Recording History

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The main purpose of photography is to record memories and document history. That is what is now often called “telling a story”. One of the intended benefits of a great photo is that it will evoke emotion in the viewer. Believe it or not the pursuit of sharpness, quality, illusion or emotion is secondary to documenting memories and recording history. I think too often a passionate photographer can lose sight of that.

Over the years I have put together a rather large collection of avian images and I suspect many of you readers have the same. I urge you all to take some time to look through those older pictures from time to time. I know when I do I often find interesting things that I either forgot about or overlooked completely. It is OK to have that “if only I knew then what I know now” moment, but then try reprocessing an image or two that do something for you with newer (and hopefully much better) software, look for the light that maybe you were not experienced enough to see before or just take a stroll down memory lane, pick one that you like and find a way to get it out to the world. Regardless of the quality, we all will be better off for it. I doubt that any of us ever took a picture with the intention letting it sit II the computer for an eternity, unseen, unappreciated and unshared.

The image I posted above was taken quite a while ago, I didn’t ever do much with it because I didn’t think the quality was good. It isn’t. But that photo has meaning. Back in the day the place where I shot that image was teeming with the Great Blue Herons. It was a nesting area with a variety of trees including a few large ones that were dead. The Herons liked nesting in those trees which gave a photographer great views to feeding and their early morning antics. Great Horned Owls nested in the trees with lots of foliage. It was the only place in the area that favored a sunrise shoot also. A couple of years ago, the Winter of 2010 I think, that the area saw unusual rainfall and wind storms. Not by the touch of man but rather mother nature this small wooded area was devastated. Many of the Herons moved on straight away, a few stuck it out for a while but they eventually left too. Today, you will be hard pressed to find a single Great Blue Heron in the whole reserve. I don’t even go there anymore for sunrise because there is really not much to shoot. The quality of that photo is bad I know it, but I took the raw image and cleaned it up as best I could, which is considerably better than I could do even a couple of years ago. I share the photo because it tells a story, shares a memory if you will, of a time that has passed and may never return. Kind of reflects the reason why we took all of those pictures in the first place doesn’t it?

Thanks for reading everyone, go look through your collection and share one with the world.

You can see more of my pictures at www.ronboyddesign.smugmug.com

10 Great Things The New iPad Will Do For You

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As I wait for my new iPad to be delivered, I fondly remember all the great things my original iPad has done for me. I am anxious, believe it or not my new iPad has been sitting in a warehouse only a couple of miles from me for over a week now. I didn’t buy an iPad 2 and some of the things about the new one are true for the 2 but I think the radical improvement will be just like starting a new. So let’s go.

1) Retina Display. People can explain and argue about what is really a retina display till the cows come home, and that is all fine but it really does not matter. What really counts is how good the new display looks. Judging from what I see on the iPhone and the history of excellence Apple has, this will be the most stunning display in the history of computing. It might not be much a couple of years from now but for today it will be the window to reality, everyone will be talking about the display. It will bring your images to life in a new way, they will now have all the color and crispness they deserve. At 2048x 1536 pixel resolution, you will want to show only your best work as flaws and heavy cropping will also become that much more noticeable.

2) New Cameras. 5 Mega pixel stills and 1080p video are an upgrade to the new iPad and bring the cameras up to an almost pro level, certainly to a point that the images can be used as part of a professional project. We all have lenses and DSLR’s for the most part and can do pretty much all we need, but imagine how easy it will be to grab an iPad and make a wide-angle shot or a quick 38 second video without having to swap out lenses. It’s going to be a lot easier.

3) Apps. iOs5 and the new iPad are ushering in a new class of touch based photo editing applications. iPhoto, Snapseed, and Photoshop Touch to name a few, all give the kind of editing power of their big brothers but allow the user to live within the iOS ecosphere. Pretty cool not having to hand off images between computers so much any more. There are other apps too. Want an education? Head over to iTunes U, one of my favorites is still iBird Pro which has evolved into a stunning iPad application that is informative beyond description. If you are in North America it is really a must have.

