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April 2009 Newsletter
Links
Upcoming:
Photo Workshops and Photo Safaris
The Bottom Line:
Shoot at Eye Level
Great Location:
Yellowstone National
Park
Photoshop Tricks:
Correcting Poor White Balance in Images
Image Gallery:
Death Valley National Park
Contact Information
Newsletter Archives
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Welcome!
I hope you are all taking advantage of the spring
photographic opportunities near you. This has been a great spring
for me. In the past two months I've done 15 photo seminars and led
workshops or safaris for 15 days - as well as a number of private photo
safaris. In other words ... I've shot a lot of images and found a
number of new hotspots to photograph. I spent a number of days
photographing the California Poppy Preserve and surrounding hills,
Yosemite National Park, Death Valley National Park, La Jolla, Pacific
Coast Highway 1, Pinnacles National Monument, and other scenic areas of
the Sierra-Nevada Mountains. Its been hard to keep up with the
editing.
In a couple of weeks I
have my southern Utah photo safari. I highlighted this area in the
Feb '09 newsletter and have heard they are expecting a huge wildflower
explosion. Unlike California, Utah has had above average rain with
much of it coming in the past 6 weeks. This should lead to a
colorful desert at the end of April. Just a few days ago I did my
third trip to the hills surrounding the California Poppy Preserve near
Lancaster, California. The hills were covered with brilliant
California Poppies, Pygmy-leaved Lupine, Goldfields, Lacy Phacelia, and
Owl's Clover. I was stunned by the beauty of these flowers rolling
over the hills like a carpet of color. A few of the images are in
the gallery. I don't think I've ever spent as much time
photographing from my stomach before - but shooting from eye level was
important. I talk about shooting from eye level in the "How To"
section of the newsletter.
Another favorite location
this spring was Death Valley National Park. I've never shot Death
Valley before, just never had the opportunity or time as I'm usually in
a hurry going to or from Utah and California for shoots or to see
family. My friend Bob Sutton and I spent a couple of days driving
through this desolate park looking for geologic color, wildflowers,
wildlife, and traveling to old mining areas, sand dunes, and scenic
areas. I was impressed by both the size of the park and just how
much beauty existed once you got past the spectacle of emptiness.
You see a lot of rocks in Death Valley. There are huge alluvial
fans of rocks, fields of rocks - small and large, meadows of rocks,
ridges and mountains of rocks. The valley floors are now dried mud
flats and salt flats, changed seasonally by rains and high winds.
We photographed the sand dunes near Stovepipe Wells as well as many
other famous and infamous features - such as the Furnace Creek and
Badwater areas. Old mining claims and equipment dot the hills -
one interesting area had 10 large kilns made by Swiss miners in 1879 to
make charcoal for the smelting of silver ore. Their construction
was very interesting and photogenic.
As I've done more
seminars I've found more folks who want to go on one-day photo workshops
and multiple day photo safaris. I'm not sure if I really help them
to be better photographers, but I certainly show them a different way to
look for subjects, to look and to see, and to work a good subject from
every angle. Photography has a few basic rules to follow that
aren't difficult to learn - things like the creative controls of
apertures and shutter speeds, using a tripod, getting out early and
staying out late. Maybe what I add is intensity and drive - and I
show them that you have to work and think to get great images on a
regular basis. Great photography can be done from your stomach or
your knees, it can be done on the coldest, hottest, and windiest of
days, it can be done in dim light or under the brightest sun, amid herds
of animals or a single wildflower .... what I teach and show is that it
can be done. BRP
PS. It's hard to schedule big photo safaris ... yet
I go on unplanned trips at nearly a moments notice every week or two.
I'm going to start sending out e-mails about these unplanned photo trips
to everyone on my seminar/newsletter e-mail list to give you an
opportunity to ride along. The costs are the same and these trips
will all be 1 or 2 day shoots, but I will only have a couple days of
notice to send out the e-mails. So you will begin to see more
e-mails from me and if a particular photo workshop or safari strikes you
as interesting - I hope you will participate with me in the adventure of
capturing beautiful nature images.
