John Ashley Fine Art Photography

Fuzzy Math and the Nikon D4

2012-01-19T17:05:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-12T14:57:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-11T12:56:00.001-08:00

“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

2011-12-06T14:30:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-05T17:50:00.000-08:00

“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.

Reality Check

2011-12-05T12:47:00.000-08:00

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." (Albert Einstein)

Well, it's been a bumpy winter so far, here at our little Lake Wobegon. The lake has iced over, and the road too, of course. My truck's brake job turned into a new water pump job, to go along with a new engine block heater on the Mrs' car. The Mrs also slipped somehow and injured her right shoulder, and one of our old dogs hurt her hips.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to surface from one of my frequent, week-long migraines. I've put up with them all my life, but the pain turns me into a Grumpy Grinch. Trouble is, I'm almost always in pain. Maybe that's why I'm also susceptible to British humor. So when a cynical photographer meets his match in a smiling little girl, even I can laugh. (Tip of the hat to photographer friend, Bob, for the video.)

School Portrait (2011) from Michael Berliner on Vimeo.

New Work: "Mountain Matriarch"

2011-10-29T21:50:00.000-07:00

“My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.” (Mark Twain)

"Montana Matriarch" (c) John Ashley

My recent photograph of a black bearfamily foraging for fall berries is a tribute to motherhood. On this day momwas teaching her three cubs about kinnikinnick berries, whose Latin nameactually translates as "Bear grapes."

Motherhood is always harder than itlooks. For animals living in the wild, motherhood is a non-stop series ofteaching one life lesson after another. A female bear is doing well toraise one cub through its first summer. Raising a pair of bear cubs demandseven more skill. But raising three curious cubs requires all the patience andpersistence of a "Mountain Matriarch."

Bear cubs are born in the depths ofwinter, deep within the female's den. Weighing in at one pound, newborn cubsnurse and grow through their first winter without hibernating. For the next twosummers they will follow mom's every move, watching and learning. They willalso hibernate with mom during their second and third winters. If they surviveto a third summer, they will be old enough to leave their family and make alife of their own.

Mother bear protects, teaches andfeeds her cubs every single day for more than two years. After two years she'llbe ready to breed again, and the circle begins anew.

Motherhood is forever - and even longer for my mother.

Angels and Devils at the Park

2011-10-04T21:37:00.000-07:00

“It would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and devils,
since we invented them.” (John Steinbeck)

Boise "Art in the Park" crowd
"Do you have any pictures of angels?" she asks.

How does a professional handle such a delicate question?

"As a matter of fact, I do," I tell her. "Got lots of 'em, all over the booth." I make a wide arc with my right hand, pointing to every corner of our glowing-white tent. "But," in hushed tones now, "they're only visible to the Chosen Ones."

No, not really. Actually, Tracy fielded this question from a potential customer, and Tracy's much less mischievous (as in not at all) than me. The woman was looking for photographs of European angel statues.

"I'm sorry, I don't have any angels," Tracy honestly answers. A missed opportunity, I say.

New work: "Diamonds in the Sky"

2011-09-06T00:19:00.000-07:00

“We shall find peace. We shall hear the angels, we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds.” (Anton Chekhov)

I hesitate to call this "work," because we were hiding from work when I made this image.

A couple of our Glacier Park employee friends simply can't get a whole day off work if they're in cell phone range. And with three websites and a photo business to manage, I can never escape from my computer while I'm at home. So even though we live on a small lake, the four of us drove 50 miles west to camp on another small lake with the twin attractions of no cell service and no computers.

"Diamond in the Sky" Dragonfly (c) John Ashley

From doing the art shows, we've learned that most animals have a set of human groupies in various numbers. We've had multiple requests for images of dolphins (pretty rare here in Montana), skunks (believe it or not), elephants (what would they think of snow?), pigs (more popular than you'd expect), and many more.

But by far the three most numerous groupies in our part of the world are horse people, raven people, and dragonfly people. If you have a good, original image of any of these animals, it will be a consistent seller.

Which brings us around to dragonflies. There's only a couple different ways to shoot macro dragonfly photos and get much of anything in focus. The film/sensor plane must be exactly parallel to the wings to get all four in focus. (One such example here.) And then you have to hope that the dragonfly decides to hold its wings straight across, because often times they droop them down at an angle.

On top of that, if you have any hope of enlarging a macro shot, then you also need zero wind and either a good tripod or no heartbeat. Macro's not for sissies, or people without immense patience.

So when shooting the dragonfly above, I wanted to get as much back-lighting as possible to make as much prismatic refraction through the wings as possible. I knew I had to get parallel to the wings, but the only way to accomplish that was to have the sun directly behind the bug. A silhouette. (I did try, and I'm still seeing spots.)

With one foot in the lake and the other up in the brush, I moved as close to parallel as I could get while still having shade on the front of my lens. Any sunlight on the lens would throw a flare that would blow out the glitter in a muddy mire of low-contrast yuck. I also threw some light back into its face with a ring flash that I've been testing.

The result? A dragonfly image from below (somewhat unusual), with wings all a-glitter (original to me - I've never seen it done before), but with two opposite wingtips that are ever-so-slightly soft (oh well, at least I knew it at the time).

We'll test it out on the dragonfly groupies this weekend to see how it flies. Until then, beauty remains in the eye of the beholder - and the bucks remain in their wallets.

UPDATE: Well, we sold out of large "Diamonds in the Sky" prints at our show, but we didn't sell a single small print of it. That tells me that the detail in the wings reads much better as it gets larger. A major difference between making images for fun and making them for a living is that you must give other peoples' interests much more deference.

Showing Up - Aaron Huey

2011-08-12T09:18:00.000-07:00

“My success is not measured in money. I have no financial security, I have no savings account. I measure my success by asking myself if I’m telling a story that the world needs to hear, if I am educating people.'” (Aaron Huey)

I ran into one of my favorite former art teachers last week. He's the one who tells all of his students the secret to success in art, life, etc. It's simple really. You have to show up. For photographers, it means that you have to be out there, day in and day out, living your craft.

One of the best examples I know of is Aaron Huey. Like me, you've probably never met him. But spending a little time watching a couple of videos will help set your vision straight.

The first video is from last winter at the Annenberg Space for Photography. Huey shows and - most importantly - describes his 154-day walk across America. No assignment, no book plan, just Arron and his dog Cosmo, one camera and one lens.

Another video is much harder to watch, but even more enlightening. Huey has spent years documenting what he calls "America's native prisoners of war" at the Pine Ridge Reservation.

Each of these videos tells a different story, and there are pearls of wisdom there for all of us.

Getting Your Ducks in a Row

2011-08-04T14:22:00.000-07:00

“Decide what you want, decide what you are willing to exchange for it. Establish your priorities and go to work.” (H.L. Hunt)

The guys points at the canvas and asks, "How did you get those ducks to sit still for you?"
I answer without thinking, "Duck tape."

Even surprised myself with that one - where'd that come from?

Michael and Me

2011-08-01T20:55:00.000-07:00

“To the complaint, 'There are no people in these photographs,' I respond, 'There are always two people: the photographer and the viewer.'” (Ansel Adams)

Here is a word-for-word transcript of a recent voice message that was left on our business phone. You couldn't make this stuff up if you tried. I can't decide if I'd rather have caught the call from this earnest, elder lady, or if it's better to have her recorded message to play over and over again. Names have been changed to protect the innocent Michael Jackson fan.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

John, this is [Jane Doe].

I am an actress on [a well-known soap opera] for many years, a prime-time Emmy winner, actress. You took photographs of me over 10 years ago. I know you are a fine photographer.

In your home when I took pictures, I saw a magnificent portrait of Michael Jackson - I believe it was black and white - with angel wings and arrows. That portrait has stayed in my mind ever since I saw it. And since his loss - or the loss of him - I would love to purchase, from you, a copy of that magnificent impression you made of his spirit and his life. My name is [Jane Doe]. I live in Los Angeles, my number is... I have email which is...

I would love to have a copy of that magnificent impression of that outstanding individual, Michael Jackson. I know you're not in town, I believe you're the same artist who took my pictures - remarkable. Again, could you please contact me at your convenience. I want it so much, I have a new dressing room at NBC to be in, and for others to see it.

Sincerely [Jane Doe]. Bye.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The only problem is, I never photographed Michael Jackson. Of course I'd love to help her, so I Googled around hoping that I might be able to point her to another photographer, but it turns out that there's a number of different images out there that fit her "wings and arrows" description. Who knew?

The high-energy Chuck Mangione

On the other hand, I have photographed a few musicians that you, my elder readers, might recognize - Tonight Show bandleader Doc Severnsen, the high-energy Chuck Mangione and jazz trumpeter Meynard Ferguson. I also worked a Smokey Robinson concert that was interesting. Part of getting press credentials included signing a contract stating that you would not photograph Mr. Smokey after the first 30 minutes. What with his prolific sweating and all, they wanted to make sure that you only took "fresh" images of him.

Maybe the nice lady who called would settle for one of my Willie Nelson photos. You know, Willie an' Waylon an' the boys? What I remember most about that assignment was, (1) the grown-up women fawning over Mr. Willie backstage, good-looking women that Willie didn't seem to notice, and (2) that Mr. Willie wasn't entirely present for that gig, if you get my drift smoke. He floated onto the stage with his old guitar, rambled through a set of songs, and wandered off back to his bus, never to emerge again.

Then-Govenor Bob Graham sends Jimmy Buffett long.

And then there was the time, emerging from the lockeroom after shooting a University of Florida football game, I found then-Governor Bob Graham sending Jimmy Buffett long for a deep pass on the old Florida Field. (The photo shows what happens when you flash the end of a roll of Tri-X film that was pushed to 1600 ASA. In other words, grainy.) Funny thing, in that day's paper we had announced that the Governor would not be able to attend some boring meet-and-greet in our town due to "scheduling conflicts."

What interesting lives these musicians must lead. To think that you can affect people so much that, many years later, someone might want some remembrance - that's simply amazing. And how about the mystery photographer who created an image that lingers in one woman's soul after all these years? Isn't that the essence of art? Here's hoping that one or two of my images might outlive me, and bring some sort of laughter or comfort to people after I'm long gone. Just maybe not the Michael Jackson fans.

New work: "Peekaboo Loon Chick"

2011-07-09T20:52:00.000-07:00

“A mother's love for her child is like nothing else in the world.” (Agatha Christie)

"Peekaboo Loon Chick" (c) John Ashley

A young Loon chick peeks out from under the protective cover of his mother's wing. Loons are very protetective parents. When the young chicks tire, they climb aboard a parent's back to rest in comfort. And when the parent senses danger - like when a Bald eagle is flying nearby - the parent lifts one wing and the chick crawls underneath. In this way the parent Loon can make the chick completely invisible from above and from below, but the chick eventually gets hungry and peeks out to see if the coast is clear.

Overheard...

2011-07-06T16:11:00.000-07:00

(Customer comment at a recent art show...)
"That would be a good one to have right across from your toilet - that guy laughing at you!"

"That was a good one!" (c) John Ashley

Going Local This Summer

2011-06-14T15:58:00.000-07:00

We're still firing up the furnace from time to time here at the end of the road, and sleeping under the electric blanket each night. But signs of summer are starting to show up, like the 2011 "Go Local" summer guide to small businesses in western Montana. Our "Huckleberry Heart" image graces the cover. Across the state, our stashes of last year's frozen fruits have long since dwindled away into stacks of pancakes, muffins and breads. Picking fresh wild berries is one of those dreams that dances through our heads this time of year, even though the huckleberry flowers are just starting to form and the berries won't be ripe until August. Some things are worth waiting for.

New work: "Bighorn Brotherhood"

2011-06-04T13:41:00.000-07:00

“A portrait is not made in the camera but on either side of it.” (Edward Steichen)

"Bighorn Brotherhood" (c) John Ashley

I enjoy customer compliments, just like everyone else. But what I love about this job is when a wild animal chooses to allow me into his personal space. It's sort of like saying, "You're okay, so I'm going to ignore you now and do whatever I would be doing if you weren't here." Whenever this happens, it always makes those moments - and the resulting images - stand apart from when the animal considers you a potential threat. Animal behavior can be a subtle thing, but sometimes those nuances can show through and render the camera invisible.

The end of the world? What, again?

2011-05-22T22:39:00.000-07:00

"Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep insights can be winnowed from deep nonsense." (Carl Sagan)

I know, I know. The blog's been running a little thin lately. In my defense, I've been working simultaneously on several projects that didn't directly involve a camera. In addition to running the photography business, I needed to pull together a PowerPoint presentation at night while also doing field work during the day on a new Harlequin Duck research project. When I finally surfaced this morning, I read that the world was supposed to end yesterday.

Why is it that every time the world comes to an end, I'm the last one to find out?

John and Lisa banding a Harlequin Duck in Glacier National Park

This time it was a bunch of folks following some preacher named Camping. These poor saps sold off everything in anticipation of the "rapture," and now they'll have to figure out how to carry on with nothing. Meanwhile, poor Mr. Camping is left to pick up the pieces with a mere $70 million in donations sitting in his bank account. Tisk tisk.

This morning's news made me feel sentimental, sort of fondly reminiscent about some of the times that my world almost ended.

Like the time when, two weeks after getting my driver's license, I rolled my mother's new Datsun B210 car while rounding a sandy corner. And while the car was at the repair shop, someone broke in and not-so-gently ripped the radio out of the dashboard. I survived the wreck unharmed, but it was touch and go for a few weeks before my mother decided to let me live.

A few years later I had minor surgery on my left knee, and then decided to stop by and surprise my long-time girlfriend, maybe earn a little sympathy by showing off my new stitches. Instead, she informed me that she was engaged to be married to someone else, in two weeks. In shock, I drove straight to the racquetball court and played hour after hour until, totally exhausted, I felt fairly sure that my stitched-up world would continue.

Now that I'm an old codger, I'm starting to get better at rolling with the punches. Like that PowerPoint presentation last week, and that Harlequin Duck project.

I spent almost a week building a presentation for high school students, something about combining biology and photography into a hybrid career of sorts. I felt pretty comfortable, rehearsing and carving it down to 40 minutes, leaving 10 minutes for questions. Then we drove nine hours to the opposite corner of Montana and prepared to give the program four times the next day. Here's a free tip -- never give a presentation on the day that the school's tech guy takes off.

Three teachers and a couple of students couldn't convince the school's projector system to work. Thirty minutes into my first 50-minute allotment, we all shuffled out of the auditorium and into a nearby classroom, where one teacher got my program to work on a TV screen. I jumped straight to the middle, but the bell rang and students started leaving, and the commotion drown out the echos of my frantic words.

John talks with high school students last week in Billings, Montana

All I could do was smirk. I was taking work -- and my life -- way too seriously.

The high school debacle was a timely lesson in humility. One of the few questions the students had for me was, "Have you ever dropped your camera in the water?" I searched my memory and answered, no. I did push my thumb through the shutter curtain on a brand new Nikon 8000 once, but I've never dropped a camera into the water. Never say never.

That was Monday. Fast-forward to Thursday.

I'm an old Nikon guy, but I use a Canon camera bag (backpack style) because -- as I like to tell my Canon friends -- if someone peers through my car window and sees "Canon," they'll figure that it isn't worth stealing. But Canon would get the last laugh.

I'm wearing neoprene chest waders, stumbling down the middle of a swift mountain stream, gently herding a pair of Harlequin Ducks towards my comrades hiding by the mist net. I'm also wearing the Canon camera bag on my back. The round rocks are slippery but the crystal clear, ice cold water is only knee-deep, so I'm not worried about falling.

Splash!

Looking behind me, I spotted a camera and telephoto lens resting picturesquely on red and green rocks at the bottom of the creek. It looked just like my camera. Then I realized, it was my camera! My beloved D700, along with my 70-200mm Nikon lens.

D'oh!

I bent over and snatched it out of the water, then suddenly realized that the camera bag on my back must have caught on a branch, and now it was unzipped and hanging wide open.

Double d'oh!

Keeping bent over, I waded back upstream until I found an opening where I could climb out of the creek. Pulled the pack off my back and, somehow, four other lenses were still snug in their pockets. Phew. It was a good luck / bad luck sort of moment.

The camera was in the water for less than five seconds but, after drying it for two days, it still wouldn't turn on. So back it went, off to meet its maker. Will I ever see my $2,800 camera or my $1,600 lens working again in this life? Who knows?

Of course, I just recently sold off two other digital bodies to prepare for the "rapture," which in my case was the rumor of Nikon's next best-thing-ever, a new D800 camera body. According to those who preach these things, the D800 was set to arrive on Earth last March. Make that the end of August. Okay, October for sure.

I'm stunned, and still awaiting my rapture.

Meanwhile here I sit, camera-less for the first time in more than 30 years (okay, not counting film and pinhole bodies), wondering why the camera gods have spited me. Meanwhile, my friend Bob has offered to loan me one of his Nikon bodies until I can get back on my feet again.

Baptizing my camera wasn't the end of the world. But I do feel as foolish, and as broke, as those other poor saps. I'll have to start over, but at least I can smirk through the hurt.

UPDATE: Good news -- camera's still dead but my lens is alive and well, and the end of the world has been rescheduled for October. Sure hope I get the D800 a few days before then...

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: The rescheduled (Oct. 21) end of the world for sure this time didn't happen, again. And earlier this week (Oct. 17) Nikon reportedly postponed/cancelled "two big major launches." Yes, the rumored D800/D900 has yet to make an appearance here on Earth - or at least North America. How long can the faithful hold on?

Do you know where your towel is?

2011-04-29T23:06:00.000-07:00

"He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which." (Douglas Adams)

If you've ever had passing curiosity about little things like, oh, the universe or the future of humanity - or parrot mating strategies - then I have four words of advice. Listen to Douglas Adams. At the risk of drifting too far off-topic, the video above is a delicious way to spend about an hour and a half. I like to listen to it from time to time while stuck at the computer, editing photographs. In this clip from the University of California, the late Adams (author of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy") weaves absurdly-hilarious examples into the most elegant and entertaining arguments for conservation that I have ever heard. Enjoy a sly genius at work.

Nature's Voice

2011-03-19T17:08:00.000-07:00

"The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope." (Wendell Berry)

If you ever wondered what Nature's Voice sounds like, she's a Loon. One of our Loons, in fact. Our "Baby on Board" image graces the March/April newsletter from the Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC), called "Nature's Voice." The NRDC is one of the Big Boys of environmental conservation, and a group that we have supported for years.

We were working in the middle of the Sonoran Desert, 20 miles from Mexico, when the designer called to purchase use rights. Fortunately, we were able to get back to electricity in time to send off a file and meet their deadline.

This was a smiley face on our report card because (1) we like supporting non-profit groups, (2) the newsletter has a circulation of 400,000, and (3) it paid for a couple tanks of diesel to get us home from the desert.

Now if we can just be patient, the lakes here in northwestern Montana will ice out in only another 4-6 weeks, and Nature's Voice will return to our chosen habitat.

Breaking News: E-Lec-Tronic Strobes Will Arrive in a Flash!

2011-03-06T22:50:00.000-08:00

"The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet." (William Gibson)

Geez, and I thought new technology was slow to arrive in Montana! Here's one of two similar billboards, many miles apart, that we passed today in southern New Mexico. And in spite of apparent cutbacks in their advertising budget, this business is still open.

"Flashbulbs?" For real?

Experiments with proto-flashbulbs began in the 1890's, and commercial flashbulbs showed up in the late 1920's. A typical flashbulb was the size of our modern 100-watt light bulb, and had the unfortunate habit of exploding. In the early 1960's, some genius invented small, four-square "flashcubes" for use on Kodak Instamatic cameras. But bulb technology burned out by the late 60's and lives on today only in movies, special uses (such as caving), and collectors.

By the time I managed my first paid photography job, in the late 1970's, small electronic strobes had taken over. We thought this was the end-all achievement in photographic lighting technology. Then they came up with mini computers that talked to each other at light speed while flashing a multi-programmable burst of highly controlled light.

And today? How can it possibly get any better, you ask? More than 100 years of experimentation and achievement has brought us to this -- the Flash Bus.

Yes, I know, I can hardly believe it myself. But in just three more days, this newest craze, this phenomenon, will be unleashed upon Seattle. And in three weeks or so, it will light up Albuquerque, just a little north of this billboard.

And in Montana? Well, it takes a little longer for these new fancies to arrive...
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Threading the Needle

2011-02-22T22:59:00.000-08:00

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness." (The Dalai Lama)

Planning a trip to photograph the moon on the horizon means that you need to know exactly where and when the moon will appear. I used to simply draw up a paper chart for each month – azimuths, rise and set times for sun and moon, etc. – and head out with my camera. Nowadays I use a lot of complicated technology, but sometimes the moon still surprises me and slips past.

Double arch (center) as seen from across the desert valley

If you want to, say, photograph the moon rising inside a natural stone arch, the easiest option is standing close to and level with the arch. Up close, the moonrise is visible at a wide range of azimuths. But move the horizon above you 30 degrees, and lining up the moonrise starts to get complicated. Move back 100 meters and the arch starts to appear smaller relative to the moon, and they get oh-so-much harder to align. Now let’s double that distance to make the moon barely fit inside the opening and -- why not -- let’s also make the moon climb through two stacked arches.