4) Mobility. It was not all that long ago that devices like the iPad were nothing but science fiction. With LTE the new iPad is functional pretty much anywhere. It just works! Need I say more.

5) Publishing and Sharing. Twitter integration, Facebook, Google+ and a whole plethora of social apps work almost seamlessly on the iPad. If you can’t get your word out now there is no technical excuse for it. Probably the biggest part of the iOS 5 ecosystem is the new iBooks platform for the iPad. iBook author (a Mac OS application) allows any would be author to put together a stunning multi media book and even sell it if wished. One thing that some people may not know about is iBooks don’t have to be published in the store, you can install you own books on individual devices making sharing among family and friends easy.

6) Portfolio. I actually think that a traditional print portfolio is still the best way to show your work. Two reasons for that, you don’t crop for a screen size and high quality printing is still the best resolution to display images. That said, a retina display iPad is the best digital solution for a portfolio. I have tried a few portfolio apps and quite frankly a lot of them are horrible, so be wary. In the end I landed on the Smug Mug app. You have to be a subscriber to the service but he app is free. It is a high quality, always working, no-nonsense way to display your pictures.

7) Connectivity. The new iPad is available in 4G LTE for both AT&T and Verizon. PC World shows both AT&T and Verizon are averaging about 25Mb speeds with peaks as high as 40 Mb. Even with lesser quality connections 4G transfer rates are equal to or better than most home internet service. With reasonably priced data plans and hot spot tethering the new iPad becomes as useful as a laptop in most situations. Not just for scanning the internet it now becomes a go to device in the field for both consumption and creation.

8) Presentation. The iPad can now connect to televisions, projectors, and other computers both wired and wireless giving the user the ability to do a presentation in almost any setting. Keynote and soon PowerPoint software will allow one to display high-resolution images and 1080p video and now recent iOS upgrades allow mirroring which lets the presentor see exactly what is being displayed on the big screen.

9) Multimedia. For years I have heard about how video is going to consume the still image experience and have not really seen it materialize, but I think that time has come being led by the iPad and iOS operating system. Not just video either but rather a true multimedia. I am talking about graphics, quality audio, voice over, and interactivity too. These are all things that we all want and will have to do. With iPhoto, iBooks, iMovie, Garageband, and a bunch of third-party applications he new iPad is going to be incredibly useful for both consuming and creating that content.

10) Storage. I really don’t recommend doing it but with a camera connection kit you can download images directly from your DSLR, edit, share and store them all on an iPad. I think there are much better solutions but with the larger capacity devices you can store a lot of photos. I see the iPad as a far more valuable device in its ability to interface with cloud storage solutions. Mobile Me Gallery actually worked pretty well but that is going away in favor of iCloud. iCloud is a confusing mess right now and I won’t use it, but other image storage cloud services like Dropbox and Smug Mug work great with the iPad. Beautiful crisp resolution and the ability to selectively download pictures for local storage are two features I really like.

So there are 10 reasons why I am anxiously awaiting my new iPad. How do I know it is going to be so good before I have even seen one? Somethings you just know!

*Update-Yup after my first day with the new iPad, it is everything I thought it would be!

Full disclosure–I am a shareholder of Apple Inc. and that has me feeling pretty good right now.
If you are still waiting for your new iPad you can check out some more of my photos at www.ronboyddesign.com

The Perils of Ahab

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As promised I have been trying to catch up with the Cormorants. These are two of my better images I have made this year. I like both of them but they are not all that great. So what is it, you may ask, that I like and don’t like about these images? First, the juvenile Brandt’s above is a fun picture because the colors are consistent and the background is pleasing although I would be tempted to clone out those two dark patches. The subject is doing something in that it is extending its wings, and the head is in a nice profile. The picture also displays in detail the shape and function of the feet wich I think is important at times. The big flaw? The sun is to the right instead of at my back resulting in some pretty deep shadows under the wing. Total deal breaker for my 4 star consideration.

