A fun outing last week to Whitewater Draw, not far from home. Whitewater Draw is a wildlife area managed by the Arizona Game & Fish Department. It covers approximately 600 acres of wetlands and riparian habitat and features a large lake. Located only a couple of hours from Tucson, and close to Tombstone and Bisbee, it makes for an entertaining day trip.
Sandhill Cranes in the tens of thousands spend the winter there. The cranes take wing at sunrise, leaving the ponds to forage for food in nearby fields. They return to the water midday to spend the night in safety from predators. Other waterfowl including ducks, geese, herons, egrets and shorebirds are also attracted to the shallow waters and wetlands.
The site amenities are minimal but include gravel parking lots, picnic tables, signed trails, and benches and viewing platforms by the lake shore. Dogs on leash are allowed. We visited on a Tuesday and it was not at all crowded – just scattered small groups of folks enjoying the sights and sounds of nature.
My visit was a casual foray just to check things out. If I had been serious about photography, I would have arrived the evening before, camped overnight, and set my alarm clock to wake pre-dawn to photograph the cranes taking off at sunrise. Still, even though this was just a scouting expedition, I didn’t leave my camera at home.
The cloudy skies were to my benefit, canceling out harsh midday shadows. I was happy with the images I captured that day. I’m still looking through my files for the keepers, but here are a couple I thought were print-worthy.
Be sure to click on the video at the top of this post to hear the sound of thousands of cranes socializing.
SYNCHRONIZED FOR SPLASHDOWN Sandhill Cranes glide down for a water landing at the Whitewater Draw Wildlife Area in southeastern Arizona. It’s fascinating to see their ability to synchronize wingstrokes in flight.FORAGING IN THE MUD I like the pose of this bird, with his lifted foot encased in mud and his eyes intently focused in search of a meal.
For my husband Mike and me the price of admission to the cruising lifestyle was the cost of a pair of tickets to watch the University of Arizona basketball team play a home game in Tucson. At half-time we visited in the bleachers with our friends and fellow Wildcat fans Steve and Linda Dashew, legendary designers of cruising yachts. They informed us that one of their designs, a Sundeer 64 sloop christened RAVEN, had just become available for sale in New Zealand.
Mike and Steve are good friends from their mutual flying hobby, having met as members of the Tucson Soaring Club. Over the years we have had plenty of opportunity to learn about Steve’s philosophy of boat design, and we had enjoyed a weekend cruising with them aboard their 78 foot sailboat Beowulf. The hook was already set and we were an easy catch!
A few days later we were winging our way to New Zealand. It was only a couple of weeks before Christmas, and here we were headed across the Pacific to a country where spring was just turning into summer.
We spent our pre-Christmas holidays putting Raven through her paces and, as Mike phrased it, we could find no reason not be buy her. She had been beautifully loved and maintained by her previous owners and by her professional crew Rod Bradley and Anouk Reijerts. She was situated in the world’s best cruising grounds and she was ready to go adventuring. So were we – and so The Raven Logs begin!
In December of 2004 my husband Mike and I purchased the bluewater capable sailboat Raven and embarked on twelve years of adventure, exploring salt water destinations around the world. Ultimately we visited forty countries by boat, starting in the South Pacific but venturing as far as Indonesia, and closer to home along the west coast of North America from Mexico to Canada, south down the Pacific coast of Central America to transit the Panama Canal, the Caribbean, and finally the east coast of the USA. Along the way we encountered scenic vistas and island cultures far different from what we experience here at home.
Mark Twain wrote in “Innocents Abroad” about the mind-expanding benefits of travel away from your homeland:
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things can not be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.
Another quote most often attributed to Mark Twain but actually written by H. Jackson Brown Jr. in “P.S. I Love You”:
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
Our voyaging days have come to an end, and although not quite twenty years have passed since we first set sail, it was well worth having lived by those words. I most certainly am not disappointed, but I am regretful that those days are behind us.
There is always some risk involved. Our captain Rod Bradley’s seamanship was so exemplary that we, and our boats, never came to harm. But unexpected storms can create havoc, yachts do capsize, uncharted coral reefs can rip out the bottom of the boat, medical emergencies can take place a thousand miles from land and the nearest doctor, and if you carelessly fall overboard the odds of being spotted, a small head bobbing between endless ocean swells, are remote. Even piracy is of some concern, more so in some parts of the world than others.
