Favorites Of 2017

It's come time for my traditional countdown of my favorite twelve images from the previous year. 2017 was a good year for photography, despite my third (and final) year of wood thrush field work taking up much of my time between the end of April and the beginning of October. As usual, there were some tough choices to be made to narrow it down to just twelve images. Here are my favorites from this year, in no particular order.

1. "Placid Lake, Turbulent Skies"

This image was taken near the top of Whiteface Mountain looking down towards Lake Placid during peak foliage at the beginning of October. At the end of our annual camera club trip to the Adirondacks, a group of us decided to take the drive to the top of Whiteface. Despite iffy weather and a small traffic jam at the entrance, our perseverance paid off more than we could know. At the top we were treated to windy and frigid conditions, but also incredible views of the surrounding foliage and mountains with light beams breaking through the stormy cloud cover everywhere. This image is a panoramic composed of seven vertical images taken with my 70-300mm lens set at 70mm. Each of those images was in turn created from a 32-bit HDR made in Lightroom from three identically composed images shot at 1 stop increments. I turned off Auto-Tone and processed the 32-bit images manually. All images were shot at f/16. Obviously to pull this off, all images were shot on a tripod in quick succession.

2. "Gaping Gator"

I encountered this relatively small alligator sunning itself along the dike at the Audubon Swamp Garden in Magnolia Plantations and Gardens near Charleston, SC. The behavior depicted is called "gaping" and is likely a thermoregulatory behavior. The alligator rests with its mouth open and often the buccal pouch extended. This individual was nicely backlit; illuminating the translucent skin of the pouch. With the benefit of almost the full reach (with a 1.6x crop factor camera) of a 100-400mm zoom lens, I was able to carefully get down to eye level to photograph this individual.

3. "Broken Dancer No. 3"

2017 was a great year for my night photography, although mostly with less natural subjects. One of my favorite locations for night photography this year was Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. This cemetery has a large collection of historic, elaborate, and artistic mausoleums and monuments. Although I captured a few images here that made it to the candidates for favorite of 2017, this image is far and away my favorite of the bunch. This image was light painted with the help of my friend Peter Nagy. I'm photographing with my tripod fully spread, lying on my belly on the ground with my Tokina 11-16mm lens. There is a powerful pink/magenta colored light pointed at the front of the statue. I'm using a spotlight from the ground to light the writing on the block and fill in some of the detail on the side of the dancer and remove some of the color cast on the statue. Peter is holding a small spotlight on the hands to emphasize the hands and remove some of the color cast from that area as well. Irene Castle and her husband were a famous dancing couple and when he died during a wartime training accident, she had this statue commissioned for his marker.

4. "Love Bugs"

I captured this macro image late one evening in July near Swan Lake in Rockefeller State Park Preserve. I went to this patch of milkweed plants looking for macro subjects and this pair of red milkweed beetles obliged. I love the contrast between the bright red beetles and the green surroundings. The red and black coloration warn potential predators of their foul taste due to toxic cardiac glycosides obtained from the milkweed plant. In an example of Mullerian mimicry, many of the insect species feeding on milkweed have a similar red/orange with black pattern.

5. "Me And My Shadow"

This image was captured at Nickerson Beach Park on Long Island. I was thrilled to finally capture some images I was happy with of this beautiful and charismatic bird. This image is one of my favorites because the combination of behavior, a parent bringing food to its young, and the perfect shadow, elevate this image beyond the standard animal portrait. This individual passed close by me on foraging runs several times as I sat still and quiet on the beach front.

6. "Give Me Shelter"

While the lighting may not have been ideal, any time you catch a baby owl out and about during the daytime has to make the favorite list. This baby screech owl was waiting in this beech tree with its parents for the rest of its siblings to fledge from the nest. It was soon joined by two other baby screech owls in the same tree. Taken mid-June in Rockefeller State Park Preserve.

7. "Displaying Teal"

This displaying blue-winged teal was displaying in February at the Audubon Swamp Garden at Magnolia Plantation and Gardens. I love the blend of frozen detail (particularly the eye) and blurred action in this behavior shot. Just enough detail is captured in the pale blue, white, and iridescent green wing feathers to show the structure of the colored wing patches. Because of hunting pressure, it can be hard to get good images of these ducks, so it was great to find wild ducks that were mostly habituated the hustle and bustle of the busy plantation.

8. "Gaea Overwhelmed"

2017 also saw many new additions to my "Fairytales" composite series. "Gaea Overwhelmed" is one of my favorites because of its environmental message and the overall visuals. I originally conceived this image and shot the background subway image back in April. But I didn't finish getting the background image into shape and photographing and adding the figures until October. As with all the images in this series, I've tried to layer multiple meanings/interpretations and social commentaries into the fairytale story and mix in modern elements to indicate their modern relevance.