Now that would be threading the needle. Do I even have a prayer, I wondered?

We recently learned of a double arch along a rough and rocky, one-lane road down in Organ Pipe Cactus Nat. Monument, along the Mexican border. We felt put off -- but not dissuaded -- by the Border Control checkpoints and the beehive of Border Patrol vehicles buzzing everywhere. Once while birding, an armed agent appeared in the middle of nowhere, and we later learned that we’d set off a buried motion detector. They also use airplanes and blimps, and early last night we watched a Border Patrol helicopter hovering low to spotlight a desert ridge. The boys were very busy.

So were we. Two days before full, the waxing moon would rise about an hour before sunset. Using our new Android-X phone, we triangulated a pretty good idea where the moon should appear by combining the applications for digital compass, data from “Moon Phase Pro,” and the “Google (night) Sky” map. All of this data was automatically fixed to our GPS location.

Monitoring moon's progress
during interval photograph

Still, I wanted to hedge my chances. So we backed up to the next ridge and started climbing.

Changing the angle up to the arches re-introduced some uncertainty into our plans. So I stood with camera at the location where I thought the moon would first be visible, and I sent Tracy down the ridge to the north, out of my view, giving us a wider view of the horizon, which we monitored with binoculars. Good thing.

Almost an hour after our vigil began, Tracy yelled, "HEY!," and I knew what she meant. “HEAD NORTH, DOWNHILL, FAST!” I ran with camera and tripod over grapefruit-sized volcanic rocks, over an unexpected six-foot cliff (where'd that come from?!), and down the ridge. I kept running until the moon was peeking over the bottom-left side of the arch opening, then started the intervolater to take images at 10-second intervals, and stepped back.

When Tracy reached me, I asked her to walk downhill to keep the rising moon in the lower left corner of the arch. When the moon cleared the upper arch from my position, I ran towards Tracy without having to track the moon -- another good idea. In this fashion, because we had a slope to work with, we were able to capture not one but three sets of images showing the moonrise through the arches.

In other words, we got lucky.

As the camera was capturing the last set of images, I asked Tracy one more favor. “You know, if you get the truck and meet me on the road, we might be able to catch the moon moving through Boulder Canyon. It’s only half a mile.”

"Double Arch Desert Moonbow" at 2.5 minute intervals (c) John Ashley

Tracy stopped in a cloud of dust and dropped me off when the moon reappeared from behind the stone cliffs of Boulder Canyon. I knew that the evening patrol was past due on the one-lane road. If another vehicle appears, I told her, just drive to the next wide spot and I’ll hike out to you. Then I moved off into the thick mesquite and massive boulders, looking for elusive images.

Not ten minutes later, Tracy's voice rang out again, “HEEEYY!” Dang, another truck must be approaching. “DID YOU HEAR ME?!” she demanded. I heard voices but no vehicle engines. “I heard you!” I yelled over my shoulder, trying to find one last camera angle. Why don't you just move the truck, I wondered.

Hiking back through the trees and rocks, I found Tracy sitting in the driver’s seat, giving me the look. “Get in now!” she quietly commanded. Rounding the front bumper, I spied three young people – definitely not tourists – standing in the shade just off the road, watching me. “Hola,” I politely nodded towards them while climbing into the truck. “What happened?” I asked Tracy.

The three Mexican “illegals” (Border Patrol's term) were walking parallel to, but a short distance away from the road when Tracy spotted them. She called out to me, and they stopped. Tracy yelled at me a second time and, deciding that I must be too far away, rolled up the truck windows and locked the doors. We'd heard that drug runners would avoid us at all costs, but immigrants might approach. Our two large dogs watched in sleepy silence from the back seat.

Border Patrol helicopter buzzing Organ Pipe cacti

All three stopped some distance from Tracy. Two men and one woman, maybe in their early-twenties, politely asked questions in Spanish. Tracy rolled the window down halfway and communicated that she didn’t understand. So they asked, “Agua?” Searching around in the cab, she spotted my old favorite water bottle that we had received as a gift, and passed it to them through the window. “Gracias,” said one of the men. “Thank you,” said the woman in broken English. They accepted the water and moved back away from Tracy, away from the road.

“Should I have done more?” Tracy asked me. “What else do we have?”

“Un momento,” I called out in touristo Spanish while stepping out of the truck. “Mas agua?” All three smiled silently, and we walked together to the rear of the truck where I unlocked the camper. Scrambling around, I found a one-gallon jug of fresh water and four ripe bananas.

“Gracias,” he said quietly, accepting the small gifts.

“De nada,” I offered, in the truest sense of the words. It's nothing.

I tried not to stare at them as the shorter of the two men stepped forward and started asking questions again, in Spanish. But I could see that all were well-groomed. The woman wore tan Carhart-type pants, and both men wore blue jeans that were cleaner than my own. Each carried a small backpack, one with a striped blanket rolled and tied to the bottom – a lot like the souvenir that used to hang on our wall back home. They wore tennis shoes that were in better shape than my old favorites, a holey-leather pair on their third set of laces.

Facing more rapid-fire questions, I shrugged and apologized that I didn’t understand. My allegedly advanced education was failing me big time in real life. I turned to the woman and asked if she could translate. After a couple of false starts, she shrugged.

The man pointed at the road and tried different words. I recognized nothing. A few more false starts, then the woman asked in English, “What state?”

“You are in Arizona,” I answered.

Now they looked even more puzzled. More undecipherable questions from him, then she tried again, “You state?”

I hesitated. “My state is Montana,” I answered, knowing that was neither the right question nor the correct answer. She smiled as if I’d told her a well-worn joke, shaking her head. Only it wasn't a joke. I wanted to help her, to help them survive the technological attack they were about to face. With all the Border Patrol agents and helicopters and God-knows what else waiting, these three politely desperate young people didn’t stand a fair chance at finding a better life. Still, I hoped they might get lucky and somehow thread the needle through this desert.

Small framed religious print left behind
by Mexican immigrants in AZ desert

They moved back into the trees as we pulled away in the truck. “Vaya con Dios,” I offered in broken Spanish, though they could no longer hear me. Three or four miles down the rocky road, I kicked myself. “A map!” I told Tracy. “They just wanted to know where they were, where this road goes.” They just needed a little bit of simple, paper technology.

Somewhere in the Sonoran desert, twenty-some miles from Mexico, my old favorite water bottle lies dry and discarded -- it's impossible to look another person in the eye and then do the same to them.

"I don't do great things. I do small things with great love." (Mother Teresa)

*****************************************************

Postscript: Kudos to the National Park Service for allowing Humane Borders to maintain water stations for migrants within Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.

An interesting discussion of the Arizona / Mexico border issues can be found here.
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Sandhill Cranes -- by day and by night

2011-02-17T00:58:00.000-08:00

"Cranes carry this heavy mystical baggage. They're icons of fidelity and happiness. The Vietnamese believe cranes cart our souls up to heaven on our wings." (Mitchell Burgess)

Let's begin by reminding everyone to NEVER look directly at the sun through your camera! Even a medium lens is enough focal power to fry your retina. Only a dimwit would aim a fat telephoto lens at the blazing sun -- so let me tell you how I did it.

Sandhill Cranes flying across the sun (c) John Ashley

I came to this Arizona wetland last winter to photograph Sandhill Cranes. We spent two evenings running around the desert to line up a flock cranes with the rising moon. It was harder than I expected. This year, capturing cranes against the sun turned out to be easier than expected -- but I still had to scout for two days to find the best location.

First, a 500mm lens attached to the D700, a cable release attached to the camera, and everything anchored to the tripod. Aiming slightly to the right of the sun, I prefocused on the expected flight path. (Hint -- it isn't infinity. That would be too easy.)

Now for the "trick." I set the D700 to "live view" and, watching the live image on the rear LCD screen, I can safely aim the camera directly into the sun. Now I just have to shield the sun with my left hand and, when the flock approaches the inferno, fire away with the remote release.

So I never actually see the birds cross the sun. And, if their path takes them across the center of the sun, then those few birds usually just dissappear from the image. Buts the sun's constantly moving, and the birds will fly higher and lower, nearer and farther away, so it's still a matter of luck and patience.

If it's early (or late) in the day, and there is a significant amount of thin clouds, fog, or whatever, then these will act like a neutral density filter and knock the sun back for you. Plus, you'll get a nice, sharp edge around the sun. But the sun is going to roast your image on a clear day. For days like this, the camera's ISO is set as low as it will go, while aperture and shutter speed are as high as they will go.

(Side notes: I almost always shoot wide open, so I seldom have problems with dusty sensors. Stopping the lens all the way down, however, was an ugly, ugly awakening. Also, stopping down past about f8 increases diffraction and decreases sharpness. In this sun example, however, soft focus can actually add to the images' "feel.")

Both images are simple compositions of cooperative Sandhill Cranes. But the mood of each image is as different as, well, day and night.

Cryptic Messages from Signal Hill

2011-02-09T22:31:00.000-08:00

"A military operation involves deception. Even though you are competent, appear to be incompetent. Though effective, appear to be ineffective." (Sun-tzu)

17:55 hours (5:55 PM). We swerve off the asphalt and onto a gated desert road, past the sign warning, “ROAD CLOSED, SUNSET – 6 AM.”

18:02 The official southern Arizona sunset. A brilliant red fire fills the western horizon. If I captured that one, I mutter to myself, they would accuse me of “photoshopping.” Better to just avoid that scene.

18:07 Another turn down another side road and, 1.62 miles from pavement, we reach the parking lot without incident. Less than 100 meters north is a small hill, sitting right out in plain view. And on top, there’s a pile of boulders covered with dozens of 1,000-year-old Hohokam petroglyphs. “Signal Hill,” they call it.

But what’s this? There’s two civilian cars in the lot. Can’t they read? I covertly stash my camera gear on top of a picnic table and wait. Tracy walks the dogs. Eventually, two groups of loud teenagers return from the sunset, each one armed with a point-and-shoot digital camera. One carries a tripod. I shake my head – the photo addiction starts so innocently.

As they load into the cars, I slip up a side trail, carrying my tripod tight to my left flank lest they spot me and wonder what I’m up to. By the time they pull away, followed by Tracy in our big white noisy diesel camper, I’m halfway up the trail leading to the hilltop. Just past the sign that says, “DANGER – RATTLESNAKES.”

Alone at last. I briefly study my target – a spiral pecked into the desert varnish on a stone face about 18” across – and I break out my gear under a thin crescent moon. I scouted this location a few weeks back and devised a plan, but the teenagers set me back 13 minutes. Now I’ll have to set up and focus in the dark.

Spiral petroglyph of Hohokam origin on Signal Hill, southern Arizona.

18:38 First test images. I set up to photograph a 20-minute star trail while briefly light-painting the petroglyph with my headlamp. But the LED bulbs are too cool, too blue for this job. I'm crawling on hands and knees to reposition the tripod as low as it will go, and my headlamp clatters away into the darkness. Stumbling back to my pack to dig out the backup flashlight, I remember that it has a nicer, warmer color. Much more appropriate for these old rocks. I reset the camera and restart the light painting, again, this time using my flashlight.

A few planes pass overhead, too high to spot me, but several fly right through my image. I curse the pilots and restart the camera each time. A mile to the west, a dozen coyotes howl in a dozen different keys.

19:00 Suddenly, a cell phone rings out into the night, extremely close to my location. I freeze. Slowly I pat my shirt pocket and realize that mine is missing. Must have fallen out while I was fumbling for my headlamp. Trying not to trip over the tripod, I track down the noise and answer my phone. It’s my accomplice, checking on progress. Tracy was reading a book a few miles away when she found herself surrounded by four elderly campground hosts. It looked dicey, but she sweet-talked her way out of that situation and was calling to double-check my ETA. Everything’s under control, I assured her, and I’ll be done in less than two hours.

19:08 Headlights appear in the desert where they don’t belong. Quickly, I lay the tripod on the ground and slip around behind the hill to watch. But the lights have disappeared.

Just as well, I sigh. High, thin clouds are forming, and most of the stars are already blotted out to the north and west. To the southeast, clouds are floating over the small city that lays hidden behind those low mountains. The city lights paint the clouds orange as they pass over, but lots of stars still shine through.

Again, I reposition my camera and tripod, gamble on the focus distance, and shorten the exposure. This time I incorporate the fast-moving clouds into the composition. I shoot several 60-second exposures, long enough to capture the color but short enough to avoid too much star trailing – I hope. Just as the clouds reach their peak, their orange glory, my first camera battery dies. The clouds dissolve and begin fading away while I’m digging around for my second battery.

20:16 Mostly clear, starry skies return. I reposition the tripod, again, and aim my camera south to capture star trails that – if my aim is true – will form a rainbow above the spiral petroglyph. I start a one-hour exposure.

20:27 The headlights return! This time they race past two possible turnoffs and head straight for Signal Hill. Have they spotted me? From the roof of a green and white SUV, a spotlight blazes a beam left and right across the thin patches of saguaro and mesquite. They’re almost at the parking lot below me.

I curse in your general direction, Border Patrol! (No disrespect intended – I wanted to be a cop once – but I don’t have time for this.) I shoulder my dark-green pack, pocket the headlamp, and admire my decision to wear a black coat and skullcap tonight. I leave the camera and tripod. They're sitting higher now but still low enough that they can’t be easily spotted from below.

A Border Patrol SUV drives through the right side
of a 60-minute star trail / light painting exposure.

The spotlight jerks across my hill, and I crouch behind a small boulder before slipping off to the east flank. The SUV swings around the parking lot and I slink back to the west face, keeping close tabs on the law. It’s not that I’m doing anything wrong. My camper is waiting somewhere on the proper side of the closure sign, beyond the gate. The area is closed to vehicles, true, but the sign doesn’t mention hikers, much less nocturnal photographers. I’m on the right side of the law, technically speaking, just doing my job.

What concerns me, however, is the thought of some well-armed Border Patrol agents who might be just a little bit over-eager to “take down” a photographer mistaken for a drug runner. I’d hate to surprise a couple of young men like that. Also, I don’t want to lose an hour of work (and potentially much more), trying to explain the nuances of nocturnal photography while staring into a spotlight. It would also be undesirable to be spotted in the dark, miles from anywhere, carrying a long black tripod that could be confused for something else. Finally, there's a thin chance that I might know one of them, a good friend's husband, and it's always embarrassing to be held at gunpoint by a friend.

The SUV and spotlight aim southeast, away from me. My phone rings. I stand and answer, suddenly realizing that the light on my face was very bright, and rather unflattering. I duck down behind a cactus. Code orange, too hot, can’t leave until situation improves, don’t call me I’ll call you.

21:48 Haven’t seen the lights now for 30 minutes, ever since they disappeared behind the next ridge south of my location. I make the call. Job’s complete, I’m hiking towards the rendezvous point, over.

22:15 I climb aboard the intercept vehicle, heart racing from my short, dark jog. Tracy yawns, and both dogs are asleep. We turn and drive our old camper south into the night. Over the first hill we pass a Border Patrol SUV idling on the roadside, headlights on.

22:30 hours (10:30 PM). Arriving at a safe location, Tracy goes to bed while I walk the dogs around a cluster of expensive motor homes that are camped in a peaceful, well-lit and tastefully-landscaped casino parking lot. One less image stuck in my imagination, one more hard-earned photograph. Another night in the days of a nocturnal photographer.

Raising Arizona

2011-01-25T17:46:00.000-08:00

"Aristotle was famous for knowing everything. He taught that the brain exists merely to cool the blood and is not involved in the process of thinking. This is true only of certain persons." (Will Cuppy)

Wasn't that the title to a bad Nicolas Cage movie? I'm staggering back from a 3- or 4-day migraine, I lost count. Just a few hours of real sleep this week. All of my recent thoughts and memories are chopped up and blended together, just a confusing bunch of snippits so far.

I remember getting ready for a reunion this weekend, "raising Arizona" with a bunch of friends. Then there's this recollection of another friend taking his photo show on the road, complete with strobe lights like the rock band, "Electric Light Orchestra" (anyone remember them?) or something; 29 cities in 42 days -- wish I could make one.

And I distinctly remember sitting in a little restaurant with a dear old friend whom I've never met before, talking about Mexican jaguars and global warming. I can also remember camping in the Arizona desert for three nights to get the appropriate moonset image in a magical location. Failed. Got lots of good images, but nothing that does the place justice. Next full moon...

Female Anna's Hummingbird, 105mm, f 9.5, 1600 ISO, 50% crop

In the middle of all this, I'm also test-driving a lens from my friend, Bob. A Nikon 105mm 2.8 micro. Nice lens. I put it to the test on a cooperative, free-ranging hummingbird. It's hard enough to get sharp macro images of slow-moving bugs and such. Capturing hummingbirds with less than 1/2" depth-of-field was downright humbling.

I don't normally photograph "feeder birds." But I figured it would be a good challenge for the lens. The bird's attracted to a little test-tube filled with sugar water, attached with a suction cup to our reflective camper window (ie - fill light). She's a little Anna's Hummingbird, and she can kinda' sorta' see me inside, so I can't move.

Manual focusing scared her off. So I put the autofocus square on her eye, and pressed halfway down on the shutter when she turned broadside -- which never lasted more than a split second. That put her eye in sharp focus and gave me just a touch of blurry beak. Way too much blurriness when she pointed towards me.

That much I remember. Now I'm just hoping this migraine, and my medicine-induced blurriness, both go away by morning. I've got an early 8-mile work hike [turned out to be 11 miles] with a 72-year-old man who would leave me in the Arizona dust, even on a good day.

Saguaro Spiral

2011-01-17T00:46:00.000-08:00

"The Spiral: A movement down into despair, a motion up into joy, a sojourn inward and back out again." (Stu Jenks)

Tough week in old Tucson town.

This laid-back college town lost six of its own, and almost a seventh. Community heroes were lost and found, just a few seconds apart. The man and woman on the street ache for a sensible explanation of an event that can never make sense. Everyone here is coping in their own ways, trying to make their worlds right again, carrying on.

Me, I make images. Sometimes they make sense and sometimes they don't. I made my first "spiral" image in the spirit of Tucson's favorite nocturnal photographer, Stu Jenks. Stu loves his funky, desert town. He also loves to photograph spirals. And he would really, really love for this world to make sense someday.

Just over the hill from the warm glow of Tucson, there is a county park that is home to the saguaro cactus. The saguaro is a survivor, a familiar figure bearing witness over the Sonoran Desert. She may be 50 years old before she begins branching out. With any luck, she'll sojourn through the darkest of nights to survive for more than 200 years.

The spiral is a five-minute exposure of my red headlamp as I "motion up" as high as I can reach. After spiraling, I light-paint the saguaro ever so slightly to make her stand apart from the Tucson Mountains. There are streaks of seven white star trails falling across the blue night. Each trail is a single star, composed of the spiral exposure and six additional exposures -- each one slightly separated, but part of the whole.

Does it make sense? Literally, no. But then...

The Eyes Have It

2011-01-06T22:53:00.000-08:00

"Life is the movie you see through your own eyes. It makes little difference what's happening out there. It's how you take it that counts." (Dennis Waitley)

The Smithsonian National Natural History Museum in D.C. is on my bucket list, and has been for many years. But for now, the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum near Tucson is my all-time favorite. From a trip there a few days ago, I put together a little reminder about what is probably the most important rule in wildlife photography. I'll give you a hint -- it has to do with eyes.

If your subject's eyes are visible, they should be tack-sharp in 99% of all situations. There's probably 1% of times when you can break this rule, but I can't think of a single example at the moment -- that's how rare it is for a good photograph to have blurred eyes visible.

Recognize anyone in the photo? Here's a few hints. There are 14 birds and a mammal, a fish, a reptile and an amphibian. Among the birds there are three different owls, a hawk, a falcon and a hummingbird. Some of these are pretty hard. If you can identify half, then you're doing pretty good. If you get more then half, you are a biologist -- go back to work.

Give up yet? Answers below.

From top left to bottom right: Harris' Hawk, unidentified fish, White-winged Dove, black-tailed prairie dog, Scrub Jay, lizard, Costa's Hummingbird, Great-horned Owl, parrot, Screech Owl, Barn Owl, Black-necked Stilt, Band-tailed Pigeon, female Cardinal, Prairie Falcon, frog.

Procession of Souls

2011-01-01T00:01:00.000-08:00

“With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.” (Steven Weinberg)

Christmas Eve luminarias at the Tumacacori Mission, in southern Arizona

“…And then after dark we’re all going over to an old Spanish mission where they set out thousands of luminarias," I told her. "It’s beautiful.”

I was on the phone in Arizona, describing our Christmas Eve plans to a dear friend in Montana – a friend who just happens to be an expert on Native American history. She acknowledged today’s beauty, and then she reminded me what yesteryear’s missionaries did to our native cultures. With the best of intentions, they tried to wipe them out.