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The Double Crested above is another one that I like. I like it for pretty much the same reasons as the other, but this time the sun is at a better angle. It also highlights the features of a breeding bird with the blue mouth and the white crest. The bad part? I just was not as close as I would like to be. Zoom in and the detail just is not as crisp as I would like it to be and I doubt it would make a good print. Deal breaker number two.

Ever know someone who treats you like crap and then wonders why you don’t like them? Sometimes it is ok to hate. Go look at some of my pictures at www.ronboyddesign.com and you will feel better. 

Century Mark

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This post marks the 100th episode of the Diary of a Bird Shooter Blog. For over 2 years now I have been trying to relay my experiences and photography knowledge I have picked up along the way. It has been great, but it is now time to do away with the “Look what I can Do” mindset and transition into a more polished, responsible and hopefully more informative role. A while back I wrote a story titled “So Say You- Truth About Zoos”, you can read it here. Today I feel the need to moderate some of my views expressed in that post.

Juan Pons is a wildlife photographer whose work I admire very much. He is very passionate about never photographing animals in captivity. I have met Juan and I am certain that his passion is sincere but I do have my reservations. He directs us to a wonderfully detailed story from the Audubon Magazine titled “Picture Perfect”. It is a story about the realities of photographing wildlife from game farms and the business of distributing and selling images made from captive wildlife. You need to read it here. As you might expect photographing captive animals it is viewed in a negative light. I know there are crazy over the top environmentalists out there whose sole purpose in life is to separate nature from humanity. I have always held a grudge against those people, but the thought of applying journalistic standards to wildlife photography seems to have great merit.

I don’t think the line is as clear as we would all like those standards to be though. I know a lot of us want to do the right thing but can be duped, some of us would like to do the right thing but don’t always do it, and a few of us don’t care about the right thing, they just want what they want. Then the bigger problem is What exactly is the right thing? For example, I have photographed a number of birds that are rescue animals, they would not be alive if it were not for their “captors”. Is that over the line? I get nervous when I see giraffes in a compound only about a quarter of a football field in size but I have also photographed small birds that were kept in an enclosure the size of a football stadium. Is that really considered captive?..and on the other side of the coin I have photographed birds in the wild that were so tame and domesticated that you could literally pet them.

As with many things there is no absolute right and wrong, but the important thing is that we all think about what we are doing. To understand that it is not responsible to get the shot by any means necessary. I am not one for full disclosure of captive images either. I think it is in conflict with virtually every other genre of photography (except journalism) where greatest reward is given to those who create a look or illusion to the viewer’s eye and mind through lighting, staging, and post production. Perhaps the better solution is to be mindful that such images should convey the proper context of  the surroundings.

As we think about these things we all need to set our own personal policies and standards and live within them. The big thing to remember is that you really can do whatever you want with very little consequence but as I like to say a lot now “The Best Way To Get Good is By Being Good”. After giving it a lot of consideration I am leaning in the same direction as Juan.

I hope this gives you all some food for thought, and thanks to Juan Pons for his wonderful real life wildlife images and to Audubon Magazine for the great story, and thanks to everyone who is reading the blog. Here is to the next hundred!!

You can see more of my bird images at www.ronboyddesign.com

Caio!!

In Pursuit-A Gull Report

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A while back I wrote a post about the Gulls (Sea Gulls), how they get little respect and are thought of as scavengers. Back then I said that I was going to make an effort to to photograph all 18 species in North America. A few weeks ago I ran into the Heermann’s gull at La Jolla Beach California. The picture above is a wintering or breeding adult. In this plumage the head turns white while the rest of the body is black and grey. The rest of the year the entire body is grey. From a distance and at a glance the wintering gull will look similar to a bald eagle which caused me to do a double take once or twice during the day. The most notable feature of the adult Heermann’s is the bright red bill with the dark tip. One of the things that catches my eye also is the almost pitch black legs and feet. I do not recall seeing that feature on any other gull and I believe it is the only gull with that color bill. Below there is a picture of what appears to be a juvenile.

