I’ve recently had the opportunity to start going through some of my pictures that I made during my recent Spirit Bear Tour.  While I normally prefer to photograph with my Canon 1Ds Mark II, I decided to take a chance and exclusively use my new Canon 5D Mark II for the majority of the trip.  My original intention in purchasing the camera was the use it primarily for its high-definition video abilities, but I’ve been extremely impressed with the quality of the stills it produces and its high ISO performance is simply amazing.  One of the things you run into on the Internet, is various amounts of hooey being flung around about the autofocus systems in one camera or another.  This article will examine my personal experience with the autofocus in the Canon 5D Mark II.

Near the end of our Spirit Bear trip we were anchored in Bishop Bay along the west coast of Canada.  The eight of us boarded the boat’s Zodiac inflatable to get closer to shore and see if we could find any Grizzly Bears to photograph.  Just as we started away from the main boat in the Zodiac, the skies opened and a torrential downpour began.  I’ve been through a lot of thunderstorm heavy rain here on the prairies, but I’d never before experienced rain with quite the force and velocity as we did that afternoon.  In addition to the torrential rain, the wind picked up with gusts between 40 and 60 kilometres per hour (25 – 40 miles per hour).

We soon found a Grizzly Sow and her cub working their way along the shore looking for food.  As I glanced through my viewfinder I quickly determined that my only practical ISO setting was going to be 3200 ISO and I prepared to try to make some useful shots hand-holding my 5D Mark II along with the Canon 500mm F4L IS super telephoto lens coupled with the 1.4x Extender II (teleconverter).  So, all told, I was photographing at 3200 ISO at 700mm from a Zodiac being bounced around in the wind and waves.  And any time you’re photographing from a boat, you always have the additional problem if your fellow boat-mates moving around as they try to position themselves.  All that gear was protected from the elements by a ThinkTank Hydrophobia which did an amazing job of allowing me to work the camera’s settings while keeping the gear 100% dry.

And the final challenge was for the camera, attempting to focus through the typhoon’ish rain on the eyes of the young Grizzly Cub.  To be honest, I wasn’t expecting great results.  I figured I’d be happy if I got one photo that was “sharp enough”.  But, it wasn’t too cold out and even given the conditions, I was simply having an amazing time.  When we returned to the boat I had a chance to review my images on my HyperDrive Color Space UDMA portable storage devices I use for backing up my images when I’m somewhere remote.  The display on that device is great but it is really hard to evaluate critical sharpness on a small LED screen.

So now, a couple of weeks after returning from the trip I’ve had some time to start reviewing my images.  When I got to the set of Grizzly images, I wasn’t expecting too much.  As I reviewed the images though I started to get excited.  Together with my long-lens skills, the 5D Mark II managed to nail the focus on well over 80% of the shots made through the driving rain.  And I’d say that I, the photographer, was probably directly responsible for at least half of the out-of-focus images dues to movement or some other factor.

Here’s one of the images I’m really happy with.  I love the saturated pastel colours and I really like the way, if you look for it, you can see the rain drops streaking through the sky.  (Remember you can click on the image below to view a larger version.)

Grizzly Sow and her Cub standing in the driving rain

• Canon 5D Mark II, 1/250th of a second at F5.6
• Canon 500mm F4L IS, 1.4x Extender II @ 700mm, ISO 3200
• Evaluative metering
• Hand held

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So, if anyone ever tries to tell you the autofocus on the 5D Mark II is not up to par, send them to me and I’ll try to straighten them out.

If you’re interested in purchasing a Gallery Wrapped canvas print of my image, please check out my image purchasing site.

Gallery Wrapped Canvas Print - Grizzly Sow & Cub in the rain

Have your own stories about autofocus?  We’d love to hear them.

Today’s post comes with a simple, but strong message.

I often make the mistake of listening to the day’s news and worse yet the pontificater’s opinions on said news.  And it caused me to pause and consider what a bunch of hooey most of these folks are spreading.

So, my Spirit Bear friend and I have a message for all those filling the world with hooey;

Stop the Hooey!

Please feel free to distribute the above image (for non-commercial purposes only, I retain the copyright) to your favourite, or least favourite, spreader of hooey!

Many pro photographers use tripods and monopods in their daily work.  One accessory for a lens (sometimes included and sometimes not) that makes using a “pod” a lot easier is a lens with a lens collar.

A lens with a lens collar allows a photographer to quickly rotate the lens from a horizontal (or landscape) orientation to a vertical (or portrait) orientation with having to mess with flopping a ballhead onto its side.  Many “pro” level lenses come with a lens collar while other lenses have lens collars available as an additionally purchased accessory.