9. "Chorus Line"

This line of white ibis was also photographed in the Audubon Swamp Garden at Magnolia Plantation and Gardens near Charleston, SC. I noticed the birds lining up on the branches of this dead tree, but then it was a matter of finding a viewpoint that wasn't obstructed by other vegetation, but allowed me to capture the linear arrangement. The overcast sky provided a nice high-key effect.

10. "Crested Dwarf Iris And Trail, Little Frog Mountain Wilderness"

During 2017 I also continued to work on my "Smallest Wilderness" project; revisiting some local wilderness as well as areas in South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. This image was made just inside the Little Frog Mountain Wilderness in Cherokee National Forest just after a light rain. Crested dwarf iris are among my favorite wildflowers and I love their saturated green and purple colors.

11. "Spring Green"

During my work on the "Smallest Wilderness" project I also visited the small but stunning Gee Creek Wilderness in Tennessee. A combination of waterfalls and wildflowers made this wilderness a joy to hike. The combination of trillium with the spring maple leaves and a katydid nymph combine to elevate this image above the "standard" wildflower close-up shot.

12. "Fall Ring Cycle No. 2"

2017 also saw the development of a new series that I'm very excited about. "The Shape Of Things" series takes elements from my nature photography and turns them into pieces of digital art that in addition to being beautiful also illustrate concepts of morphology, seasonality, cycles, and the passage of time in the natural world. This image is one of my favorites depicting the cycle of color change in foliage and the seasonality of the natural world. To see more of this series and my other composite, night, and digital fine art work, please visit my new website at https://whimbrelnature.myportfolio.com/work .

Happy New Year to all! Wishing you the best and lots of outdoor adventures in 2018!

Working The Subject

I'm sure I've talked about this before, but it bears repeating. Don't just settle for your first view of your subject and leave it at that. If you really want to increase your chances of making your best photograph (and develop your eye for composition along the way), you've got to work your subject. Photograph from a variety of angles, a variety of heights, zoom in or out (by lens or by foot), and experiment with different lighting, if possible. Always ask yourself what attracted you to the subject in the first place, and if your current composition is best highlighting those elements.

I can't tell you how often I see photographers approach a subject, fire off a couple of shots at eye-level from the same angle they approached the subject, and then move quickly on to the next subject. If I find a good subject, I can work the subject for hours sometimes (particularly if it is a cooperative animal). Let me give you a real-life example.

Recently I had the chance to photograph at Woodlawn Cemetery during a night-time tour event where they illuminate some of the famous or interesting mausoleums with colored lights. One monument that really spoke to me was the grave of Vernon and Irene Castle, famous dancers in their day. Irene had seen a small bronze sculpture of an exhausted ballet dancer folded in on herself entitled "The End Of The Day." When Vernon died in a WWI training accident, Irene had the statue recreated for the grave marker. It has a very powerful emotional impact and I knew I had to find a way to do it justice.

The first evening I photographed the statue, the colored lights were too close to the front of the statue and thus there were harsh highlights and shadows and the Doric colonnade behind the dancer wasn't fully lit. I tried to balance it with light painting, but I was not happy with the results. For sake of brevity, I'm not including any of those images here, but I still explored the monument from a variety of angles, finding shooting up from lying on the ground at about a 45 degree angle from the front of the statue the most successful.

"Broken Dancer No. 1" In my first series of images, I photographed the monument from straight on (parallel with the light source) and only using the colored lights with no additional light painting. I liked how some of the vegetation above the monument was highlighted and how the lit elements stood out starkly against the dark background. Canon 7D, Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 lens, ISO 100, f/8, 13 seconds.

The next day I photographed with my friend Peter Nagy, and we moved the colored lights back a bit, which reduced the harsh shadows/highlights and illuminated the entire monument. In my first series of images, I liked how the lit elements stood out starkly against the black background. I also like how a small portion of the surrounding vegetation caught the light in complimentary colors and form to the monument. So I photographed straight on from in front of the statue at about statue-height, which was kneeling level ("Broken Dancer No. 1").

"Broken Dancer No. 2" In my second series of images, I moved to the left of the statue to capture the rising full super moon in the same frame as the statue. I liked how the combination of the moonlight and direct side lighting from the colored lights outlined the dancer in a dramatic way. I used just a bit of light painting from an angle behind the statue and my camera to just illuminate the inscription on the block and fill in some detail on the dancer's leg. The original light painting was brighter, but I reduced the influence of that layer in Photoshop so I didn't overwhelmed the dramatic lighting of the statue and ruin the dark somber aesthetic of the overall image. An angle from just above eye-level created the most pleasing arrangement of elements.  Canon 7D, Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 lens, ISO 100, f/8, 6 seconds.