Both our cruising boats were designed by a legendary yacht designer, Steve Dashew, who also happens to be a personal friend. From his own experiences over the decades logging more than 250,000 nautical miles with just his wife and family aboard, he has written multiple magazine articles and several very thick books about boat systems and safety at sea. He is passionate about embedding safety measures into his designs. Boat speed is critical – with enough speed and modern weather reporting, it is possible to predict, outrun and avoid a storm. If inadvertently flipped upside down, the boats will right themselves – although the interior decor will certainly suffer!
When we committed to this lifestyle it was with our bodies in good health, a strong dose of optimism and perhaps a misplaced feeling of invincibility. Most of all, we put our well-placed trust in these experts whose seamanship skills surpassed ours.
Almost from day one I kept a journal online in a blog which was christened The Raven Logs and retitled The AVATAR Logs after we transitioned to our second boat AVATAR – a powerboat. The entries were written in a letters-to-home format as a means for staying in touch with family and friends while we were thousands of miles away on extended absence. At the same time, they served to create a diary of our varied adventures, preserving memories that we could look back on and enjoy again and again.
A few of my earliest efforts have been lost forever. I signed on to one of the very early cloud-based platforms and put a lot of effort into creating an attractive site to host my writings. That small startup platform was purchased by a much larger company, whose name you would recognize. My online content was summarily erased without warning and without any means of retrieval. Lesson learned – cloud computing is great and much more advanced than it was fifteen years ago – but it is a double-edged sword and loss of data can go either way!
I always felt there was a book in those blogs somewhere, but as they accumulated the project seemed more and more unwieldy. A worldwide pandemic seems like a good time to tackle the project. I am finally going back in time to revisit the stories I wrote and review the photos I took on all of our many journeys, in hopes of creating a cohesive whole that can again be enjoyed by family and friends, and anyone else who likes a seagoing adventure.
We were not sharing our expertise as seasoned sailors, which we are not. Nor are we travel experts dispensing advice on best itineraries or insights into cultural differences worldwide. The experiences we shared in our travelogs were more like ‘toe in the water’ stuff. We voyaged as tourists to far destinations and came ashore for brief visits, but always we returned to our Americanized boat with all the comforts of home – electricity and air conditioning powered by our diesel generator, fresh water produced by our state-of-the-art watermaker, scuba gear and an air compressor to refill the tanks, modern kitchen appliances and an extensive pantry of groceries purchased and stockpiled from supermarkets in more developed countries before embarking, a clothes washer and dryer, computers, satellite phone, radar and navigation equipment, and comfortable bedrooms with a thick mattress on the bed, hot water shower and flushable toilets In comparison the village mode of transportation ashore might be by hand-hewn outrigger canoe or a communal ancient pickup truck in questionable mechanical condition. Village laundry was washed in a river, and all food was either fished from the sea or grown in the village gardens. Another advantage to our offshore anchorages – they were out of flying range for the mosquitoes!
I have always been a visual person and photographs were an essential part of my communication. Photos on my blog from those early years were snapshots. Digital cameras in the early 2000s were in their infancy. For the first couple of years I was shooting with digital point and shoot cameras that produced files barely one megapixel in size. The very first interchangeable-lens DSLR to hit the market arrived in 2000. I didn’t get serious about photography until 2006 when the technology had hit its stride and I acquired my first high quality digital camera – a used Nikon from my sister who was switching to Canon (we both shoot Sony now). I had to go online to find photography courses to learn how to operate it.
As the years went by digital camera technology advanced, my skills improved, and the resulting images I captured progressed from snapshots to a career in art from photography! Today my latest and greatest Sony Alpha 1 mirrorless camera can produce image files as large as 50 megapixels at a speed of 20 or 30 frames per second. Ultimately the cruising blog morphed into a photo journal which continues to this day as I still travel and explore, camera in hand, although my floating photography platform has been replaced by travel photo workshops.
PS – If you don’t want to miss an episode, be sure to subscribe to my email list to receive the latest posts in your Inbox. You can also follow me on Facebook and/or Instagram with the tag @cbparkerphoto.