The Heermann’s Gull inhabits only the Western coastline of North America from Washington to Central Mexico. They migrate along the western flyway. There are about 150,000 pairs in existence and like the Brown Pelican about 90% of them breed in Mexico, specifically the island of Ilsa Rasa near Baja California. Heermann’s Gulls generally eat small fish like sardines and anchovies and occasionally pirate food from unsuspecting Brown Pelicans.

These Gulls are fairly approachable, often hang out near pelicans and are best photographed at first light. The biggest challenge of photographing the Heermann’s is the adult in breeding plumage where the head is almost solid white and much of the body is black. Strong contrast will often cause blown highlights so compensate down on exposure and use some flash to bring detail into the black areas or shoot in stronger direct sunlight.

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Thanks for reading the blog and until next week You keep shooting.

You can see more of my Sea Gull images here.

You Complete Me

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I wonder how many times that phrase was said during the last week. For a bird shooter it can have a more unconventional meaning. One of the many rambling thoughts that bounced inside my skull this week was that the photo above was one such thing that “completes me”. Many of you may think it is somewhat unremarkable, some may think it a wonderful image, but none of you will hold it in the esteemed place that I do.
That lesser Gold Finch completes a long journey in more than one way. It is my notification that I have accomplished much of what I set out to do in bird photography.

For the few years I have really focused on larger birds and about a year and half of that a huge chunk of my shooting time was spent chasing Brown Pelicans. When I first saw the bird photography of Chris Klaphake, who is a remarkable photographer, I was inspired by some of hos songbird images. I wanted to make those kinds of pictures with the color and creamy bokeh, so I set out to get some. I didn’t want to fill my bucket list but rather to shoot real high quality, magazine quality if you will, images that will bring my subject to life. This image is my start to that.

One of the thing that makes this photo remarkable to me is that I made it all in a professional manner. The photo its self is correct. Correct exposure, complimentary colors, sharp, with nice bokeh but it is how I got there that means the most to me. This particular bird is small, fairly fast and over the years I have made many pictures that are horrible. This time I found a location that was rich with the birds, I spent time watching the birds behave and how they reacted to humans. In this case they were hanging out near a feeder and were pretty tame. I lined up my shots, checked the sun angles and then I watched the birds. I came back again and watched the birds, then I came back again to make the shoot. When I set up I had all my settings correct the first time, had my angels down, backgrounds laid out and everything was perfect on the first try. No fuss no muss and that is what is remarkable, truly pro level performance from start to finish. I think some folks like to call it “unconscience competence”. What ever it is I have finally arrived. Now comes the really hard part, “rinse and repeat for the rest of my life”.

Thanks so much for reading and have a great day

You can see more of my photos at www.ronboyddesign.com

About-The Sandhill Crane

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For about a year that I have been studying the Sandhill Crane culminating in a trip to Bosque Del Apache to photograph them in large numbers. During that time I have grown rather fond of these characters. They have distinctive behaviors that make them unique and their large size and willingness to be close to humans makes them just fun to be around.

One large flock, I believe it is the Northern flock migrates every year from Montana in places like Red Rock Lakes South to New Mexico and Mexico at places like Bosque Del Apache and along the Rio Grande Valley. Many others hang out on the Platte River in Ohio and the sandhills of Nebraska. Hence the name Sandhill Crane. They spend the Winter feeding and regain about twenty-five percent of their body weight lost during migration these months in preparation of moving North for Spring and Summer to raise their young. They feed on corn and aquatic plants for the most part but their favorite food, at least in the Rio Grande Valley, is the Chufa Sedge. They use their long beaks to drill as much as six inches into the soil to get at the chufa nut which is very similar to a grape nut for its high nutrition value. They are large birds, the male will get up to twelve pounds and have a wingspan of almost seven feet. The Sandhills mate for life and when they migrate back to breed they typically will only produce one or two offspring and those offspring learn to fly in about ten weeks. Since the Sandhills produce so few young they are very protective of their nest keeping other cranes at a distance and employing the “broken wing” decoy to distract other predators like the coyote. Normally grey in color, the Sandhills in the Red Rock area turn rust brown. It is not a change  in feather color but rather from the soil and water rich in minerals that stain their entire bodies from preening. These birds are very social too. When feeding they are constantly calling out. It is thought to be a communication between mates for the most part. Females call out twice (so typical) for every one male call making their distinctive “kar-r-r-r-o-o-o” sound. They also have a distinctive courtship ritual called “The dance of the cranes” where the open their wings and hop up and down. This is also thought to be a stress reliever allowing them to release excess energy, in any case it is also the reason why they earned the nickname “preacher bird” a long time ago. Even though they only live for about fifteen to twenty years old the Sandhill lineage goes back as far as the dinosaur making them a true prehistoric species.

