunch of baboons? Well, you’re right! Demonstrating that our species went a little name-crazy at one point, here are a few of the more interesting names for groups of individuals of the same species:

Apes → shrewdness	Boars → singular		Foxes → skulk, leash
Badgers → cete	Kittens → kindle		Doves → piteousness
Bears → sleuth	Cheetahs → coalition		Emus → mob
Hummingbirds → charm	Jellyfish → smack		Mole → labor
Rhinoceroses → crash	Tigers → ambush, streak		Trout → hoover
Turkeys → rafter	Woodpeckers → descent		Turtles → bale
Peafowl → ostentation, muster		Raven → unkindness, congress
Cockroaches → intrusion (fitting, isn’t it?)

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City Escapes Nature Photography Newsletter - January 2013

noreply@blogger.com (City Escapes Nature Photography) — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 23:18:00 +0000

CITY ESCAPES

Nature Photography, LLC

Newsletter

January, 2013

Full-Frame vs. Cropped Digital Camera Sensors

Digital camera sensor sizes can be confusing. Like many things technical, they are often given names consisting of a combination of letters and numbers that tell the uninitiated absolutely nothing. Many of us wonder why we should even care; after all, the only easily discernible difference -- for those who aren’t fluent in geekspeak, anyway -- is the price tag. There are significant differences between the characteristics of various sensor sizes, though, and even if you aren’t looking to buy a new camera soon, understanding those differences may help you get the most out of the camera you currently have.

Most sensor size names are based upon their relation to the size of a 35mm film negative. Thus, a full-frame sensor is roughly the same size as a 35mm film negative, while almost everything else is smaller. (Medium- and large-format digital sensors do exist, but they are such a completely different animal, and so prohibitively expensive, that we will not discuss them here.) Just as the size of cameras themselves vary widely from camera phones through point-and-shoots up to professional-grade behemoths, so do the sensor sizes. Each has particular traits that make it more or less useful for any given situation and photographer.

Given that full-frame sensors are only available for DSLRs, we will focus here only on that line of cameras. Therein lie two main choices: full-frame sensors and crop-frame sensors. Here are some of the differences.

* Zoom factor: a full-frame sensor will give you the same field of view as a 35mm film camera, given an equivalent lens. In other words, looking through a full-frame camera with a 100mm lens attached, you will see the same field of view as looking through a 35mm film camera with a 100mm lens attached. The smaller crop-frame sensors, however, will “zoom in” on your subject. Thus, looking at that same subject through a camera with a crop factor of 1.5 is like looking at it through a 150mm lens on a 35mm film camera. Whatever is in the center of your frame will fill up more of the frame, and whatever is on the edges will be cropped out. This is great for subjects where getting closer is desirable, such as wildlife or sports photography, but not necessarily helpful for subjects where a wider expanse is wanted, such as landscape photography.

* Depth of Field: Because full-frame sensors “see” more, in order to fill the frame to the same degree as a crop-frame sensor with any given subject, either a longer focal length must be used, or the photographer must get closer to the subject. This makes the depth of field shallower, as both techniques help to isolate the subject from its background. If you’ve ever been frustrated by your point-and-shoot camera’s inability to blur backgrounds, this is why: you can neither get close enough to your subject (and still maintain focus), nor do you have a long enough focal length at your disposal. On the other hand, large-format cameras can have trouble achieving a deep enough depth of field for landscapes. Apertures must be closed down anywhere from a stop to a stop and a half to get an equivalent depth of field to a crop-frame sensor.

* Noise: In general, the bigger the sensor, the larger the photosites (the actual instruments that record light at a specific point on the sensor). This means that even though a full-frame sensor and a crop-frame sensor may each create 12 mp images, images from the full-frame sensor will be cleaner, with less noise, and with a greater dynamic range (more shades from light to dark are successfully captured). This is especially evident in low-light photography, where full-frame sensors can significantly increase the maximum usable ISO.

* Detail: Those larger photosites allow for much greater detail in the image, as well. To maintain detail in a deep depth of field image, however, requires longer exposure times or increased ISO settings. Due to the full-frame sensor’s lower noise content, this may not present any real problem, requiring only a few tweaks to settings and, of course, a tripod.