The volcanic disaster in Tonga strikes to my heart. My husband Mike and I have traveled to that island kingdom three times – in 2005, 2009, and finally in 2013. It is so sad to think of those pristine blue waters, tropical beaches, and palm forests covered with ash. Tonga is not a wealthy country and I am sure the inhabitants are suffering greatly from the damage to their homes and livelihoods.
I wonder too how badly the coral reefs and sea life will be affected. At least the humpback whales, who migrate to Tonga annually in the July-October time frame to raise their babies, are far away in their migratory feeding grounds this time of year.
Pictured is our boat Raven, a 64 foot long ocean capable sailboat. We bought her on Christmas Eve 2004 in New Zealand and our first cruising adventure the following season was to Tonga. Here we are anchored in the Ha’apai Group, stern-tied to a palm tree.
Our two boats, the sailing yacht Raven succeeded by the powerboat AVATAR, traveled to a total of 40 different countries from 2004 to 2016 before we ended our cruising lifestyle. During those years I kept a photo-journal blog initially named The Raven Logs and later re-christened The AVATAR Logs in keeping with the change in vessels. The blogs began as emails home to family and and friends, written while struggling with what was then prehistoric internet technology in a third-world country.
Those were life-changing years that I will never forget. My early photography efforts were snapshots, but each year both my camera and my writing skills improved, so those journals document that growth as well. The blog still exists but links have broken and photos have turned into ? marks. I’m starting to go back in time to polish up those posts, year by year, to bring them back to life. There might even be a book hidden away in there! Did you ever notice that my online portfolio was heavily weighted towards seascapes and underwater scenes? Now you know why!
I polled my audience and the consensus was unanimous that I should resurrect my sea-going stories and share them again. Stay tuned!
PS – If you don’t want to miss an episode, be sure to subscribe to my email list to receive the latest posts in your Inbox. You can also follow me on Facebook and/or Instagram with the tag @cbparkerphoto.
For bears, it’s time to think about hibernating, but for me – I’m just emerging from my self-imposed pandemic isolation.
My photography is oriented around travel adventures, so the last nearly two years put a serious crimp in my motivation. A trip to Scotland was postponed two years in a row (now rescheduled for June 2023). I also chickened out on a trip this year to Africa where vaccination rates are still abysmal. But for a brief time this summer things were looking promising and I took advantage of that window to squeeze in an Alaskan photo workshop with our intrepid leader Denise Ippolito of A Creative Adventure Photography. Denise does all the hard organizational work and all we have to do is show up for an amazing photography oriented experience! The showing up part can be a challenge however, as you will read shortly.
My photographer sister Patty Hosmer (HoofPrints Fine Art Photo) and I traveled together to the Katmai National Park and Preserve, a four million acre wilderness in southern Alaska. Alaskan brown bears fishing for salmon were the focus of the workshop. Sharing the experience with my sister was double the fun.
Just getting to the site is a challenge in itself. From Tucson we flew on Alaska Airlines to Seattle, connecting to a flight to Anchorage where we spent the night before boarding a third flight to King Salmon, Alaska. Never heard of it? Not surprising – King Salmon is a very small airport that services commercial fishermen, cannery workers and intrepid tourists in that order.
We spent another night’s layover in a rustic apartment in King Salmon. I think we had the last available rental in this very small town and we were lucky to have been offered the chance to share it with another workshop participant. Finally we boarded our fourth and final ride aboard a DeHavilland Beaver bush plane that carried us to our week’s lodging at ATA (Alaskan Trophy Adventures) Lodge.
The pilot strapped us in, told us “don’t touch anything” and took off, leveling off a mere thousand feet or so above the terrain on the 30 mile flight to the lodge. This afforded us a terrific aerial view of the unspoiled landscape and meandering waterways that constitute part of the Bristol Bay Watershed.
Bristol Bay has been in the news for the past few years due to controversy over the construction of the Pebble Mine – a massive undertaking that would destroy the pristine environment in the watershed, and also the thriving salmon fishery – the last one surviving in the world. This past season a record 64.5 million salmon were counted during the salmon run in Bristol Bay as the fish swim upstream from the ocean to the headlands where they spawn and die, but where a new generation hatches. Permits for the mine have been on-again, off-again, but currently the project has been squelched, hopefully forever.