Here are a few more fun facts about the Sandhill Crane:
The “intention pose” is that funny stance they make before the flock takes off. They stretch their necks and position the body more horizontal waiting for the signal to depart. That is the warning to all photographers to be at the ready.
They preen for two reasons. The first being the obvious, to clean themselves but also do it as a sign to another aggressive crane. The preening allows the threatened bird to see the aggressor from different angles and send out a signal to say “I’m watching you” in hope the aggressive bird will back down.
Immature cranes have more gold in the wings and foreheads are gold/brown instead of red.
Their main predator, the coyote actually plays a vital role in the survival of the species. First they consume the sick and diseased birds which prevents illness from running through the flock and their occasional interruptions in the crane feeding forces them to move around regularly prevent them from over feeding an area that would render it barren in future years.

One of my favorite videos about the Sandhill Crane is from New Mexico State University available on YouTube. It is over an hour-long but is well worth the watch.

As always thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed the picture and the info. You can see more of my Sandhill Crane photos here.

Repeat Performance

420mm f9 200iso 1/1000sec

There are trips that are once in a lifetime, there are places you go to all the time and then there are places that you can go to on a regular basis but it takes a real effort. A trip that takes time, money, and planning, but you can always do it once or twice a year. In bird photography it is really important to make those trips on a regular basis. The more you visit the more you will be rewarded.

Last week I made my third trip to La Jolla Cove near San Diego CA. It is a couple of hours from home and to make it worthwhile you need to be there before dawn. Even though it is one of the most beautiful places on the planet and I throughly enjoy every moment I spend there, the journey is not something that I look forward to. It generally makes for one very long day. Even though it was only my third time there the pattern has been set and I will be making the trek down there for many years to come. On that day my goal was to get just one Arthur Morris style pelican shot with the proper angle and sun direction. I had come close last time but not quite good enough. That is the picture above. Last year I made my first trip to Bosque Del Apache, I made about seven thousand images in four days and today the list of pictures I want to make there is longer then it was a year ago. I can’t wait to go back. The important thing to understand is that the pictures you take will get better with each visit. I suppose there is a point of diminishing returns but most places I go to on a regular basis have so many different hiding places and angles to shoot from that I have never felt that I have covered the entire location. In most cases I have only scratched the surface.

Let this be your template for repeat performances. First time out, shoot a lot, wander around and when you get back home carefully look at your images. See what is good and bad about them. Compare them to photos others have shot at that same place then make a list. List the shots you want, the birds you want to see and the places you want to shoot from. Then go back and try to get just one or two of them. Focus on just one bird, just one angle, just one location and then repeat as needed. When you get that shot move on to the next one on your list. The birds and weather have a big say in wether or not you get that shot and that is where returning on a regular basis becomes so valuable. So shoot early and shoot often.

Thanks so much for reading the blog. I hope you enjoyed the picture and advice. Don’t forget to leave a comment if you have any questions or you just like the blog.

You can see my new gallery up at my website www.ronboyddesign.com

iBooks Author and You

Graphics by KM Dezine

They say it was one of Steve Jobs’s greatest passions. Since the moment I first touched an iPad on launch day almost two years ago, I have been trying to make an e-book that works well on the iPad. At the time there were no good solutions. I was looking for a high level of interactivity, rich graphics for photo display, a meaningful method of distribution and something that was relatively easy to produce. I checked out e-Pub publishing and that was horrible on every level. It was just a method of scaling text for the most part, everything else took a lot of work and required advanced skills. PDF’s were easy to make and distribute but they lacked much interactivity and didn’t scale well. In the end I landed on making a Keynote presentations. Keynote made beautiful documents with a high level of interaction and even audio but it proved almost impossible to distribute with large file sizes and Mac only viewing.