Mountain Lion walking across some rocky ground - CA

• Canon 5D Mark II, 1/320th of a second at F6.3
• 100-400 F4.5-5.6L IS @ 120mm, ISO 400
• Evaluative metering
• Gitzo 3541XLS Tripod with a BWG-Pro Gimbal Head

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Mountain Lion standing on top of a hill in golden light - CA

• Canon 5D Mark II, 1/800th of a second at F6.3
• 100-400 F4.5-5.6L IS @ 320mm, ISO 400
• Evaluative metering
• Gitzo 3541XLS Tripod with a BWG-Pro Gimbal Head

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Another trick that I use while photographing from a tripod or monopod is that I leave the lens collar completely loosened.  This allows me to quickly move from one shooting orientation to the next without fumbling with knobs.  The faster I can make the transition, the more likely it is that I’ll get the shot.  Some folks may worry about making sharp images with the lens collar loosened, but I find that if I use the proper techniques for making sharp images, that it doesn’t present a problem.

Have some more tips for dealing with lens collars?  I’d love to hear them.

For many years, the Spirit Bear was considered a legend of the Gitg’at and Kitasoo Native Peoples. Their legends told of a time when the glaciers finally receded, and it was Raven who made everything green. Raven also decided to make one in ten black bears white, to remind him of the time when the world was white with snow and ice. Raven decided to set aside a special area of the world for these bears – now known as the Great Bear Rainforest. It was a remote paradise where the bears were to live in peace forever.

The Great Bear Rainforest is pristine rainforest with valleys covered in lush foliage. Hemlock, cedar and ancient Sitka spruce stand tall. Packs of rare black wolves roam freely and hunt the many deer in the forest. Porpoises, seals, orcas and humpback whales inhabit the channels and coves around the rainforest. In many ways, the Great Bear Rainforest strongly resembles the paradise that Raven had meant it to be. However, hunting and the fish farming industries are endangering the “Spirit Bear”

The Spirit Bear, also known as Kermode bear (Ursa Americanus Kermodie) only lives in British Columbia’s Great Bear Rainforest. This bear is not related to the polar bear nor is it an albino. It is a Black Bear with a recessive gene that causes about 1 in 10 bears to be white. Families of these bears can consist of both black and white bears.

The territory of the Spirit Bear is about 7.2 million hectares. They exist in the territory from Princess Royal Island to Prince Rupert Island, Terrace and East Hazelton. Most of the world’s Spirit Bears are found on Princess Royal Island. The island is also home to salmon, bald eagles, foxes and other animals. Spirit Bears are strong and easy going. They can easily protect themselves from other animals and they make an effort to avoid lynx, grizzlies, mountain lions, as well as humans. Their #1 enemy is man.

The Spirit Bears survived the ice age, but today there are only a few hundred left in the world. This sub-species of the black bear is clearly in danger of extinction. While the white bears themselves are protected from hunting, the Black Bears in the same rainforests are not. And when one of the black bears is killed for a trophy on someone’s wall or floor, the special recessive genes that help create the Raven’s Spirit Bears, dies along with the Black Bear.

A further threat comes from the numerous fish farms spreading like chickweed throughout the channels and inlets throughout the rainforest. These farms produce Atlantic Salmon, a species obviously not native to the pacific west coast of Canada. The high concentration of fish in the farm nets leads to severe problems with sea lice. While many wild fish will naturally have a couple of lice living on their bodies, the locations of fish farms with their close proximity to the natural spawning creeks and rivers of the wild Salmon means that young, freshly hatched wild fry must swim through heavily lice infested waters where their small bodies can be quickly and completely overwhelmed with lice, killing the fry.

This year the salmon counts are desperately low, leading to low numbers of bears, Spirit, Black and Grizzly, fishing the rivers. The bears rely on the nutrition and fat from the salmon to survive their winter hibernation. The wild salmon are the lynch pin of entire rainforest eco system. From the wolves to the Bears and even the forest itself, all these natural systems rely on the nutrition of the wild salmon to survive.

Every European country that has introduced fish farming has seen their natural wild salmon stocks collapse. When you next consider purchasing fish for dinner or even at a restaurant, you can really help the wildlife in the Great Bear Rainforest by only purchasing wild and not farmed fish.

If you’d like to help make a difference, consider writing to:

Honourable Gordon Campbell
Premier of British Columbia

Email: Gordon.Campbell.mla@leg.bc.ca or premier@gov.bc.ca

Mailing Address: Room 156
Parliament Buildings
Victoria, BC V8V 1X4
Canada

Phone: 250-387-1715
Fax: 250-356-6176

Minister of Forests and Range
Honourable Patrick Bell

Email: for.minister@gov.bc.ca or pat.bell.mla@leg.bc.ca

Mailing Address: Room 137
Parliament Buildings
Victoria, BC V8V 1X4
Canada

Phone: 250-387-6240
Fax: 250-387-1040

And, you might want to consider supporting an organization called Pacific Wild. Pacific Wild is an environmental organization run by Ian McAllister whose mission is to research and find ways to protect this incredibly special area of the world.

If you have any comments or questions about the video, I’d love to hear from you.

