Fuzzy Math and the Nikon D4

So Nikon finally delivers the new D4 body in January, after Santa already made his rounds. But unless some Secret Santa decides to gift me this newest-best-ever-of-the-day, I won’t be dragging one of these new $5,999 cameras through the mud and snow of western Montana.

Current issue of Montana Outdoors (cheap cell phone capture)

Right after the D4 was announced, the State of Montana delivered $160 into our business account for two photos published in “Montana Outdoors,” photos of a trout and a ladybug (the only insect in this issue!). Photography-wise, “Montana Outdoors” is a respectable magazine that still pays for wildlife and landscape photographs, just not real well. “Texas Highways” pays about the same while “Arizona Highways” pays a little better.

I thought it would be an interesting exercise to compare my sale of two images to a respectable magazine, and the cost of producing those images. Just the equipment costs, not including any the back-end expenses like the photographer’s time, fuel for and wear on his truck, a decent computer, hard drives for file storage, editing software, etc. (Don’t even think about calculating a cost for the years spent learning the craft.)

Those are the rules to this game. Got it? Okay, let’s play.

The trout image ($80 sale) was made with a D700 and 70-200mm lens, or $4,350 worth of gear. The ladybug image ($80 sale) was made with a 105mm macro and ring flash, or $531 worth of additional gear. Grand total of $4,881 worth of camera gear.

Based solely on the constant of a respected magazine’s payment schedule, I would have to sell two photos every month for another 26 issues to break even on this subset of my gear. More than two years. (Viewed another way, I would need to sell one image to 52 more magazines to break even.)

Now let’s visit the opposite end of the spectrum. One of the best bird photographers out there, Arthur Morris, is also one of the top business minds in my industry. I’ve never met him, but I can certainly respect his success in both arenas.

Mr. Morris has just a few favorite camera/lens combinations. The majority of his images are made with the following set-up. He favors an EOS-1D Mark IV camera body ($4,999), with an EF 800mm f5.6L IS lens ($13,899) and 1.4X EF III tele-converter ($474) wearing LensCoat covers ($90 and $20). Even at telephoto distances, he likes to throw in daytime fill from a Wimberly-mounted ($202) Canon flash ($987) and Better Beamer ($44). Mr. Morris balances this modest little set-up on a carbon-fiber tripod ($899) with LegCoat covers ($43) using a Wimberly head ($607).

Mr. Morris never carries just one camera/lens/tripod. But, just considering this set-up, he’s making images through more than $22,264 worth of camera gear. If he sold two images every month at my “respectable magazine rate,” then he would pay off his gear after 139 issues, or 11 years and 7 months later.

In this exercise, that means that he spends more than five times what I spend to make an image - and in reality, he spends a whole lot more.

Mr. Morris normally carries about twice as much equipment as I listed, and he acquires the new best-ever equipment just as soon as it appears, every year or so, not once every 10 years. But of course, I’m not floating around at the top of my field, like Mr. Morris (and I do a rather dismal imitation of a businessman to boot).

Also, while I use cameras to (mostly) sell retail prints, Mr. Morris is mostly selling an image – his own. He  projects the best-instructor-ever image to sell his photo safaris, which is where he makes his serious money. Retired doctors and dentists apparently line up like schoolboys for the chance to shoot in a group with the best-instructor-ever, on photo vacations “of a lifetime” that cost between $3,300 and $12,500 - gratuity not included.

Funny thing is, I’d bet you a dozen D4’s that Mr. Morris could easily make sellable images with my gear, and with gear even older than mine.

What’s my point?

You don’t need the newest-next-best-thing if your goal is making good photographs. If you just have too much money to deal with, then go for it. Camera companies are excellent at solving that problem. But for the most part it’s not the working photographers who are buying the astronomically-priced gear. It’s a tiny handful of top photographers, plus a growing hoard of retirees who are probably more interested in their personal image than in their photographic images.

I’m a wee bit green with envy, of course, but I never intended to buy a D4 anyway. My $2,700 D700 was more than enough camera – at least until I dropped it in the creek. No, I’ve been waiting on the one that comes after the D4. The D700 arrived one year after the D3, so the D700 replacement is now – finally – on the clock.

That means the oft-rumored D800 may finally arrive this year, maybe even as early as February. And compared to the $6,000 D4, a $3,900 (estimated) D800 might be an affordable bargain. If not, I’ll be satisfied to pick up a used D700 from someone who can afford baby-stepping up to the D800.

Buying the most expensive, newest-best-thing every year – what some might call “conspicuous consumption” – is the American way, but it’s not the only way. By choice or not, many of us who are travelling on a different, less-expensive path are still quite able to make quality photographs.

Fall/Winter 2011 "Go Local" Cover

I may be oh-for-two with eclipse photos, but I'm three-for-three for "Go Local" magazine covers. A local grassroots, non-profit group publishes the magazine twice a year to help promote the small, locally-owned businesses in our valley.