Some of the glow faded from our evening plans, and my pre-conceived photograph changed directions. Instead of making a warm, romantic image of the old mission illuminated by candlelight – like all the other photographers – I would focus instead on the procession of souls winding past the crumbling remains. And at the last minute, I decided to sacrifice my tripod and leave it behind.

One camera, one lens, one thousand candles.

Each luminaria is one small tea candle resting in sand inside a small, brown paper bag. Pretty dim. I made one test exposure, then set my camera to collect candles and stars. Fifteen seconds at ISO 4500, 16mm f2.8 lens wide open. What I couldn’t control was the flickering of strobes from cameras in front and off to camera left. I counted roughly 1-5 flashes every 15 seconds. This is gonna’ be interesting...

I placed my camera on the ground (no tripod, remember?) next to the main path and built up a small, sandy berm under the lens to aim for stars. As strangers walked slowly past, I knelt before them and and collected their images.

Luminarias and stars framed the mission. Random, distant flashes turned people into ghost images (left and right) against the night sky. Bursts of light closer to the mission made brick silhouettes (center) out of people walking through a 15-second exposure. And one woman (far right) made a light painting self-portrait when she stopped long enough to look at the screen on the back of her digital camera.

The image is simple and complex at the same time, sort of like history. “Pretty” images and stories sell better, but "original" is almost always more intriguing to me. I hope my dear friend approves. And I hope the powers that be can forgive our good intentions, no matter the year.

Show & Tell, Version 4.01

2010-12-12T01:18:00.000-08:00

"Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger." (Franklin P. Jones)

Just this morning, I overheard part of a speaker-phone conversation between my wife and a dear friend. She was explaining to Tracy that, "John reminds me a lot of my son. They're really not strange, but they do have a funny view of the world."

These days, that amounts to a compliment in my book. No doubt, my odd angle on the world gets knocked a little off-balance by some of the funny people I meet in this business. But which came first? I think the two feed off each other. Maybe that explains why I enjoy their slightly off-kilter questions and comments more than I probably should.

Once again for 2010, we present some of the things people said in our booth during the past summer and fall. Enjoy...

*********************************************

"My brother is a really good photographer -- nothing like you." Um, thank you.

"You drew it with crayons?"

"Do you teach?" I like to mentor young photographers, I answer. "What about a couple of dumb adults?" Perfect!

"You take these pictures yourself?" I do. "That must be a fun hobby." Yep, you have no idea how much fun I'm having right now.

"Do you have any portraits? You have such a unique way with animals, I want to see what you do with people." I repeat, I am not responsible for the ban on experimenting with live humans.

*********************************************
"This is the best 'biology degree at work' I've ever seen." Why, thank you. Would you like fries with that?

"Man, I'd be happy if that was the
only picture I took my whole life."

"I'm a photographer, too. You're good. I like the way your mind works." It works, it just refuses to stick to anything resembling a schedule.

"Now when my kids come visit, they ask me, 'Did you get any new John Ashleys?'" Shhhhh. Don't give my wife any ideas.

"Wow. Yours is the first photography booth at this show that doesn't look just like all the others. What do they do, go to art-dot-com and print off the same images?" Couldn't have said it better myself.

*********************************************

"That's what I love about Montana -- it's like driving into a photograph everywhere you go. It's not like Oregon, Oregon is gross." I'll have to disagree -- I like Oregon. Go Ducks!

"That's weird. Did you do that underwater?"

"Do these come from photographs?" Why yes, and that's where they end up, too.

"So, do you have a pelican yet?" He asks me the same question every time, year after year. Sort of like "Groundhog Day" meets "Waiting for Gudot." Apparently, I'm really just a working class rodent stuck in this absurdest play.

"What are these? Are they photos, or are they art?" Hmmm. I guess that you'd be the judge of that.
*********************************************

"How does your mind think of these things? I don't get it" [Many Moons Ago]. I'm a professional. Don't try this thinking stuff at home.

"How does your mind think of these things?"

"This is my favorite booth!" he exclaims, then whispers, "in the whole show!" I'm a little hard of hearing. Can you repeat that a little louder, and face the crowd when you speak?

"Did you just die when you took some of these?" Give me a minute. Let's see. Hmmm. No. No, I think I survived. Yes. YES! I SURVIVED! (Free tip: theatrics works well in certain retail settings. Other times, not so much.)

"Boy, the photographers just keep getting better and better every booth." Okay, no need to go any farther now.

"There's a lot of nature photographers here, but your's is a step above." So, can I hire you to handle publicity?

*********************************************

"Where'd you get that volcano?"

"Where'd you get that volcano? Is that Iceland?" Actually, that's the milky way, as seen from Montana. But they have a similar one in Iceland.

"It's a lot of work to paint something like that." Yes, I guess it would be. And these photographs were a lot of work, too.

"Did you really see this?" Well, technically speaking, the viewfinder went black for 1/500th of a second just at the peak moment. It's so frustrating... [Eagle Talons]

"Is that moon really there?" Yes it is, and they really landed on it, too, but some grumpy people just don't want to believe anything these days.

"I'm so glad you showed me that [three nights of 'Huckleberry Moon"]. I called, 'Bullshit,' when I first saw the photo. I was sure it was done with photoshop." And I'm so glad you're no longer grumpy. Happy to help.

*********************************************

"I don't care how depressed you are. Looking at that photo [Peaceful Lamb] would have to make you smile." Mission accomplished.

"You combined your creative eye
with your heart. I love that!"

"That's a handsome Raven. They usually look like buzzards."

"From a distance that looks like a unicorn" [Dancer, top photo]. Yeh, that's what they look like when they shed their horn in winter. I'm a biologist by training, ya' know. Want me to check your vision?

"That is so cute! I love it!" So there's cute, and then there's beyond cute?

"You've got it! You capture that moment that we all want to stare at." Yeh, just don't inquire about my thousands of outtakes...

"John, you must be a man of immense patience, because without it you'd never get these." I get this comment a lot from people who have tried to photograph wild animals...

*********************************************

"I thought it was
some kind of eyeball."

"Did you really catch them jumping out of the tree?" she asked. I replied, "Well to be perfectly honest with you, I photographed them jumping out of the tree [Leap of Faith], but I just let 'em hit the ground." (Tracy was out of the booth at the time.)

"This will be perfect for my clients." One of several customers who turn out to be psychiatrists...

"I can't even wrap my head around that picture" [Many Moons Ago]. Do you recognize that guy that just left?

"Your work is just beautiful. I wish I was rich," she tells me. I'm ready for this one. "Here's my card. Let us know when you win the lottery."

And finally, the most insightful question I heard this fall. "Do you feel like you're on display?"

Why yes, yes I do. Especially when I'm not talking. But it's almost Winter Solstice, and now this display is temporarily off duty until spring. I need to lug a camera and tripod around in the desert moonlight to get my head screwed on sideways again.

Happy holidays, all.

Toasting our "Bette Bread"

2010-12-08T13:26:00.000-08:00

"Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.” (Dr. Seuss)

We held on to the good stuff as long as we could. But this morning we toasted the last of our cherished "Bette Bread." Cracked-wheat honey sourdough bread -- a simple delicacy that lingers on your taste buds and helps to fill an empty spot in your heart. Thanks, Bette. Peaceful journeys, Grace. We miss you...

Making Peace

2010-11-24T09:48:00.000-08:00

"Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice." (Baruch Spinoza)

Our "Peace" image made the cover of a publication that advertises small Montana businesses (like us!) and promotes the benefits of shopping locally. The multi-layer image features myself and Tracy, with our dogs Abbey and Jodie. Tracy and I were on the front page of the local newspaper a few years back, but this is the first time our dogs have been cover girls. Modeling fees were negotiated in terms of dog cookies.

If you've never worked with layered photographs, then the image can look like some sort of magic trick. But it's really more straight-forward than it appears, and the only "trick" is pre-visualizing what you want to achieve in the end.

From a neighbor's deck overlooking our small (frozen) lake, Tracy guided me from above as I carved out the letters with a snow shovel. Then I placed the camera/tripod on the deck and programmed it to take an image every 30 seconds. All we had to do then was run around and have fun on the ice. After several minutes, I had enough images to select four favorites. A short window of time was important so the lighting would be exactly the same for every image selected and assembled.

We minimized footprints in the snow by entering from the bottom of the "P" and jumping between letters. But the dogs didn't follow protocol, and I had to clone out a few dog tracks.
I posted a short time-lapse video here a while back that shows the basic process.

As you can see, Making Peace does not involve magic, and it might be more achievable than it first appears -- and that's a holiday message worth promoting.

Bulging at the Seams

2010-11-17T22:12:00.000-08:00

Does this lens make my butt look big? Honestly, I've gotta' give more directions next time I hand my camera over to Tracy.

But, if you move me outta' the way, this is a pin cushion view of our brick wall at the "Think Local" holiday store, in downtown Kalispell (140 Main St.). Tonight was the grand opening. (And yes, that is a four-foot-wide Raven canvas.)

If you're looking for original, handmade gifts this year, then this is the place. "Think Local" is a group of Flathead Valley artists who put on two outdoor, summer shows, and pull together the indoor holiday store. In it's second year, the store now features about 30 artists.

The historic building is bulging at the seams with handmade items, everything from pottery and jewelry to fine furniture crafted by my friend, Jim. Of course, if you like creative photography, there's one wall you'll just have to visit...

Lend a Hand, and a Camera...

2010-11-10T07:58:00.000-08:00

"Give what you have. To someone, it may be better than you dare think." (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

It's that time again. Yep, cold and flu season. I've spent my most recent days laying around in agony, croaking like a pitiful version of Louis Armstrong.

(And roll 'em. Fade in Louis', "What A Wonderful World".)

And, it's also coming up on Help Portrait time once again. This year's date is Saturday, December 4th. If you haven't heard, Help Portrait is a volunteer movement of photographers who donate their time and talent to give portraits to people in their communities who otherwise would not be able to afford such a personal gift. You can click on the banner above to read all about it on the HP website.

And I can also tell you that it does not matter what you skill level is. If you can create a decent portrait, that's more than enough. The photographs are just a device for creating something far more subtle. What this event is really about is YOU making the time to CONNECT with a group of funny, loving, interesting people that you've never met, people who live right there in your own community.

You can join a group of volunteers already working in your area, or you can start your own group. Last year here in the Flathead Valley, three of us spent the morning making portraits at a halfway house/shelter, and the afternoon at the local Veterans' Home. A nurse helping us at the VA made an observation that had eluded me -- the portraits from that day would be the last "real" photographs of some of these elderly men and women.

I recently heard a lecture on public radio that described how, after your basic needs are met, happiness is not correlated to wealth. But one of the major indicators of happiness is your level of connections with other people. Well, here's a chance to make a difference in the lives of others, as well as your own.

It will only cost you a few hours, but it will stay with you for the rest of your life. That's a pretty good deal.

Fire in the Hole

2010-10-02T09:42:00.000-07:00

"Leave no outhouse unplundered." (a line from, 'The Young Indianna Jones Chronicles')

I wanted to call this leaning outhouse photo, "Bubba Don't Smoke in the Privy No More," or maybe, "Dangerous Gasses -- No Inhaling." Perhaps, "Roadhouse Chili, the Day After." But I don't know, they all seem so wordy.

This image is from my series of photographs known affectionately as, "Light Paintings That I Don't Know What to do With." I have a growing collection of, um, different images that probably have little commercial value. But for me, light paintings are like episodes of "Lost" back when it was still on TV -- makes no sense to normal people, but a handful of us are hooked anyway.

By day, I was photographing horses at an old ranch on the east side of the mountains, in central Montana. By dusk, I was waiting for the moon to rise over this abandoned outhouse. And that's when the clouds rolled in. I probably would have tried an interval moonbow if the clouds had been anywhere else in the sky.

This exposure was 32 seconds (bulb with a cord) at f8 and ISO 400, 18mm lens on a D700. For light, I lugged around a big-boy spotlight plugged into a jumpstart battery. Overkill for this scene, but it's the light I use most for painting bigger scenes and the biologist in me likes to keep some variables consistent. I shot about a dozen frames before my assistant (wife) declared that it was time to retreat to our camper.

The painting started inside, then back to front. With the light off, I pressed myself against the back wall inside the privy and told Tracy to trip the shutter. I painted inside the door, turned the light off and, closing the door behind me, ran around behind the privy. Brief, glancing brushes on the background debris, then light off again. After dashing off camera left, several glancing strokes across the grass. Light off, race to camera right. Paint a few lines across the outhouse to bring out the peeling red paint, then finish up with a couple of more glancing strokes across the grass.

There are times when I wonder what goes through Tracy's mind, like when she's watching me dance around a dilapitated outhouse in the dark, in prime rattlesnake habitat on the Montana prairies. Most of the time, I try not to think about it.

With the clouds rolling in thick and thin, I wandered between 30 and 60 seconds, trying to blur the clouds but keep the moon from blowing out. All of our frames were slight variations on the same theme, and always in the same order. I chimped the back screen after each exposure to see where I might want more or less light. It's a good idea to work from the histogram when your pupils are adjusted to the dark, because the screen image is going to look extremely bright to your eyes.

I picked this frame for editing for two unusual reasons. First, the flare. Lens flare is normally a bad thing to be avoided, but I warmed up to this one. This flare reminds me of the concussion wave from a big explosion -- which sort of fits our theme here. The second reason is that little blue floating scribble. It's from my dialed-down headlamp, and I noticed it after the first few shots. I made more exposures with and without the headlamp and mostly preferred the ones without the scribble. But in this frame it adds a little strangeness that I like.

Another thing to point out -- the original is sharp, but some painted areas appear slightly blurred. On a windy night, if you paint the same movable object more than once, you'll probably find a little blurring and multiple exposures in those areas. Some of the yellow flowers are blurred because I painted them relatively slowly in the wind. And the weedy stalk at the bottom of the privy door shows a multiple exposure because I hit it with two quick coats of light, but at different times.

Just a little burning and dodging in post-processing, and now this romantic, western painting reminds me of that night spent on a windblown prairie -- just the moonlight on my wife, and me in the privy.

.

Show & Tell, Version 3.01

2010-09-01T11:11:00.000-07:00

"Art is making something out of nothing and selling it." (Frank Zappa)

Eleven art shows in 12 weeks. Three states and 8,387 miles. Four record-setting shows (sales-wise) and only one real stinker. Phewww!

But how can it be September? Last thing I remember, it was early June and I was packing the truck for our first summer show. I've been driving for three months, stretching canvas 'till 2 AM, and framing an endless line of prints.

It's a good thing we have such interesting customers to keep us entertained on our journeys. When perfect strangers walk into our booth and take in my photographs, Tracy and I just never know what might come out of their mouths (summer samples below). My scattershot responses often catch them off guard, as well.

So, what did we do on our first weekend off all summer? We gathered friends, climbed a mountain to pick huckleberries, and then trundled off to the pub for a greasy dinner and a chance to catch up on a summer's worth of gossip. It was a good start for our return to normalcy -- whatever normal may be.

***************************************************************

"It looks like somebody's brain at a Grateful Dead concert," he tells me, pointing at 'Gossamer Wings.' Sorta' makes me wonder about the stories he might share after a couple of beers.



                         ***************************************************************

"These are spectacular. Keep taking pictures." (Argghh. Don't you read my blog? I don't 'take pictures,' I create photographs.)

"Now," he asks seriously, "are these pictures taken with a 'real' camera?" Oh, the directions I could run with this one -- if only Tracy wasn't listening in...

"I go to a lot of art shows and I see a lot of photographers. I usually think, 'I can do better than that.' But not you. You're good." Wow. How's a simple country boy supposed to respond to such a compliment?

"Now, do you do the photography and the painting, too?" Yes, I tell him. I don't even try to explain the concept of light painting to him.

                         ***************************************************************

She's staring at 'First Light.' "I want to cry, that's so beautiful! That's exactly what it looks like." Finally, someone who's seen what I see. I meet so many people who have never seen the red rocks of Lake McDonald, or the colors in the Milkyway, or even the path of the full moon.

"These are fabulous!" another woman declares after buying a print of 'First Light' and two others. "No," she corrects herself, "they're better than fabulous!" Happy to be of service. Tell your friends...

***************************************************************

"These are more than photographs," she struggles for words, "you capture a feeling." Hmmm. That's a good thing, right?

"You have the best photography. It's just so much more intimate than the others." Maybe that explains why I blush so easily...

"I like to see animals when they're happy." I like to see customers when they're happy.

She's decked out in beads and tie-dye. "What do you do, give the animals Valium when you photograph them? They're all smiling." What a coincidence. She's smiling so much more than the other customers...

***************************************************************

"There's a horse with a Buddha eye."
There's a person with a colorful imagination!

"What is that?" asks 5-yr-old girl. I tell her, it's a horse's eye. She looks at me, puzzled, "I didn't know horses had that color mascara."

***************************************************************

"Did you take lessons?" the couple inquires. "My brother-in-law says he's gonna' buy a camera and do this. I told him to take some photography lessons, but he said that cameras these days do everything for you." Go ahead, I laugh to myself, make me look good.

"Thank you," he says in earnest. "I want to shake the hand of a patient man." Just don't ask me to babysit, I reply.

"I gotta' get a trout photo -- so I know my enemy." Sounds like maybe he's lost more battles than he's won.

****************************************************************

That one's a moonbow,

I tell him.

He points to the canvas

hanging next to it,

"So that one's a duck-bow?"

***************************************************************

"Your photography really stands out from the others," she explains. "Take that mountain over there" (points to booth across from me). "You see it in different seasons but it's the same thing over and over again. Your pictures are different. They say something." Comments like this usually leave me muttering, blushing, and staring at my feet.

He asks in all seriousness, "So, you worked for National Geographic?" Comments like this just leave me laughing out loud...

"You really capture the fur and feathers -- they're touchable." That's because I'm the rare 'Montana Zen Hunter,' a pacifist blend of Raven and Coyote... (Hmm, that sounds like a roasted coffee bean mix.)

***************************************************************

"It's raining ducks!" she tells her mom.

"She'll love it," she declares after buying a print for a friend. "Her cats will probably sit under it all day."

"That mom has it figured out. That's what I need to do," she explains while making pushing motions with her hands.

"Yeah," he tells her, "but they don't show the rest of the picture. An eagle comes and eats them." Steady there, John. Bite your tongue. You were once a teenage male, too.

***************************************************************

"I'm a photographer and I don't normally buy other people's work, but your photos are phenomenal." Not only was he complimentary, but he also bought two prints.

"Where do you find these?" Well, they're everywhere. You just have to learn how to see them...

She points at 'Peaceful Lamb' and tells her husband, "Every time you order rack of lamb, I'm going to show you this picture."

***************************************************************

"I've seen that one before. That's from Hubble (the space telescope)," he tells me matter-of-factly. Uh, no, actually I was on planet Earth when I created that photo. "You took that?" Yes.

"That's a real photo?" Yes. "Wow..."

My thoughts exactly, but for different reasons...

**************************************************************

"This is above and beyond what you normally see (at art shows)" Flattery will get you places.

"I'm enjoying your paintings." Don't even go there, John...

"I like your photography," she says. And I like your taste in art, I shoot back. Tracy rolls her eyes -- did he really say that?

.

World on Fire

2010-08-29T12:23:00.000-07:00

"If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion." (The Dalai Lama)

Ladies and gentlemen, Ms. Sarah McLachlan.

One of my all-time, all-around favorite artists. And not just because she's Canadian or because she's so darned beautiful -- though neither attribute hurts. Sarah sings, she dances, she even draws quite well. But it's her lyrics that draw me in. Her songwriting is superb, and her music videos are polished and mesmerizing. And, in the unusual, unpolished video below, she uses words to make a sharp point about our first-world priorities. (Try to ignore the first-world commercials that might appear.)

Instead of spending $150,000 on the video, she spent $15 on it and donated the $150,000 to humanitarian causes. Just a little something to give me pause when I find myself coveting the newest, next-best-thing Nikon produces. (But then, you probably already know about my soft spot for good causes...)

So, what can you and I do ?

.

Challenge Your Creativity

2010-07-10T20:47:00.000-07:00

"I can teach technique, but I can't teach vision." (Mike Cindric)
"Photo gear is good, but vision is better." (Chase Jarvis)

The local art museum recently asked me to write up a brief description of my photography. Hmmm. It sounded easy enough at first, but it became exponentially harder the closer I got to writing. Sort of like describing your life in three paragraphs or less.

But I did it. I boiled photography down to one sentence, and then backfilled with three paragraphs of fluff. I'll fluff it up even more for you.

(My opinions are not intended to bash those camera owners who will feel, well, bashed. Rather, I think this way in order to challenge to myself to hone my own photography. I want to dig deeper and make better images, and I don't want my work to look like everyone else's.)

So, here goes...

As a medium, photography spans a wide range of merit, from a vacation snapshot to an Ansel Adams creation. In this sense, I believe that there are many people who take pictures but only a few photographers who create photographs. And I'm not talking about Photoshop creations. It's a creative imagination behind the lens that makes a few photographers stand apart from the ubiquitous copycats.