I’ve just returned from a fantastic trip to the Great Bear Rainforest along the coast of beautiful British Columbia, Canada. I’ll be making return visits in May of 2010 for a visit to the Khutzeymateen to lead a group photographing Grizzly Bears and next September I’ll be leading another group to again (hopefully) photograph Spirit Bears. One thing that you learn after eight days as a photographer trying to photograph in a rainforest is that your gear for protecting yourself and your camera gear from the weather is critical. It rained during a lot of our time while we were out and about photographing; everything from a gentle mist to a raging typhoon conditions.  There were eight of us on this trip and I’ll let you know about my and the group’s experiences in regards to what rain gear worked and what didn’t.

Humpback Whale swimming towards us in the rain

• Canon 5D Mark II, 1/80th of a second at F6.3
• 70-200 F2.8L IS, 2x Extender II @ 400mm, ISO 800
• Evaluative metering at -2/3 compensation to compensate for dark water colour
• Hand held

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First, I’d like to impart a few thoughts about the term “Water Resistant.” I’d like to meet the marketing schmuck who came up with this term? Every piece of gear that someone had that was labelled water resistant leaked like a sieve when exposed to anything more than a gentle mist for more than 30 seconds. Pants, jackets, gloves and yes, even camera covers labelled as “water resistant” all failed miserably in terms of keeping things dry. If I were running the world, I’d ban that term. Gear would either be rated as water proof or not. None of this namby pamby stuff about water resistant.

For covering myself up, I used an Under Armour Foley Jacket that provided super rain protection while being very lightweight and packable. On my legs I used a pair of Truant Pants from Mountain Equipment Co-op and they did a wonderful job of helping my legs stay warm and dry.  On my feet I wore that standard issued rubber boots provided by our hosts and they worked great.  On my hands I used pair of gloves from Columbia Sportswear called the PFG Waterproof Fishing Gloves.  Ha!  These things leaked like a strainer and in a steady rain, my hands were soon wet and cold.  I would only recommend these to my worst enemy.  Nice gloves for keeping your fingers warm, horrible when you want to stay warm AND dry.  In fact, no one in our group seemed to have found a solution for keeping their fingers warm and dry with enough flexibility for operating their camera’s controls.  If you know of a great waterproof glove, please drop me a comment below.

I used two pieces of gear for keeping my camera and lenses dry.  When I was photographing with a shorter lens like my 70-200, I used a cheap and eminently useful product called the Rainsleeve from OpTech.  At just $6.95 for a package of two of these 18″ rain sleeves, they go a long way for providing excellent water proofing for your camera gear.  Yes, it’s basically a plastic bag with a drawstring to close it in around the lens, but it is an angled plastic bag and it works great.  The plastic is lightweight and provides pretty good access for adjusting the camera’s controls.  However, if you need to change memory cards, batteries or add or remove a teleconverter, you might find those tasks difficult to accomplish easily with the Rainsleeve fully engaged around the camera.

Kermode "Spirit" Bear searching for salmon along a river

• Canon 5D Mark II, 1/800th of a second at F4
• 500MM F4L IS @ 500mm, ISO 1600
• Manual Exposure – Metered off of neutral green foliage
• Gitzo 3541XLS Tripod with Jobu-Design Black Widow Gimbal Head

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At 18″ in length, the Rainsleeve wasn’t going to help me protect my camera with the Canon 500mm F4L IS lens and a teleconverter.  For that, I decided to opt for a more serious piece of gear from ThinkTank.  And speaking of ThinkTank, I’d have to nominate them as the number one company that just understands photographers.  They have a plethora of products and all the ones I’ve used and tried just work.  The piece of ThinkTank equipment I used for my telephoto lens was the ThinkTank Hydrophobia.  This is a professional piece of gear that just works.  Once you’ve purchased the appropriate eyepiece for your camera and wrapped it up in this sucker, your gear is pretty much guaranteed to stay dry in even the heaviest of deluges.  Short of full immersion into water, the Hydrophotobia works great, provides relatively easy access to camera functions, changing memory cards, batteries and even adding and removing teleconverters.  Hydrophobia from ThinkTank is highly recommended.

One fellow in our group was using Kata’s E-702 Elements protection system for his camera and the E-704 Elements Extension for his large telephoto lens.  He found their system of two separate pieces of rain gear (one for the camera body and one for the lens) joined by Velcro to be cumbersome and difficult to use.  He found it easier just to use the lens cover as the rain protection instead of the full system.  It isn’t that the Kata gear didn’t protect from the rain, it did, but rather an issue of access and usability.  However, folks using the Kata E-702 system for just a camera with a smaller lens didn’t have any issues operating their gear and it stayed nice and dry.

My camera bag, the Kiboko from Gura Gear, was simply awesome.  I never had to fully expose it to a down pour, but what it did run into, it handled like a champ.  I’ll have a full review of the Kiboko bag in a future blog entry.

I had one piece of equipment, the Hyperdrive ColorSpace UDMA, which ended up getting half-way submersed in water.  Fortunately, I had it enclosed in its included neoprene case and the unit, along with my stored images, emerged unscathed.  Of course I had an additional backup unit along, but it would have been a real drag to have been down to a single backup device.