Alaskan brown bears are the 2nd largest species of bear on the planet behind polar bears. Genetically identical to mainland grizzlies, they are bigger because they live in an environment with bountiful food supplies. Bears are omnivores and will eat anything from grass and berries on up the food chain. They even dig up clams on Katmai’s beaches. Salmon season in late July through September is their opportunity to really pack on the pounds before disappearing for months into winter hibernation. At nearby Brooks Falls there is an annual online Fat Bear contest in which hundreds of thousands of votes are cast for the chunkiest contenders. This year’s champion was a 25 year old bear named 480 Otis, who is now a four-time winner of the contest. Otis weighs more than 1,000 pounds and his success even at his advanced age can be attributed to his technique of sitting in the falls, apparently napping, but in fact sharply alert to the prospect of any salmon headed his way for an easy catch.
Our lodge was located on the Alagnak River, a designated Wild & Scenic River. Salmon season had already peaked at our location before we arrived. The biggest, strongest bears had moved on to better fishing grounds. The bears that remained worked hard to catch the few remaining fish. Sows led their small spring cubs on what must have been exhausting treks pacing up and down the well-worn paths for miles along the riverbank. Adolescent bears were especially active and prone to frequent head-first plunges into the shallow river in often futile efforts to pin down a salmon.
We spent seven days, from 9 to 5 each and every day, cruising up and down the river in small open fishing boats that held a guide and two or three photographers. It was a bit on the chilly side but we were squished into multiple layers of clothing topped off by waterproof chest-high waders and boots, hats to keep our ears warm, and mosquito netting to protect our faces from the huge and voracious Alaskan mosquitoes! The skies were grey but somehow we never got rained on – a stroke of luck! I even managed to crack a rib trying to awkwardly exit one of the boats and instead falling flat on the shore, half in and half out of the boat, directly on top of my camera which I was trying to protect from the water.
Back ashore each evening in our rustic cabin, we peeled out of our waders, jackets, sweaters, boots, gloves and hats, and headed off to a hearty dinner in the main dining room of the lodge where we could compare bear sightings and enjoy gourmet cooking (with a heavy emphasis on salmon) and a much anticipated glass of wine. Then back to the cabin for some rushed photo processing before the generator shut down and we were subjected to a mandatory lights out.
One night we were even treated to the fringes of the largest earthquake to hit Alaska in 50 plus years – an 8.2 tremblor that struck some 250 miles away but gave the lodge a good wake-up shaking, cracking a plate glass window and tumbling waders to the floor from their wall hooks. It also did in the septic system for the ‘luxury’ lodge accommodations high on a hill, forcing those occupants to utilize an outhouse for the duration. Patty and I were obliviously happy down by the river in our cabin that featured indoor plumbing.
I took about 20,000 photographs in those seven days. My Sony a1 camera has a high-speed mode that can take 30 frames per second, which comes in handy when action is at its peak, but isn’t so much fun when it’s time to dig through the files looking for the keepers. I’ve been processing bear photographs for the past few months and posting favorites on my Facebook page. There is now a nice collection of these on my website that displays a variety of special moments in the lives of Alaskan brown bears, as well as some other Alaskan wildlife including bald eagles and a red fox that frequented our lodge for scraps. I love to capture intimate moments revealed by the behavior of wild animals as they go about their daily lives. I feel my new collection succeeds in portraying a collage of these small moments frozen in time by the camera’s lens.
Just this past weekend I finally got around to creating my 2022 Alaskan Bear calendar after taking votes on Facebook for crowd favorite images. And once I made one calendar, it was pretty easy to make more – so I can now offer eight different calendars featuring Alaskan bears, African wildlife, seascapes and the Sonoran desert all available for purchase.
I wanted to repost a story I wrote a few years ago as the cover feature for Berthon Lifestyle, a yachting lifestyle magazine published in the U.K. It was one of those times when the words came together extraordinarily well to help me express what photography means to me, how I approach it, and why I share my images.