Let's say that I wander around in Glacier Park until I find a "pretty" scene -- this will require 2 to 3 seconds. I choose a pleasing composition, carefully select my camera settings (manual, always!), and wait for the best light. But when I press the shutter, I am taking a copy of something that is already "pretty." In this case, I'm just a technician, and there are thousands of technicians with cameras out there. Not much different than some guy pressing the button to Xerox a glossy calender.

In some cases, this is where I begin the image making process. But in many cases, this is where a lot of self-described "photographers" end their efforts. I see these guys over and over at art shows. Oh look, yet another "picture" of flowers in front of Mt. Reynolds in evening light. Gag me with an Instamatic.

Pretty? Sometimes. Original? Not in the least.

I don't understand how some people claim the "photographer" title, just because they can point a camera and press a shutter. A moderately bored orangutan can do that. We can do better, fellow humans. We must, or photography will continue down the slippery slope towards boring irrelevance, the rejected spam of the art world.

One local "photographer" (his claim, not mine) appears to "take" every picture with a 50 mm lens from a standing position, and then whines about digital hurting "real" photography. Well, I believe that a "real" photographer should be able to create compelling images with digital, film, wet plate, pinhole, or even a cell phone. The image depends on how the brain cells are used, not the kind of camera.

Another photographer I cross paths with apparently finds images in photography magazines, and then drives around the country to copy them exactly. Shaft of light in slot canyon? Check. Sunrise in Tetons? Got it. Lighthouse on California coast? Got that, too. There's not a single image in his booth that hasn't been taken and published by a thousand others before him. Not one faint flicker of originality.

On the other hand, I recently met a high school photographer named Alex, and some of his early images are more creative and original than many of the examples above. I always tell aspiring young photographers to go ahead and "take" the easy picture. But that's where they should begin, not end. Keep working it, changing it, and sometimes you'll end up with something rare -- an original photograph! Something that isn't in every other portfolio (and art fair booth) out there.

(Don't even get me started on the so-called "game farms." If your idea of creativity involves forcing incarcerated animals to perform for you then, in my humble opinion, you don't even deserve a camera. Your dollars are creating a demand that forces wild species to live their lives in cages, and you should be strung up by your camera strap. Enough said.)

Like I said at the beginning, this is my own personal challenge and a goal that I often miss. Some days, I only manage to "take pictures," and I'm a so-called full-time professional. I try not to put too many of these pictures out in public view. Instead, I try to keep working an idea until I get to something original, or until I give up.

Okay, a few examples.

On the east side of Glacier Park, Chief Mountain stands apart from the rest. I watched the moon rise past Chief Mountain a few times, and took some pictures. But my images never did justice to the real live spectacle, so I kept mulling it over. Finally, I experimented with a few nights of interval photographs as the full moon cruised silently past Chief. That was it. My final image is not a top seller for me, but in my mind I finally captured a bit of the spirit of the vision quests that the Blackfeet Indians seek from this mountain top.

This photograph was created 20 years after "taking" my first "picture" of the full moon behind this mountain.

Another example. I spent a few years monitoring Bald Eagle territories in Glacier Park. I watched eagles catch fish and ducks, but I'd never seen a photograph that did justice to the skill involved. I pondered, how can I photograph eagles in a way that shows what they must do just to survive? After the image came into focus in my mind, we set about in a canoe, photographing the resident pair of eagles on a small lake.

It took three months, off and on, to get the "Eagle Talons" image out of my head and into my camera. This photograph is one of our top sellers because people have never seen anything like it. Neither had I, before developing it in my mind.

One more moon example. A lookout friend tried to describe a full moon night in a fire lookout, but couldn't find the words. So I set about creating a visual description. I picked Huckleberry Lookout, looked up the azimuths and transects for several nights around the full moon, and started drawing lines on a map. To make the moon look huge, I had to make the lookout small, so I needed to be miles away from the mountain. I started hiking.

On the first evening, a cloudy moon rose to the right of the lookout. So I drove back the next night and changed my location. This time, the moon climbed the ridge and just missed to the left. Rats! So I returned the third night and moved the camera location again. This time it worked. From the first two nights, I learned to anchor my tripod better and shorten my interval. The final, edited photograph at the top of this page -- a photo that I created in my mind before creating it in my camera, many months later.

For two years now, I've been working on a moonrise panorama over yet another mountain. Still not good enough. Still trying -- this one, and a head full of other images that are still just ideas.

"Taking pictures" is easy. About all it takes is opposible thumbs. "Creating photographs" is much harder -- not for technical reasons, necessarily, but because it requires you to think. It requires imagination.

Again, I'm not saying that my images are better than others', or that creative photography necessarily sells better than the repetitious "pretty pictures." What I'm saying is that we should work hard to create our own niches, to be a little different. I don't always succeed, but at least I try.

And if I can succeed from time to time, then obviously you can too.

Behind the brain cells: If my words are less than convincing, listen to a much more eloquent version from guru David "AKA Strobist" Hobby at The Candid Frame podcast #98.

Behind the pinhole: If you need a little inspiration, the quote at the top of this entry is from the website of one of my favorite photographers, Stu Jenks down in Tucson, Arizona. Not only is he a creative photographer and musician, but Stu is also one of the best writers I know. His business card identifies him as, "Nocturnal Photographer, Daytime Writer." Damn, sure wish I'd have come up with that before he did. Should I just copy his creative words?

Do not be an Immortal Photographer, Like I Used to Be

2010-05-21T19:50:00.000-07:00

"Livin' on sponge cake, watching the sun bake, all of those tourists covered with oil..." (Jimmy Buffet's "Margaritaville" plays in the waiting room, while I anxiously await the cancer doctor).

Our big fir trees were shrugging off 30-mph gusts, but a different motion caught my eye. In the approaching storm, a Bald Eagle was flying arrow-straight across the lake, racing downwind between rolling whitecaps and bruising clouds. It was hard for me to follow the eagle and pay attention to a familiar voice on the phone.

"John this is Doctor George." A second adult eagle joined the first, and now they were circling, chasing in the wind. "Sorry about the delay... computer glitch... just got your biopsy results."

Moving to a different window, I spotted a third adult eagle and then a darker sub-adult. Everything suddenly made sense. A wandering eagle had ended up in a place where it didn't belong. The resident pair of nesting eagles was chasing off the trespassing bird, and the sub-adult got caught up in the melee.

"Unfortunately," the doctor hesitated, "it's melanoma." All four eagles disappeared from my view.

I quietly repeated the "m" word, and Tracy -- who knew I was talking to my doctor, and who was parsing my every syllable -- shot me a look. It's the kind of silent communication that happens a lot between two people who have been together almost 15 years. Her look lasted less than a second, but it said a lot.

It started with, "Oh no!"

As in, "Oh no! You haven't finished building our house yet, buster!" I imagined her thinking. "And you have a 17-year-old cat who needs pills twice a day," she continued, "and one old arthritic dog who needs to be lifted in and out of the car, plus the other dog who waits by the door whenever you're out shooting all night. Besides," she concluded, "I'm too tired from training you to start working on a new husband." Then her normal, sweet facial expression returned.

Maybe my diagnosis caught her off guard, but I've been expecting this call for 30 years. Ever since skin cancer fired a warning shot across my brow.

In my early teen years -- in sunny Florida -- I fell in love with two things, photography and water skiing. (Actually three, if you include every dark-haired girl in my school.) With camera in tow, I hit the lake every chance I got. By this, I mean whenever I could convince my best buddy Jimmy (whose parents owned a boat) that I would pay him back for half the gas and outboard motor oil, just as soon as I got some more money. I promise. Jimmy was a soft-hearted soul. (Sorry Jimmy. With interest, I think I still owe you about a thousand dollars.)

Over time, my cameras and my skis -- and my teenage immortality -- silently contributed to one sunburn after another. Like Icarus, I was flying too close to the sun, and there would be a price to pay.

By the time I turned 19, a nurse friend forced me to see her doctor friend, and he promptly carved a chunk out of the top of my right ear. Basal cell carcinoma, a non-spreading type of skin cancer. It seemed like a small price to pay for my sunny stupidity, but it was really a warning of worse things to come.

I eventually escaped from Florida, landing in Montana with a pile of camera gear -- and piles of coats, hats and long-sleeved shirts. So far so good. But newspaper photographers take most of their pictures when it's like, you know, daytime. Though less frequent, I still burned from time to time.

During the Montana summers, I tried to keep covered up and move from shade to shade, avoiding the mid-day sun. I used sunscreen when necessary, but prefered cover to chemicals. But you know how life goes. Some years I forgot to get in to see the doctor. And some days I sat in the sun with my camera all afternoon, forgetting to wear long sleeves or pack sunscreen.

Unfortunately, damage to your skin is cumulative. Let's say in life's lottery you draw the number, 100. So if you had 95 sunny days of youthful indiscretion, then for the rest of your adult photographer life you only get five more days of skin damage before you start developing skin cancers. Kinda' sucks for us freckled folks --- we drew all of the low numbers.

The vast majority of skin cancers are the superficial, non-spreading types, basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma. They're fairly easy to remove, and they don't come back. But they are good forecasters of storm clouds, and you might be flying head-long to some place you don't want to be.

That bad place is melanoma, the potentially fatal type of skin cancer.

Over the years, I've stumbled into a few encounters with wild wolves, lions and grizzly bears. My pulse shot up and adrenalin kicked in, of course, but I didn't feel anything that I could define as fear, because animal behavior is predictable to some degree. But for the last 30 years, I have lived in constant fear of melanoma. It's very treatable when caught early on -- as I did -- but it has a dreadful, unpredictable behavior. Cut it out, and it just might return anyway. Or one or two malignant cells just might float off in your bloodstream, transferring the cancer to lymph nodes, brain, kidney. Bad places.

So if you are a fair-skinned photographer, don't be foolish like me. And if you're not a photographer, take my advice anyway. Forget about tanning. Hold a crucifix in one hand and a garlic braid in the other, every time you pass a tanning salon.

And, do self-checks at home. If available, a little mutual preening is a good pair-bonding experience. My melanoma appeared on the back of my neck, just beyond where I could see in a mirror. Tracy discovered it, and I was soon sitting on a cold metal table, reading a very old magazine and wearing a funny little gown. (How on earth do they expect you to tie a knot behind your back, anyway?)

Also, get checked over on a regular basis by a doctor -- especially if you are fair-haired, fair-skinned, or if you sunburned as a child. Guilty on all three accounts. I've been going to my dermatologist once a year, but now it looks like that will turn into once every three months.

My doc isn't exactly starving -- his wife even has one of my canvas photos hanging on their living room wall. But there are lots of other places besides the doctor's office where I'd rather spend my money. For example, I've long wanted one of these SPF 50 sun protection hats, but I could never justify a lousy 20 bucks for yet another photo accessory. Maybe something like this would fit in your camera bag? It could be a bargain, considering that my last skin cancer bill was a tad over $800.

Now that I've landed in this storm, I can't afford any more foolish behavior under the sun. The doc called me with test results this afternoon, and he'll cut a chunk out of my neck in the morning. But tomorrow's weather forecast calls for just a 30% chance of scattered storms.

I like my odds.

UPDATE: I survived the procedure this morning, but I feel like an extra in a bad vampire movie. While laying face-down on the operating table, I had a captive audience with the doctor and nurse. So I tried selling them on some nice artwork for the office walls. I'd give that effort a 50% chance of success. But the doc told me that, because we caught the melanoma early, I've got a 95% chance of surviving the next five years. But of course, he doesn't know about some of my other foolish behaviors...

This Friday, May 28th, just happens to be national "Don't Fry Day." For more information on that, and on skin cancers, see the Skin Cancer Prevention website.

More: flying (water skiing) like a drunk duck video here.
Cameras, trick skis and girls. Ahh, life was good back when I was immortal.
.

Photos That Changed the World

2010-04-15T19:04:00.000-07:00

Whatever you might think about Getty Images' treatment of professional photographers, this short, six-minute slideshow by Jonathan Klein is still thought-provoking. See if you agree. The video is from TED.com, (Technology, Entertainment, Design) which describes itself as "...a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading." They have lots of other intriguing videos as well, all free to view.

Show & Tell, Version 2.01

2010-03-30T22:22:00.000-07:00

"Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater." (Gail Godwin)

All of you good, intelligent people with cameras out there, I hope that you appreciate my ongoing educational efforts on your behalf. At arts and crafts shows, I try my best to explain to the public what it is that we do with our cameras. Most of these people are pretty sharp, and some of them are pretty funny, but some need a considerable amount of educating.

This is where I come in.

For some reason, dazed people are drawn to my imagery -- sorta' like lemmings to a cliff. I take their hits so you won't have to. This spring I've been shovelling the ~~shi~~, stuff pretty deep during our shows. Hopefully, you will find an educated and appreciative audience when you show your photographs.

Call it public service. You're welcome. I think.

*****************************************

"Are these real?" she asks in total seriousness. I immediately reply, "No, they're fake." Then in a low, quiet voice I tell her, "It's all in your imagination." (This is why Tracy doesn't like for me to do shows alone.)

"How'd you get that one duck to turn around?" he asks. I say without hesitation,
"I didn't. I made all the rest of them turn around." (I never know what will come out of my mouth until it's too late.)

"Are all these photos hand-taken?" she inquires. Okay photographers, 'fess up. Which one of you out there is photographing with your feet? Well stop it! You're making the rest of us look old fashioned.

I point out that her favorites are all photos of baby ducks. "I think it's a maternal thing," I tell her with my professor voice. "I think you're right," she says in surprise. "You're better than Freud."

"That's a wierd picture of the duck," she admonishes me. (Actually it's a grebe, not a duck, and most people think it's funny, not wierd.) I just bite my tongue and smile sweetly -- Tracy would be so proud.

"It's alright now. You know ya' can't please everyone so ya' got to please yourself."
The background music is playing Ricky Nelson's "Garden Party." Suddenly I realize that Ricky is reaching out to me from 1972!

"I could sneak off into the woods with my camera and never get any shots like these."
Me too. That's why they invented planning and practice and research.

"Oh, I love that dragonfly," she motions for her friend to look. But her friend turns away, "Don't show me. I already mortgaged the house."

Tracy says, "My husband is the photographer." The customer responds, "And are you the artist?" So the next time Tracy says, "My husband's the artist." The customer asks, "Are you the photographer?" Some people are sneaky that way, always probing for a crack.

Tracy turns over a matted print to show my bio and mug shot to a lady customer. "He's cute," the customer says. "You should keep him hidden." (My favorite comment! Hey, wait a minute. Is that why we moved to the end of the road?)

"Your photos rock!" But I just want them to roll out of here.

"I just love talking to you," a repeat customer tells me. "It's so..." "Educational?" I offer. "Astronomical!" she declares.

"I have this hanging in my livingroom, and I never tire of it." she kindly tells me. "I saw it from 40 feet away and knew I just had to have it. Thank you for your art, it's just beautiful." You're welcome, and thank you for your good taste.

I explain how my image, "Many Moons Ago," shows the moonset on five consecutive nights, requiring almost a week's work to create one photograph. Not difficult enough, apparently. He challenges me, "Are you going to be more ambitious next time and go for ten nights?"

"C'mere honey, look at that one. If we had space to hang something..." he suggests to her. She interjects, "You could put it in the dog kennel!" Hey, whatever you want lady. I've got dogs to feed, too.

"I used to be a hunter but now I hunt with a camera, basically," the big guy tells me. "I'm moving to Montana and I can't wait. Gonna' get me some pictures." For some reason, now I feel nervous about wearing my cammo.

"Did you really take these?" he asks. Hmmm, which path do I lead this one down -- the boring truth or an interesting if not totally improvised story? "Yes," I confess regretfully, unable to come up with a new story on such short notice. He caught me off guard.

"I love that [Chief Mtn. Moonrise]. I could stare at it all day." Maybe, but she went home with a different image instead.

"That's gotta' be airbrushed, right?" he asks, trying to impress his friends with his intelligence. (Some magazines, not photographers, used to airbrush photos of models. But that became obsolete when Photoshop arrived 20 years ago.) "No," I tell him through slightly clenched teeth, "they're just photographs." He tries to save face, "Well, this is oil here, right?" "Yep, you caught me on that one." (No, not really. That's also a photograph.)

"Did you photograph that, or did you just imagine it?" He's pointing at "Eagle Talons." I look at the canvas print. It's five feet long. Almost two feet tall. Weighs a couple of pounds. I slowly look him over and think to myself, please, please tell me that you didn't operate a motor vehicle to get here.

Even the artist in the next booth over, behind a curtain, chortled when she overheard that one...

"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without loosing your temper or your self-confidence." (Robert Frost)

Wanted: Mega-monopod

2010-03-14T12:46:00.000-07:00

"Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have a right to do
and what is right to do." (Potter Stewart)

Dear Ms. Manners,

My wife and I both pretty friendly. We love fuzzy animals, help elderly people cross the street, and do lots of community service. We have a little photography business that we work very hard at. My question is this, when I’ve spent a long time easing into position to photograph a shy bird, and someone with expensive camera equipment stumbles up behind me to take pictures of the same thing, but scares all of the birds away instead, is it wrong to beat him senseless with my telephoto lens?
-- Sincerely, Slightly Bent Out of Shape

Dear Slightly Bent,

I feel your frustration and I can tell that deep down you are a generous soul, and rather handsome to boot. But it would be wrong to beat this person with your camera lens. The business end of your monopod would be much more effective, and substantially less expensive. You obviously work hard for your money, but if you can afford a nice, heavy ball head, so much the better. Give it a try next time and, please, let me know how it goes. I care.
-- Good luck, Ms. Manners

-----------------------------------------------------------------

While driving our diesel-gulping truck camper a couple of weeks ago, all the way from southern Arizona to northern Montana, I passed a grand total of two cars and three semi trucks (yes, I counted). Based on this rigorous statistical analysis, there are approximately five people between Mexico and Canada who are more mild-mannered than me.

Apparently, they aren't photographers.

Aggression is a basic personality trait that reveals itself in degrees. While photographing birds on our Arizona trip, Tracy and I encountered lots of photographers -- most were considerate, but it wasn't always pretty. (Or maybe the four guys below were "picture takers." These days, most of the people walking around with expensive camera equipment are retired amateurs, not photographers working for a living.)

The first guy was polite. We stumbled across him near a wooded trail that winds along a lakeshore. We waved silently to each other, and then Tracy and I slipped around him so we wouldn't disturb whatever it was that he was photographing. He saw our camera gear, but he didn't follow us.

This guy was the green farm truck that waves as it passes you, the one that pulls over to the side of the highway before making a phone call.

The second guy was slightly annoying. He was weilding a big Canon lens at a small desert pond full of ducks, where Sandhill Cranes return on winter evenings to spend the night. I had waited three years to return to this spot to attempt a photograph of the returning cranes against the full moon -- one of those ideas that gets stuck in my head and won't leave me alone.

Tracy and I were moving through the desert scrub together, a quarter-mile at a time, trying to align the scattershot cranes with the ever-moving moon. Looking back, we realized that Big Canon was following us. Looking at ourselves, I was wearing brown cammo but Tracy was wearing a red coat. Big Canon had spotted us from half a mile away, figured out what we were up to, and decided to join us. Fortunately, he stayed 100 yards back and didn't affect the birds we were trying to photograph.

This guy was the black sedan that rides your bumper, tailgating at 65 mph because he thinks you'll increase his gas mileage. Annoying, but not a big deal.

The third guy was clueless. Tracy and I were hiking into a wooded creek bottom of a popular, birding hotspot. Standing in the middle of my route, a fellow wearing about $20,000 worth of camera gear was working something in the trees. So we detoured quietly around Mr. Rich, circled behind him unseen and moved off several hundred yards into the woods. Well out of view, we started working with a mixed flock of interesting birds. An Arizona Woodpecker and Painted Redstart were feeding alongside a few more common birds.

After some time, the birds began to ignore our presence, feeding below eye level right in front of us. I was carefully working towards a clean background for the Arizona Woodpecker when I heard crunching noises behind me. Suddenly all of the birds flew high up into the tree tops, and I turned around to find Mr. Rich stumbling around a few feet behind us.

"Tracy. We have an interloper!" I spoke much louder than necessary, hoping the guy would get the hint.

No such luck. Mr. Rich refused to respond or even look at me, and was pointing his big lens almost straight up into the bright sky -- more than enough evidence that he was taking crappy pictures. I gathered my gear in a huff and hiked away into a mesquite bosque, where we enjoyed a flock of Bridled Titmouse in peace.

This guy was the yellow Hummer, passing in the no-passing zone, the one who forces you off the road as he casually swerves into your space just before causing a head-on collision.

But the forth guy was the worst. We were enjoying a guided hike with about a dozen happy birders with binoculars. A 60-ish guy with average camera gear walked straight into the middle of our group, interrupting the guide to tell everyone about his photos of an Elegant Trogon -- one of the local birds that we hadn't seen that morning. "I spent hours with him," he boasted. "Got hundreds of pictures. I bet that just makes you feel sick!" I couldn't believe my ears. We'd seen the Trogon a few days earlier -- completely surrounded by cameras -- and we just walked away quietly.