Overall, the group had no issues with their camera gear.  Out of eight individuals, we had five Canon shooters and three Nikon shooters.  The Canon cameras consisted of everything from a 50D to the 1Ds Mark III with a preponderance of 5D Mark II’s, and the Nikon shooters seemed satisfied with their D300’s and D3X’s.  It’s a testament that the major camera manufacturers seem to have made great strides in quality control as many expeditions like this invariably suffer some sort of equipment failure in the past.

Do you have a favourite piece of gear for keeping you or your gear dry?  Have you run across something that just utterly failed?  Please share your experiences with the rest of us.

September has returned all the daytime wanderers (school folks, their parents, folks on holidays, etc.) to their regular routines and my errands today took half the time they did during the summer. It was the beginning of August when I noticed the first leaves starting to turn colour here in Edmonton, and while the full fall colour season is still probably a few weeks away, the trees seem well aware that winter is on its way.

I’m very excited about my upcoming Spirit Bear trip. The trip is sold out and I know we have a great group of people going. I’ll be super happy if I can come away with just a few usable images of the Spirit Bears but will be happy with whatever I get. For the first time in a long time, I’ll actually be out of email/Internet contact for a week or so. That’s going to be interesting and I’m kind of dreading the mountain of email that will be waiting my return.

After the Spirit Bear trip, I have my Fall Wildlife Photography Workshop (also sold out) at the Triple “D” Game Farm in October over the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend. Fall is an excellent time to visit the Kalispell, Montana area because of the cooler temperatures we should have timed the workshop to take advantage of the fantastic fall colour in the Flathead Valley in Montana.

In November I’m off to Churchill, Manitoba to scout out a location for a 2010 Polar Bear Photography Workshop. Where many people do trips to Churchill to photograph the bears from Tundra Buggies, I’m looking to do something a little different where our group will be able to be down on the ground (safely) and photograph the bears from their level, instead of 12 feet above them from a Tundra Buggy. Stay tuned to my workshop website for more details or you can contact me to be put on a list to be directly informed when full details on this trip are available.

When I look at my workshop and tour schedule for 2010, it is starting to look like a busy year. So far, here’s what the year looks like:

• Jan – Winter Wildlife Photography Workshop
• Apr – California Wildlife Photography Workshop
• May – Coastal Grizzly Photography Tour
• Jun – Loon and Other Delights Workshop
• Jun – Finnish Brown Bears Exploratory Tour
• Jun – Spring Wildlife Photography Workshop
• Jul – Summer Wildlife Photography Workshop
• Sep – Spirit Bear Photography Tour
• Oct – Fall Wildlife Photography Workshop
• Nov – Polar Bear Photography Workshop

If you’re interested in getting more information on any of those events, please contact me.

As noted above, this coming January I’m back in Kalispell, Montana for my Winter Wildlife Photography Workshop. There are still a few spots available for this workshop held during my favourite time of year at the Triple “D” Game Farm. Why is winter my favourite time? Glad you asked. Winter has the animals looking their best with awesome fur coats. The temperatures are cool which helps the animals work for extended periods without getting hot or tired. And the final reason has to do with fraidy cats. Fraidy cats are the people who don’t consider going outdoors in the winter because they don’t like the cold temperatures or snow. The benefit of all the fraidy cats around is that it means that those people who choose to venture into the cold and snow end up with unique pictures of beautiful animals in winter conditions that a lot of photographers will never get because they are fraidy cats.

And speaking of winter wildlife, I thought I’d share a few images from last winter at the Triple “D” Game Farm.

There are few animals that exemplify the idea of a beautiful winter fur coat like the Red Fox.  (Remember that you can view larger versions of the images by clicking on them)

Red Fox portrait - CA

• Canon 1Ds Mark II, 1/160th of a second at F6.3
• 100-400mm F4.5-5.6L IS @ 400mm, ISO 400
• Evaluative metering at +1/3 compensation to compensate for snowy background
• Gitzo 3541XLS Tripod with Jobu-Design Black Widow Gimbal Head

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Red Fox walking over the top of a snowy hill - CA

• Canon 1Ds Mark II, 1/800th of a second at F6.3
• 100-400mm F4.5-5.6L IS @ 190mm, ISO 400
• Evaluative metering with no compensation
• Gitzo 3541XLS Tripod with Jobu-Design Black Widow Gimbal Head

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Did you know that silver foxes are just red foxes with silver fur? I didn’t. The fellow in the following image had siblings who were both red in colour. It isn’t hard to imagine why their fur was/is so sought after for fur coats.

Silver Fox walking through some snow - CA

• Canon 1Ds Mark II, 1/640th of a second at F6.3
• 100-400mm F4.5-5.6L IS @ 210mm, ISO 400
• Evaluative metering with no compensation
• Gitzo 3541XLS Tripod with Jobu-Design Black Widow Gimbal Head

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Wolves in the winter are a lot of fun too. These giant canines love the snowy conditions and are very much at home in winter conditions. The one thing I always look for when making wolf images is the intensity in their eyes. I think the following images capture that intensity pretty well.