* Lenses: One thing to note is that the lenses for the two different types of sensors are quite different. Full-frame lenses can be used to full effect with either type of sensor, while crop-frame lenses are limited in their abilities on a full-frame camera. Namely, the camera will automatically crop the area to be used on the full-frame sensor to equal the size of the crop-frame sensor, effectively negating many of the benefits of the full-frame sensor. You will still get the advantages of the larger photosites, but the number of those photosites utilized will be drastically reduced. Also, lenses for full-frame cameras tend to be much larger, heavier, and significantly more expensive than their crop-frame counterparts. Using full-frame lenses on crop-frame cameras can have a peculiar advantage, though. Most lenses produce images that are sharpest at the center and that blur toward the edges. Since crop-frame sensors will not register the edges of the full-frame lens, the blurriest parts of the image are automatically removed.

Hopefully this information will help you understand how to use your current camera to a fuller capacity. And if you’re in the market to upgrade, you now have a little more information to ponder.

Good luck, and good shooting!

January’s Monthly Specials

Get 10% off of unframed, 8x12 prints of “Calling Darwin – Galapagos Mockingbird” and / or “Nature’s Paintbrushes” when you order from our specials page. As with all of our unframed prints, these prints are eligible for our No Hassle Returns.

January’s Fun Facts

January’s birthstone is the garnet. We are familiar with the deep burgundy color that makes garnets so extraordinary, but did you know that this gemstone occurs in a wide range of colors? Natural garnets come in all colors – even colorless --except shades of blue, and larger garnets can be multi-colored. Some garnets that are particularly hard do not find their way to a jeweler’s, where we are accustomed to finding them, but rather to an industrialist’s: they are made into sandpaper, appropriately called garnet paper.

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City Escapes Photography Newsletter - December 2012

noreply@blogger.com (City Escapes Nature Photography) — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 05:40:00 +0000

CITY ESCAPES

Nature Photography, LLC

Newsletter

December, 2012

Family Get-together Photography: Getting the Most Out of Your Shots (and When to Put the Camera Away)

December is a time of celebration for many of us, a time when we get together with friends and family to feast on traditional foods, exchange gifts, honor our beliefs and our families, drink eggnog and champagne (hopefully not together), and ring in the new year. (In my family, in addition to Christmas and New Year’s Eve we also have at least four birthdays – we celebrate all month long!) December is also a great time to put those photography skills you have been honing to good use.

The vast majority of photography is meant, first and foremost, to either capture or evoke emotion. Whether it be the delight in a child’s face as he or she unwraps that mysterious box from under the tree, the primal fear and awe caused by a massive tornado twisting dark and menacing in the sky, or the tranquility and peace of a serene landscape, images are intended to transport the viewer into an emotion. That is why posed shots so often seem lacking – there is rarely any genuine emotion revealed in them, except perhaps discomfort. The images are flat and uninteresting. This holiday season, for the most impact, try to capture the candid moments. Plan for that point in time when the gift gets unwrapped. Keep an eye on the dog to capture the instant the cookies get snuck off the counter. Shoot from the hip if you have to, so that people aren’t self-conscious about being photographed. And above all, don’t be obtrusive about it.

Sure, get those posed shots of the entire family together, too. But as you are doing so, interject something that will bring out candid emotions in your subjects: tell a funny joke, relate a moving story, make a goofy face. Put them at ease. If there is someone in the group who simply does not want to smile, don’t try to force them. The more singled out and chastised they feel, the worse your images will be – and the colder the air between you.

Be aware, also, that many people are uncomfortable being photographed. We live in a very judgmental society, where people are evaluated and criticized by their looks much more frequently than they should be. This creates feelings of insecurity among many, especially women. People begin to believe that they should not have their photo taken unless they are perfect and stunningly beautiful, for it will create a record of their “shortcomings”. Even if those who surround them think the world of them -- and they know it -- this insecurity can triumph. Some folks also will not truly relax until the cameras get put away. There are different reasons for this. Some don’t want to risk letting their hair down when images of their actions might be captured for future reference, while others simply remain too self-conscious to relax. As the photographer, you must be aware of these potential situations and learn to read the mood of your subjects. Don’t push beyond an acceptable limit; respecting your subjects – be they animal or human – is one of the fundamental rules of photography. You may even want to create “no-camera zones” (which include cell phone cameras) at certain times, such as when playing games that require participants to do something goofy. Some people who may already be hesitant to make themselves look silly will flat out refuse to participate if there is a risk that photos will be taken and shared with others who are not present. Always remember that the ability to record and share images has far outpaced most people’s level of comfort with having things recorded and shared. Respect your subjects, and the holiday get-togethers will continue to be photographer-friendly.