This guy was the red sports car driven by a trust fund teenager, the one who passes you without bothering to move out of your lane, both of his right tires on your side of the painted line.

You know the one.

Letting these guys get under my skin is just one of my many character flaws, I guess. Most people would just blow off these idiots and keep on photographing. I couldn't. I had to leave.

I'm not an aggressive photographer, not one of the "trophy hunters." Getting the rare, good image is invigorating, encouraging. But spending my time respectfully in wild places, with wild creatures, is my reward.

For me, photography is a meditation. Sort of like a quiet Sunday drive on a forgotten backroad to clear your mind. I enjoy the company of a friend or two, but if some aggressive hitchhiker pushes his way into the car, it ruins the experience.

Non-aggressive types like me tend to just walk away and avoid conflict. But the numbers of people carrying cameras is growing exponentially, and you can't teach ethics to some of these guys -- it just isn't a part of their personalities. At this pace, these people with aggressive tendencies will come to dominate most of the hot spots. Bosque del Apache has turned into a photographer freeway, and Yellowstone is not far behind. What's the point in standing in a crowd, capturing the same image as everyone else? I just don't get it.

How will considerate photographers adapt? As for myself, I'll keep searching out isolated backroads. And, I'm also saving up for a big, heavy ball head for my monopod.

Pass It On

2010-01-24T12:32:00.000-08:00

"The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is right now." (Chinese proverb)

A single personal tragedy has had a huge influence on how my life has unfolded. But what's less obvious is how the little things have influenced me and those I've crossed paths with. And sometimes, it's the little things we do that make a difference in the end.

In the beginning, I learned the mechanics of photography from books, classes, and lots of trial and error -- mostly error. But I learned the art of photography from just one man, and his name was Bill.

Bill was my mentor, but I'm not sure if he ever knew it. In his mid 20's, he didn't seem to be aware that he was already one of the best photojournalists alive. The New York Times Corp. owned the daily newspaper where Bill worked, and they wanted to move him up to one of their larger papers. But Bill preferred our small-town paper. His aversion to a "career ladder" was one of the things we had in common.

Somehow, a remnant cigarrette always stuck to the right corner of Bill's mouth, wiggling up and down when he talked, which wasn't often. Ashes dusted the paper's clausterphobic, one-man darkroom. In the darkroom, Bill always wore an untucked, faded and worn, brown-plaid shirt. His brown hair was short and often uncombed, and his left cheek bore faint scars from some difficult event in his past.

I was in high school when Bill hired me to photograph Friday night football games, and then expanded to cover other sports and feature assignments. Later he hired me as the newspaper's lab tech, running the darkroom and processing all of the advertising and editorial film -- everything except for what Bill shot. All the while, I was silently studying Bill's images.

After many months of working every day, and most nights, my own photographs were starting to faintly resemble Bill's style. I was learning to "see" in a different way, and the editor started telling others that I had "an eye." Bill was trusting me with more and more assignments, and I was soaking up his influence and borrowing his equipment. It was the most creative period of my life.

One Forth of July weekend, Bill handed me all of the local assignments. I covered a car show in one town, a parade in another, and fireworks in a third. This freed him up for a fun assignment, riding along with the Sports Editor, three hours down I-75 to Tampa to photograph a professional soccer game on Saturday night. It would be his last assignment.

I knew that my boss liked to sleep in, so I waited until mid-morning on Sunday before calling his apartment. I wanted to borrow his 300mm lens. His girlfriend answered the phone, listening silently to my familiar voice. She hesitated before speaking.

"John," she said in a soft, falling voice, "Bill's dead."

************************************

Twilight falls softly across this small, western Montana lake. Tired and muddy, but content, I'm sitting on broken rocks at the water's edge. Two Loons are watching me across 40 feet of calm, twilight-blue water, their backs spotted black-and-white like my own salt-and-pepper beard. And like me, they're quietly curious. They slowly swim over to get a better look at the middle-aged man with his old telephoto lens. One Loon slowly circles the other, and the stationary one rests its chin on its back and sleeps.

I take two or three exposures of the Loons in the soft light. But mostly I just watch, lost in thoughts that slowly circle around my old mentor. Bill was a natural light photographer, almost never using the strobe that lived in his camera bag. He was at his creative best when photographing in difficult conditions, just the opposite of most of us. After a difficult spin around the fields of biology, my own work had circled back to photography. I wondered if Bill might grudgingly approve of my new images that were mostly shot in the dark. Twenty-eight years after his death, my vision still turns blurry with the memories.

Time to move along.

************************************

For reasons I would never understand, one Saturday night long ago, a stranger decided to get drunk and drive on the wrong side of Interstate 75, head-on into another car. The drunk was uninjured and, after a couple years in prison, he returned to the streets. The two men in the other car didn't fare as well. Our Sports Editor eventually left the hospital after several months and several surgeries, but he never really recovered. Our Chief Photographer was killed instantly.

Bill was 27. I had just turned 19. Bill's exhausted, ruddy-faced parents presented his broken camera to me, an old Nikon F2 that was dented and worn long before the accident.

I still have that camera.

Tributes were written, even one in the competing newspaper. I put together an 8-page, ad-free special section that our paper published, featuring only Bill's images. After seeing the photos, the New York Times' publisher sent me a handwritten note of thanks. Everyone, it seemed, was trying to find some way to cope.

I spent months struggling through the mollassas of shock and grief. As my head slowly cleared, only one thing in my world seemed to make any sense. I needed to pass on some of what I had learned from Bill. It was something that I needed to do as a way to work through this tragedy so I could move on.

The paper interviewed other photographers for Bill's job and, in spite of my youth, they hired me. I was reluctant to turn any duties over to anyone else, so I worked non-stop. The editor eventually forced me to hire a lab tech, and I finally hired a couple of talented freelance photographers to help cover the workload. I enjoyed the comraderie with the young photographers, but I never felt like I was helping them as much as they were helping me.

************************************

Eventually, politics pushed me in a different direction. When James Watt was hired to sell off our public lands, I decided that our dwindling wildlife needed me more than the comfortable readers did. Leaving Bill's legacy behind me -- or so I chided myself -- I moved to Montana and shot for the local newspaper while finishing up a biology degree in Missoula. One benefit of the job was working with photo interns from the university. Even so, I had given up on the idea that I could do much to influence or help them. So after finishing my degree I went to work as a biologist.

Unfortunately, my Park Service bosses were more interested in protecting their retirements than they were in protecting wildlife. These bureaucrats kept telling me, "You gotta' stop working so hard," and even tried to prevent me from doing volunteer work on my days off. After eight years of struggle against the "good ol' boys," I finally left for a new place where I could be productive. I wished the bureaucrats well, and they in turn threatened me not to publish my research. Exploiting a loophole, they bypassed highly educated and experienced applicants to replace me with the town drunk, giddy in the knowledge that he would be one of "the boys" and never accomplish anything. It was a deliberate, in-your-face move.

They didn't even know my history with drunks.

Circling around once again, I eventually landed on this small Montana lake with my collection of aging camera gear. I had decided to combine biology with photography, try to influence how people see and feel about wild places and wild animals. Eeking out a living as a self-employed artist was not for the faint of heart, even in good times. Why am I doing this, I kept asking. Why am I still trying to influence anyone with my photographs? I could earn a decent living in a dozen other ways. Why fight the good fight, why struggle?

*******************************************

The email subject line said, cryptically, "From the 'credit where credit's due' department."

It was from David, one of the young photographers I'd worked with after Bill's death. I was surprised that he managed to find me, hunkered down here at the end of the road. While every step in David's path had carried him higher up the career ladder, my every step was hiking the opposite direction. We lost touch 20-something years earlier, and I had no idea where his camera had taken him.

As it turns out, David had flown well past me as a photojournalist. Shooting for the Baltimore Sun, he had worked his way through assignments from the White House to the homeless, and most layers in between. His surprise email explained how he had recently jumped off the career ladder to venture out on his own, starting a "little" self-employed photography venture called Strobist (www.strobist.com). He now specialized in off-camera lighting and taught photographers at workshops across the globe. His Strobist blog attracts more than 300,000 regular readers, and his written series of free lessons have been translated into four different languages.

I was surprised that he even remembered me, since we only worked together for a short while. And I was dumbfounded at the reason for his email. He was writing to let me know that, in a recent magazine interview, he had named me as an early influence in his photography. He was writing to thank me for helping young photographers like him learn the art.

I read and re-read the article. What did I do that ever helped David? Nothing came to mind. It struck me, did Bill have any idea how much he taught me? I don't know.

Would Bill approve of my wildlife and landscape photographs? Probably not. He was strictly a people photographer. Would he approve of David's use of strobes? Most definately not. Bill always prefered natural light. Would Bill approve of David's ethics of helping the next line of photographers?

Absolutely.

David picked up the torch that I dropped, and now he's using his wry sense of humor to gently remind his readers to "pass it on," to have a positive influence on someone, somewhere during their careers.

Bill didn't get to see my career unfold. But now I get to watch David use his talents to make a difference. Having this privilege is just one of those little things in life that's unexplainable -- and beyond measure.

Winter Skies

2010-01-03T18:29:00.000-08:00

"Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory." (Albert Schweitzer)

Now that it's January, I'm starting to come around to consider whether or not to think about the possibility of maybe trying out a New Year's resolution. I don't wanna' rush into anything.

I'm thinking that a good resolution for me might be to put off procrastinating. If I just wait a little bit longer before not doing things, then maybe I could forget more of the things that I didn't get around to doing.

Like this video, for example. I put it together less than a year ago. Okay, it was 11 months, three weeks and a couple of days ago. We had a rare, clear night sky last winter, so I set the camera (Nikon D200) out on our deck where I could plug it into AC power. (Winter air temps kill batteries in short order.) My planning also included me curling up indoors, under our electric blanket, while the camera did all the work.

Personally, the only major drawback to living at the end of the road (i.e. in Montana) is the preponderance of gray in winter. The short winter days feel even shorter when there's gray overcast for weeks on end. I read about winter meteor showers, and look out the window. Gray. I follow the lunar cycles, anticipate new and full moons and, when I look out the window, still gray.

On the other hand, winter is what keeps Montana from turning into another, say, California. I've worked in some beautiful back country in the Golden State, but I'm thankful that all of the Californians live there and not here. If Montana became that crowded, I'd have to move to the Yukon Territories. They don't have political parties up there, and they enjoy frequent northern lights.

Oh yeah, the video. I almost forgot.

I'd been meaning to put together a short video on startrails for some time. Sort of an educational tool. I find nighttime photos fascinating, but about 90% of normal people (i.e. non-photographers) who see my startrail photos don't have a clue what they are. Meteors? Airplanes? Scratches? So I put this video together during a lull last winter, and then I promptly forgot about it. Sorta' makes me wonder what else I've done.

In this particular video and composite image (top), there are four things going on. Foremost, the Earth is rotating, which makes the stars appear to move across the sky -- the constellation Orion makes a late appearance. Also, the moon rises partway through, which lights the fog rolling in, and across the frozen lake the neighbor's yard light paints the fog orange.

Now, there are two ways to create a startrail photograph. You can take one long, single exposure, as in the good (not great) old days of film. Or you can take a series of short exposures, one right after another, and then combine them into a single composite image. This video is the latter method, but I actually prefer the former.

One long, single exposure seems to give me more variety on star/planet size and color. I don't know why that is. But digital cameras are draining batteries during the entire exposure, so you can only go about an hour (depending on temperature and body) on 4-8 AA's . That's because, with digital cameras, the sensors get hot and start to create all kinds of digital fog and noise. So I also have to use the noise reduction feature in my Nikon bodies, which automatically takes another exposure of equal length immediately following my star trail exposure. That means a one-hour exposure is followed by (approximately) a one-hour noise reduction exposure, and two hours in the cold is really pushing your luck with AA batteries.

Each generation of camera bodies improves on battery life -- my D700 lasts much longer than my D200s -- but we'll still be pushing the envelope until we have a digital body that can go 12 hours or more on one battery.

A creative photographer friend in England tried using the extra grip with dual batteries, and "hot-swapping" fresh batteries into the grip during the exposure. He tells me that it works for him, but I'm not that brave. I don't want to sit out in the dark all night only to find out, later on, that I jiggled the camera halfway through.

So I cheat. I bring a bigger battery. I use an AC adaptor for the camera, plug the adapter into a small inverter, and plug the inverter into one of those car emergency-jump-start batteries they sell at Costco. The cheesy little adapter from Nikon costs as much as the inverter and battery combined, and the whole jury rig runs about $200.

The cheaper and easier method is to combine lots of short exposures into one composite image. My digital Nikon bodies have a great feature called "image overlay" that I use a lot for moonbows, but it's tedious if you are combining more than 10 or 20 images. You can also stack short startrail exposures in Photoshop, but that gets laborious as well.

For a good startrail composite, you'll be combining 200 to 400 images. Consecutive 30-second images means 120 frames per hour, so three hours of trailing requires 360 images. For this size project, I use freeware from Achim Schaller in Germany called, oddly-enough, "Startrails" (http://www.startrails.de/). It's simple, easy to use, and it works well.

For this stacking method, and this video (remember the video?), I use a remote cable to lock the camera down on 30-second exposures. My ISO usually hovers between 200 and 400 (on the D200, higher on the D700), and I usually stop-down whichever lens by one stop to make me worry less about soft corners.

But like I said, the video is just an educational thing. I normally go the one-long-exposure route. I try to make the image more meaningful by including a lake or some recognizable mountain in the foreground. Funky old buildings, church steeples and the like would also make interesting foregrounds, but I'm just not that kind of guy. I am surprised by how many people go through all the work to create a startrail photo just to stick some boring, anonymous tree tops in the foreground.

None of this information is new, most of it will probably become obsolete after one or two more rounds of new camera bodies from Nikon and Canon. I can't wait to see Nikon's response to Canon's latest volley.

I'm an old and forgetful Nikon guy, but if you haven't yet seen what the new Canon EOS 1D Mark IV body can do, prepare to have some brain cells scrambled. The short video, "Nocturne," was shot at ISO 6,400 with a 35mm DSLR! (also see, "Behind the Scenes" of Nocturne). This new body records HD video, and reaches into the stars with a maximum ISO of 12,800. Of course, the price is also astronomical (US $4,999).

Unbelievable. Just imagine the expanding possibilities for startrails and other kinds of astrophotography. Mark my words, there will be an explosion of mind-bending nighttime photography in the next couple of years. Maybe I should have waited a little bit longer and just forgotten about my little video.

Happy New Year, and happy (star) trails to you...

And the Winner is...

2009-12-13T08:36:00.000-08:00

[ 12.18.09 UPDATE: The numbers for Help-Portrait keep rolling in. 40,000+ portraits made by 8,300+ volunteer photographers at 715 locations in 42 different countries. How's that for a volunteer movement that started just four months ago? News release here. ]

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This just in. With 43% of locations reporting, the run-away winners in the Help-Portrait derby are the good people among us who received a professional portrait of themselves -- many for the first time in their lives. In second place were the thousands of photographers and volunteers who made it all happen. At last report, 1400+ photographers and 2720+ volunteers created 17,200+ photographs yesterday, and gave them away with a smile and sometimes even a hug.

Here in the Flathead Valley of western Montana, a team of three photographers braved a winter snowstorm to create 81 portraits in two different towns 15 miles apart. This holiday season the good people at a homeless shelter / halfway house in Kalispell, and at the Montana Veterans' Home in Columbia Falls, will have a little something to share with their friends and families.

Based on the heartfelt reactions from both sides, I think we might be seeing more of this type of behavior in the future. Click here if you'd like to help out or learn more.

CNN coverage here.

Help-Portrait Opportunity

2009-12-08T15:20:00.000-08:00

I almost didn't post this because I arrived late to the game. But here's the deal: If you're a photographer, there's a great opportunity for you to give back to your community this Saturday, December 12th. Here's a quick jump to the official Help-Portrait website.

This Saturday, photographers are volunteering their time and talents to give free portraits to people who otherwise could not afford them. The homeless, the down-on-their-luck, displaced families, women of abuse, foster kids. You name it. Locations include: churches, nursing homes, homeless shelters, children's hospitals, and so on.

Currently, there are over 7,000 photographers signed up to volunteer at over 600 locations in 58 countries. Even our sparsely populated state of Montana has Help-Portrait locations in at least three cities, so far.

This project is for the disadvantaged among us, so it will not take any business away from hard-working portrait photographers. Volunteer photographers will get a chance to sharpen their skills -- and they might just make a difference in someone's life. Isn't that worth a few hours of your time?

Even if you're not a photographer, volunteers are needed to help out at many locations. And here's the kicker -- December 12th is the official day, but no one is going to stop you from doing this at any time, or even multiple times if you're up to the challenge. Are you up to it?

Show & Tell, Version 1.01

2009-12-06T12:17:00.000-08:00

"Life is a long lesson in humility." (James M. Barrie)

Some days I have to wonder about my sanity. Especially those days when I find myself in my booth, acting like an artist, selling photographs at arts and crafts shows. Thousand of people funnel through every show. Perfect strangers walk into my 10' by 10' world and take turns tossing compliments and insults at me. A lot of the comments are both amusing and confusing at the same time.

On balance, it's amazing what an artist endures at these shows. But we do this for a living. Some days, we also do this for fun. And having experience with both species, I'm here to tell you that people are way less predictable than grizzly bears. Some people in my booth speak of the sublime, which I don't deserve, while others seem oblivious to their rudeness, which I also don't deserve. Trapped in a 10-foot square, my mood gets batted around between mountain tops and sewer drains.

Below is a small collection of quotes that were said or overheard in our booth in just one month, November, 2009. Try a little taste of what people feed us at art shows. If you find yourself alternately laughing and scratching your head in bewilderment, then welcome to "mi vida loco."

***************************************************************

"I'm one of those obnoxious people who likes to come look at things I can't afford."

"This is probably egotistical, but your talent is just amazing."

"Boy, you have a lot of luck with your camera." (Boy, just imagine if I had any skill, too.)

"I'm sorry my money's a mess. My mom says that's why my life's a mess."

***************************************************************

"It's an elk," says the wife, exasperated with her apparently unrefined husband. "You want to hang it next to the Kramer picture? Maybe I should beat you more."

"So whud'ya do, smear your lens with worms to get all those fish to come up?" (You know, for some reason I never thought of that.)

"It gives you hope that all things are possible."

"I'm glad I'm not a duck. I wouldn't be able to jump."

"I love it. I put it right by my bed. It makes me so happy to look at it."

"Look at the the ducks in the fence!" (Um, actually it's three images of the same tree, side-by-side. Sorta' thought that might be obvious.)

"What kind of crazy duck is that, a stupid duck?" I tell her, it's a Bufflehead. She replies, "A knucklehead?"

*****************************************************************

"Very nice" she says. "I'm impressed, and I don't say that very often." Her husband agrees, "No, she doesn't."

"Now, are these paintings or photographs?" They're all photographs, I say. "And then you paint them?" (Must. Not. Pull. Hair. Out. Must. Not. Pull...)

"I don't know what it is about your pictures, but they sure speak to me. We must march to the beat of the same nutty drummer." (And I thought I was the only one hearing those voices.)

"I rated your's the best work in the whole fair." (Blush slightly.)

"Did you see the guy over in aisle one? He's got some nice photos. You should go see." (Turn red slightly.)

*****************************************************************

"My dad tried to catch a baby moose, then the momma moose came out. My dad's an idiot."

"Oh, so that's a real place?" (Yes. I don't show my photos of imaginary places to just anyone, ya' know.)

"That's so beautiful, it almost brings tears to my eyes," she says while staring at canvas print of Avalanche Gorge. Her friend chimes in, "When I build a house, I'm gonna' have walls." (Excellent idea, very practical.)

(I often have to explain how I stay awake all night, taking photographs at five-minute intervals to create moonbow photographs. After hearing my explanation,)

"Do you do anything else with your life?"

"Okay, there's smoke coming out of my ears."

*****************************************************************

"Now I feel either very inspired or very envious. I'm not sure which way to go."

"Your work is very literate. You say what you mean very clearly."

"These paintings look so real!" (Yep. I'm very literate, you know.)

"You've got an eye, you've really got an eye." (I've really got two, but that's just between you and I.)

"I took a picture of a photograph once that caught my eye." (He pulls out his cell phone to show me his copy of someone's copyrighted photo. Thanks for stealing, I think to myself.)

*****************************************************************

(Looking at my photo of a Northern Harrier -- a hawk.) "That's probably the owl that got my cat." (She leaves, and the next customer says,) "Probably a Great-horned Owl got her cat. Good for the owl."

"Make that island a boat and you'd have so many men dreaming they were there," she says of one of my Wild Goose Island photos. "We have vivid imaginations."

"Up where we go fishin' we see two, three eagles at a time, but I've never seen five together before."

*************************************************************

"There's a little bit of humor in your things." (Life's a funny thing.)

"You know how many boxes of unframed art I have?" (as she paws through unframed art).