For the next series, I knew I wanted to capture the full super moon in the frame with the monument, so I moved to the left side of the statue ("Broken Dancer No. 2"). Extending my tripod to full height (just over eye-level when standing on tip-toe for me) gave the most pleasing perspective and arrangement of the elements. The exposure was somewhat limited by the need to not blow out the highlights around the moon or in the center of the Doric colonnade. I decided to let detail in the moon itself blow out, as the exposure in the statue was much more important. In a separate capture, I light-painted a bit of the ground and the inscription on the base with a powerful flashlight set to it's lowest power setting. I illuminated from a low angle just behind the statue and my camera. Even then, when I combined the two frames as layers on Lighten mode in Photoshop, I greatly reduced the opacity of the light-painted layer and did some masking to preserve the impact of the dramatic lighting on the statue itself and maintain the overall aesthetic. Also I wanted to keep the viewers eyes mainly to the most important parts of the image, the dancer, the moon, and the colonnade, by keeping them the brightest parts of the image.

"Broken Dancer No. 3" In my final series of images, I photographed from my belly on the ground with my tripod legs spread out flat. With the entire Doric colonnade lit with the colored lights this time, the composition was much more successful. It took several tries to get the light painting balanced correctly. Peter used a lower power flashlight to spot the hands during the entire exposure. I used the low power on my spotlight to illuminate the inscription and briefly sweep the dancers face to bring out a bit of detail. This image was captured in a single frame. Canon 7D, Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 lens, ISO 100, f/8, 5 seconds.

Finally, I moved back to the low position on my belly to the front-right of the statue that I had liked the previous evening ("Broken Dancer No. 3"). With the colored lights repositioned, the entire length of the Doric colonnade was illuminated and successfully fulfilled the composition I had envisioned the night before with the colonnade sweeping into the corner of the frame. I had Peter use his comparatively weaker flashlight to hold a spotlight on the hands during the entire 5 second exposure. I then used my spotlight on low power (and not for the entire duration) from towards the back of the statue to illuminate the inscription on the block and to briefly sweep across the underside of the dancers face to bring out a little detail and definition. This was all captured in one shot versus how I often light paint with different lighting captured separately and then combined in Photoshop later. Even now as I look at the image though, I think I might dodge the grass a bit more to make sure the viewers eye is definitely drawn to the statue and the colonnade versus the upper right-hand patch of grass.

I hope this helped illustrate the concept of why and how I work a subject. This applies just as much to my nature photography as it does to my night photography. This just happened to be the most recent example I had at hand. I think my favorite image is still "No. 3", which is yours and why?

If you like my night photography, be sure to check out the "Night Works" gallery on my new website at http://digitalart.bestnatureimages.com.

Night Photography

"Monumental Death"-  Light painting of the Harbeck Mausoleum on the grounds of the historic Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, New York. Harbeck is one of the largest and most ornate mausoleums on the grounds. Canon 7D, Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 lens, ISO 200, f/11, 30 seconds. As usual with my light painting, this image is built up from several separately light painted images, allowing me finer control over the final image and the ability to produce several different interpretations from one relatively short session.

Those who follow the blog, or my work in general, will know that in addition to all things nature, I have a passion for night photography. I love combining nature and night photography, but I'm also not adverse to photographing more "human" subjects at night, particularly with light painting techniques. In the past few weeks, I've had the opportunity to get out with members of my camera club and do (and teach) some more architectural-focused night photography.

"Hitchcock Church"- This architecturally interesting Presbyterian church in Scarsdale, NY was the site of a night photography workshop session for my camera club. After the instruction was over, I just couldn't resist taking some images for myself. Canon 7D, Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 lens, ISO 100, f/8, 2.5 seconds. This exposure uses only ambient light.

I thought I'd share with you a few of my favorite images from those outings. A few of the images are from Hitchcock Presbyterian Church in Scarsdale, NY. This was the site of the "hands-on" portion of a night photography workshop run by my friend Peter Nagy, which I assisted with. The rest of the images are from Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, during a club night photography field trip also organized by Peter.

"Moonlight Repose"- A small mausoleum with a beautifully ornate door nestles under trees backlit by the full moon. The mausoleum and trees were painted with a flashlight. The blurring in the trees is due to fairly strong winds that evening, but I kind of liked the effect in this case. Canon 7D, Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 lens, ISO 200, f/16, 30 seconds.