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Upcoming Workshops and Safaris Events |
Scheduled Date |
Cost |
Details |
Meet-At Location |
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Wed, April 22, 2009 |
$30 |
Photoshop for Photographers Seminar |
Clovis, California |
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Sat, April 25-26, 2009 |
$320 |
2 Day Southern Utah Photo
Safari |
St. George, Utah |
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Mon, Apr 27-28, 2009 |
$320 |
2 Day Zion and Bryce Photo
Safari |
Springdale, Utah |
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Thu, May 14th, 2009 |
$160 |
9 Mile Canyon Workshop |
Price, Utah |
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Sat, May 16-18, 2009 |
$480 |
3 Day Yellowstone Photo
Safari |
Gardiner, Montana |
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Thu, June 5th, 2009 |
$160 |
Yosemite in Spring Workshop |
Fish Camp Entrance to Yosemite |
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Sun, June 7th, 2009 |
$160 |
Grand Tetons and Jackson Hole Valley |
Jackson, Wyoming |
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Sat, June 20th, 2009 |
$160 |
Gold Towns of the Sierras |
Angel's Camp, California |
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Sat, Sept 19-22, 2009 |
$480 |
3 Day Yellowstone Fall Photo Safari |
Gardiner, Montana |
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Sat, Oct 24th, 2009 |
$160 |
Bolsa Chica WMA |
Huntington Beach, Ca |
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Sun, Nov 8-9, 2009 |
$320 |
Zion in Fall Photo Safari |
Springdale, Utah |
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The Bottom Line: Shooting
at Eye Level |
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When I first began
shooting nature images tripods were either heavy and cumbersome
or cheap and light, there really weren't the kind of quality
tripods we have now. Center post supports didn't allow the
legs of a tripod to fan out, thus keeping you at a shooting
height no lower than its collapsed legs would allow.
Today's modern tripods allow you to get much lower.
Getting low and shooting at eye level is something that I had to
learn to do because of this issue with early model tripods.
Anybody that has taken a seminar from me or done a workshop or
photo safari knows how much I stress using a tripod - and stress
shooting at eye level. Buy a tripod that can take you down
to the ground.
The Bogen tripods I use
had a center column that allowed you to raise the camera height
even higher, but it also inhibited you from getting too close to
the ground. I cut half of the center columns off with a
saw so I could get lower. Now, instead of hand holding ground level images, I
can extend the legs horizontally and shoot at ground level from
the tripod - a vast improvement over hand holding lenses.
However, there are times when I do hand hold lenses for the sake
of speed, movement, agility, and safety. Some subjects are
moving constantly (like snakes or butterflies) and don't allow
the time needed to set up the tripod.
As you will be able to
see in the following images, shooting from eye level is
important to your presentation of the subject. With
people, looking up at them or down to them attaches a different
feel or emotion to the image. How many mothers tower over
their toddlers on the carpet and take photographs of them?
How many people tower over flowers or snakes and photograph
them? And looking up is just as bad at times, shooting
birds up in a tree or shooting up cliffs or mountains to bighorn
sheep or other animals changes the subject perspective and
distorts shapes and size.
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Both of these images
were shot at eye level. Imagine the cute image of the
babies feet if I had shot it from above. Instead of cute
toes, which are subject here, I would have had less cute feet,
ankles, etc. Babies have this uncanny ability to bend into
any position - and here the baby had his toes pointed out.
I just lowered my studio tripod and shot straight into his feet.
It worked. The grandmother and grandson image worked so
well because I brought the child up higher so they were both at
eye level. It makes for a much more loving, comfortable,
and less formal image that truly reflects their relationship.
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The image of the gopher
snake (left) wouldn't have been possible without me getting on
my stomach to shoot at eye level. This is a portrait of a
gopher snake, while a shot of the snake from above is nothing
but something slithering in the dirt.
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By getting low with a super-wide angle lens I was able to
capture the Baby Blue Eyes flowers on the hillside in front of
the oak tree. Carry a towel with you when you shoot from
your stomach to keep from getting covered in flower pollen -
which I needed for this image. The California Poppies
(below) were an example where I lowered the tripod right to the
ground to shoot the image and give the proper perspective to the
flowers within the overall landscape. Could I have just
hand-held the image, probably, but having a tripod that will go
to eye level (nearly ground level here) was an advantage.
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An image like the one below of the Sandhill Cranes has
greater interest because it is a flight image shot nearly at eye
level. Standing on an elevated road, maybe fifteen feet
above the edge of a grain field, gave me the opportunity to
shoot right into this flight of cranes as they approached the
field. Whenever I have a situation where I can shoot at
eye level to my subject - I do it.