Enter the new iBook Author application from Apple. Introduced in New York last week, Steve’s great passion of electronic book distribution has come to life. iBooks Author knocks down at least two pins in the battle of creating e-books. It is an application that makes building an electronic book about as easy as possible and it has an extremely high level of interactivity. There are five widgets that bring everything to life. I have to admit that I have not had the chance to fully explore all of them because some of it is simply over my head at this time but here is a quick overview.
Interactive Image Galleries-Embed high quality picture galleries that show full screen with thumbnails captions and titles.
Video and Audio-You can embed video movies and audio that will play up to full screen, automatically if you wish, and even the capability to make a video intruduction.
Embed a Keynote presentation-Yes, you can take that gorgeous keynote presentation and have play full screen right inside your book. I believe the effects are limited to those available in the iOS versions though.
3D Images-Readers can interact with 3D images. These images are becoming more common and you can even create them at no cost with the Google Sketch Up application.
HTML Modules-You can write code to have the same functionality as websites and is updatable. Well not exactly, as I understand it java script is required and this only writes dashcode. I can write and modify some HTML but I have to say that this module is beyond my expertise at this time.

Add all those together with the great design and organizational capabilities of the text maker application Pages and you have one heck of an e-book making machine. But it does only hit the two pins of being easy to use and highly interactive, there is still the issue of distribution. There is good news/bad news about that. First the good news. It is really easy to publish the book to the iBooks store, you can charge or give it away and Apple takes its usual thirty percent cut. There are about a hundred million iPads in circulation right now and that is a whole lot of eyeballs. The bad news is the books are only available to iPad owners in its purest form. Apple allows export as PDF and standard e-Pub also but they lose functionality and distribution for sale may be forbidden in the SLA. I would say that third pin is wobbling and we are all hoping the ball will bounce back and knock it over. Most of that is up to Apple.

iBooks Author is available free of charge to anyone with a Mac running OS Lion and there is a verification procedure required to distribute in the iBook store. If you have always dreamed of making an interactive photo book iBooks Author is probably the application for you.

You can learn more about iBooks Author and download it here.

Moose Fodder

A few days ago Moose Peterson wrote about composition and how hard and frankly how important it is to make an image where the subject is very small in the frame. He made a great commentary along with a stunning photo. You can read that post here.

I, like many are one of those people who is usually trying to get as close as possible to my subject. It is not that easy, carrying long heavy lenses, learning good technique, and lots and lots of practice are the soup du jour. It is something that I prefer and yes it is the challenge that makes it most exciting. To answer the Moose question of why I would make an image that way I have to say it is a threefold answer. First, I like that style the most. amazing detail, color and blurred out back grounds are a showcase for great technique and top-level gear. Second, I am a suburban shooter and ugly and distracting backgrounds are a fact of life. You kind of have to go for what you know and it is really tough to make the composition when you can’t practice it. I think that many of us go for the “eyeballshot” simply because we can do it on a regular basis. Third, and I know I am repeating myself a bit, but that is what I like the most. A well done avian portrait or head shot is awesome to me.

But, as it turns out the Moose is also quite right. I had a really hard time selecting a picture to put with this post because I didn’t have many (any?) of those great composition, story telling images that Moose loves so much. I bet that many people are in the same boat as me too. I have to add that those opportunities just don’t come by that often and quite honestly when I can make those things happen I am most likely searching for something else. It is more difficult to make that kind of image. I am not sure that I am willing to say that one is more attractive than the other though, and I will mention that when I was at Bosque Del Apache last year I found myself pulling back more in an attempt to get the surrounding scenery, to tell a better story, and that is a good thing.

Something I do know, is that it is all pretty hard but with practice, patience, and a bit of luck any of can make great images whether they be “eyeballs” or landscaped wildlife.

You can see more of my “eyeball” shots here.

Thanks for reading!!