Woodlawn Cemetery is a night photographer's wonderland. Full of fascinating and historical mausoleums and grave markers. We were photographing for close to five hours, yet I barely scratched the surface of the available subjects. I can't wait to get back and do more.

"Illumination Within"- Many of the mausoleums at Woodlawn include gorgeous panes of stained glass, such as this one which was opened for our group. Canon 7D, Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 lens, ISO 200, f/16, 30 seconds.

Often my night photography inspires other creative endeavors. In the example below, an image of the Hitchcock Church door inspired and became the background for a new image in my "Fairytales" series.

"Hitchcock Church Door"- This image of the church door, taken with ambient light, is a panorama composed from two vertically-overlapped horizontal images. I liked how pointing up and down with the wide-angle lens exacerbated the curvature distortion from the  ultra wide-angle. It has the intimate feel of a fish-eye lens. After converting to black and white, this image inspired the creation of a new image in my "Fairytales" series, seen below. Canon 7D, Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 lens, ISO 100, f/8, 4 seconds.

"Forbidden Door"- Inspired by the image above, this image was additionally inspired by the "Bluebeard" fairytale. The model, the blood, the locking mechanisms, the keyhole, and the locking board were all photographed from separate locations and composited in.

When I'm light painting a subject, I like to take multiple exposures which are then combined later with Lighten Mode in Photoshop. This has several benefits. The first is that it allows shorter exposures, which helps keep the sensor from heating up and therefore cuts down on long exposure noise. Secondly, and more importantly, it allows me much more fine control of the light on the subject. Finally, by lighting separate pieces, separately, I have a lot more easy control over the look of the final image and can even produce several versions with different moods or emphasis, all from one relatively short light painting session.

"Small But Beautiful"- While it is a rather compact mausoleum compared to some others in the cemetery, the Everard mausoleum is no less ornate in its structure and use of stained glass.  I took three exposures of this mausoleum. In one, I just shone light through the stained glass at the back. In the two others I light painted the front from the left side and the right side. The right side light painting was sufficient and I liked the shadows and detail much better than in the left side exposure. So I only used two images, combined on Lighten Mode in Photoshop to create this image. Canon 7D, Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 lens, ISO 200, f/16, 30 seconds.

As mentioned, Woodlawn includes some historic burial sites, including the fascinating tomb of F.W. Woolworth.

"Five And Dime Pharaoh"- F.W. Woolworth is buried in an Egyptian-style mausoleum guarded by two beautiful sphinxes. Canon 7D, Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 lens, ISO 200, f/16, 30 seconds.

Hope you enjoyed the images. If you are a photographer, get out and try some night photography and light painting. You might just find yourself hooked!

"Grecian"- A closer view of the ornate door on the Penney mausoleum. It's fascinating how many of the older mausoleums are influenced by ancient and classical art, the resident's "greatness" presumably amplified by the connection with great cultures and empires. Canon 7D, Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 lens, ISO 200, f/16, 30 seconds.

Behind The Image: Bald River Gorge Wilderness Cascade

"Wilderness Cascade" Bald River Gorge Wilderness, Cherokee National Forest, TN. Canon 7D, Sigma 70-300mm f/4-5.6 DG APO lens, 1/5 second, f/22, ISO 100, two shot panorama on tripod.

For today's behind the image, I thought I'd take a look at one of my images from my spring "Smallest Wilderness" project trip to Tennessee. These smaller cascades were upstream of the ninety foot Bald River Falls on the edge of the beautiful Bald River Gorge Wilderness.

Composition

First, let's start with my compositional intentions. I wanted to capture a somewhat abstract image that illustrated the beauty of the patterns in the falling water and dark underlying rock, without providing other grounding or contextual elements on the shoreline. I was particularly drawn to the distinct curvilinear lines of the steep drops framing the roiling and chaotic drop pool and shallower cascades in the middle. I knew that I wanted to render the water with a silky texture, while maintaining enough detail to make out individual lines of current and to preserve the jagged texture of the underlying rock in the foreground. A deep final drop pool, fast current, and the nearby ninety foot drop precluded getting into the river, so my only choice was to shoot from the very tip of an overhanging rock ledge. Leafless branches sticking out into the river and the far shoreline meant that I needed to zoom in quite a bit to maintain a clean composition.

Mechanics

You may have heard the axiom to "never shoot at f/22". Why? Because lens diffraction reduces the overall sharpness of the image. This is a good general rule to follow. Yet, as you can see from the caption above, I did just that (and frequently do in my nature photography). You now might be rightfully asking yourself, "why?" In most cases, it has to do with the fact that depth of field is paramount for the particular image I'm making (most often macro) and more important than the slight edge in overall sharpness. More often than not in these situations, conditions such as a moving or changing subject, wind, rapidly changing light, etc... also preclude an attempt at focus stacking.