December’s Fun Facts

December seems to be the only time we ever hear about mistletoe. How much do you actually know about this fun holiday decoration?

· Mistletoe is a parasitic plant, requiring a host tree or shrub. Heavy infestation can kill the host plant.

· Many common species of mistletoe are poisonous.

· Mistletoe is spread mainly by birds. Birds eat the seeds, some of which survive until they are passed through the birds’ digestive system. Parts of the birds’ dung will land on tree branches, where the surviving seeds will attach themselves and germinate. This process is how the plant got its name. The old English version is “mistiltan”: “mistel” means dung, while “tan” means twig.

· The plants grow into basket-like masses in the branches of their hosts. These masses provide ready-made nests for many species of birds, including the northern spotted owl and painted honeyeaters.

· The origins of the tradition of kissing under the mistletoe are unknown, but it dates to at least 16^th century England.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

from all of us to all of you. May you have a

WONDERFUL NEW YEAR!

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City Escapes Photography Newsletter - Nov 2012

noreply@blogger.com (City Escapes Nature Photography) — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 22:44:00 +0000

CITY ESCAPES

Nature Photography, LLC

Newsletter

November, 2012

Understanding Your Camera’s ISO Settings

Maybe you’ve seen it in your digital camera’s menu, and have no idea what it is. Or perhaps you shot film once upon a time, but never really paid that much attention to which film you bought. Either way, gaining an understanding of ISO can greatly improve the quality of the images you capture.

ISO (short for the International Organization of Standardization) in photography refers to a film’s or digital sensor’s sensitivity to light. The higher the sensitivity (ISO number), the less light required to properly expose the image. This is particularly important in darker settings (think indoors as opposed to bright sunlight), or in situations where you need a fast shutter speed to freeze motion (think trying to freeze the basketball as it hurtles toward the hoop at the big game). The greater the light sensitivity, the less time your shutter needs to remain open, which can also mean the difference between hand-holding your camera and needing a tripod. If higher ISO settings have so many benefits, you might ask, why on earth would we ever use a lower one?

The answer to that question lies in the one big drawback of high ISOs: grain (film) and noise (digital). Lower ISO settings will give your images a smoother look, while higher ISO settings will have noticeable spots all over the image. With some images, especially black and white images, this may be a desired effect, but for the majority of photographs it is distracting (digital noise is especially unpleasant). The second major drawback of high ISO settings is a decrease in color saturation.

So, keeping these benefits and drawbacks in mind, which ISO setting should you use in which situation? For bright outdoor settings or for flash photography, start at ISO 100. If your aperture and shutter speeds are correct and the image is too bright, turn the ISO down to 50 and try again; if it is too dark, crank it up to 200. One of the truly beautiful things about shooting with a digital camera is the ability to change the ISO setting after any and every image. With film cameras, the entire roll of film has the same ISO setting, so if you need to change ISO, you have to change the roll (not counting pushing and pulling, which we won’t get into here). This was one of the reasons, along with having different focal length lenses readily available, that professional sports and wedding photographers in the age of film often had two or more cameras slung around their necks. Some camera models’ lowest numbered setting is 200, so that would be your base setting for bright situations.

For indoor shots, try starting at 200 if the area is well-lit; begin at 400 if it is normally-lit. Going as high as 800 or even 1600 in dark settings, such as churches, galleries, and the like, is not uncommon, and also works particularly well for getting great mood shots of birthday candles being blown out or of holiday lights. Expect to get considerable noise in any images taken above ISO 800, though the amount varies considerably by camera make and model. Some professional cameras can capture images at ISO 3200 and above with almost no noise, while other digital models have considerable noise at ISO 800. Play with your camera to discern where its acceptable-noise-threshold is. The newer the camera, the higher you are likely to be able to go before you encounter noise. Like all things digital, improvements in noise reduction are developing at a mind-blowing pace.