You can download a PDF version here. You can also find the original cover photograph here on our website.

Wherever your home may be, make the effort to support your local businesses. They, in turn, will help make your own community a vibrant and more interesting place for you to live.

Lunar (Eclipse) Madness

“It is the very error of the moon: She comes more nearer earth than she was wont, and makes men mad." (William Shakespeare)

Lunar eclipse vanishes from the the pre-dawn sky,
high over Chief Mountain in Glacier National Park.

I am now officially oh-for-two on lunar eclipse photos - but I am getting closer. I was forced to punt six hours into the last eclipse, but during yesterday's eclipse I only missed my shot by 15 minutes.

The last eclipse was several summers back, and I set up on a lakeshore for the night. I had this elaborate plan to photograph the entire arc with two identical camera/tripod sets, each one covering half the sky with a good amount of overlap. I started well before sunset, with the eclipse starting at about 2 am. And then the clouds rolled in at 2:10 am. I stayed all night anyway, but all of my plans evaporated. I never found out if all those careful calculations would have worked.

By contrast, the stars appeared to be lining up perfectly for this eclipse - so I added in a series of mistakes and generally raised the degree of difficulty by several orders of magnitude.

The full moon was due to set at 304 degrees west - a perfect azimuth for me to place it behind Chief Mtn. (almost a three-hour drive from home). The Earth-shaded moon was predicted to glow "coppery orange" and set a little bit before sunrise.

Now, about the winter weather here in western Montana. Normally, the mountains disappear into clouds in the fall and aren't seen again until spring. Where we live, on the west side of the mountains, yesterday's forecast was for dense, freezing fog. Not so good for astrophotography. But, as fate would have it, the forecast over on the east side of the mountains was for what I consider a clear winter sky - only 22% cloud cover!

The way the stars, planets and clouds were aligning, I should have been able to capture a once-in-a-lifetime image of a copper-colored moon just barely touching the top of a dark-blue, pre-dawn Chief Mtn.

The operative words here are, "should have."

Another thing about weather on the east side of the mountains. It's windy. Very windy. All winter long. When I worked there years ago the postmaster explained to me that, when the wind finally stops blowing in spring, everyone falls over.

My eclipse night weather forecast? A manageable 25 degrees, and west winds 25-35 mph with gusts to 50 mph. Okay, so that's challenging for long exposures made in the dark, but maybe not insurmountable. I've worked in worse. Maybe.

Now about those mistakes. I left home late, which forced me to shoot my azimuths in the windy dark, using binoculars to see the mountain, but I was still able to sort out the best of seven potential camera locations. In a hurry to leave home, I also forgot to pack my weight bag and second tripod. With two tripods, I could have anchored my lens to one and camera body to the other - clunky to set up but solid in the wind. I did, however, bring along my perpetual headache, and the prescription drugs were pretty good at helping me think less clearly. So, I didn't actually leave all of the fog behind.

In addition, I'd misplaced my favorite (thin) headlamp and resorted to wearing an old clunky one instead. I had also cut my left thumb on a picture frame earlier in the week, which made me painfully reluctant to remove my left glove. And to top things off, I was still figuring out how to use my first-ever pair of bifocal eyeglasses.

Let's just toss all of these conditions together during a nighttime, winter hurricane and make some images, shall we?

I parked perpendicular to the wind and set my lone tripod up on the leeward side, as short and as solid as I could make it. But the gale easily curled around my car, and I could see the camera shake with every gust. Well okay, I guess I'll just have to time the gusts. I figured out too late that I couldn't use mirror-up with a remote release, so my next-best choice was a 3-second timer delay. So all I had to do is guess when each wind gust would end, and press the shutter release 4-6 seconds before the lull.

Now it's a good thing no one was there to watch me, so I don't have to feel embarrassed. Like when the tripod head detached itself from the tripod. Or when one tripod leg suddenly decided to make itself shorter. Or all of the times when I tried looking through the viewfinder, forgot, and headbutted my camera with the big headlamp.

But the worst mistake was wearing a winter glove on that injured left hand. As the eclipse progressed and the moon got darker and darker, I was dialing down the exposure to a minimum, and then dialing up the ISO. Then I did the reverse when the ambient light started to rise. This required spinning one knob with my (un-gloved) right hand while pushing one of four tiny buttons with my (gloved) left hand.

I can hear you groaning.

You should have heard me groan when I realized that I'd inadvertently dialed the camera settings from RAW to JPG format, and then back again some time later. And, somewhere among the JPG's, I somehow also changed the color-balance to tungsten. Of course I didn't notice these camera changes right away, peering through my new-fangled bifocal eye glasses, and there's no going back if you screw up a bunch of JPG's with a fumbling hand and feeble brain.

