Greetings everyone! I’ve been working on a couple of big posts lately and been out shooting nearly every free minute, so I’ve fallen a week behind. That said, I’m going to share a few of my latest images of West Tiger Mountain (which is about twenty minutes from my house) with you here. I’ve got lots to say, but I’ll save it for the upcoming next few posts. Enjoy! Click each image to enlarge!

West Tiger Mountain Stream

This beautiful, fast-moving stream flows down from the heights of West Tiger Mountain just east of Renton, Washington where it joins the Raging River about a half-mile downstream.

Douglas’ Squirrel (Tamiascurus douglasii)

This small and noisy dark squirrel was heard long before I spotted it in the trees. After about a thirty minute hunt, I gave up – only to have it appear twenty feet in front of me, perfectly posed for this image.

West Tiger Mountain Forest

Late afternoon golden sunlight filters through the trees on the slopes of West Tiger Mountain in Western Washington.

Related posts:

1. An Eagle’s View
2. Rattlesnake Mountain – Under a Great Big Sky
3. Mountain Stream with a Touch of Snow

I’ve passed the nine-month mark as a Washington resident, and I thought it was time for me to plant my flag and give myself the hesitant yet inevitable title as a Washington nature photographer. Seems so strange after all those years of being known as “that crazy Floridian guy wading out all alone in the Everglades with all those huge alligators and no boat!” - but I’m riveted. I’m entranced. Mesmerized. The Pacific Northwest has got me hook, line and sinker, and I’m not going anywhere. While at this point Washington doesn’t feel like home yet, but I certainly don’t feel like a stranger anymore. There is a primal and raw quality to the nature and wilderness of this state that makes me feel like I belong here, and if it takes me the rest of my life to understand it, so be it.

I’ve been out shooting a lot recently in the mountains, forests, estuaries and coastlines, and my one image/one post approach isn’t really working out when I’m getting a lot of final images that are making the cut, and besides it has been getting a bit monotonous.  I’ve decided to switch it up a bit and instead post a video slideshow with fifteen of my new images at once. While a video doesn’t give much of a description of what I am showing you like I usually do, I’ve decided to put thumbnail images below. Just find the image that interests you and click on it to see both the image enlarged and my description and /or thoughts about making the image.

With all these new images that are building up to equal the scope and volume of the galleries of our original Florida Nature Photography website – we’ve quietly rolled out and released our North American Nature Photography Website. If you like what we’ve been doing all these years so far – please help us spread the word and share this blog, post, or link to the new website:

North American Nature Photography

I really hope you enjoy the new images, and as the weather continues to get warmer and the animals get more active and the trees and flowers bloom in wild and colorful profusion, I’ll be out getting many more wildlife and other nature shots as spring progresses into summer. Everyday brings another mystery, wonder, and feeling of awe as I learn to feel that sense of place that will (I hope) one day be the place I call home.

 Many thanks once again to our friend, Elizabeth Anne Middleton of Pianorama for lending her music and magic to our image slideshow. Help me return the favor by checking her out HERE. I know many of my readers/followers work in creative fields and we all know how hard it is to find non-synth music for our projects. 

Related posts:

1. Red Fox on Mount Rainier
2. A Phantom Familiarity – Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge
3. The Songbirds of Winter

Sometimes a photograph speaks more than words. Photographed this young red fox on Mount Rainier a few days ago. I was completely fascinated by the golden ring of fur encircling its face, and the dark hairs around the eyes and neck plus the rich color of the evergreens behind it created perfect contrast to make this image.

Red Fox on Mount Rainier

~ click to enlarge ~

I’d write more but it’s such a beautiful day that it would be a crime to stay indoors. Later!

Related posts:

1. Rattlesnake Mountain – Under a Great Big Sky
2. Silver Falls on Mount Rainier
3. An Eagle’s View

Spring has arrived in Washington, and not a minute is wasted when the skies are clear and it’s not raining.  Since yesterday was such a beautiful Easter morning and deciding to mix a workday with a family day, I took my wife and kids up to check out Rattlesnake Mountain and get some more images to be used for both gallery work and potential buyer stock. As my children are two and four years old, I wasn’t expecting to actually go to the top of the mountain ledge, but being obviously stubborn like dad – we made it up to the top with no trouble. The climb was about 1150 feet and about four miles round-trip, and the view from the top was spectacular!