"All the 'ews.' That's all we can say, 'Ew, ah, ew, ah.' Hahaha!"

"Talk to John," mother says to her 8-year-old son as she walks away.

"Do you have any room on your walls?" she asks her girlfriend, but then answers for her. "No, of course not."

**************************************************************

"You don't see too many crows," he says as a compliment, while admiring my Raven photograph. I just smile and say, thank you.

"He is just so handsome!" (I overhear her say. I rush out from behind the booth, much to my disappointment. Oh, you mean the Raven.)

I go into a long explanation of the technique of light painting, and how I used it to create my First Light image. He ponders for a bit, and then speaks his eureka! moment, "I've got a headlamp. I should try that sometime."

"It captures a soul." (But I'll be happy to release it for a small ransom.)

"I love the peacefullness of the lamb because I need the peace in my life." (She walks away without the peace.)

"There's a sheep and lamb like we used to have. Can you smell them?" (Sorry. I probably shouldn't have eaten that burrito for lunch.)

"I'm sorry, but that photo is just precious." (I'm sorry, but I wish it was just irresistable instead.)

**************************************************************

"Your last name is 'Fine'?" (No, but our business name is John Ashley Fine Art Photography.)

"I'm a, well, looking at these photos I wouldn't call myself a photographer."

"You take all these yourself?" Yes mam. "You just sit there forever?" Yes mam.

"You're from Montana? Oh, of course. Where else could you do this?" My thoughts exactly...

.

Photographs and Memories

2009-10-17T21:47:00.000-07:00

"When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not. (Mark Twain)

While writing a recent issue of "Wild & Free Montana," a mental image fell out of a cardboard box in some dark, dusty corner of my memory. That issue was about photographing animals at eye level. And the mental image reminded me of an, um, interesting photo assignment that I had completely forgotten about -- the one where I was almost mauled by a cougar that had wrapped itself around me. Maybe I should explain.

Remember the Lincoln Mercury ad campaign back in the early 80's? It featured a cougar reclining on top of their sign, growling and twitching its tail. I was working for a newspaper in central Florida, and it was a local family that raised those cougars (yes, they had more than one). Car shows and dealerships around the country would hire these guys to parade a cougar around on a chain for the weekend. It was an event -- people got to see a "scary" animal, and this family got to make a living.

But then, up in some northeastern state, the cougar mauled a kid who got closer than he was supposed to. An off-duty cop shot the cat, and the kid survived. And that's when my newspaper entered the fray.

Back in Florida, the mauling story pounded out of the bulky Associated Press teletype machine and landed in the copy editor's hands. This was back in pre-history (1982) and my memory is pretty blurry. But somehow the editor added some copy to the AP story that potentially slandered the cougar's owners. Bad day for the kid, bad day for the cougar, and bad day for my employer.

The family met with the publisher and threatened to sue. Over the course of several intense meetings, they came to a tenuous agreement. The lawsuit would be dropped if the paper published a feature story that was "positive" about the family and how well-treated and safe their animals were.

Guess who got sent. It should have been that copy editor, but it wasn't. Instead, they sent a perky young woman reporter and me. Actually I had read all about the rare Florida panther and was curious to see a captive cougar up close.

(My prints from that day are long gone. But they had a menagerie of other big animals as well, and I do remember that the photo most popular with the editors showed a Bengal tiger swimming with its buxom woman owner in a wet t-shirt. Some things never change.)

But back to the cougar. While the reporter was busy interviewing the guy, I slowly approached the cougar and started taking pictures. The big cat was calmly laying in tall, green grass on what looked to be about 20' of chain, and the chain was anchored to a big steel stake in the ground. His tail started twitching slowly.

You see where this is going, don't you?

Photographing a cougar from a standing position makes it look smaller, like a house cat. So I dropped down closer to eye level for better photos, and crouched left, right and forward. All of my attention was focused through the lens, and I felt pleased that the cougar was now staring at me, eye-to-eye.

Then I stood up.

The cougar was on me, mouth at my neck, front legs wrapped around my shoulders, before I made it off the ground.

Now if you freeze the frame here and ponder the situation, the first thing that comes to mind is, HOW STUPID ARE YOU? The next thing is, how should one react in that situation? If it was a wild mountain lion, you would try fighting it off. But this was a trained cat, raised in captivity. What would you do?

I froze.

Camera slung over one shoulder, camera bag dangling from the other, and a 140-pound cougar draped in my arms. In my mind's eye, I can no longer see what happened immediately before or after. But I can clearly see myself standing there, hugging this cat, frozen in time and in place like an old black and white photo that you haven't looked at in years.

Almost as fast as the cat, the owner charged into the cougar and smacked it with a short length of chain. The cougar pushed off me and lept back into the grass. I slowly backed away and surveyed the damage. I didn't have a single scratch. But the cat got wailed on, and the reporter was suffering from a serious case of eye-popping.

It was an awkward moment, given that we were there to write a "positive" story about how safe these animals were. But we were supposed to be professionals, so by the time we had driven an hour back to town, we were able to play it down and dismiss what might have happened. Still, as word slowly leaked out around the newsroom, I think the reporter and I gained some stature. We did our jobs, after all, and no one got hurt and no one got sued.

They got their story, and I got one of my own. It's one of those old, fading images that you store in a box in some dusty corner, until you forget that it's even there.

Coupon Offer

2009-09-07T10:09:00.000-07:00

If you're driving around Montana this weekend, looking for a home, be sure to check out the "Parade of Homes" here in the Flathead Valley. And especially, make sure to visit #9, "Skier's Heaven," up at the Big Mountain Ski Resort. It's a brand spanking new, rustic little ski-in ski-out, 5 bedroom, 6 bath, 4420 square foot beauty, with custom everything everywhere. But the best part is that it's spruced up with some of our canvas prints. So carefully inspect the walls, and if you decide that you love our photographs, this weekend only you can purchase them for just $1.1 million (negotiable), and we'll throw in the house absolutely free. Just our way of saying, "Thanks." Be sure to mention coupon code IGOTTAHAVEART to receive this special pricing. Some restrictions apply, taxes and snow plowing not included, offer not valid in all time zones, see house owner for details.

Rusty, the Red-necked Whatever

2009-09-01T13:19:00.000-07:00

"I hope you love birds too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven.” (Emily Dicikinson)

It was a hot and dusty week here at the end of the road. The three-man construction crew had been working on our siding everyday, always starting before 8AM to beat the heat. I don't know about you, but it's usually past noon before my brain starts firing on all three cylinders. So at first, I thought maybe I had mis-heard the elder construction guy.

"Yep. And we saw an injured loon on the road coming in," he said in passing while setting up the table saw, like that was something that he always sees on his way to work.

"A loon. Really?" I repeated, wondering what he had really said, and why my coffee hadn't kicked in.

"Yep, a loon" he repeated. "We tried to catch him. Mike chased it around the truck, but that sucker could really run." I pictured three large fellows running circles around their pickup, chasing a short loon on a dusty gravel road, half a mile from the nearest water. It was an interesting image.

Wait a minute -- the coffee was starting to work. Loons have trouble even walking on solid ground. Their legs are set so far back on their body that they just sort of push themselves along. I tried shaking the cobwebs out of my ears.

"So," I asked slowly, curiously, "what makes you think it was a loon?"

"Oh, I know loons," he declared, with the conviction of being the eldest person present. End of discussion.

That's how my day started. So we found a big, blue plastic tub with a good lid, and got directions on where to look for a loon ("Just past the mailboxes, before the hill."). Three of us piled into the car to go roadside birding, and the crew fired up their saws and started making more dust.

I parked the car in the middle of the reported loon habitat, and we started walking the roadsides. Sure enough, in short order our friend Bernadette found the bird laying still in the tall grass, just a few feet off the gravel. I slowly approached from behind with my big, thick fleece shirt and, once in position, I asked Bernadette to stand in front of the bird and wave her hands to get its attention. One quick pounce, and the fleece-covered bird was struggling in my arms.

We made a quick examination. The wings were small but uninjured, and both legs were strong while kicking me. The sharp beak was in working order, the eyes were clear and focused, and there were no visible body injuries. Not even a ruffled feather. The bird seemed normal, except perhaps for its decision-making abilities. I set him in the plastic tub, and Bernadette held the lid down while I slid my arms out. We drove back to the end of the road, home to our little lake.

"Red-necked Grebe," I yelled to the crew while carrying the bird in the tub through the construction zone and into a quiet corner of our basement. I named him in honor of our friend who's having surgery to rescue him from years of back pain. "Rusty, the Red-necked Grebe." It sounded better than, "Rusty, the Sort-of-loon-like Whatever Bird."

More than an hour later, the local bird rehabilitator still hadn't returned Tracy's call. Since Rusty didn't have any external injuries, we decided to release him in the lake rather than hold him captive any longer. I slipped my arms back into the tub and, holding his long beak with one hand, carefully pulled him out. I crouched low and set him in the water, and his powerful legs started kicking away. When I let go I expected him to immediately run, swim, or fly away. Instead Rusty spun around to face me, and then lunged. He missed me, but he made his point and restored his injured dignity. Rusty then casually turned back towards open water and slowly swam away. So much for saying, "Thanks."

The night before we met Rusty was dark and moonless. Every now and then on dark nights, flying loons and grebes will mistake roads for rivers or skinny lakes, and land there by mistake. On water, they have to run across the surface in order to take off. But when grounded, because their legs are so far back, they can't really run to get airborne again. We suspect that one wrong judgement turned Rusty into a grounded grebe.

Rusty stayed at our little lake for the next week or so. He spent lots of time preening and swimming, and lots of time diving and fishing. We felt relieved to finally see him catch and eat a good-sized trout. After surfacing with the fish, it took Rusty all of five seconds to swallow it whole. And when we last saw him, Rusty was acting like a healthy loon, er, I mean grebe.

Whatever.

.

A Wildlife Emergency

2009-07-19T21:35:00.000-07:00

"Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom..” (Bertrand Russell)

"We have a wildlife emergency!" my friend declared. She was ringing my doorbell with her 11-year-old son, both of them looking worried and anxious. Possibilities flashed through my mind. Did someone hit one of the neighborhood fawns? Was the injured Loon back again?

No, this was a bat emergency. They had discovered a blind and naked baby bat, still alive, but laying helplessly on the neighbor's deck in the middle of a summer's day. I looked down at the two-inch long bat pup, then up to the two hopeful faces watching my every move, and felt my heart sink.

When a child learns empathy and wants to help an injured animal, how do you explain to him that many baby animals don't survive to adulthood? I put on my "serious biologist face" and tried my best. In a good year, I started, maybe three-quarters or more of the pups in a bat nursery will survive to become full-grown bats. In a bad year, less than half of them survive. "The animal world is really, really tough -- and that's perfectly natural," as long as we don't do things to make it even harder on them. Inside, I doubted that my rationalization was helping, but maybe I was planting seeds for the future.

There was no good solution. An abandoned bat pup is unlikely to survive for more than a day. But I had a young version of myself by my side, and we had to do something. I couldn't find any sign of bats in the house where the pup lay. So with gloved hands, I collected the purplish pup and carried her next door, where I knew that bats lived. We placed her near the roof ridge and hoped for the best.

In the summer, pregnant bats move into warmer (thermally stable) locations, like metal roofs and attic spaces, to give birth and raise their young in nursery colonies. Like us, bat mothers usually only have one baby per year. They nurse them with milk for about six weeks. The pups grow quickly and can fly at about three weeks, but they normally stay in the nursery until weened. Sometimes, a pup crawls or falls out of the nursery. Sometimes, when disturbed, the pup clings to mom and she tries to move it to a new location. Either way the pup is pretty much doomed. (This is why bat exclusion measures should never occur in the summer.)

In the fall, most bats will move out of human structures and migrate to thermally-stable caves ("hibernacula") for hibernation. If disturbed during hibernation, they burn up the equivalent of 20-30 day's worth of stored energy. So undisturbed nursery and hibernacula locations are perilously critical to bat survival.

It's revealing that, in locations where the native bats are large and easily seen, bats are cherished and sometimes even revered. But in places where bats are small and hard to see -- like North America -- bats are feared and persecuted. And that can lead to strange behavior in unexpected places.

Back when I worked in Glacier National Park, I attended a yearly meeting with most of the park's Rangers. These are guys and gals that I hold in the highest regard. But when a bat appeared at one such meeting, the Rescue Rangers left me shaking my head. One after another, the room quickly filled with highly-trained men and women swatting and throwing things at the frightened bat. One very intelligent Ranger friend opened the door and repeatedly threw a towel outside. "The bat will chase it out the door!" he yelled. Well, I've watched thousands of bats in the wild, and not once have I seen one chasing a towel.

The Rangers stopped for a moment, and the bat landed on a wall. I quietly placed an empty coffee can over the exhausted bat, slipped a piece of paper between the can and the wall, and safely trapped the bat in the can. Another ranger friend cheered, "How many Rangers does it take to catch a bat? Ha! They can't do it. All it takes is one biologist!"

In another bout with the Park, I tried to get the Chief Naturalist interested in Glacier's native bats. During the popular summer-time campfire talks, the seasonal Naturalists often get upstaged by bats feeding on the mosquitoes that are in turn feeding on the audience. With my own money, I bought a set of slides showing our native bat species. I then donated the slides to the park collection so the Naturalists could incorporate bats into their educational slide shows. I also wrote a detailed memo about potential funding sources for buying a "bat detector" (detectors amplify bat echolocations so humans can hear them). I figured that the campfire kids would be fascinated to hear the bats feeding around them. My efforts went absolutely nowhere. Apparently, native bats were not cute and cuddly enough to mention to park visitors.

The Park Service is required by law to preserve each park's natural resources -- even bats -- for future generations. But just try explaining this to the dusty bureaucrats running some of the park units. Glacier has lots of old buildings within the park boundary. And this means that lots of excellent bat habitat is infested -- with park employees and visitors. So I volunteered to take the rabies vaccination shots, at a cost to the park of about $100. Then the park would have a trained and protected person to respond to bats in buildings. You can guess how well this went over. The native bats living in Glacier Park were lumped into "pest management" instead. It takes some people a long time to learn how to change directions.

You can learn all about bats in short order at the links listed below. I won't go into the many ways in which bats benefit all of us -- even the people who still fear them. Suffice it to say that we really need bats if we want our children to live in a healthy environment. Right now, our native bats are suffering a "wildlife emergency" of their own, and they really, really need our help.

White-nose Syndrome (WNS), is named for a white fungus that appears on the faces of infected bats. Since its discovery in a single New York cave in 2006, WNS has killed more than a million hibernating bats. Little brown bats appear to be hit the hardest. WNS is rapidly spreading south and west, and it's about 95% fatal. A number of bat species risk extinction within a matter of years -- unless we find a cause and a solution. To learn more about WNS and how you might help, read more at the Bat Conservation International website.

Bats and humans can peacefully coexist -- we did so for generations. As you read this, a handful of bat biologists are struggling to find a solution to this new wildlife emergency. Our children will be watching our every move.

Bat Links:

What to do if you've found a bat
Bat Conservation International
Bats of Montana

Bonus Years

2009-06-26T18:56:00.000-07:00

"It takes a long time to become young.” (Pablo Picasso)

Much to my amazement, I awoke the other morning to find myself 47 years old. Amazed because, while still a teenager, I decided that thirty was really quite old and there was no way I'd ever last that long. Upon reaching my 30th birthday I declared that, from that day forward, I was living on bonus years. I suppose it's been all gravy since then -- in spite of what it might taste like from day to day.

I don't know why, but all of my closest friends are older than me. Like my friends, Tracy is, um, wiser too. But she always points out that we are the same age for half of each year. We never seem have enough time for our small circle of friends -- an Earthy group of teachers and Park Service types -- and it's a rare encounter whenever we round up the whole gang. At a recent birthday gathering, Tracy was complaining (in a loving way) about some of the hazards of being a photographer's assistant. I listened silently as she told her version of what happened the other night up in Glacier National Park.

I enjoy the challenges of night time photography far more than Tracy does, but she's a good sport about it. We started work at about midnight with a little one-mile, full-moon hike through bear habitat so I could try a light painting project that I'd been thinking about all winter. We took turns calling out, "Hey Bear! Hey Moosey-moose!" Volume matters more than content. I much prefer silence, but it's not good to surprise a big, wild animal -- especially in the dark.

After the light painting, we moved on to photograph the moonset over a lake. How romantic, I thought. After the moon dropped below the horizon, the sky was dark enough to try for star trail photos on yet another lake. By then it was 3:30 AM, and Tracy was half asleep. But it was still pretty dark, so I wanted to squeeze in a little more light painting at a spot where a roaring creek crosses under the road.

Tracy stood beside the bridge and slightly below the road, and I was upstream and uphill, painting light onto my subject with a big flashlight. Her job was to trip the camera shutter open, watch a stopwatch for 60 seconds, and then close the shutter. While she sleepily watched the seconds count down, a commotion caught her attention. "Hey Bear!" I'm yelling while clambering down the hill towards her, with my bear spray drawn. That seemed to wake her up.

Just beyond Tracy, in the growing twilight, an adult grizzly bear was strolling silently along the road. I was angling to get between the bear and Tracy to make sure it wouldn't turn down the trail and encounter my favorite photography assistant. Tracy drew her bear spray and jumped to my side. "Hey Bear!" we yelled in unison.

In spite of all our yelling, the bear paid no attention to us what so ever. It just wanted to cross the creek without getting wet. After it reached the far side of the bridge, I turned to head back to work. "Did you close the shutter?" I asked. Well, it must have been the lack of sleep because, when she saw the bear, Tracy forgot all about the photograph we were creating. I closed the shutter myself while Tracy stared intently down the road. "I don't suppose you'd want to hike down the trail to the waterfall," I tried. She declined. Instead, she decided that we would take the rest of the night off. She was shaking, and it wasn't even cold.

While Tracy was recounting the bear encounter with our friends, I was watching out of the corner of my eye for any sort of reaction from our ranger friend, the one who gets called when there's a bear incident in the park. He just shook his head and said, be careful, "I don't wanna' have to patch you up."

So here I am, still around after 17 bonus years, still amazed. And my old friends -- like the other wild animals -- still make the encounters special. That, it seems to me, qualifies as time well spent.

Intermittent Reward

2009-05-28T18:17:00.000-07:00

"Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.” (Samuel Johnson)

Late May already. Hard to believe. The last pile of snow is finally gone from the shady corner of our driveway. Hints of snow still hide in the shadows on the mountainside behind our house, but they’re getting harder and harder to find. As snow gets replaced by birds and flowers, spring is rushing in like a lion.

Spring is nirvana for a naturalist and photographer, but frustrating at the same time. For every pair of nesting birds we follow, there are 20 more that I want to spend time with. The season has turned into a dawn-to-dusk, seven-day-a-week marathon, and even our dogs are exhausted from all of my running around.

I’m exhausted, and also a bit perplexed. I was raised to believe that the harder you work, the more you will succeed. But sometimes it seems like the harder I try, the more average my work becomes. I ache to be everywhere at once, camera in hand, trying to understand the wild animals and natural phenomenon that surround me. But in springtime I feel constantly rushed, trying to force photos out of the wrong time of day, in the wrong kind of lighting, or during the wrong weather. Even the clouds seem to be rebuffing my efforts.

I’m finally starting to understand how to interpret the cloud cover forecasts. For nighttime astrophotography, I need mostly clear to perfectly clear skies. Otherwise only the brightest stars are visible, and the moon plays hide and seek in the clouds. So when the weatherman forecasts 20% cloud cover between midnight and 6 AM, a reasonable person might expect something close to an 80% clear sky. Wrong. It’s more akin to how the wind blowing east is called a west wind.

We mis-interpreted the 20% overnight cloud forecast a few days ago. Loaded up the car with camping gear, about 50 pounds of camera gear, and the dogs. We drove four hours to position the night sky against the mountains in a pleasing, pre-planned manner. Then we watched the clouds toy with my hopes. Eighty percent clouds at sunset. Down to 60% by midnight – maybe it’ll work out? Nope. Back to 80% by 3 AM, raining by sunrise. No photos whatsoever.

There are better things to do at 3 AM than watch the clouds gather. Sleep, to name just one. But spring is short in Montana, and we can sleep next winter. Time is of the essence, and so we struggle on.

I was heartened recently to read about the struggles faced by some of the top bird photographers out there. It seems that spending half a day crouched in a blind and not getting “the photo” seems to be the norm. The rate of “keepers” is reportedly between 2 and 5 percent, in spite of the advances in camera technology.

Photo blinds always feel cumbersome to me, and I prefer to use stealth and patience. And my few autofocus lenses are always in manual mode because I’m still more accurate than they are. But still, I sometimes spend entire mornings or evenings in my well-worn neoprene waders, feeding the local mosquito populations while sitting in a muddy marsh at the far end of our lake. More often than not, I slog home without an emotionally meaningful photo.

But intermittent reward is more addictive than a reliable reward. (See, I was paying attention in that college psychology class.) And every now and then those muddy hours pay off.