Learning to use your ISO settings will greatly enhance your ability to capture the images you want to capture – even if you keep your aperture and shutter speeds on auto. Like almost everything else in photography, once you understand the basics of how it works, you can then break the rules to create a wide range of effects. One word of advice, though: when you are done shooting, be sure to return the camera to whatever ISO setting you decide to have as your “normal” setting (usually ISO 100 or 200). There is nothing quite like firing off those perfect images the next time around, only to discover that you left your camera set at ISO 3200 -- and your images look nothing like what you expected! (I will neither confirm nor deny that this warning stems from personal experience. Ahem.)

November’s Monthly Specials

It’s that time of year -- get 15% off of our boxed Christmas cards when you order from our specials page. Each box contains 10 cards; 2 each of 5 different designs. There are no limits on quantities, so stock up now!

Bonus special: Get a free 5-pack of Christmas cards when you spend $100 or more through December 15!

November’s Fun Facts

November’s full moon, falling this year on the 28^th, is known in some Native American tribes as the Beaver Moon. Beavers, which do not hibernate, are especially active this time of year building and repairing their lodges and dams in preparation for winter. Since they are also nocturnal, most of this activity occurs at night, by moonlight.

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City Escapes Nature Photography Newsletter - Oct 2012

noreply@blogger.com (City Escapes Nature Photography) — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 02:15:00 +0000

CITY ESCAPES

Nature Photography, LLC

Newsletter

October, 2012

We’re Getting Batty for Halloween!

October is when the air turns crisp, leaves begin to turn gorgeous shades of red, orange and yellow that make fireworks jealous, and of course the creepy-crawlies come out for Halloween. One of our favorites of these ghoulish beings gets a bad rap – they are not at all creepy, or crawly for that matter. They are nonetheless one of the most ubiquitous symbols of Halloween: bats.

Why are bats cool? For starters, consider that bats are the only mammals that can fly. (Flying squirrels don’t actually fly – they glide. Have you ever seen one go up?) Some species are pretty good at running, too, reaching speeds of up to 4.9 miles per hour on the ground. And of the 1,105 bat species in the world, only one uses humans for food, and not very often at that. Two of the three species of vampire bats feed almost exclusively on birds, while to the third, the “evil” common vampire bat, humans are way down on its preferred meal list: it significantly prefers livestock to people. Vampire bats are also the only known bat family whose members will adopt orphaned pups, and females will often feed a new mother for up to two weeks after she gives birth (blood casserole, anyone?). Vampire bats are proving useful in medicine, as well: their saliva has been shown to help increase blood flow in stroke patients much more quickly and effectively than traditional remedies. Given that stroke is the leading cause of long-term disability in the United States, we should welcome these little creatures with open arms.

If these are the worst of the bats, how can we not like the entire order?

Bats make up about a quarter of all mammalian species, and some of the differences between the species are significant. The Malayan flying fox, for example, is the largest bat species, having a six-foot wingspan, while the smallest species, the Kitty’s hog-nosed bat, has a six-inch wingspan. Some bats fly at speeds of up to 50 miles per hour, while others fly at elevations up to 3000 feet. Some bats eat only fruit, while others eat impressive numbers of insects (a single bat will eat between 2000 and 6000 insects each night), and still others eat a wide variety of foods, from nectar to fish to frogs -- even birds. Most of the bats in North America are insectivorous, and they provide humans with a huge service: they eat many millions of agricultural pests and other insects such as flies and gnats nightly. Got a true blood-sucking pest, i.e. mosquitoes? Bring on the bats! Nectar-drinking bats are important to agriculture in another way: they are fantastic pollinators. Farmers of crops such as bananas, cashews, mangos, and agave rely on bats for a successful crop.

There are still many myths that cling to bats. Contrary to “common knowledge,” bats are not blind, and in fact many bat species have excellent eyesight and do not rely on echolocation to find food or their way around. Another widespread myth is that bats are frequent carriers of rabies. In truth, less than 0.5% of all bats are infected with rabies. To put that number in perspective, over the past 50 years in the United States fewer than 40 people have died from rabies contracted from a wild bat, whereas lightning has killed an average of 58 people each year.