 Upper Snoqualmie Valley and Cascades

~click to enlarge ~

In the image shown here ever-slightly facing north of due east, are a series of mountain peaks still capped with a bit of snow: Mailbox Peak to the left with Dirtybox Peak just to the right and behind it. On the right side is Mount Washington with Cedar Butte (the large hill) in the foreground. Between the mountains is a part of the Upper Snoqualmie Valley and the South Fork Snoqualmie River.

There is abundant wildlife both on the mountain itself and around the lake below, and many botanical beauties such as huge trilliums and delicate orchids throughout the whole area. Something tells me this is going to be one of the places I visit heavily over the upcoming years, as it is only a half-hour drive from my house.

Related posts:

1. An Eagle’s View
2. Blows My Mind….
3. Mountain Stream with a Touch of Snow

Today I want to talk a little about style. Periodically I poke around the web and have a look at what other people (both pros and amateurs) are doing in regards to portraits and I’ve been seeing something that has me feeling a little disappointed. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m seeing a lot of technically fantastic portraits that don’t seem to have any soul to them. I’m not going to point to any examples, but those of us in the business who look at a lot of images all the time, sometimes the images that are lacking can stick out in a way that is more glaring than it might be to the (for lack of a better word) uneducated.

Style. I’m not talking about clothes, or fashion, or what’s popular. I’m talking about finding the essence of the subject  which many of the images I’m seeing lately are lacking. You can have perfect focus on the upper eyelid, perfect light metering, and incredible depth of field and still have a portrait fall flat. It doesn’t embody a certain mood. It doesn’t evoke a feeling, possibly from a personal experience. It doesn’t have that special sauce.

If you don’t bring that special sauce to your portraiture, then you’ve failed, and no amount of  “likes” or Facebook praise will fix it.

How do you add style, you ask? That’s entirely up to the photographer. Everyone is a little different from the next. Every photographer has his or her story as an individual, and the way I look at portraiture – the image is as much about the subject of the portrait as it is about one who is making it. That is why photography is an art, and not merely a recipe. Take a dozen experienced shooters and one model, you will undoubtedly get a dozen very different final images. On the technical side, it all starts with equipment choice (i.e.. camera type, lens choice, maybe filters, etc), followed by choice of aperture, focus and exposure, and finally – editing.

All too often I’m seeing this as the whole process, but it’s really only a part of it. The other half is supremely important: get the personality. This means talking, joking, telling a story or asking questions to get the subject to relax, open up, and become expressive. This is where the personality will come out of your subject – when a connection is made and it becomes personal to you – the photographer. You aren’t trying to make a 2D image of Homo sapiens, you are trying to portray who that person is as an individual, unique in the world. If done right, there should be a twinkle in the eye, and completely open expression (if desired), and an honesty that radiates from the image itself.

We aren’t done – yet.

The final part on the one-two punch is editing. This too is vastly different from shooter to shooter, and is an extension of actually taking the photo. These days we are the creator and developer – not just the camera operator, and in my opinion it is the very best thing about the digital age. It enables us to go to places never dreamed possible in the days of shooting film. A good editor can take the mood and feeling of the portrait and enhance it in any way he or she wants. A great editor can make a fantastic portrait even better. Again, the editing can be technically brilliant in regards to level, curves, histogram reading, etc. – but if it doesn’t further improve the image’s impact, then it lessens its worth and detracts from the original endeavor to make a great portrait.

Related posts:

1. Rainy Days and Mondays

The other night I was shooting for a corporate business event in downtown Seattle. As you can guess, it was raining the entire time, but it didn’t matter too much because the event was indoors. Afterward I was leaving the event and weaving my way through downtown traffic, three things happened: the rain stopped and the sky suddenly cleared for a moment, the Space Needle appeared out of the gray - lit up beautifully and only a couple of blocks away, and there was suddenly an opening to park on the side of the street just in front of me. There was only one thing for me that I just had to do….

Space Needle ~ Seattle, Washington

~ click to enlarge ~

The Pacific Northwest’s major landmark, and Seattle’s most recognized symbol – the Space Needle is 605 feet (184 m) high at its highest point and 138 feet (42 m) wide at its widest point.