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Location: Shooting
Yellowstone National Park |
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Yellowstone is the greatest
wildlife shoot in the lower 48 states, maybe in the entire
hemisphere. Other places can be teeming with life: like
the Everglades, the California coastline, Alaska, or even have
greater numbers of specific animals or birds, like Bosque del
Apache and its sandhill cranes and snow geese, or San Simeon and
northern elephant seals - but none are as unique as Yellowstone
National Park. Yellowstone is as complete an eco-system as
exists in the world today. Game animals and predators live
out their life cycles with few changes from centuries ago.
Not perfect, Yellowstone represents a level of "wildness" in its
2.2 million acres that has been successful in mixing people with
wildlife.
My first photographic experiences in Yellowstone,
beyond the point and shoot level, was back in 1985. I
stumbled around the park, not knowing where to go, not knowing
when to be there, and definitely not understanding the seasons
and how the animals vary their behavior by it. But over
the years I learned those things - my timing has been better,
and my success has improved greatly. Now when I go to
Yellowstone I feel like I'm going home, I feel I can pick which
animal I want to try and photograph and put myself in the best
position to accomplish it.
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Some areas of the park have greater concentrations of
certain animals than others. There are more grizzlies in
the Lamar Valley area, but they are easier to photograph on the
Tower - Dunraven Pass road. There are more elk in the
large park valleys like Hayden and Lamar but they are easier to
photograph in the Madison River Valley, Swan Flats, and the
slopes of Mt. Everts. Some places are just better than
others.
The road from West Yellowstone east to Madison Junction
is good for elk, river otters, osprey, coyotes, and the
occasional black bear. From Madison Junction north to
Mammoth Hot Springs is good for wolves, grizzlies and black
bears, elk, and coyotes. From Mammoth Hot Springs north up
to Gardiner, Mt is good for elk, pronghorn antelope, black
bears, and bighorn sheep. The road from Mammoth Hot
Springs to Roosevelt Junction (where the turn north is to the
Lamar Valley) is great for badgers, black bears, coyotes, elk,
and mule deer. The road from Roosevelt Junction north into
the Lamar Valley to Cooke City is good for bison (especially in
spring), grizzly and black bears, gray wolves, coyotes, red fox,
river otters, mule deer, osprey, and bald eagles. From
Roosevelt Junction east past Tower, south up the Mt. Washburn
Road and over Dunraven Pass to Canyon is good for black bears,
mule deer, grizzlies, red fox, and the occasional moose.
From Canyon west to Norris Junction is usually pretty slow for
animals - sometimes a bear or some bison. From Canyon
south to Yellowstone Lake is good for great gray owls, bison,
grizzly and black bears, elk, coyotes, red fox, river otters,
eagles, osprey, and gray wolves. The roads around
Yellowstone lake, back west to Old Faithful, or east to Sylvan
Pass and the east entrance have always been slow for me.
I've shot an occasional bald eagle, bear, or mule deer but
considering the number of hours I've spent looking its been
slow.
Having said all that, you photograph animals where you
find them. I've shot bighorn near Swan Flats and great
gray owls near Lake. I've photographed river otters in the
Gardiner River and black bears on the slopes of Mt. Everts.
I've shot great images of Spruce Grouse around the Calcite
Cliffs and on the Blacktail Plateau dirt road. Some
species are very localized and you can go to the same spot and
find them nearly every time. In 25 years I've only shot
the geyser basins a couple of times and been to Old Faithful
maybe 8 or 9 times. When I'm in Yellowstone its hard to
shoot landscapes, its hard to spend time at geysers or thermal
areas - I'm a wildlife photographer first.
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Photoshop Tricks: Correcting White
Balance |
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Digital cameras are great tools,
but like all tools sometimes it takes two different tools (or
more) to do the job correctly. Photoshop is that other
tool. One of the difficulties I've had is consistently
getting good color in images that have a caste to them, or
bright colors, or images on overcast days. There seems to
be a subtle color bias in many of those images, or, said another
way - there are shifts in white balance (the color of light).
In my seminars I show examples of a family shoot amid highly
reflective, golden autumn leaves - as well as a coyote shot on
snow on an overcast Yellowstone winter's day. Being able
to correct the white balance is important to getting the best
image possible.