So if we all embrace bats wholeheartedly, will their future be assured? Unfortunately, no. In large parts of their ranges in eastern North America, bats are dying by the millions due to an introduced fungal infection known as white-nose syndrome. The fungus, Geomyces destructans, which is steadily spreading westward, gets its common name from the white fuzz that grows on infected bats’ faces, especially around their muzzles. The highly contagious fungus, which kills 90% of infected bats, interrupts the bats’ hibernation by damaging their wings, causing them to awaken. This is a major problem for bats, as they must use their stored fat deposits much more quickly while awake. They end up either starving to death or freezing while searching for food in the winter. There is currently no cure, though wildlife biologists are working feverishly on several fronts to combat the disease. One of the more innovative projects involves attempting to keep the fungus in check through, well, cave hygiene.

The Nature Conservancy – the very organization we donate one percent of our income to every January – has created a man-made bat cave (no butler required) outside of Clarksville, Tennessee. The cave, a 78-foot long, 11-foot high box made of concrete culverts, is built into a hillside, and comes complete with netting and wall-crevices for roosting, a ventilation chimney, a rainwater pipe that provides drinking water and humidity maintenance, and, of course, high-tech surveillance equipment. It is estimated that this one cave could easily hold 160,000 bats, with some estimates going as high as 250,000 bats – almost all of the bats in the nearby natural cave system. The bats have a dedicated entrance, as do people, though the two species will not likely overlap much. Once the bats have moved out of the cave to their summer roosts, the people will move in, disinfectants in hand, and the cave will be cleaned, eradicating all traces of the white-nose fungus. If it works, this treatment will be repeated annually, allowing the bats time to adapt to the especially virile fungus naturally. Though challenging to design, the cave was easy to construct: it was completed in a single week in late August, at a cost of approximately $300,000, with an easy-to-duplicate plan. The Nature Conservancy views the cave as a prototype, and hopes that other conservation organizations will be able to make use of their design, if it is successful.

We are wishing the Nature Conservancy, and the bats, the best of luck. May they have a peaceful, uninterrupted slumber this winter.

How Can You Help the Bats?

For starters, put up a bat house or two around your house. They are easy to build, or if you’re not into carpentry, inexpensive to buy. Not only will you be helping out the bats, you will be helping yourself: bats are some of the best natural insect control around. Who needs an annoying bug zapper when you have a few night friends around?

If you are a spelunker, be fastidious about cleaning and disinfecting your gear – clothes, shoes, ropes, headlamps, everything. Do not go from one cave or mine into another without this thorough disinfection. (White-nose syndrome is thought to have been brought to North America from its native Europe by humans, and its spread once here has been facilitated by cave-hopping.) Observe all cave closures and restrictions; they may not only be for your safety, but possibly also for the safety of the creatures that inhabit them. Avoid caves or mines with large established populations of hibernating bats. As intensely cool as the bats are, if the fungus reaches a critical mass in the cave, 90% of that bat population could be wiped out in a single winter.

And of course, tell all your friends about how cool bats are. The more educated people are about these amazing creatures, the less fearful they will be, and that will be good for both bats and people.

October’s Monthly Specials

Get 10% off of unframed, 8x12 prints of “A Nation’s Pride -- Wounded” and / or “Stone Lantern & Maples” when you order from our specials page. As with all of our unframed prints, these prints are eligible for our No Hassle Returns.

October’s Fun Facts

The Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin, Texas, is home to the largest urban population of bats: up to 1.5 million bats at its annual peak. There are so many that it can take up to 45 minutes for all of them to emerge from the bridge to begin their nightly hunt. Beginning in April, hundreds of thousands of Mexican free-tailed bats arrive to give birth, and they stay through October. Bat-watching has become a popular tourist activity in the city. Bat-watchers are warned, however, that “depending on how close you are, an umbrella is a good idea.”

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City Escapes Photography Newsletter - Sept. 2012

noreply@blogger.com (City Escapes Nature Photography) — Sat, 01 Sep 2012 20:00:00 +0000

CITY ESCAPES

Nature Photography, LLC

Newsletter

September, 2012

When Being a Professional Photographer Gets in the Way

This month’s topic may seem odd coming from a company dedicated to professional photography. Nonetheless, it is a subject that we, and the people who know us, have to contend with fairly regularly. Though it is by no means a heavy, serious topic, I am nonetheless hoping that by discussing it, a few awkward moments can be alleviated.