Grey Wolf watching intently from behind a tree - CA

• Canon 1Ds Mark II, 1/500th of a second at F6.3
• 100-400mm F4.5-5.6L IS @ 210mm, ISO 400
• Evaluative metering with no compensation
• Gitzo 3541XLS Tripod with Jobu-Design Black Widow Gimbal Head

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Grey Wolf walking over snow, watching intently - CA

• Canon 1Ds Mark II, 1/500th of a second at F6.3
• 100-400mm F4.5-5.6L IS @ 210mm, ISO 400
• Evaluative metering with +2/3 compensation due to preponderance of snow in the scene
• Gitzo 3541XLS Tripod with Jobu-Design Black Widow Gimbal Head

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An animal that I’ve never previously had the pleasure of photographing before was the Fisher. These ferocious weasels are one of the few predators that will consider a porcupine as a source of food. While this small forest dweller looks cute, I assure you that his bite is worse than his bark.

Fisher peering through some spruce limbs - CA

• Canon 1Ds Mark II, 1/640th of a second at F5.6
• 70-200 F2.8L IS @ 200mm, ISO 400
• Evaluative metering with -1/3 compensation
• Gitzo 3541XLS Tripod with Jobu-Design Black Widow Gimbal Head

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Fisher portrait - CA

• Canon 1Ds Mark II, 1/320th of a second at F6.3
• 70-200 F2.8L IS @ 200mm, ISO 400
• Evaluative metering with -1/3 compensation
• Gitzo 3541XLS Tripod with Jobu-Design Black Widow Gimbal Head

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And, did I mention something about this guy’s bite?

Fisher snarling from the end of a branch - CA

• Canon 1Ds Mark II, 1/640th of a second at F6.3
• 70-200 F2.8L IS @ 200mm, ISO 400
• Evaluative metering with -1/3 compensation
• Gitzo 3541XLS Tripod with Jobu-Design Black Widow Gimbal Head

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Being Canadian, I’m rather fond of the Canada Lynx. One of the great attributes of these wonderful felines is their gigantic, almost cartoonish feet. When I photograph Canada Lynx, I always look for opportunities to show off their feet along with those wonderful long tufts of fur on their ears.

Canada Lynx walking down a snowy hill - CA

• Canon 1Ds Mark II, 1/2500th of a second at F6.3
• 100-400mm F4.5-5.6L IS @ 275mm, ISO 400
• Evaluative metering with +2/3 compensation for bright snowy conditions with light toned animal
• Gitzo 3541XLS Tripod with Jobu-Design Black Widow Gimbal Head

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Canada Lynx sitting on the snow - CA

• Canon 1Ds Mark II, 1/2500th of a second at F6.3
• 100-400mm F4.5-5.6L IS @ 330mm, ISO 400
• Evaluative metering with no compensation
• Gitzo 3541XLS Tripod with Jobu-Design Black Widow Gimbal Head

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Canada Lynx walking across some snow - CA

• Canon 1Ds Mark II, 1/2000th of a second at F6.3
• 100-400mm F4.5-5.6L IS @ 235mm, ISO 400
• Evaluative metering with +2/3 compensation for bright snowy conditions with light toned animal
• Gitzo 3541XLS Tripod with Jobu-Design Black Widow Gimbal Head

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The animal I’ll end off with for this update is the Snow Leopard. And yes, it is a coincidence that my feature animal this month is named the same as Apple’s newly released operating system for the Macintosh. These beautiful cats are simply beautiful to behold and have a special intensity in their faces. One of the interesting attributes of the Snow Leopard is that their tails can be as long as their bodies. Winter is obviously the optimal time to photograph Snow Leopards and they aren’t usually available to photograph at the Triple “D” during the summer months.

These Snow Leopard images were made at a new photography compound at one of the sites that Triple “D” leases land at and I was the first photographer fortunate enough to photograph the Snow Leopards at this site. This makes for some unique images and the setting pretty well mimics where they are found, at least the few that remain, in the wild.

Snow Leopard standing along a steep snowy incline in front of a mossy ledge - CA

• Canon 1Ds Mark II, 1/1250th of a second at F6.3
• 100-400mm F4.5-5.6L IS @ 190mm, ISO 400
• Evaluative metering with +2/3 compensation for bright snowy conditions with light toned animal
• Gitzo 3541XLS Tripod with Jobu-Design Black Widow Gimbal Head

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Snow Leopard standing along a steep, snowy incline in front of a rocky ledge - CA

• Canon 1Ds Mark II, 1/500th of a second at F6.3
• 100-400mm F4.5-5.6L IS @ 250mm, ISO 400
• Evaluative metering with +2/3 compensation for bright snowy conditions with light toned animal
• Gitzo 3541XLS Tripod with Jobu-Design Black Widow Gimbal Head

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This last image was made when a Snow Leopard decided to take off down the hill after a piece of snow that had tumbled down the slope. While these are intimidating animals, I felt secure that the animal trainer standing right beside me would intervene if necessary. So, I kept shooting as the leopard galloped down the slope towards me. He stopped about 10 feet away and I managed the following image, which is one of my favourites as it really shows off the intensity and beauty of this spectacular cat.