Related posts:

1. We Relocated to the Seattle, Washington Area! Why?

Today I visited a new place as I continue exploring Washington State and move farther and farther from my home to look for native wildlife to study, photograph, and eventually hope to write about with some degree of authority as I become more familiar with my surroundings and its natural rhythms. Sometimes new and previously unvisited locations seem to have a kind of “phantom familiarity.”  I had that experience today as I visited the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge.

In North Florida over the past several years, I was a regular visitor to the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge on the Gulf of Mexico, famous for its spectacular abundance of wildlife - particularly in migratory species of birds. Over the years I came to know all of the trails very well through all the different seasons. The primary habitat was estuarine mud flats surrounded by salt marsh. At roughly 2800 miles to the northwest, the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge is very much the same. The only difference being instead of warm Gulf waters dictating the natural rhythms, here the Puget Sound and the cold waters of the Pacific Northwest are in charge.

Golden-Crowned Sparrow

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Even some of the wildlife is the same, but of course there are many new species of which I’m only beginning to see for the first time. Similar  animals I’ve seen at both locations after my first trip are: great blue herons, ovenbirds, greater yellowlegs, American coots, American bitterns, mallard ducks, ring-necked ducks, American wigeons, buffleheads, northern shovelers, song sparrows, American robins, red-winged blackbirds and bald eagles.

What was new today was seeing for the first time: northern pintails, green-winged teals, common mergansers, all sorts of new seagulls (I’ve always been horrible at identifying them), yellow-crowned sparrows, a different-looking yellow-rumped warbler (different species?), possibly two different types of swallows, a huge turtle that was completely unexpected, and the first mink I ever saw that conveniently popped up by me for about three seconds as I was changing lenses on my camera.

I think I’ve found a new future stomping ground….. many more photos on the way, I thought I’d just get one of them out on the same day while the memory was still fresh.

Related posts:

1. If it Looks Like a Duck, and Quacks Like a Duck…
2. The Songbirds of Winter
3. My Photo was Picked for the 2011 National Audubon Society Calendar!!!!!!!

Cold and rainy Seattle Monday evening tonight – perfect for an outdoor portrait session? Yes! This is Jessica’s shoot.

Because we planned an outdoor portrait session, the rain literally put a damper on our plans, but we persevered and under the cover of the pavilion at Gene Coulon Memorial Beach Park in Renton, Washington we were able to make it happen. Many thanks to Brandi Johnson…. more about her in an upcoming post!

Related posts:

1. Lake Washington Sailboats
2. Keeping it Simple – Outdoor Portrait Photography

This morning started off with snow and by noon, the snow had melted and the sun was out resulting in a beautiful bright, cheery day at just above freezing: my kind of weather, and stuck in my office was the last place I wanted to be. So I grabbed a camera and a zoom lens and headed out! These are a small sample of some of the images I brought back….. click any image to enlarge.

Chestnut-Backed Chickadee

Chestnut-Backed Chickadee

Chestnut-Backed Chickadee

Black-Capped Chickadee

Black-Capped Chickadee

Dark-Eyed Junco

I saw a lot of these small species of songbirds, but these three are just a start. More images one the way!

Related posts:

1. A Face only a Mother Could Love
2. My Photo was Picked for the 2011 National Audubon Society Calendar!!!!!!!
3. If it Looks Like a Duck, and Quacks Like a Duck…

A few hours ago, we just got our power restored after 58 hours of non-preparedness and freezing in our home. Being relatively still new to Washington from Florida, we were absolutely not prepared for an extended power outage, which was cause by a massive Ice storm that left over 400,000 people without power in the Seattle area. On the second night of darkness, I got cabin fever and had to go out for a walk, and I brought my camera, tripod, a fast lens (70-200mm f2.8), and one of my Nikons. I wanted to try something completely different from my normal work.

These ice sculptures caused by the freezing rain were spectacular! I had to take some very long exposures to pull enough light into the camera for these images….. click on each for a larger image.

I realize these are very different from the photography normally displayed here, but I’d love some input and your thoughts on these. Like it? Not Really? Meh?

No related posts.