So what is this mysterious subject? Simply put: show us your pictures – with pride! I cannot tell you how frequently I hear apologies and self-deprecating comments from others who know what I do for a living, especially when it comes time to show their vacation photos, those adorable pictures of their children, etc. Almost always now, such exhibitions, when they happen at all, are preceded by embarrassed or uncomfortable drops of the eyes, a slight shuffling, and the aforementioned apologies at the photos’ supposed lack of quality – even though some of them are simply breathtaking. Most disturbing, though, is the drop of the smile that occurs when people who are excited about sharing their experiences suddenly become afraid that they will be judged harshly by the professional in the room. This is so completely unnecessary.

First of all, let me remind you that I take snapshots, too – just like everyone else. Secondly, I take a lot of photos, and only the best are seen by the wider public. Thirdly, though people are usually aware that my gear is on a more professional level than what most of them shoot, they forget that I don’t expect them to have the same gear. And that they do not need to apologize for the gear they do have. Significantly, they also forget that having better gear does not guarantee better photos. I have seen some truly amazing photos taken with camera phones and little point-and-shoot cameras, and some horribly bad photos taken with extremely expensive cameras. What the photographer sees is still the principal feature of photography.

The most important aspect that seems to be lost, though, is that I am not judging anyone’s photographic prowess, except to occasionally be blown away by a particularly stunning image or a unique vantage point. When people share photos, be it neighbors swapping vacation photos or professionals in galleries, what they are really doing is sharing experiences. Stories are being told in pictures. Events and moments in time that the photographer deemed worth capturing are being displayed. When people shrink away from sharing their photos with me because I take pictures for a living, what they are in fact saying is that they think I will judge their experiences and the things they value to not be worth my time, or worse, that I will greet them with disdain. Nothing could be further from the truth. I am honored when people allow me to share these moments with them. I want to see the buildings and street scenes that caught their eye, the view from their campsite and the funny mushroom peeking out from a rotting log. I want to see their children giggling and their seven-foot-long sticks for roasting marshmallows. I want to see the world through their eyes.

I also hear comments that belie a belief that I will find their vacation destinations mundane and boring, given some of the places to which I have been fortunate enough to travel. Again, not true. Being a “world traveler” does not automatically strip me of my ability to appreciate experiences had closer to home. Moreover, destinations further afield are not necessarily better, more fun, or more interesting than those right down the road. They are simply different. There are so many beautiful, fascinating, and delightful places in the world that I would be exceptionally arrogant to think that only those I have visited are worthwhile. I’m not that full of myself. Even people who have been to those far-flung places I have visited will have a different experience from mine, and I am bound to learn something new from listening to tales of their adventures, and seeing their photographs. I want to see places through the eyes of others, notice what they notice, hear their stories. People sharing their experiences with me broadens my horizons, helps me to see the world in new ways, allows me to see things I hadn’t noticed before.

The bottom line: please, show me your pictures! And do it with pride, for I am not judging you – I am learning from you!

Free Entrance into the National Parks

On Saturday, September 29, many national parks will be celebrating National Public Lands Day by waiving their admission fees for the day. If you are looking for an inexpensive (or free!) outing, this is a great day to explore the wonder that is the American National Parks system. If September 29 doesn’t work for your schedule, keep in mind that there are four other occasions throughout the year when admission fees are waived, including an entire week in April for, not surprisingly, National Park Week. And, as the National Park Service reminds us, of the 397 national parks, 264 never charge admission fees. So take advantage of the bounty that is the national park system – it has so much to offer.

For a list of participating parks, go to http://www.nps.gov/findapark/feefreeparksbystate.htm.

For a schedule of fee-free days, go to http://www.nps.gov/findapark/feefreeparks.htm.

September’s Monthly Specials

Get 10% off of unframed, 8x12 prints of “Windows to Ancient Wisdom – Bull Elephant” and / or “Acacia Sunset” when you order from our specials page. As with all of our unframed prints, these prints are eligible for our No Hassle Returns.

September’s Fun Facts

September 22 is Elephant Appreciation Day. Given how much I adore elephants, I could hardly pass on the opportunity to have a Fun Facts dedicated to the giant pachyderms.