Snow Leopard watching intently from the down-side of a snowy hill - CA

• Canon 1Ds Mark II, 1/800th of a second at F6.3
• 100-400mm F4.5-5.6L IS @ 220mm, ISO 400
• Evaluative metering with +2/3 compensation for bright snowy conditions with light toned animal
• Gitzo 3541XLS Tripod with Jobu-Design Black Widow Gimbal Head

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That’s it for this update. If you have any questions about the images, how they were made, why I chose the settings I did, or anything else about photography, I’d be happy to answer them for you. Those sorts of inquiries along with questions about workshops can be directed to me through my contact page.

Questions, comments and critiques are always welcome and encouraged.

Please contact me if you are interested in obtaining the rights to use one of my images or to purchase a fine art print.

Best regards,

Paul

I’m not going to discuss all of the ethical issues around photographing captive animals. It is a very touchy subject and it almost always degenerates into an emotional flame war. What I am going to discuss is truthfulness in wildlife photography as it pertains to the photography of captive animals.  I hope I don’t come across as preachy here, but ethics are a big issue for me especially as they surround my chosen profession of wildlife photography.

The variety of locations that a photographer can make images of captive animals include zoos, wildlife parks, game farms, acquariums and some would even argue that some of the private game reserves in Africa qualify as captive animal photography locations.  I take photographs of captive wildlife animals and I lead workshops at the Triple “D” Game Farm where I help other photographers go home with an impressive portfolio of images. I don’t make this a secret and it is nothing I am ashamed of in the least. I know the folks at Triple “D” very well and I know they care for the animals deeply and shed more than a tear when one of their animals passes away. I also know that the animals I photograph there are healthy and happy. The healthiness is apparent in the photographs, but the happiness is apparent to me when, at the end of a photography session, the animal happily goes off with the trainer into its crate or back into the truck for the ride back to the ranch. That tells me the animals are happy to be around the folks at Triple “D” and it helps me and my clients get better pictures.

Young Puma sitting on a snowy ledge - CA

• Canon 1Ds Mark II, 1/1000th of a second at F5
• 70-200 F2.8L IS, 1.4x Extender II (Teleconverter) @ 120mm, ISO 400
• Evaluative metering at +1 1/3 compensation to compensate for bright snowy conditions
• Gitzo 3541XLS Tripod with Jobu-Design Black Widow Gimbal Head
• Triple “D” Game Farm, Kalispell, Montana

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I am also upfront about labelling my images of captive animals. If you see a wildlife image of mine and it has a “-CA” designation at the end of the photograph’s caption, that “CA” designation indicates that the subject of the photograph is a captive animal. I have no issues photographing happy and healthy wildlife surrogates and I also have no issues letting everyone know that the image they are viewing is an image of a captive animal.  In fact, I go so far as to “burn” the “CA” designation into the metadata for the image.  This way, even if my original captioning of an image disappears, anyone who is interested and in possession of a bit of technical skill will be able to read the metadata (or EXIF data) embedded in the image and discover for themselves that I’ve labelled the image with the captive animal designation.  Alternately, any of my images without that “-CA” designation at the end of the photograph’s caption are images of wild animals able to come and go as they please.

I have a problem with photographers who pretend that the image they made of a captive animal was actually an image of a wild animal. In my opinion it is dishonest and does a disservice to the wildlife photography community. I also have an issue with what I consider a lie by omission. Some photographers don’t say whether their images of captive animals are of wild or captive and I think they do this as they’d prefer the public to assume they are viewing images of wild animals. I think this is dangerous to both photographers and animals because people may decide they want to get too close to a truly wild animal to get a great shot. Should the animal hurt the photographer both suffer because many times an animal that has attacked a human is subsequently killed. So an unwitting photographer, trying to duplicate the results they’ve seen of photographs of captive animals, ends up causing problems for themselves and the animal. That just doesn’t fit with my personal ethics.

Every once in a while I’ll come across a photographer who is lying about the “wildness” of their image(s) and I have no problem calling them on it. I’ll do it privately at first and if the person recants, removes or corrects their mistruth than I’ll let it rest there. But, if someone wants to go on publically lying about their image, I have no problem publicly pointing out their lie.

Here’s a little story. About a year ago I was surfing a well known nature photography web site when I came across an image of a Mountain Lion in their Fauna photography section. The person posting the image had concocted a wonderful story about how they’d heard from someone about a Mountain Lion that was known to come across an area of rocks most mornings.  This person apparently visited that pile of rocks the Mountain Lion was known to frequent for several days in a row. Finally, after a week of this epic photographic adventure, sure enough a Mountain Lion appeared and the photographer managed to make a few images before the animal went on its way.