Half an hour after sunset, I started working my way out of the marsh, heading toward the lakeshore and the forested trail that leads home. As I wobbled clumsily across the spongy bog, the resident Loons out in the lake noticed me and swam over to see what this mosquito-clouded creature was all about. I sat down on the rocks at the water’s edge. The Loon pair swam slowly towards me until we could look each other up and down. Eventually, they lost interest in me and my quiet questions. They circled each other twice, rested their heads on their backs, and slept. I mostly just watched, but also took a few photos in the blue twilight, at shutter speeds that they’ll tell you are way too slow for a 500mm lens.
Our quiet meeting didn’t seem to move the Loons much, but I sure enjoyed it. Still, I didn’t have high expectations for photographs taken in the dark without a tripod. But you know what? This time it worked. This time, the blood and mud and struggle turned into something that is timeless. And that is exactly the rare thing that keeps me going.

The Occultation

2009-04-22T16:48:00.000-07:00

"We may go to the moon, but that's not very far. The greatest distance we have to cover still lies within us.” (Charles de Gaulle)

We got the dogs out of bed at 4AM and drove up to Glacier Park so we could set up the cameras before dawn. Just before sunrise, a crescent Venus was set to dissappear behind the crescent moon, only to reappear on the other side an hour later. It was a rare "occultation," and we were determined to see it.

We picked a location where the moon would rise against a backdrop of snow-capped mountains. On this morning, however, they were also cloud-capped. Looking due east, where the moon would clear the horizon, there were clear skies to the north and clouds to the south. And not even pretty clouds, but dull gray ones.

We crossed our fingers. But by the time the moon and Venus emerged from the clouds, they were way above the horizon. So much for my snowy mountain scene -- and a couple days of planning. But it's still pretty special to sit on a pre-dawn mountainside with your family, and watch a natural spectacle unfold.

The photo above is a composite of images taken at two-minute intervals. Shortly after Venus dissappeared, the clouds returned. The moon eventually climbed back out of the clouds, and we did get to watch Venus reappear. But by then the sky was bright blue and the moon was just about impossible to see. So we did what any starving artists would do -- we went for a big breakfast at one of our favorite eateries.

Studly Ducks

2009-04-17T17:21:00.000-07:00

"Use what talents you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.” (Henry Van Dyke)

[ Note: This is a recent article that I wrote for the local Audubon chapter newsletter and local newspaper. Place names are western MT locales. ]

There are only two serious contenders for the most dazzling duck in western Montana. The male Wood Duck and male Harlequin Duck are easily our most decked-out waterfowl. But other than looking outrageously handsome, there are surprisingly few similarities between these two Montana natives.

Trying to describe the feathers on these fellows is like trying to describe a box of crayons. A male Woody wears iridescent emerald head feathers, a white polka-dotted mahogany breast, and smooth almond flanks. The male Harley sports a midnight-blue body, chestnut flanks, and white patches that vary in shape from round to crescent. The females and young of both species are mottled brown, and the female Woody wears a striped, white eye patch while the Harley hen has a round, white cheek patch.

Think of these two smallish ducks as Montana’s “common cosmopolitan” and “rare recluse.” While Woodies are pretty common in summer, Harleys are twice as rare as grizzly bears. Woodies spread out across most riparian habitats, but they prefer the slow waters of beaver ponds, creeks and oxbows. Harleys are just the opposite. They spend the nesting season on just a handful of fast-flowing Montana streams, though they’ll occasionally show up on lakes and rivers during migration.

Some Woodies stick it out and stay in western Montana year-round. But starting in early April, most of them migrate up from southern California and Mexico. Harleys, on the other hand, migrate east-west, and begin arriving in Montana by late-April from the Pacific coastlines of Oregon, Washington and British Columbia.

Woodies nest almost exclusively in tree cavities, with a strong preference for naturally occurring holes. They don’t do any excavating, but they will occasionally use old Pileated Woodpeckers cavities. They’re also quick to move into man-made nest boxes, when properly sized and placed. Countless Woody nests have been documented, and the nest trees might be located half a mile or more from the nearest body of water. Not so with Harleys. They are almost exclusively ground nesters, and most Harley nests are well-hidden within just a few feet of the water’s edge. They are incredibly secretive while nesting. In Montana, you can count the number of reported nests on one hand -- and still have a couple of fingers left over.

Female Woodies will often nest as yearlings, but most female Harleys won’t even attempt to nest until they are 4-5 years old. While some of the Woody hens return to nest in the same wetland where they were born, pretty much every Harley female returns to her natal stream for nesting. Woodies lay twice as many eggs (10-15) as Harleys (5-7), and some Woodies even manage to raise two broods in a summer. Harleys never attempt more than one nest per year.

Once the females start incubating eggs, the males of both species leave the nesting area and do not help with raising the young. Once apart from their mates, the adult males of both species will molt their colorful breeding feathers and wear a more female-like plumage for rest of summer. Male Harleys migrate back to the coast in early summer, before the eggs even hatch.

The eggs of both species hatch after about 28-30 days of incubation, usually in late June and July. Both species are precocial, so mom will guard her chicks but she won’t feed them. All of the downy chicks start out eating aquatic insects, but after about two weeks the young Woodies begin a gradual change-over to the mostly vegetarian diets of their parents. The Harleys will stick to a carnivorous menu.

Juveniles of both species are able to fly at about 6-8 weeks old. Their first set of real feathers -- for young males and females alike -- will look a lot like their mother’s plumage. The young Woodies will eventually wander away from mom while learning to fly. They’ll disperse in all directions before turning south for migration between mid-September and early November. Here in Montana, most of the young Harleys will get left behind on the natal streams when their moms migrate back to the coast in August or September. A month or two later, the young Harleys somehow know to migrate west to a place they’ve never been before. They will end up on the same rocky coastlines with the adults, but they won’t reunite with their parents or siblings.

Woodies are monogamous during a breeding season but can change mates from year to year. Once paired, Harleys mate for life. Harley pairs reunite on the coast and spend their winters together, and in the spring they arrive in western Montana together.

Spring is by far the best time to look for both of Montana’s most handsome duck species. The more common Woodies can be spotted in many local waterways, including Spring Creek, Ashley Creek and McWenneger Slough. But the easiest place to see them is Woodland Park in downtown Kalispell. Just about the only way to see the rare Harleys in spring is to drive as far as you can up the Going-to-the-Sun Road in Glacier National Park, then park your car and hike or ride a bike even farther. Keep a keen eye on the swirling waters of McDonald Creek, and prepare to be dazzled.

Spring in Bits & Spurts

2009-04-06T21:11:00.000-07:00

"If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.” (Anne Bradstreet)

Our calendar flipped past the first day of spring and right on into April, but the snow berms still looked the same around our house. So after five straight days of snow and dull gray skies, we made a deal. If Tracy finished with the taxes that she’s been avoiding, and if I finally finished grouting the tiles that I had laid weeks earlier, then we would take a whole day off to go searching for signs of spring.

The forecast called for sunshine, and the sky was full of stars when we lifted our old dogs into the car before dawn. We quickly dropped in elevation and headed south toward the far end of the Flathead Valley. We weren’t in a big rush, but Highway Patrol Officer Denton did turn around just to visit with us and suggest that we slow down. Because of this, the sun peeked over the mountains before we were halfway there. After a few golden moments, the sun climbed into a growing bank of clouds. As the coffee started kicking in, I realized that the clear sky was fading in our rearview mirror, and we were driving into the gray curtains of snow clouds. Big, wet snowflakes – our first sign of spring.

We were aiming for the National Bison Range, but a small group of Tundra Swans flew past our windshield and lured us onto the muddy back roads of Ninepipes National Wildlife Refuge. The main reservoir had iced-out and assorted ducks and geese were spread across the water. On a small island, four Bald Eagles studied the ducks from their perch in an old, gray cottonwood snag. On the adjacent island, another old cottonwood had finally fallen down, and the entire island was covered with noisy gulls staking out gravel for future nest sites.

The government built the two islands thinking they would make great duck nesting habitat, but the gulls and Cormorants promptly took over. Once when I was in college, I helped count and age all the gull eggs on those islands, and we had to wear full raingear to protect us from the gull’s best defense – non-stop guano bombing runs, with us as moving targets. Now I’m supposed to be older and wiser, so I appreciated the gulls’ tenacity from the warmth and safety of our car.

Once again, we drove towards the Bison Range only to be lured away by birds. We pulled off into the mud and let the dogs out to stretch. On one side of the road, a Short-eared Owl sat on a post in the middle of the field. On the other side, about 500-800 Northern Pintails were feeding in last year’s fallen brown grasses. Every five minutes or so, someone in the group would decide to try elsewhere, and half the flock would circle the sky for a minute or so before landing again within duck-walking distance of where they started.

Things were much quieter when we finally reached the Bison Range. Small groups of white-tailed deer ignored us from the creek bottom, and the bison were little brown dots way up on the hillside, just below snowline. A group of pronghorn does and yearlings worked the middle hills while a lonely buck grazed single-mindedly down along the road. A Golden Eagle took notes from a power pole.

It would have been almost silent if not for the Meadowlarks. The original megaphone must have been inspired by a Meadowlark. The male’s song hits you like it’s coming from three feet away, but after scanning and searching you finally find the yellow-suited virtuoso perched on a rock 100 feet away. Even if it’s still snowing, a singing Meadowlark means that you have found spring.

We also found some old friends who were out looking for spring, and they directed us to a birding hotspot back up near our end of the valley. We arrived at Church Slough to find hundreds of Tundra Swans and American Widgeon spread out on the far side of the river bend, where the ice had melted. We watched the show for hours as small groups of birds flew up and down the river.

At least one adult Bald Eagle and six sub-adults were also working the area and chasing each other around. Every so often, one eagle would make a slow pass over the ducks, low enough to frighten them into flying as a group. This way, the eagle could watch for any unusual movement that would signal a weak or injured duck. For efficiency’s sake, the eagle will usually only give chase if it spots an odd duck. Almost all of these inspection flights are unfruitful for the eagle. However, one eagle appeared to cause a bunch of duckly anxiety when it dove into a group of Widgeons -- and plucked out a fish.

The duck and eagle show was so entrancing that, the following afternoon, we drove back down to the slough for another round. Tracy spotted four of the eagles perched together on the ice, about half a mile downriver. But all of the ducks and swans had resumed their spring migrations, and I think the eagles were as disappointed as we were. But it was a sunny day, the first in recent memory, and the first warm day since last fall. And here in Montana, we’ll take our spring in bits and spurts if we have to.

John's Stimulus Plan

2009-03-10T21:29:00.000-07:00

"You make a living by what you get. You make a life by what you give.” (Winston Churchill)

We just returned home from our first “Spring” art show of 2009 to find our tulips starting to bloom -- in glass jars on the kitchen counter. Just beyond the kitchen window, it was 14 degrees with 9 inches of fluffy new snow. Ahhh, spring in Montana. Just trying to walk the dogs can be downright stimulating.

I’m hopeful for some of the stimulus plans springing up these days. I think they will help melt our fears and frozen finances, and accompany us into the halcyon days of summer. Currently, none of the plans target artists. But if I was handed a pile of money, I would just double-down and produce even more art until all of the money was gone. My goal has never been to become rich and famous, and I am pleased to report that I’ve been quite successful so far. I just want to spend a quiet, introspective life that enables me to share the wealth that I create. But wealth is not the same as money. Therefore, I used the last few days to hatch my own stimulus plan.

This past weekend, thousands of people paid good money to walk around an art show. They explored the islands of creativity, looking at artworks that may or may not stir their emotions, and visiting with artists who would otherwise never cross their paths. Art changed hands, and friendships were born. But after touring the show, half of the people walked out empty-handed. Did they get snookered out of six bucks? Hardly.

Artwork on display creates emotional responses, and people soak it up with various degrees of thirst. Most of the time, people who seek out and enjoy the artworks only “pay” the artist with compliments. A careless and insincere compliment becomes a hurtful insult, but one heartfelt compliment can be a gift that makes an artist smile for weeks. We brought home a little money and lots of compliments, and we’re still smiling and a little perplexed.

At almost every show I hear some version of, “These are the most creative photographs I’ve ever seen!” from people who get momentarily lost in their emotional response to an image, only to watch them walk away without buying a print. This can be perplexing behavior to see from the artists’ side of the relationship. One minute you’re sharing your wealth and the next minute you’re just part of a circus, dazzling their senses while they eat handfuls of popcorn.

At art shows, we’ve handed out thousands of business cards that feature our most popular image on the back side. We could have left it blank. Only once (that I know of) has our business card led to a sale of that particular image. This small gift is a net loss for us professionally. But personally? What is the value of making a total stranger feel good for a moment? If someone in my booth breaks into a belly laugh, but walks out without buying a photograph, our interaction adds nothing to the GDP.

But just how much is the laughter worth to that person’s health? And what is it worth when Tracy and I get caught up in their infectious delight? What about the next time they stumble across our business card, and turn it over to smile at the image again? This doesn’t help us feed our dogs, but our “net loss” must be generating some amount of wealth in the human ecosystem. We might make the same amount of money by selling fewer images at higher prices, but then our little emotional response generators would hang in fewer homes, and thus generate a little less wealth.

Therefore, the question becomes one of somehow balancing wealth and money. This can become a twisted conundrum. To me, art should be a soothing balm for the masses, not reserved for the uppity income brackets. By and large, artist are gawd-awful salespeople. We live too close to the heart, and our creations can sometimes end up worth more to us emotionally than they are worth financially to others. The vast majority of artists never even dare to try and sell their works. Many of us would much rather give our creations away to those who "get it," those who respond emotionally -- if only we could still afford groceries. Hence, the "starving artist" stereotype. I’ve met one or two salesmen who happen to be good artists, and they always seem to do well, but I know scant few artists – myself included – whose salesmanship equals their creativity.

(Personally, this relates to the reasons why I don’t photograph the same old rented bears and captive birds that every other wildlife photographer sells. I don’t want to take those same old images, even though they sell well, because they hold no emotional value for me.)

So I spent the weekend hatching a new plan to carry us through. It is brilliant in its simplicity. All I really need is one curious patron who is rich but wants to become wealthy. And all they have to do is share enough pesos to keep us in beans and rice (and to keep our dogs in dog food). That, in turn, will allow me to share every bit of wealth -- in the form of art -- that I can wring out of my remaining days. This is my stimulus plan, such that it is. We are currently accepting applications.

Such were the thoughts rumbling around in my head as the art show was winding down. And that’s when a neighboring artist walked into my booth with a gift for me -- a cartoon drawing that I had “paid” compliments on earlier. In a simple act of kindness, he chose to share it with me instead of selling it. In that moment he gave up a future sale, but his warm generosity made both of us feel wealthier.

These days, during this stubborn economic winter, we need to be brave enough to spread a little bit of money around. But more importantly, we also need to spread more kindness and real wealth around with the people we meet. If we can afford a little bit more of this behavior, then spring is sure to bloom a little bit sooner.

"Laughter is the closest distance between two people." (Victor Borge)

Just One Word

2009-02-08T22:04:00.000-08:00

"Hope doesn't come from calculating whether the good news is winning out over the bad. It's simply a choice to take action." (Anna Lappe)

State of the Photography Nation

2009-01-25T22:21:00.000-08:00

"We're between the future and the pasture.” (John Gorka)

At this point in our evolution, I’m feeling the need to review our current “State of the Photography Nation.” Warning to photographers: the following tantrum is wrapped around twisted opinions that may cause disorientation. Please sit down before reading this.

The “digital revolution” truly is. Human history is now divided into BD (Before Digital) and AD (After Digital). This brave new digital world wields the twin advantages of (1) user-friendly cameras that can be relatively cheap, and (2) elimination of the chemical darkroom. The old 35mm cameras were mostly technical, pricy, and intimidating to the masses. These shiny new digital “toys” are incredibly user-friendly – some even come in designer colors. And even if there was a chicken in every pot back in the days of film, there was never, ever, a darkroom in every garage. Computers have replaced most darkrooms, and now both computers and digital cameras far outnumber garages.

The good old film days were better for the business of photography for the truly talented. But, in my humble opinion, the digital era is better for the art of photography because it is dropping millions of friendly cameras into the clever hands of the curious masses.

Does this mean professional print photography is a dying business model? Well, sort of. It hasn't gone extinct, but it is evolving into a different kind of animal. What used to be a business that relied on delivering a product (the photographic print) is turning into a business that delivers a service (education) to thousands of new digital camera owners who want to make their own art.

Education is a great thing. Unfortunately, delivering this education is turning us into a screaming clan of self-aggrandizing former-photographers who now churn out endless workshops, lectures, books, CD’s, DVD’s, online classes, etc. I sometimes think of all this as a steaming pile of “Self-help Training Until Financially Fatigued.” (STUFF for short. I avoided the temptation to create a different acronym.)

The result; you no longer have to be a talented photographer to be in the photo business. Heck, you don’t even have to be a photographer. You just need a search engine-optimized website to hock your CD guide to the Newest-Best-Software-Ever-Of-The-Month. Or your e-book on the nimble Nikon D10,000 Camera-Slash-Personal-Assistant that delivers your morning coffee before heading out to take perfect pictures while you scan the headlines and sip your drink in your pajamas. (Hold on – didn’t that used to be my job?)

It appears that there are now more photographers selling STUFF than there are photographers selling photographs. Need a detailed guide to the newest Nikocanon dream camera? You can buy the 600-page book on CD before you can even get your hands on the camera. Who wouldn’t want to learn the “Evolution of a Masterpiece” just by taking an online photography class? Just click that Paypal button, my friend. How about a very expensive vacation disguised as a photo workshop? Pick your favorite park/state/continent, and then take out a second mortgage.

How are photographers – the ones who actually used to take pictures -- evolving in the digital era? Just like the painters did after a new invention called the “camera” took away much of their paying work in portraiture and illustration. Some talented photographers are moving to new habitats in the abstract and fine art fields. Many more are piling on the STUFF bandwagon.

A long-time photographer who boasts of 600,000-plus images (now there’s someone in dire need of an editor!) said that he makes more money giving lectures than he does selling photos. Another photographer in California sells “photo safaris” on his website by dropping the name of his deceased friend, Galen Rowell, every couple of sentences. Many other photographers build beautiful websites, and then proceed to clutter them up with advertising. One of the most honest ideas comes from a photographer I like who writes a technical website. At the top of every article, he asks for a $5 “donation” to help him support his wife and kids.

Wedding and portrait photographers appear to be holding their own, financially. But even they are getting pushed in new directions. Wedding photographers used to make buckets of money by keeping the rights to their photos and then selling endless prints to the happy newlyweds and their families. Nowadays, some of the tech-savvy public wants digital versions of their wedding photos, not prints, and so more photographers are obliging. The people photographers are often paid a flat fee for his/her skills during the shoot, not for the number of photos taken or prints produced.

That seems reasonable for event-specific people pictures. But it pressures us wildlife and landscape photographers to sell digital versions of our images. That idea sounds a lot like following the lemming in front of you towards that yonder cliff. If a high-resolution digital version of your Once-in-a-Lifetime capture gets loose on the internet, you'll never get it back. At least once a week, someone emails me a different version of a “Best Photographs Ever” collection. Some are very good, some are plain bad. Very few of them even credit the photographer, and none of them help the photographer feed his kids.

Plopped down in the middle of this digital revolution like a grumpy two-year-old, I often wonder where my little niche in the “Photography Nation” will end up. I do like teaching, and I would enjoy helping people learn the artform. But I’m not sure how to morph from here to there. My personality tends to be the antithesis of self-aggrandizing (and I absolutely couldn’t stand the egotistical photographers I’ve met), but self-promotion looks like the dominant DNA in this new environment. So how does a modest guy with self-deprecating humor stand up and get noticed in the midst of all these self-proclaimed experts selling all this STUFF? I really don’t know, and that’s why I had to sit down before reading this.

"I never know how much of what I say is true.” (Bette Midler)

Time After Time

2009-01-09T22:33:00.000-08:00

"What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.” (St. Augustine)

"Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend.” (Theophrastus)

So I finally train myself not to write 2007 on checks anymore, and here it is 2009 already? Whose idea was that? Seems like only last week, it was 2008. Where does our time go? We keep spending all this time but, really, where does it actually go? Maybe it is gone forever, but maybe it just changes faces.

While putting together Christmas cards last month, I browsed through lots of old photos of friends. I have to admit, being my friend appears to take a heavy toll on the innocents. They all have such young faces in those old photos. What happened? Smoother skin, darker hair, no grandpa glasses. There's an old photo of the energetic little puppy playing with our full-size dogs. Nowadays, that puppy is a “mature” dog who refuses to go out if the snow’s too deep for her liking. Which, come to think of it, sort of sounds like me these days.

The snow turned to rain yesterday, so I was happy to stay inside and read a thankful email from someone who received our “Leap of Faith” photograph as a gift from her family. That photograph is a scene that we wandered into while walking our dogs back during summertime weather. The mother duck’s behavior sparked my curiosity and encouraged me to stop and sit near the nest tree. I watched her for almost two hours before I ever saw her little chicks. Now if we take this scene and trace the timeline backwards, I think we can follow the inspiration for this photo back at least two generations.