A dozen years ago, my husband and I surprised ourselves by making an impulsive, pre-retirement decision to purchase a bluewater sailboat located in New Zealand, ideally situated for exploring the prime cruising grounds of the South Pacific. My first (as it turned out, naive) impulse was to cultivate an artistic hobby to fill the leisure time generated by our idyllic new lifestyle. Many options – oil paints, watercolors, pastels – were discarded as too messy for a vessel’s tight quarters. Finally I settled on photography and embarked on not one, but two new adventures.The best camera, as they say, is the one you have with you. Photography on a boat can be pursued with a smartphone or a pro DSLR. It is neat and clean and portable, whether on deck or ashore or even underwater. Add a computer and appropriate software for organizing and editing the images, and the onboard studio is complete.
From the deck of a cruising yacht there is a wealth of inspiration and source material that ranges from scenic vistas to wildlife to foreign cultures. These days my photo platform is a rugged aluminum FPB64 motor yacht, supplemented by an aging much-loved inflatable kayak.
All it takes is one simple click to ‘take a picture’, a rectangle, destined to hang on the wall as a print or glow on a screen as a digital image or join a collection in a book. But as a photographer/artist I don’t want to just record a photograph. I want to create art, to meld technical material with creative insight, elevating that rectangle to a higher plane.
The equipment and software available today are sophisticated and powerful, but to transform photography into an art form requires more than just good tools. Is a great novel the product of a good typewriter? It takes more than a good camera to produce an artistic photograph.
My finished photo-based artwork results from multiple technical choices made prior to pressing the shutter button – lens selection, exposure, depth of field, shutter speed, ISO, white balance, dynamic range and more. On the creative side I incorporate composition, light, shadow, color, texture, gesture and motion, all to play their part in capturing the raw image, the first step.
Step two is the selection process that takes place in the digital darkroom (my computer) reviewing and culling to find those select images that resonate with my imagination. The third phase is post-processing, the judicious application of a variety of digital darkroom tools – software and filters, layered and retouched by hand to manipulate the image into its final form.
In the beginning I took a cyberclass that taught me how to get the most out of my Nikon’s buttons, dials and menus. Early on I learned the important camera techniques necessary to achieve the best results. But on a boat, many of those best practices are impractical. Focusing on a cavorting dolphin or a diving pelican while striving for balance on a boat navigating ocean swells is not an ideal scenario for keeping the camera steady. A shore expedition in the company of non-photographers is a source of irritation for those who don’t appreciate a 20 minute pause for setting up and composing the perfectly executed shot.
As a result I’ve learned compromises. On a moving deck I compensate by shooting at higher shutter speeds or raising the ISO setting. To keep my balance I bend my knees and widen my stance to absorb the shock. I jam my elbows into my ribs and mash the camera viewfinder into my eye socket for additional stability. Often I fire off a burst of photos knowing that one of the bunch will by sheer luck be more crisp and clear than the others. There will be a lot of throwaways, but a few will be keepers.
I do a lot of shooting from my kayak. It’s a soothing, soul-satisfying experience to rise just before dawn and glide silently in quest of a sunrise, or a seabird, or a village just starting the day. Again, the gently rocking boat and the low light of early morning limit my choices, demanding compromise.
A good image should relate a story to the viewer, not simply recreate a scene but instead share an insight into the very essence of what first captured the photographer’s imagination. It may be about how the interplay of light and shadow illuminates a seascape for a brief magical moment. It may be about reflections on glassy water, or how a bird’s feathers flare in flight. Perhaps it’s a story of village life, a new friend, a beautiful scene, or the devastation of a storm.
But there’s a second story that accompanies each image, and that is the story that belongs solely to the photographer. The travel, the gear, the camaraderie, the solitude, the discomforts, the challenges, the accomplishments – all are embedded into the making of that simple rectangle. Not just sight but also sound, touch, smell, even taste, are part of the experience. Whenever I review my work the memories come flooding back to let me relive the adventure once again.
To illustrate, this particular image tells the viewer the story of a mother whale helping her new calf breathe in clear blue tropical water. But for me it contains the hidden short story of how she first swam away from me, then changed her mind and returned to within touching distance of her own volition, lingering passively in the water next to me, eye to eye, observing me as I observed her, while her baby slept.