When I read this story, I thought to myself how fortunate the photographer had been to a) see a Mountain Lion in the wild, close up and b) to not have been eaten by said Mountain Lion who was obviously within 20 – 30 feet of the photographer. As I thought about the story more, it became obvious to me that the story was a little too good.  Mountain Lions have a very large range and the odds that one would frequent an area so regularly seemed entirely unlikely to me.  I studied the posted image closely and soon realized that the rock the Mountain Lion was climbing over looked very familiar to me. I decided to consult my Mountain Lion images which were all made at the Triple “D” Game Farm in Kalispell, Montana. Sure enough, I could match up the rock the lion was travelling over crack for crack, lichen for lichen.  In addition to arguably completely oversaturating the colours in the image, the photographer posting the image was a bold faced liar who had concocted a story about photographing a wild animal when in reality they’d made a nice image of a Mountain Lion at the Triple “D” Game Farm.  (Click on the image below or above for a larger view)

The Mountain Lion Liar - Identifying information removed

I immediately sent this photographer a private message. I detailed that I could exactly match the rocks and lichens in their image exactly by overlaying their image with one of mine in Photoshop and asked if they wanted to reconsider their story. The photographer never had the courage to respond to my message but rather deleted the image from the web site.  I imagine that they would like to pretend that the incident never happened. While I would have preferred that the photographer showed a little intestinal fortitude by admitting their lie, I settled for the redaction.

There are many places in the world where one can photograph both captive and wild animals. If you decide to photograph captive animals, please have the temerity to label your images appropriately.

Agree or disagree? I’d love to hear from you.

When I first upgraded to Lightroom 2.0, I spent a considerable amount of time playing with the new features.  One of the new RAW processing features that really intrigued me was the adjustment brush.  The adjustment brush allows the user to adjust Exposure, Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Clarity and Sharpness of an area of an image that a user chooses by painting over that area with the adjustment brush.  An additional feature is that the adjustment brush, in addition to any of the other adjustments, allows you to paint over an area of the image in a colour.  For this tutorial, I’ll be using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.4 to make the adjustments although the same adjustment brush is now available in Adobe Photoshop CS4’s Adobe Camera RAW processing tool.

Before Adjustment Brush

I’ve seen the coloring feature of the adjustment brush used by photographers to colorize black and white images.  It is a useful tool for colorizing old black & white images.  But I had trouble imagining what sort of use I could put it to.  However, when I discovered an image of mine of a Canada Lynx kitten, photographed under mottled light, where a significant portion of the critter was drastically overexposed where a beam of sunlight caught the side of the animal, it occurred to me that I might be able to make use of the adjustment brush to salvage the image.  In a perfect world, you’d never have to photograph under mottled light conditions, but until I find that perfect world, I’m happy to use the software tools available to make lemonaide out of lemons.

After Adjustment Brush

My approach for recovering the area of the image with the blown highlights, as you’ll see in the following video, is to use the adjustment brush to make radical changes to the exposure of the overexposed areas.  Additionally, I use the coloring feature to add some of the missing color back to the area.  I finish up the image making a number of adjustments to the image, returning, at least in my occasionally humble opinion, a perfectly usable version of the image from a file that would otherwise have been delegated to the trash bin.

The video demonstrates how I accomplish this task and additionally walks you through a number of other adjustments that I’d make to this wildlife image to get it ready for prime time.

After you’ve reviewed the video, I’d appreciate hearing any comments you might have and I’d be happy to assist you with questions where I can.

The photograph featured above and in the video was created with a Canon 1Ds Mark II with a Canon 100-400 F4.5-5.6L IS lens at 1/160th of a second, F5.6 and ISO 400.  For more information on the equipment I use and recommend, please check out my gear page.

It was last August when I received a tip about a nest of Swainson’s Hawks.  These cooperative hawks set up their nest at the back of a commercial shopping plaza that boarded a large field.  What was really cool about this nest is that it was easily accessible for photography purposes from the back parking lot and located right in the city of Edmonton.  So, I scouted out the area and oblivious to the curious stares of the shopping plaza employees, I was able to photograph the birds from my vehicle to my hearts content.

But, I soon noticed a disturbing trend.  Although the birds at first appeared healthy and full of life, I soon started to notice a number of birds that appeared, and there is no easy way of saying this, well, they appeared headless.  There I said it.  Headless hawks. In Edmonton.  Headless Hawks in Edmonton!!!

Here’s the first headless hawk I photographed and presented for your examination.  And I swear on my copy of Scott Kelby’s The Adobe Photoshop CS4 Book for Digital Photographers that I DID NOT use Photoshop or any other photo editing tool to remove these birds’ heads.  This is, in fact, the way they appeared straight through my viewfinder and onto the camera’s sensor and I will be happy to supply the RAW files to any interested individuals or government agencies.  (Remember you can click on the images to view larger versions of the files.)