· Despite the mental images we all grew up with of elephants chowing down on them, elephants don’t like peanuts. They don’t eat them in the wild, nor are they typically fed peanuts in captivity.

· The height of an elephant at the shoulder can be estimated from a front footprint. It is roughly the circumference of the foot times two.

· Elephants can’t jump.

· Asian elephants can hold up to 2.5 gallons of water in their trunks, while African elephants can hold a whopping four gallons.

· Elephants don’t need much sleep. They snooze only about two hours a day.

· An elephant’s trunk has over 100,000 muscles in six major muscle groups. No wonder it’s so dexterous!

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509-396-5154

City Escapes Photography Newsletter - August 2012

noreply@blogger.com (City Escapes Nature Photography) — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 02:25:00 +0000

CITY ESCAPES

Nature Photography, LLC

Newsletter

August, 2012

City Escapes Collaborates on New Photo “Weaving” Program

For the past several years, City Escapes Nature Photography has been collaborating with University of Utah Professor Valerio Pascucci to develop a new method for stitching together multiple images into a single panoramic image. While Professor Pascucci and his team developed the stitching software, City Escapes Nature Photography provided several large sets of images as the raw data. Among the sets were a roughly 300-image panorama of Mount Rushmore and multiple sets of Lake Louise in Banff National Park, Canada, the largest of which consisted of over 3,000 individual images and took over 16 hours to complete.

The challenge for Dr. Pascucci and his team was to develop a more effective method of stitching together images that would eliminate current difficulties such as cars on streets being cut in half, or in our case, pieces of canoes, rather than the full canoes, showing up on a lake. (Due to the way in which the software actually works, he has dubbed the new technique “weaving,” rather than stitching, which is entirely appropriate.) While the resulting software is still in its development stage, it shows great promise as a must-have tool for panoramic photographers. Jodi had a brief opportunity to play with the prototype and is very excited about its potential to make the life of a photographer much easier.

On August 8, 2012, Professor Pascucci’s Ph.D. student, Brian Summa, presented their new weaving technique in a paper entitled “Panorama Weaving: Fast and Flexible Seam Processing” at the premier computer science conference for graphics, SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group on GRAPHics and Interactive Techniques). Widely considered to be the most important annual conference for the presentation and publication of new research in the field of graphics and animation, SIGGRAPH is attended by thousands of computer scientists every year, and getting a paper accepted for publication is no small feat. Currently fewer than 20% of submitted papers are accepted.

We congratulate Professor Pascucci and his team for their strides in solving one of the more perplexing problems in panorama stitching. We look forward to continuing our work with Dr. Pascucci, and are proud to be a part of this collaboration.

Framing Pause Coming Soon

City Escapes Nature Photography will soon be temporarily unable to frame images for you, as we will be moving our headquarters and will not have access to all of our equipment. Though we do not yet know quite when the move will happen, we wanted to give you ample warning, so that you could order any images you wanted us to frame prior to the move. Our unframed paper print and canvas options should remain available throughout the move.

August’s Monthly Specials

Get 10% off of unframed, 8x18 prints of “How Pawful” and “Night Thunder – American Falls” when you order from our specials page. As with all of our unframed prints, these prints are eligible for our No Hassle Returns.

August’s Fun Facts

As the Olympics draw to a close, we look at some of the champions in the animal kingdom:

- We all know that the cheetah is the fastest mammal, reaching speeds up to 70 mph. But does it win the prize for fastest animal on the planet? Not even close. The peregrine falcon obliterates the cat’s record, attaining speeds of over 200 mph while in a dive.

- The winner of the high-jump goes, not surprisingly, to an insect. The spittle bug can jump 115 times its body length.

- The top award for marathon distances in the animal kingdom goes way beyond 26.2 miles. Traveling 50,000 miles in a year, from the Arctic to the Antarctic and back again, the Arctic tern is the hands-down winner of greatest distance athlete.

- The insects win again in the strongest-critter category, with the dung beetle pulling 1,140 times its own body weight.

- How would Michael Phelps compare to the fastest swimmer in the animal kingdom? Not well: the sailfish, built for speed, has been clocked at close to 70 mph.

If you have any questions, or suggestions for future newsletters, please email us at: relationships@cityescapesphotography.com

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CITY ESCAPES Nature Photography, LLC

www.cityescapesphotography.com

509-396-5154