An even lengthier version of that narrative begins with a 6,000 mile journey to the tropical kingdom where the humpbacks congregate. It includes my history of previous whale-watching expeditions led by professionals, where I learned whale behavior and how to observe them in the water safely and respectfully. It is colored by a Sunday morning sail in search of a cooperative whale, and the frisson of excitement as I donned snorkel gear, grabbed the underwater camera, and slid into the water from off the stern of the boat.
Each photo, that deceptively simple click, is embedded with two stories, one for the viewing public and one for the photographer alone. To produce them with forethought, investing time and energy into making them the best they can be, is to embed that memory even more deeply into my being.
All photos are copyrighted and registered with the U.S. Copyright Office. Enjoy but please respect.
Happy 2020 to you all! I can’t thank you enough for all your enthusiasm and support. It means the world to me and keeps me motivated.
Tomorrow we ring in not only the New Year but a new decade. I’m looking forward to new adventures, photographic and otherwise. January will start off with equestrian competitions on the West Coast. We anticipate some boating adventures throughout the year from our floating base in Dana Point, California. And I’ve already booked a June photo workshop in Scotland with Denise Ippolito to photograph seabirds (puffins and gannets), and another trip with Denise to Bosque del Apache next November for the amazing migrating sandhill cranes and snow geese. Who knows what other interesting subjects will find their way in front of my lens!
But on this last day of 2019, here’s a bit of nostalgia – presenting my Top 25 Most-Liked Photos from social media for the year. Click your way through each captioned image to view in high resolution and to read more about it.
Thank you again for your interest and participation. I look forward to sharing much more with you this coming year.
I wanted to repost a story I wrote a couple of years ago as the cover feature for Berthon Lifestyle, a yachting lifestyle magazine published in the U.K. It was one of those times when the words came together extraordinarily well to help me express what photography means to me, how I approach it, and why I share my images.
I have to admit I’ve been mildly depressed these past months as we put AVATAR up for sale and our cruising days have come to an end. AVATAR was my main photo platform for many a year and it’s been hard to come to terms with the loss of a lifestyle. But summer sunshine always gives my spirits a lift, so with this blog post I’m renewing my commitment to share my photography with you.
I hope you will take the time to read and enjoy A Photographer’s’ Story. I’ll be back in a week or two with another story, this time from Hawaii. It’s time to dust off the keyboard and get back to my storytelling.
Equipment: Nikon D700, 1/45 sec at f/4.8, ISO 200, 14mm (14.0-24.0mm f2.8)
“A PHOTOGRAPHER’S STORY”
A dozen years ago, my husband and I surprised ourselves by making an impulsive, pre-retirement decision to purchase a bluewater sailboat located in New Zealand, ideally situated for exploring the prime cruising grounds of the South Pacific. My first (as it turned out, naive) impulse was to cultivate an artistic hobby to fill the leisure time generated by our idyllic new lifestyle. Many options – oil paints, watercolors, pastels – were discarded as too messy for a vessel’s tight quarters. Finally I settled on photography and embarked on not one, but two new adventures.The best camera, as they say, is the one you have with you. Photography on a boat can be pursued with a smartphone or a pro DSLR. It is neat and clean and portable, whether on deck or ashore or even underwater. Add a computer and appropriate software for organizing and editing the images, and the onboard studio is complete.
From the deck of a cruising yacht there is a wealth of inspiration and source material that ranges from scenic vistas to wildlife to foreign cultures. These days my photo platform is a rugged aluminum FPB64 motor yacht, supplemented by an aging much-loved inflatable kayak.
All it takes is one simple click to ‘take a picture’, a rectangle, destined to hang on the wall as a print or glow on a screen as a digital image or join a collection in a book. But as a photographer/artist I don’t want to just record a photograph. I want to create art, to meld technical material with creative insight, elevating that rectangle to a higher plane.
The equipment and software available today are sophisticated and powerful, but to transform photography into an art form requires more than just good tools. Is a great novel the product of a good typewriter? It takes more than a good camera to produce an artistic photograph.
My finished photo-based artwork results from multiple technical choices made prior to pressing the shutter button – lens selection, exposure, depth of field, shutter speed, ISO, white balance, dynamic range and more. On the creative side I incorporate composition, light, shadow, color, texture, gesture and motion, all to play their part in capturing the raw image, the first step.