For this particular image, several factors were in play. First, zoomed into about 140mm (x1.6 crop factor makes an effective length of 224mm) and being relatively close to the cascade, depth of field became crucial in capturing detail in the foreground cascade and the deceptively relatively distant background cascade. This was important to establish the framing effect that I wanted and keeping the abstract nature of the image. Focus stacking wasn't feasible in this case because of the ever shifting lines of the current. Second, I needed to lower my shutter speed enough to get the required silkiness in the water. Finally, I knew that by rendering the water as a blurred, silky flow, absolute crisp sharpness was not going to be an absolute requirement for this particular photograph.

It turned out that at the level of zoom required to crop out the bare, out of focus, branches poking in from the sides, I couldn't fully get both the bottom of the background steep drop and the foreground steep drop in the frame at the same time. So I took the two following frames.

Post-Processing

Unfortunately, being a fairly abstract image, there weren't enough reference points for either Lightroom or Photoshop to automatically stitch the two images above together properly. So I brought both images into Photoshop as different layers. I used "Auto-Align Layers" to get the layers roughly lined up and then changed the opacity of the top layer to 50% and used the move tool to line up the pattern of the jagged rock in the foreground as accurately as possible.

Even then, the ever-changing lines of flow in the foreground had changed enough in between images (and due to the perspective shift) that the lines would not line up if I blended in the middle of the bottom falls. Leaving a very obvious seam. I realized, however, that if I blended the two layers right at the bottom fall line (at the top of the jagged rock), then the blend was invisible. I used the graduated tool to draw a very short transition between white and black on the layer mask for the top layer, blending the two images together seamlessly. Then it was just a matter of cropping off the horizontal mismatch in the edges of the frame.

Finally, I made standard processing adjustments to the RAW file in Lightroom. I adjusted the Exposure, Whites, Highlights, and Blacks sliders for contrast and maintaining a proper level of detail in the whitewater. I adjusted Clarity and Vibrance and added an additional Medium Contrast curve for added impact. I corrected for the lens used and more importantly chromatic aberration. I added a slight amount of noise reduction and some slight capture sharpening. Because of the abstract nature of the subject and the already dark rock and water, I only added a slight amount of vignetting to hold the viewers eye, without being obvious.

Behind The Images- Skimming The Light And Ravenel Bridge Twilight

This image, "Skimming The Light" was taken in late February while I was on a trip to photograph some Wilderness Areas just north of Charleston, SC for my "Smallest Wilderness" project. I went into the northern part of Mount Pleasant to grab a bite to eat and thought I'd head over near sunset to the Ravenel Bridge for a little fun sunset/night photography. When I got there and started setting up on the end of the fishing pier under the bridge, I noticed the small groups of brown pelicans were flying very low to the river under the bridge on their way down the Cooper River. Just inches off the surface of the river. As the sun started setting, the groups of pelicans came at a fairly regular pace. So while my rented Canon 6D was on the tripod for the bridge shots, I popped my rented EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6L IS II lens on my Canon 7D body and started tracking the pelicans (hand-held) as they flew near the end of the pier. Despite the relatively low light, it was easy to maintain focus on the birds as they were flying exactly parallel to the end of the pier and I could usually roughly preset the focus to approximately the right distance out on the water before the birds arrived.

This image was taken at the beginning of twilight, just after the sun sunk below the horizon. There was still plenty of light and color in the sky which reflected beautifully in the ripples on the river. Given the brightness of the water and the relatively low light levels, it made sense to capture the image as a silhouette, rather than trying to capture detail in the pelican. The zoom was racked out to 400mm (640mm equivalent on the 1.6 crop factor of the 7D). So I was trying to keep the shutter speed as high as possible (even with the internal stabilization) while maintaining a decent ISO to reduce noise. I ended up shooting this image at ISO 400 and 1/200th of a second at f/5.6. On some frames the birds were blurry due to unsteady tracking or panning faster or slower than the bird, but on this particular frame I panned with this bird's motion perfectly and the shutter speed was just high enough to keep the bird and water relatively sharp. Most birds were gliding with their wings open quite a bit, like this bird, but it was still a matter of catching the right angle and posture where the outline of the pelican was clearly recognizable.

After catching some close-ups of the bridge silhouetted against the sunset sky and tracking pelicans with the telephoto for a while, the twilight sky finally darkened enough for the lit bridge to stand out against it. I liked the deep blue color of twilight above the bridge, while the band of sunset orange at the horizon added complimentary color interest. I shot "Ravenel Bridge Twilight" with a rented Canon 6D body, which is a full-frame sensor and has great low-light performance.