Headless Hawk - Sample 1

As a perfectly rationale and sane wildlife photographer, I was of course, very concerned.  Was it my presence that caused this hawk to lose its head?  Was I witnessing some sort of previously unknown phenomenon whereby a seemingly healthy and beautiful hawk could spontaneously lose its head?  Was it perhaps a case of alien abduction?

I went home troubled and disturbed and no, that’s not my regular state of being.  Hoping against hope that this was a one-time occurrence, I returned the following day.  Guess what?  It happened again!  Okay, maybe I could live with this happening one day, but with this happening on different days, I really started to freak out a little.  Here’s the second headless hawk for your examination.

Headless Hawk - Sample 2

When I got home I carefully checked my equipment and concluded that the equipment couldn’t have possibly have caused this travesty against nature.  Later I considered my actions.  Had my presence and observation of these hawks somehow caused some sort of quantum mechanical paradox akin to Schrödinger’s cat paradox?  Was I somehow drifting between our world and a parallel universe where hawks live their lives headless?  If that were the case, how the heck do they eat or even see where they’re flying?  Maybe it was aliens.  Because if you know anything at all about aliens, you know of their tendancy to steal bovine innards.  Was this a new attack on the wildlife of our planet?  It was the final headless hawk though that really got me thinking (you are of course free to doubt the veracity of my thinking).

Headless Hawk - Sample 3

I noticed this last hawk had a metal band on one leg.  Was this a method aliens had devised for marking these birds?  Some sort of signal to other aliens that they’d already abducted this birds head.  Was it some sort of message saying “Nothing to see here, move along and find your own hawk’s head”?  Maybe the metal band was some sort of stabilisation system to tether the hawk to its perch until its head was returned?  Was the government experimenting with these hawks?  Are they working on a plan to remove human heads too?  For what purpose?  What’s going on???

Colour me baffled.  I never did solve the mystery of the headless hawks.  I’ve done a lot of photography in the last year and have photographed a ton of raptors and have yet to see a reoccurrence of this frightening episode.  Maybe you’ve got a theory on what’s going on.  I’d love to hear it.

(Originally published in Outdoor Photography Canada Magazine)

Many individuals are immediately sceptical when viewing images in the digital age. The ethics of digital photo manipulation is increasingly important to the digital photographer. It turns out that this concern is fully warranted but I personally draw a distinction between digital manipulation in documentary photography and photography as art.

Lincoln's Head on John Calhoun's Body

Photo manipulation has been happening since the medium was invented in the 1800’s. One of the most famous images of US President Lincoln is actually a composite of Lincoln’s head pasted onto John Calhoun’s body. Former USSR dictator Stalin routinely removed his enemies from photographs by having them air-brushed out. More recent manipulations include a TV Guide cover with Oprah Winfrey’s head being substituted on Ann-Margret’s body and a photo that won an award as “one of the most impressive news photos of 2006” of antelope crossing under an elevated bullet train in China later being revealed as a composite of the antelope running merged with another image of the elevated train.

Oprah's head on Ann Margaret's body

Most of my photography is used as art in one form or another. When I’m working on an image as art I try to make photographs that are visually and artistically compelling. All images are an interpretation of reality and are subject to the limits of the technology used. Therefore, when my photographs are used for artful purposes, I have no issues with reinterpreting reality. 100% of these photographs are touched, in one way or another, in photo editing software. Usually, that digital touch is limited to cropping, dust removal and contrast and colour saturation adjustments. However, if the situation warrants, I have no issues with dramatically reinterpreting the colours, key elements and composition of a photograph in order to make a more artistic image that tells a compelling story.

Running Fox Kit - Before Alterations

Fox kit walking over the top of a hill - Retouched Image

My argument is that a photograph made for artistic purposes is an art form and must be subject to the freedoms that the description implies. Artists, including painters and sculptors, routinely create a representation that differs from reality. And where that artist thinks nothing of adding, excluding or enhancing elements from the original scene, I feel the artistic photographer should be afforded the same latitude.[nggallery id=6]

Documentary and news photography is another issue altogether. When I create an image that is used for this purpose my ethics allow very little digital manipulation. I do not fundamentally alter the image by adding, removing, enhancing or de-emphasizing any of the key elements of a photograph. Adjustments made to a documentary image go no further than cropping, basic contrast and colour saturation adjustments and some basic sharpening.

The National Press Photographers Association agrees with this point of view. The NPAA has a code of ethics and it, in part, reads “Accurate representation is the benchmark of our profession. We believe photojournalistic guidelines for fair and accurate reporting should be the criteria for judging what may be done electronically to a photograph. Altering the editorial content … is a breach of the ethical standards recognized by the NPPA.”

Ethics are a deeply personal matter. For me, it boils down to intent and usage. Journalistic use of photos can only be subject to the simplest adjustments presenting a fair representation of the scene as captured with no intent to deceive. The artistic photo created by a skilled photographer and artist captures both the spirit and essence of a scene that allows those elements to be transferred to the viewer.

Feel free to disagree (or agree) with me.  Post your thoughts here for us all to share.