Step two is the selection process that takes place in the digital darkroom (my computer) reviewing and culling to find those select images that resonate with my imagination. The third phase is post-processing, the judicious application of a variety of digital darkroom tools – software and filters, layered and retouched by hand to manipulate the image into its final form.
In the beginning I took a cyberclass that taught me how to get the most out of my Nikon’s buttons, dials and menus. Early on I learned the important camera techniques necessary to achieve the best results. But on a boat, many of those best practices are impractical. Focusing on a cavorting dolphin or a diving pelican while striving for balance on a boat navigating ocean swells is not an ideal scenario for keeping the camera steady. A shore expedition in the company of non-photographers is a source of irritation for those who don’t appreciate a 20 minute pause for setting up and composing the perfectly executed shot.
As a result I’ve learned compromises. On a moving deck I compensate by shooting at higher shutter speeds or raising the ISO setting. To keep my balance I bend my knees and widen my stance to absorb the shock. I jam my elbows into my ribs and mash the camera viewfinder into my eye socket for additional stability. Often I fire off a burst of photos knowing that one of the bunch will by sheer luck be more crisp and clear than the others. There will be a lot of throwaways, but a few will be keepers.
I do a lot of shooting from my kayak. It’s a soothing, soul-satisfying experience to rise just before dawn and glide silently in quest of a sunrise, or a seabird, or a village just starting the day. Again, the gently rocking boat and the low light of early morning limit my choices, demanding compromise.
A good image should relate a story to the viewer, not simply recreate a scene but instead share an insight into the very essence of what first captured the photographer’s imagination. It may be about how the interplay of light and shadow illuminates a seascape for a brief magical moment. It may be about reflections on glassy water, or how a bird’s feathers flare in flight. Perhaps it’s a story of village life, a new friend, a beautiful scene, or the devastation of a storm.
But there’s a second story that accompanies each image, and that is the story that belongs solely to the photographer. The travel, the gear, the camaraderie, the solitude, the discomforts, the challenges, the accomplishments – all are embedded into the making of that simple rectangle. Not just sight but also sound, touch, smell, even taste, are part of the experience. Whenever I review my work the memories come flooding back to let me relive the adventure once again.
To illustrate, this particular image tells the viewer the story of a mother whale helping her new calf breathe in clear blue tropical water. But for me it contains the hidden short story of how she first swam away from me, then changed her mind and returned to within touching distance of her own volition, lingering passively in the water next to me, eye to eye, observing me as I observed her, while her baby slept.
An even lengthier version of that narrative begins with a 6,000 mile journey to the tropical kingdom where the humpbacks congregate. It includes my history of previous whale-watching expeditions led by professionals, where I learned whale behavior and how to observe them in the water safely and respectfully. It is colored by a Sunday morning sail in search of a cooperative whale, and the frisson of excitement as I donned snorkel gear, grabbed the underwater camera, and slid into the water from off the stern of the boat.
Each photo, that deceptively simple click, is embedded with two stories, one for the viewing public and one for the photographer alone. To produce them with forethought, investing time and energy into making them the best they can be, is to embed that memory even more deeply into my being.
All photos are copyrighted and registered with the U.S. Copyright Office. Enjoy but please respect.
Here’s another favorite from last week’s exploration of Sabino Creek with the water flowing, mist rising in the chill morning air, and rays of light beaming through the naked branches of the sycamores. I have so many winter portraits of bare-branched trees that I call them my ‘Dead Tree Collection’. There is a rhythm and poetry to the silhouette of bare branches against the sky, uplifted and graceful almost like dancers.
I did pay the price however. I have succumbed to some version of winter crud so, as I cough, blow my nose, and guzzle medicine, I’m keeping this post mercifully brief.
A new year, and back to my photography after a hiatus during the holidays. We’ve been having some lovely rainstorms with snow falling in the mountains. The result is that Sabino Creek, usually dry, is running again. We’ve lost our shortcut across the river, but the enhanced scenery is worth it.
This morning I woke before dawn and saw that a low fog was blanketing the creek. I knew the combination of the coming sunrise and the lifting mist would offer a rare photographic opportunity. I spent a couple of hours at the water’s edge, and even midstream (soaking my shoes) in pursuit of some landscape photographs to add to my portfolio. There were several keepers in the lot, but this one might be the favorite.