In order to get the perspective and framing that I wanted for the bridge, I had to shoot with my Sigma 70-300mm f/4-5.6 DG APO lens at 70mm. However, that meant I couldn't fit the whole bridge in one image. So to create this vertical image I shot 7 horizontal images on top of each other, each overlapped by approximately 50%, and stitched them together vertically using the panoramic stitching software in Lightroom and Photoshop. Each image was exposed at 6 seconds at f/16 and ISO 100. Since the camera was full frame, and the panorama is composed from 7 images, the file size and quality on this panorama are huge.

Despite the extensive overlap in the frames, all the stitching software and all the different stitching algorithms had difficulty stitching the images together vertically properly and there was an area between the first and second supports where some of the details, including the wires and the upper part of the second support structure, did not quite match up properly. To fix this, I brought the panorama and the appropriate overlapping horizontal frame from the original series into Photoshop as layers. I auto-aligned the layers, which didn't do a perfect job, but enough that the problem areas matched up between the original image and the panorama. I then put a black layer mask on the original image and used a relatively small brush at 50% hardness to paint with white on the mask just over the problem areas in the panorama. This brought in the details from the original image in just those areas and "fixed" the mismatched wires and other details.

I hope you enjoyed the "Behind The Images" and feel free to post any questions in the comments section. In the next post, I'll include some more images from my "Smallest Wilderness" trips down South this late winter and early spring.

It's That Time Of Year Again...

Yes, I know I've been awful about posting for most of this year. I've been undergoing some transitions, and I hope to rectify this deficit in the coming year.

However, while not as much as I would like, I did get out to photograph quite a bit in 2016. Here is a round-up (in no particular order) of 12 of my favorite images from the year (many of them posted for the first time).

1. "Fall Morning, George D. Aiken Wilderness"

This year I embarked on a long-term book project called "The Smallest Wilderness" and I've started to visit some of the more local wilderness areas that qualify for the project. This fall I had the opportunity to visit the George D. Aiken Wilderness in the Green Mountains of Vermont on a pair of beautiful mid-October days. This 4800 acre federal Wilderness Area was established in 1984 and contains no trails. All travel is by bushwhacking and map/compass navigation (and/or GPS). This is one of my favorite images, taken just after sunrise, that captures the beauty and character of this unique wilderness.

2. "Fairytale"

This year I also joined a camera club and have been competing in both the "Traditional" and "New Dimensions" categories. "New Dimensions" is not my usual mode of operation, but I wanted to continuing learning and expanding my abilities for artistic expression. This composite is not a "nature" photograph, but I'm very happy with it and it has inspired a new body of work for me, exploring fairytale tropes from a feminist and metaphorical perspective. All the elements in this composite were derived photographically (except the horizon line). The trees and coy-wolves are from images taken in Shenandoah National Park. The grass is from an image taken in Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge. The road is from Croton Point Park in Croton-on-Hudson, NY. And the "model" (my daughter) was photographed outside in my driveway.

3. "Fall At Val-Kill"

This quintessential rural fall scene comes from the Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site in Hyde Park, NY. I spent a beautiful fall morning photographing with my old friend Patty Hankins (up from Maryland). The mown field, circular hay bales, fall foliage, and lovely cloud formations made an irresistible subject. This is a two image (shot vertically) panorama.

4. "Tarrytown Reservoir"

I actually captured this image as a background for another "New Dimensions" creation, but I think it works well on its own. I saw the heavy fog this morning and threw my camera gear in the car when I brought my daughter to school. Once I got to the Reservoir, I was glad I decided to give it a shot. Perfect fog conditions lasted for about an hour before completely burning off.

5. "Beech Leaf In Ice"

I'm always fascinated by the myriad of patterns formed by air bubbles, cracks, and crystal structure in ice. One of my favorite photographic subjects is the thin layers of ice that form over fast moving streams or shallow puddles in extremely cold weather. On this trip to Rockefeller State Park Preserve I went specifically looking for old fall leaves trapped in ice and I wasn't disappointed.

6. "Sky Islands"

Another image from "The Smallest Wilderness" project, the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge Wilderness is a wonderland of 3660 acres of freshwater wetlands just 26 miles west of Times Square. It was difficult finding a way to capture the beauty of the wooded wetlands in this wilderness, without losing any semblance of artistic composition in the unruly tangles of vegetation.