The “walking the dogs” part seems pretty straightforward. As a scruffy kid in a house full of boys, I remember always having at least one dog and cat around as part of the family. My wife, Tracy, went so far as to breed and raise dogs – big dogs. Huskies and malamutes. She even trained some of them as sled dogs. Our current dogs would much rather ride in the sled, but I digress.

The “curiosity” part of my timeline is less direct but maybe more obvious. I received it as a gift from my mother, who in turn learned it from her father -- my grandfather. As the youngest of four girls, my mother grew up as a beautiful, red-haired tomboy. I almost feel sorry for any boys her age who tried to keep up. Some of her favorite days were spent on the back of her trusty donkey, “Pete,” exploring the wild brambles between a few lonesome ranches of that time, deep in the hills of central Texas.

(After grandpa bought him, Pete got into big trouble with grandma for chewing a hole through the kitchen window screen to get at some Cheetos left on the nearby table. Apparently, Pete had his own curious side and knew how to spend his time well. Earlier in his career, when Pete belonged to another family, he had a staring role in the school's Christmas program in Bryan, Texas -- but that's another story.)

When I close my eyes I can see the two of them, mom and Pete, spending their hours wandering amongst the winter oaks and spring wildflowers, listening to the rhythmic ebb and flow of summertime cicadas (“locusts”), following their curiosity down the river and then back home again as evening falls, just in time for chores and supper.

The “ranch” where mom grew up was the gift of my grandfather’s life. Away from the river, it was a sweaty patch of prickly pear and stunted mesquite trees where, after retiring from Texas A&M, grandpa could enjoy the outdoors and continue dabbling in genetics research. Think cows and catfish. Rabbits and roadrunners. The occasional rattlesnake notwithstanding, it was a great little patch of wildness where a red-haired tomboy and, a generation later, a scruffy little boy could spend their days following the curiosity that flowed into them, through grandpa, from some older, unknown source. Over the years, that curiosity has wandered aimlessly from cows to cicadas, and eventually to cameras.

So while “Leap of Faith” captures a simple moment in time, the photograph is really a byproduct of grandpa’s curiosity, a curiosity that keeps getting passed along in time (mixed with another family’s lifelong love of dogs). My grandfather is long gone, but how he spent his time still influences us. Everyone who gets a daily chuckle from this photograph has grandpa to thank. His time ended while I was still very young, but I’m grateful for the way he raised my mother. I’ve known her all my life, and she’s still the curious type.

So as we spend our cache of time, does it really disappear? I don’t think so, not really. Because we are spending it on the people around us, even on the strangers we cross paths with. This is your time, and now we’ve crossed paths. So I’m hoping that my time spent behind a camera sparks your curiosity about those little patches of wildness that remain out there. And I hope that you give in and follow your curiosity out the door a little more often this year. That simple act would please the generations – just watch out for a red-haired girl riding a curious donkey.

Happy new year, all.

"There is no cure for curiosity.” (Dorothy Parker)

10 Holiday Photo Tips

2008-12-21T16:38:00.000-08:00

"Advice is judged by results, not by intentions.” (Cicero)

1. Edit later – not while the wrapping paper is flying. Don’t hold back on how many photos you take. But when life settles down again, be sure to do a thorough delete (too blurry, too dark, etc.) and don’t give in to the temptation to keep everything.

2. Avoid taking pictures from a standing position – especially photos of pets and children! Get down on the floor so that your camera is at their eye level. For a wide view of the scene, try standing on a chair and photographing downward. Because we spend most of our days looking at the world from a standing position, changing the camera angle up or down will almost always make the photo more interesting.

3. Try to include at least one medium-range and one close-up portrait of every person present on Christmas morning. If you can make a habit of this, after a few years you’ll have a wonderful collection of year-to-year photos of the people who mean the most to you. And if you really stick to it, you’ll eventually end up with great collage material.

4. It can be hard indoors, but try to keep the clutter out of your backgrounds. When positioning yourself to take a photo, be aware of how the background might change if you moved just a skosh left or right.

5. Or go the other way – use the background to make funny photos. Catch Aunt Tracy standing in front of the wreath and she'll look angelic. Just don’t tell Uncle John that you’re lining him up in front of the deer antlers.

6. Look for variety. Think of your holiday as a movie. It starts with a wide scene, then a medium, and eventually a close-up. Most people are stuck in medium when it comes to photographs. Look for details in a plate of cookies, wide scenes full of wrapping paper shreds, etc.

7. If you live in snow country, try taking a photo from outside looking in through a window. Set your color balance to "daylight" and you'll get a warm orange interior surrounded by a cool blue exterior. Wait until the blue dusk light is one or two f-stops less than the light inside. Be sure to bracket -- and make sure it’s a window to your house.

8. If venturing outside for very long, try keeping your camera and flash batteries in a warm pocket until you reach your destination and are ready to start taking pictures. (Storing batteries in the freezer is a myth. Cold kills batteries.)

9. Make sure you have more cards/film and batteries on hand than you expect to use.

10. Remember to put the camera down from time to time and enjoy the moments!

A Bird in the Hand

2008-12-06T16:46:00.000-08:00

"I realized that If I had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes.”
(Charles Lindbergh, interviewed shortly before his death)

I have a cold. I have a cold and some serious brain fog. Just like my little chickadee. Another one hit the window today, dang it. We live in Eden and so we have windows all over the house. We also feed the birds. Bad combination. We've tried placing white, vinyl stickers in the middle of the windows -- in the middle of our view -- so the birds don’t fly headfirst into the glass. It doesn’t always work.

I heard the familiar “thump” while working on the computer, and I looked outside to see a little Black-capped Chickadee lying on the windowsill, two little feet pointed skyward. What can you do? Here’s what I’ve learned -- don’t give up on the fellow. I gently collected him in my palm and brought him inside. Setting him in an old towel, I lowered the towel into a big, clear tub with a lid (very important), and moved him to the warmest, darkest part of our house. And then I waited. When I left him, he looked dead to the world. He didn’t look much better thirty minutes later. But an hour later, he was standing up on the towel and looking for an exit. I carried him back outside before removing the lid (very important), and gently lifted him up in my hand. He blinked twice, and then flew off to the nearest tree. His brain fog had lifted!

Birds sometimes break little bones when they collide with a window, and then there’s not much you can do. My ornithology professor taught me how to squeeze a seriously-injured songbird (broken wing or leg) in your hand until it had passed. He believed that was the most humane thing to do. Still, that’s a really hard task for a bird lover. I’ll admit, sometimes I’ve carried seriously injured birds off to a quiet location in the forest – that way at least, the last thing they see is familiar. I don’t know if it helps them, but it helps me. A little bit.

But in my experience, most birds that fly into windows just get knocked foggy. You can’t rescue them all, but you can help many. What’s most important is to keep them warm, quiet and contained – and hope they recover. If left outside, their little inferno bodies are likely to burn up too many calories to recover before the fog clears.

Our previous bird/window collision was about a month ago, a Mountain Chickadee. I didn’t have high hopes that she was still alive, so I set her on a towel in a bucket without a lid. Big mistake. I spent a good part of the afternoon watching her fly around the house -- ridding herself of excess weight along the way.

Several years ago, a Northern Flicker (a medium-sized woodpecker) flew into an upstairs window. When I collected him, both eyes rolled back, then closed, and his head flopped onto his back. I figured he’d broken his neck, but I couldn’t bring myself to squeeze him. So I placed him in a towel inside a cardboard box, and left him alone in the studio. I checked on him every hour, all morning and into the afternoon. His eyes remained closed, his head still flopped back. Six hours into the ordeal, I was trying to think of a quiet spot to bury him as I opened the cardboard lid to reach inside. Suddenly, a big blur came flying out! Looking for an exit, he flew straight into the nearest window, hitting it head-on from the inside. Fortunately, he wasn’t flying very fast this time. The collision slowed him down just enough, and I grabbed him. His eyes looked clear and focused, and he turned his head from side to side. I carried him outside and lifted him skyward. He flew off, lifting my spirits along the way.

And finally, 27 years ago I got to meet an honest-to-goodness blackbird. I was working for a central Florida newspaper and had driven into town on a Sunday to print some photographs. No one else was around, but I heard noises coming from the newsroom. Somehow, a Grackle had gotten into the press area and dipped its long tail into the thick, black, newspaper ink. It then proceeded to explore the rest of the building, smearing ink everywhere it landed. I eventually corralled it in the city editor’s office, then carried it to the back door to set it free. As I watched it fly away, the door quietly closed behind me and I realized that my keys were back inside the darkroom. There I was, smeared with ink and locked out of the building on a Sunday afternoon. I called one of the writers, and he kindly drove into town to rescue me.

The most embarrassing part? I had to be rescued earlier that same day after locking my keys inside the car. Now that’s some serious brain fog.

Bringing Smiles to N. America, One Photo at a Time

2008-11-25T16:53:00.000-08:00

"Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.” (Dr. Seuss)

We are home for a day. Back from one art show, getting ready for another. Just enough time to change the kitty litter, restock our inventory, and jot down a few words.

Our Spokane show was a success, in spite of a new booth location a few acres beyond the back forty. We adopted many of our photographs into good homes. As usual, “Leap of Faith” was the top seller, and it did a good job getting everyone to smile and laugh in our booth. If life is a give and take, then there’s lots of living going on in our booth.

While we were telling stories and packaging up photographs, hundreds of people took the time to share little bits of their life stories with us. We met Justin, a gallery owner with enough ideas and energy to make me feel like an old man. And Tracy, a young photography student, who felt so inspired that she worked up the courage to ask if she could correspond with me as she works her way along her own photographic journey. (I happily agreed.) And Marilyn, a lovely spirit who related our Eagle photograph to a recent personal tragedy in her life. Her story tugged on my heart, but she stood with an inner peace and quiet grace.

And then there was Bette. For many years now, Bette and Grace have been two of our biggest fans and best customers. Every year at the Spokane show, we would watch for the two of them working their way through the crowd as they zeroed in on our booth. Hugs and squeals all around, and then Bette would produce a fresh loaf of homemade bread from her bag – a treat we would savor. Then they would take their time, pouring over everything in our booth, telling everyone within earshot that they, too, needed to have one of these or two of those. But their zeal for life was most evident in the loving banter that bounced between the two of them like a tennis ball at Wimbledon. They are “Friends for Life” like you’ve never seen.

But this year was different. As Bette zeroed in on us with hugs, Grace was missing. Instead, Bette was searching the show with her daughter, worrying aloud that she might not find us -- and then what would she do with the loaf of fresh bread hidden away in her bag? I waited as long as I could, but I had to ask about Grace. As a few tears escaped, Bette explained that Grace is no longer able to walk through the show. Medical issues have taken Grace’s memory, and she would no longer recognize us. All of the unknowns would be overwhelming for Grace, and all the joys of “Girls’ Day Out” will live on in Bette’s memory alone.

In spite of her heartbreak, Bette pushed through. She awoke Sunday morning, baked a perfect loaf of cracked-wheat honey sourdough bread, and drove off in search of her “artist friends.” She poured over every image in our booth, picked out a photograph, and declared that we had made her day. She floated away, happy, smiling – and unaware that I had slipped a package of greeting cards into her bag while she wasn’t looking. They’ll show up when she gets back home. Maybe she’ll write a note to Grace, and maybe the photograph on front will make Grace smile. I sure hope so.

This morning, back in our Montana home, we smiled silently while savoring our “Bette Bread” toast for breakfast. Love shows up in many forms.

Now for Something Completely Different

2008-11-12T17:08:00.000-08:00

"You don't need to outdo the competition. It's expensive and defensive. Underdo your competition. We need more simplicity and clarity.
(Jason Fried)

Photography competitions cause me convulsions. I’ve entered a bunch, and I’ve judged a handful, and I still have troubles with them. Many years ago, I got into big trouble with a girlfriend who discovered one day too late that I had thrown out a handful of photography awards. (Except for one plaque that I still have to this day. Buried in a box somewhere. I think.)

When I won I always thought, “Gee, didn’t they see the flaws in my photograph?” or, “The judges should have noticed how I could have made this better.” And when I judged them, instead of ranking the images, I would rather call the photographers and say, “In my humble opinion, this is what you did well and this is where you could improve.” That probably wouldn’t go over too well considering the egos involved (mine included), but I guess I’d rather be a teacher than a judge.

Anyway, I stopped entering competitions many years ago, but a recent one pulled me in. Tim Grey, a computer guru who writes about and teaches Photoshop to professional photographers all over the planet, announced a little contest for the best use of a wide angle lens. The prize was a chance to borrow the lens of your choice from a company that rents expensive camera lenses to photographers. But I had other ideas. I sent him "Lake McDonald Pearls” (shot with an 11mm lens that was itself borrowed from my friend and fellow photographer, Bob). With my entry email, instead of a borrowed lens, I angled to score a scholarship to Tim’s week-long Photoshop workshop in Seattle. One thousand dollars for tuition is about nine hundred more than I can afford.

I guess my photographs are more compelling than my words. "Pearls" won honorable mention, and Tim didn’t bite on my scholarship idea. Not even a nibble. But he did have some nice words to say.

“As I was reviewing the images submitted for this photo contest, I also decided there needed to be an ‘A for Effort’ category for the person who put the most effort into producing a great image. In my mind, that category was won by John Ashley… John will also receive a free signed copy of 'Photoshop CS4 Workflow.'”

So I won a fat new book on Photoshop, which is great -- but did he notice the flaws in my photograph?

"I write down everything I want to remember. That way, instead of spending a lot of time trying to remember what it is I wrote down, I spend the time looking for the paper I wrote it down on."(Beryl Pfizer)

On Photoshop & Geezerdom

2008-10-21T17:17:00.000-07:00

"Beware of the young doctor and the old barber.” (Benjamin Franklin)

I had the dubious distinction of visiting the doctor today for a check-up. It was my end of a pact made with a friend – I’d go to the dermatologist that I had avoided for five years if she’d visit her doctor, where she hadn’t been seen in two years. So basically, I think it was her sneaky way of caring about me.

The nurse/receptionist asked the obligatory questions. Allergies? No. Medications? No. Any medical conditions? Just old age, I said. She shot back, “You can’t be old because your birth date is close to mine.” (Note to self – make sure nurse is way younger than you before making age jokes.) She left the room, and I started wondering if maybe I’m younger than I give myself credit for. Maybe there is still a Young Buck hiding behind these Old Geezer gray whiskers.

I must have been the rare male patient, as there were approximately 347 “People” and “Self” magazines, along with one “Newsweek.” Thumbing through the news magazine, I started to keep track of how many of the photographs were subtly or boldly manipulated with Photoshop. Blemish-free skin, cut-out backgrounds, three grizzly bears running through a snowfield with three Angus bulls. It quickly became a search for a photograph that wasn’t obviously manipulated. Finally, towards the back, there was one small image that basically looked like somebody’s innocent snapshot. Still, I know that it had been adjusted for density, color balance, and contrast – at a minimum.

People sometimes ask if a particular photograph of mine has been “manipulated.” They’ve never worked with Photoshop, but they’ve heard it used as a verb, and they think this must be a bad thing. My short answer is, “yes,” every digital image must be manipulated in order to make a viewable print. In fact, except for some top-of-the-line professional cameras, every digital camera makes lots of “manipulations” to every image every time you press the shutter. What we might think of as a “pure” snapshot is in reality very altered by the camera. And lots of times, the decisions made by the camera are wrong and need to be corrected (“re-manipulated”) by editing software, such as Photoshop.

(Most professional photographers capture images in what Nikon and Canon call “raw” digital form, but even this is not 100% pure. The goal is to remove the decision-making from the camera and place the responsibility instead on the photographer, working at her computer and wishing she was outside taking more photos instead. Most of the time, her goal is to take the electrons recorded by the camera and work them over until they match the scene as she sees it in her mind – which, by the way, may well be different from the scene that her assistant experienced. It’s still subjective!)

For the most part, photographers are using software to overcome the limitations of digital cameras. (Just like we used to do in ancient places called "darkrooms" by dodging and burning areas under the enlarger while printing our negatives.) There are also some very creative people who are using this software to take various parts of many images to create something totally new and unrecognizable from the any of the parts. Some of this new art is stunning, and I’m envious of the amount of creativity these folks snuck off with. (Some fine examples here from Magdalena Wanli.) These creations still fall into the photography category, but I suspect that they are eventually destined for a new description.

So yes, Photoshop is a valuable tool used by virtually every professional photographer – to one degree or another. I have no problem with this, with a few caveats. No propaganda -- truth must remain the playing field. And photojournalism must remain minimally affected by editing. Nothing more than corrections of camera shortcomings. Digital editing is still fairly new, and I wish that people were more aware of it and could tell, just by flipping through a news magazine at the doctor's office, how each image was altered. This, I think, will take many years.

I was feeling better about my years while driving home from the doctor’s office. I’d faced my fear and lived to tell the tale, so I must still be a prime specimen, I reasoned. It was then, while driving down a long straight-away, that I noticed a blinking light on my dashboard. Right turn signal. I’d been driving for miles, telling all of the other drivers that at any moment I would turn -- right into the muddy stubble of a fall wheat field.

“Old man!” I chuckled.

I was guilty of the one thing that officially defines Geezerdom. Oh well, at least my friends still care about me in my golden years…

Lessons From my First Fan

2008-09-21T17:21:00.000-07:00

""I am in love with Montana. Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans." (John Steinbeck) [ Editor's note: John A. grew up in Texas. He hopes to spend his remaining days in Montana, and he thinks this is one of the funniest quotes he's ever heard. ]

I wasn’t much for photography last week. Instead, I was just a proud son. Ma and Pa Ashley made the long, long, long drive up from central Texas to northwestern Montana. They’ve only been up once before, about 10 years ago, so it was quite an honor to have them visit.

Aside from a few travelling clothes, the only thing mom brought along was an old, dusty, framed photograph. A photograph that used to be – to me, at least – of dubious merit. It captures a cloudy sunset over a group of sailboats docked at a marina, in colors that used to be rich reds and oranges but have since faded to dull browns and yellows.

Anyone could have taken that photograph, but I’m the one who did. I was a skinny high school kid, learning how to use the school’s yearbook staff camera. I think it was a Canon, and I know for sure it was a 50mm because that’s the only lens we had. Cameras these days are sleek and commonplace. But back in those days of prehistory, 35mm’s were big, clunky dinosaurs that were not user friendly at all. I was just starting to learn how to handle a dinosaur.

Mom really liked the sunset photo, and so we got it enlarged and ready to frame. Then the strangest thing happened -- she asked me to sign the print. I felt dumbfounded! It’s an okay photo, I conceded, but it’s not like I’m an artist or something. An artist creates something from within, but I was just a beginning photographer, capturing something from without. I declined to sign the photo (and it’s not easy in the south to refuse one’s mother). She framed the unsigned image anyway. It hung in her office until she retired, and then it moved into the house, where it still hangs today.

Except for last week, when she lifted the frame off the wall and hauled this old photograph all the way up to Montana. You already know why. Once more, 30 years later, my dear mother asked again if I would sign her photograph. I did. I carefully pried apart the fragile frame, and nervously scribbled my name. And now her prized possession is on its way back to that dark rectangle on the wall, where it has hung for so long that the rest of the wall has faded around it.

These days, I’m somewhere in the neighborhood of what my mother’s age was back then. And she taught me a thing or two in the years between. Art, I eventually learned, is all about the emotion that you feel when you “take in” or view a photograph. Or a painting, or a song – or even a homemade meal. We are all artists, each of us, and some of us also happen to be photographers. That old photo doesn’t remind my mother of sailboats. Instead, it reminds her of the pleasure she felt watching one of her boys growing up and exploring the natural world around him.

And now here’s her boy, 30 years older if not actually grown up. Trying to make photographs that will create in other people that feeling of wonder, inspiration and appreciation for the natural world. A good feeling. This past week, my first fan reminded me firsthand what my work is really all about.

"...Art is the message, not the medium." (Ken Rockwell)

Chasing Butterflies

2008-09-03T17:33:00.000-07:00

"Creativity is allowing onself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep." (Scott Adams)

I agree. I found myself photographing butterflies today, even though I should know better. Chasing butterflies with a camera is like devouring birthday cake -- it only seems like a good idea at the time. Now I've got several hundred images that I need to review before I can delete them, as planned. See, today was more like practice. I'm honing one of those creative ideas that may or may not pan out. It involves a way of photographing butterflies that, as far as I know, no one has ever tried before. But, alas, summer is waning here in Montana, and butterfly numbers are declining daily. You and I both may have to wait until next summer to see if this idea works. Fortunately, there will be a number of birthday cakes to help get us through the winter.

100 Photography Tips

2008-08-30T17:36:00.000-07:00

"There are two types of photographers: those who take pictures and those who make pictures." (Camille Bonzani)

To start you off with a bang, here's 100 free tips on digital photography, courtesy of your neighborhood camera store (if you happen to live in New York City). If you still have questions, email me. Don't know if I can answer them, but it's always fun to get unexpected email, isn't it?