Just a couple of notes first. If you find
your images appear flat online when they appear great in
photoshop - here is the solution. If you are processing
RAW files for the web make sure and select the sRGB color space
in the converter. I always shoot in the Adobe1998 color
space (the color space with the largest gamut of colors) then
convert the color space to sRGB if the images are going online.
In the RAW processing converter you have a choice of color
spaces. If I'm shooting high-quality JPG's then, again I
shoot in Adobe 1998 and convert the retouched image to sRGB
before saving it for my website. This allows me to tweak
the colors in photoshop knowing how they will look online.
Lets step through an example of correcting the color balance
of an image. Below are two images I took just a couple of
weeks ago. The image on the left is the original RAW file
image, while the image on the right has had the white balance
reset. You can see that the original image has a red
bias, especially when you look at the color of the flowers and
the sky, or notice the change in the green colors in the image.
I suppose some folks might like the original image, but I think
the red bias is too strong to ignore. This is how you
change it.
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original
color balance retouched |
Once you have processed the RAW file or opened a JPG
image, create a second layer by clicking
CTRL-J (PC) or drag the background layer to the Create a New
Layer icon in the Layers Palette.
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Now the work we will do will be on the "Background
Copy" layer so we can compare the changes. Next click on
Layer, then New Adjustment Layer, then select Threshold.
The Threshold dialog box appears, just click OK - and you will
see a new Threshold Layer in the Layers Palette box with its
dialog box open. To find the whitest point in an image,
slide the center point marker to the right, as indicated by the
red arrows. The black and white image will turn mostly
black, showing only a small spot or two of white. Those
are your white points.
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With the Threshold Layer active, and the sliders
adjusted, hit OK. Then zoom in on one of those spots so it
is larger in your monitor. Now, make the Background Copy
Layer the active layer by clicking on it. Your screen
should look something like this. You can always reopen the
Threshold dialog box by double clicking on the Threshold Layer's
gradient thumbnail icon.
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Now, open up the Curves dialog box.
For PC users this is the CTRL-M shortcut, or you can go to
Image, then click on Adjustments, then select Curves. With
the Curves dialog box open, you will notice three eye droppers
in the bottom right hand part of the box. Click on the
white eye dropper (for setting the white point) tool. Now,
click inside the selected white point area on your image -
inside the area you have zoomed in on. Sometimes you might
have to click on more than one spot to affect the white balance.
If your image gets washed out, just hit CTRL-Z to
reverse it and try again. Click on spots within your
selected area until more white boxes appear. Now, click OK
in the Curves dialog box. Click on the eye in the
Threshold Layer to turn it off - so you can now see the image
again. Compare how the Background copy layer looks to the
original image (Background Layer). Redo this if necessary,
sometimes I have to try this more than once. You
might need to choose a different image white point to try.
But when the results look good, discard the Threshold Layer -
you have now reset your white balance in the image.
Collapse the two layers and save the image, or go forward to
complete other image processing steps.
Sometimes slight adjustments can be done without
changing the overall color balance of an image. If you
understand the color table then you can effect certain color
castes by either de-saturating that color, or by increasing the
opposite color in the chart. For example, if you pull up
the Color Balance dialog box, CTRL-B on a PC, you will see that
Cyan is the opposite of Red, Magenta is the opposite of Green,
and Yellow is the opposite of Blue. Adding Blue to image
decreases the apparent Yellow in an image, and vice versa.
See the image below.
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Sometimes you can change the white balance by finding
the dark point. Instead of moving the Threshold Layer
marker to the right, you move it to the left to find the darkest
point on an image. Then you reselect the Background Copy
layer, pull up the Curves dialog box, and choose the Black Eye
Dropper this time to click inside the selected Black Point in
your image.
White Balance corrections like this keep your colors
looking true. While most image may not require this type
of correction - some do - like my California Poppy Images shown
here. I hope this helps many of you that have e-mailed me
about the steps involved in this.
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Image Gallery |
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Death Valley National Park |
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Death Valley National Park |
Death Valley National Park |
Death Valley National Park
Amelia Gold Mine detail, California |
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Contact Information |
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Brent Russell Paull
Images of the American West
460 E. Estate Drive
Tulare, California 93274
559-909-5208
brentrpaull@hotmail.com
www.amwestphoto.com
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© 2009 Brent Russell Paull All Rights
Reserved |