7. "Mother Yellow"

I normally don't do a lot of photographic work at bird's nests, except under very special conditions. The potential for disturbance, versus the chance for new photographic material is too great. However, this female yellow warbler built its nest right next to the busy public boardwalk at Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge. I still did my best to reduce my presence/disturbance, but she was either going to adapt to human disturbance or the nest would fail, and anything I did was unlikely to change that.

8. "Sand Flats, Monomoy Wilderness"

Another image from "The Smallest Wilderness" project, taken when I sea-kayaked out to North Monomoy early this fall. The knob you can barely make out in the center background is the actual island that is exposed at high tide. All the foreground is the extensive (and impressive) sand flats that surround this part of the island wilderness. Monomoy is also a National Wildlife Refuge, but all of North Monomoy and most of South Monomoy are designated federal wilderness totaling approximately 3244 constantly shifting acres.

9. "Intertidal"

While on vacation with the family near Mt. Dessert Island in ME, I was able to sneak away one morning for a little photography. This vertical panorama was made from 5 horizontal images on the famous Boulder Beach near Otter Cliffs.

10. "Feeding Dowitcher"

Jamaica Bay National Wildlife Refuge in Queens, NY has to be one of my favorite spots to photograph shorebirds. The trail around the mudflats of East Pond gives you unprecedented access to the birds. If you lie (or even stand) still in a good spot, the birds will come to you. I've had peeps walking back and forth feeding less than two feet in front of me. They get a good diversity of species as well. Early this fall I had a bunch of great opportunities to get spectacular images of short-billed dowitchers, in flocks and individually.

11. "Forest On Fire"

I had an opportunity to photograph the fall foliage in the Adirondack Mountains of New York this year. I came back with many fine images, but this one of the sunrise light just hitting one ridge full of peak foliage is one of my favorites.

12. "Black Skimmer In Flight"

When you first start birding (particularly if you're young) certain birds just capture your imagination. They seem so exotic and rare. The black skimmer was one of those birds for me and I still remember seeing my first one. This spring I had the opportunity to enjoy some time at Nickerson Beach on Long Island which hosts a large colony of nesting common terns and black skimmers (as well as a bunch of pairs of oystercatchers). It's a fabulous place to photograph, particularly if you are packing a long lens. On this particular trip I had rented a beast of a Canon 400mm f/2.8. I might have trimmed one of the wingtips a bit in this image, but I'm still really pleased with the sharpness, framing, and even horizon of this shot, particularly when trying to handhold that behemoth lens.


Well, I'm going to stop there at twelve images, one for each month, although these images aren't evenly distributed throughout the year. I tried for a breadth of images from different shoots, even though on many shoots it was really hard to make a decision because I had more than a few really good shots. I've left some great images to post later, one way or another. And I promise I will post more in the coming year.

I wish all of my fans, followers, and friends Happy Holidays and best wishes for a great New Year! Your first step to a fabulous 2017 is to get outdoors more and enjoy this incredible planet and all its wild beauty.

Monochromatic

Air bubbles trapped under ice, Gory Brook, Rockefeller State Park Preserve, Sleepy Hollow, NY.
Canon 7D, 180mm macro f/3.5L lens, ISO 800, f/16, 1/15 second.

When photographing macro patterns in ice, sometimes I find it beneficial to convert to black and white. The monochromatic treatment tends to really bring out the patterns. Our eye is better able to detect and follow patterns of tone without the distraction of color.

A color version of the same photo just doesn't have the same pop as the black and white image above. The blue color of the bubbles and the brown of the stream bed distract from the patterns and shapes, rather than add to it. The other blue reflections in the ice also draw the eye away from and lessen the impact of the circular bubbles.

In addition, a black and white image is much more forgiving of larger adjustments to clarity and contrast, which help to emphasize the visual patterns and texture better. In the next image, a monochromatic treatment gave me the opportunity to really crank up the contrast and deemphasize the background and allow the eye to concentrate on the interesting shapes created by the ice.

Gory Brook stream ice, Rockefeller State Park Preserve, Sleepy Hollow, NY.
Canon 7D, 180mm macro f/3.5L lens, ISO 100, f/16, 0.8 seconds.

The last image in this series, is actually very monochromatic in its original form anyways, but I decided not to convert it to black and white. I think the opalescent reflections in the fine details of the ice provide an important point of interest in the otherwise monochromatic scene and add just a tiny bit of magic.

Ice formation at small waterfall, Gory Brook, Rockefeller State Park Preserve, Sleepy Hollow, NY.
Canon 7D, 180mm macro f/3.5L lens, ISO 100, f/22, 1/8 second.

Textures

Decaying beech (Fagus grandifolia) leaves trapped under ice, Gory Brook, Rockefeller State Park Preserve, Sleepy Hollow, NY.
Canon 7D, 180mm f/3.5L macro lens, ISO 100, f/18, 0.6 seconds.