But in the end, it wasn't the Keystone Cop routine that kept me from making the image I wanted. Instead it was my camera angle. That, and plain ol' bad luck with the timing.

I had to shoot from the road because I didn't want to trespass - especially in the dark, and in snow. Moving uphill along the road moved the moon higher, while moving downhill moved the moon farther left and off course from the mountain. My chosen spot was simply the best available roadside camera angle that would have the moon set behind Chief Mtn.

Still, this camera angle would have worked perfectly - if only the moon had set earlier, or if a few clouds to the east had knocked the pre-dawn light down a couple of stops. Instead, the sky got too light too early, and the already-dark moon simply evaporated into thin air while still hanging too high above Chief Mtn. (top image).

Like the previous eclipse, I punted. I tried to go wide (the image below) but it was too late. The sky was too light for the moon to show any "coppery orange" glow. Instead, the eclipsed moon looked like a regular full moon that had faded with the sunrise - and that's a regular old once-a-month event, not once-a-lifetime.

You need to aim high to make unique images, working through the challenges, and no one's going to succeed every time. But just 15 minutes more darkness, and I would have nailed this one.

Well, maybe.

Wide view of the lunar eclipse somewhere in the general vicinity of Chief Mtn., in Glacier Nat. Park (c) John Ashley.

Show & Tell, Version 5.1

I suspect that we've done over 100 art shows by now. I don't want to sit down and count them up because I fear the actual number would make me feel exhausted. The shows are a lot of work, but that's how we earn our living. Plus, we never fail to get some funny, um, morsels dropped on us by customers flying past. Some things overheard at recent art shows...

"Did you take all these," he asks. Yes sir, I answer. "I hate you," he says.

"You should call that one, 'Floss Daily.' "

He turns to his female companion, "This is what I see when you smile, sweetie." Then he sheepishly whispers to Tracy, "She says way worse things to me."








"So you just go out and sit there and wait to take pictures of animals that go by? " she asks. Yeah, I answer, something like that.

She's incredulous, "So did you actually get that close to grizzly bears?" No, I answer. Those are black bears.

She shows her friend "Huckleberry Heart," and her friend replies, "Yum!" Then her friend shows her "Elk Mist," and she replies, "Yum!" Only in Montana - make that, only in Montana and Idaho.


She asks, "Do you have family?" I have a wife and two dogs who depend on me. "Hmm, I figured you for a bachelor." Nope. But my wife does encourage me to go out alone at night in prime grizzly bear habitat.

He asks Tracy, "Is your husband a Star Trek fan? That ["Harrier Stare" below] looks like a Romulan Bird-of-Prey." Just part of my never-ending battle with Klingons...

Two "Birds of Prey," one alien and one native.

"I gave it ["Peaceful Lamb] to a woman with breast cancer," a return customer explains. "I put it in with a fake boob."

"Did you see the picture of the... ducks (Loons), Crow (Raven), Snowy Owl (Short-eared Owl), elk (moose), mule (horse), grapes (huckleberries), etc, etc.?"

She and her girlfriend are looking at "Mountain Matriarch," a photo of a black bear sow with three cubs in three different colors. She turns and tells her friend, "Looks like that momma's been messing around."


After looking at the photos in my booth he tells me, "Sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you." I have no idea what he was refering to in the booth, but I certainly know the feeling. I think the phrase pretty much sums up our 2011 show season.

I'll see you bears next year...

Time-lapse Teasers

“I am just going outside and may be some time." (last words of Captain Lawrence Oates)

It's no secret that I would happily spend my remaining days - and nights - shooting time-lapse videos in scenic locations. There's only two obstacles holding me back - time and money. I'm just waiting on that kindly, golden patron to knock on my door. So I take notice when I run across someone who's found a way to get paid for, and/or make money from such videos.

The first time-lapse video is a recent short promoting the state of Oregon (photographers' website at http://www.uncagethesoul.com/gallery/). If these guys can find enough clear skies in Oregon, of all places, then why can't I ever find time to do something similar here in Montana? Regardless, watch the video - it'll knock your socks off.

Finding Oregon from Uncage the Soul Productions on Vimeo.

The second is from a series of time-lapse videos created by Randy Halverson. All of his videos are stunning, and all can be found at his Dakotalapse website (http://dakotalapse.com/). Randy's shooting RAW files in motion, using a Meade Milapse telescope mount and a Stage Zero dolly. He includes set-up shots on his website.

Tempest Milky Way from Randy Halverson on Vimeo.

All of these time-lapse videos are hypnotizing, almost perfect. The only tiny little nit-picking problem I can find with them is that they were all shot with Canon DSLR bodies. Yes, I'm still waiting not-so-patiently for that way-late Nikon D800 to arrive. Sadly, I know that even Santa hasn't been able to get his mittens on one.