As I mentioned in my previous post from this series "Snow Day," winter is a marvelous time for macro photography because the muted colors and relative paucity of subjects allows you to slow down and really appreciate pattern, form, and design. In this particular series of images, I was focusing on pattern and particularly on texture.

Oak (Quercus) leaves trapped under ice in a swamp along the Pocantico River, Rockefeller State Park Preserve, Sleepy Hollow, NY.
 Canon 7D, 180mm f/3.5L macro lens, ISO 100, f/22, 1/5 second.

I found several pools that were full of decaying fall leaves and in places the leaves were trapped just below the surface of the ice. Shooting through the ice muted the colors of the leaves (which were already muted through decay). The combination of decay before the cold weather set in and the air bubbles trapped in the ice added a lot of texture to the images as well.

Decaying beech (Fagus grandifolia) leaves trapped under ice, Gory Brook, Rockefeller State Park Preserve, Sleepy Hollow, NY. The missing squares on the leaf due to decay adds to the textured effect.
Canon 7D, 180mm f/3.5L macro lens, ISO 100, f/16, 0.4 seconds.

This ice effect reminded me of when folks desaturate color images and add textures to photographs in post-processing to invoke feelings of nostalgia or make a photograph look old. While it can be effective, I often find this post-processing technique looks contrived or at the very least cliched. But here was a genuine and honest invocation of that nostalgic effect, using only the unaltered subjects that nature provided.

Decaying beech (Fagus grandifolia) leaves trapped under ice, Gory Brook, Rockefeller State Park Preserve, Sleepy Hollow, NY. 
Canon 7D, 180mm f/3.5L macro lens, ISO 100, f/18, 1.0 seconds.

It was a very "zen" experience sliding and searching around the ice to find the most pleasing arrangements of leaves and then moving the camera around until the composition drew the eye into and around the frame. I looked for arrangements that had one or two prominent leaves and then background leaves that enhanced, rather than distracted from those main shapes. Compositions with just a single leaf, with little background detail, were too simplistic and did not work well. But compositions with too many background leaves, or leaves that were too mutilated or were imbedded at multiple levels in the ice, were distracting and tended to move the eye out of the frame or away from the main subjects.

I hope you enjoyed these peaceful images and that you have a chance to get out and enjoy the quiet beauty of winter before spring is upon us once again.

Friday Night Light(Houses)

"Timey Wimey Stuff" The progression of time represented in a single photograph from Nauset Light, Eastham, Cape Cod, MA. This image is a composite of images of the motion of the stars as the Earth rotates and images of the rotation of the light beam from the lighthouse. Canon 7D, Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 lens,  ISO 400 (6400 for light beams), f/2.8, 30 seconds (x261 images) for the star trails (1/4 second for each of the light beams).

So many things to post! I have more #OptOutside photographs from my Black Friday trip to share, but I just couldn't wait to share this image. I made a quick photography trip to Cape Cod this weekend, with the express purpose of doing some more night photography. The weather looked a bit iffy, but Friday night ended up nice and clear in most Cape locations. So instead of resting from the long drive Friday night, I drove up to Nauset Light and spent the rest of the night (and a good part of early Saturday morning) trying to get some good lighthouse and star trail images.

It wasn't easy to find a good angle for a quality image of the lighthouse. There was a huge flood on the front of it, which drowned out the stars, and a huge plywood wreath was slung across the front. The wreaths seem to be somewhat of a tradition for Cape Cod lighthouses, and while it might be cutesy, from a photographic standpoint they are butt ugly. After working the angles for a while, I found that photographing from the backside shaded me from the offensive flood light and gave the best stars (I had to give up on getting concentric rings around Polaris). Then it was just a matter of waiting around about 3 hours on the cold hard gravel while my camera took 261 consecutive thirty second exposures using an intervalometer.

Despite the chill and the profound lack of sleep, it was a fabulous night to sit under the lighthouse and stare up at the star-filled sky. Every few minutes or so, I was treated to a Geminid meteor as well. It was an incredible experience, and given it was my first attempt at night photography in a long time, and my very first attempt at integrating star trails and a lighthouse, I didn't expect much more than a great experience and some photographic lessons learned.

As it turns out, looking at my camera back at the end of the night, I was hopeful that I really had something. Now that I've had a chance to process and put the images together, I'm really pleased with the results. It's gratifying to know that all that time in the field (and sleep deprivation), plus the hours of processing on the computer, paid off in more than just lessons learned.

I hope you enjoyed the image and I'll be back with more from Black Friday and my Cape Cod trip.