Hummingbirds!

Hola, I’ve been very busy these past few months with some photography tours, and I’ve had the chance to do a fair bit of work with hummingbirds. In the tropics, using multiple flash is the best way to do hummingbird photography due to the generally low light levels. Nonetheless, and in spite of a recent trend toward using lots of flashes, I find that less is more when it comes to lighting for these images. Too many flashes and you lose the interesting texture and shadow that draws our eyes to hummingbirds in the first place. And sometimes I use a bare minimum number of flashes to simulate a shaft of sunlight streaming through the rainforest. This is a new technique in hummingbird lighting, and it gives a really dramatic look.

I hope you enjoy these photos. All were taken with the Canon 5D and either the Canon 300 mm f2.8 or a Tokina 80-200 f2.8 lens. And of course, all are full frame — no cropping and only the minimum of post-processing work! All will be available soon in the Deep Green Photography Fine Art Print Gallery.

Cheers from Costa Rica,

Greg

Costa Rica photo tour with Rob Sheppard

Hi, I’m happy to announce that I will be co-leading a photographic tour in Costa Rica, July 18-22, 2009 with Rob Sheppard! Rob, of course, is well-known to readers of Outdoor Photographer magazine and to the readers of his many books on photography and digital photo processing. See Rob’s website here: http://www.robsheppardphoto.com/index.html.

This trip is being run by my friends at Holbrook Travel. Please visit the trip page here: http://www.holbrooktravel.com/pages/NatureTours/details.aspx?Id=550

Cheers,

Greg

Black-necked stilts, a very different lighting scheme

Bird photographers tend to think pretty traditionally about lighting. In particular, a general rule is that the sun is supposed to be behind one’s shoulder, placing frontal lighting on the bird to avoid shadows. While this type of lighting does produce nice portraits, making images with an artistic flair requires a bit of out of the box thinking. One way to do this is to shoot into the sun.

While at one of my favorite dry forest bird photography spots here in Costa Rica, I went down to some salt ponds to photograph the abundant water birds that congregate there to feed. Black-necked stilts were there, and I immediately set out making some nice portraits of them with the sun at my back and the water a nice dark greenish color. But then I decided to walk around to the other side of the pond, thinking that shooting into the sun would give such a strong reflection on the water that I could choose intentionally to portray it as a white sheet. When shooting into the sun, the subject usually will be rendered as a dark silhouette, but by intentionally overexposing the scene, I was able to let the water go entirely white while exposing the birds properly. It gave a very different, graphic look and resulted in one of my favorite bird images.

Tech specs: Canon 20D, Canon 300 mm f2.8 L IS lens, 2x teleconverter, handheld, ISO 200, f13, 1/800 second, aperture priority, +1.3 exposure compensation

Cheers,

Greg

Foto Verde donates photo tour

My photo tour company here in Costa Rica, Foto Verde Tours, has donated $1000 for a photo trip of choice to The International Ecotourism Society’s (TIES) new Ecodestination Auction for 2009. As a member of TIES, Foto Verde Tours believes strongly in ecotourism — tourism that simultaneously benefit both the environment and local communities — and see nature photography as a logical contributor in this effort. If you are interested in supporting the work of TIES while also gaining some credit toward a great Costa Rica photo safari, please visit the TIES auction page.

To learn more about TIES, visit their main website.

And be sure to check out the Foto Verde Tours site for some upcoming trip options.

Cheers,
Greg

Deep Green website updated

Hola! Well, with 2009 in full swing, I’ve finally found the time to update my website with lots of new images from 2008. Check out Deep Green Photography to see the new flash intro as well as lots of new favorites in my new fine art print store.

I promise this year to keep this blog updated with new images, gear tips, and photo tour news.

Cheers,
Greg

backyard birds preview

Soon I will have a full article on my experiences photographing birds in the backyard of my new house in the Costa Rican highlands. For now, I’d like to share a few nice photos, the result of a couple of hours spent on my porch during a four-day rainy spell. Photographing while under the cover of a roofed porch while the rain came down was a delight. While my wife and I have now put four feeders out in our yard (simple posts with a platform for ripe plantains and some mossy branches nailed to the platform for perches), during the rainy spell we decided to hang some bunches of plantains from one of the posts of our porch. I nailed a mossy branch to the porch, grabbed a mug of coffee, set up my equipment, and stayed nice and dry while photographing from only 10 feet away! The birds loved it too as they were able to get out of the rain for a while and enjoy a snack. And the cloudy diffused light along with the rain gave a nice look to these images of cloud forest birds.

In a post to come I will have pictures of our feeders along with some tips on feeder design for fruit-eating birds and a wider selection of images of the birds that visit our yard. For now, here are a few photos with tech notes.

Nos vemos en el campo (see you in the field),

Greg

Female flame-colored tanager

The flame-colored tanager is a beautiful resident cloud forest bird that is fairly difficult to photograph. They are quite common around the Savegre Lodge but since they don’t have feeders, photographing the birds takes quite a bit of luck. They come to my feeders every day. While my next goal is an image of the bright orange-red male, the female is actually quite an attractive bird in its own right. 

Tech info: Canon 20 D, Canon 300 mm f2.8L IS lens, Tamron Pro 2x TC, 550 EX flash w/Better Beamer, Manfrotto tripod, -1/3 exposure compensation, -3 flash exposure compensation, f5.6 for 1/200 at ISO 100

Male northern oriole

Northern orioles arrived just a week ago from up north, and it took them less than a day to find the feeders. They forage in mixed flocks along with resident tanagers, saltators, and even woodpeckers. We have around 4 male and 3 female orioles that seem to have taken a liking to our backyard and the trees on our neighbor’s farm. Costa Ricans call this bird sargento, the sergeant. I was lucky enough to catch this one with its wing raised just as it landed.

Tech info: Canon 20 D, Canon 300 mm f2.8L IS lens, Tamron Pro 2x TC, 550 EX flash w/Better Beamer, Manfrotto tripod, -2/3 exposure compensation, -3 flash exposure compensation, f5.6 for 1/320 at ISO 200

Blue-gray tanager

One of the more common highland birds, the blue-gray tanager is actually fairly hard to photograph in a way that captures the subtle colors of the wings. I was happy with this image as the natural light provided a faint backlight while my flash helped to open the detail in the wings.

Tech info: Canon 20 D, Canon 300 mm f2.8L IS lens, Tamron Pro 2x TC, 550 EX flash w/Better Beamer, Manfrotto tripod, -2/3 exposure compensation, -3 flash exposure compensation, f5.6 for 1/320 at ISO 200

Blue-gray tanager

I composed this image of a blue-gray tanager with a magazine cover in mind. You never know, but it helps to leaves space for the magazine masthead at top and the article captions to the left or right of the subject. I like how the misty drizzle typical of cloud forests here shows up in the background.

Tech info: Canon 20 D, Canon 300 mm f2.8L IS lens, Tamron Pro 2x TC, 550 EX flash w/Better Beamer, Manfrotto tripod, -2/3 exposure compensation, -3 flash exposure compensation, f5.6 for 1/400 at ISO 400

Male northern oriole

I was really happy with this image of a male northern oriole. Sharpness is right on, and the deep green background really makes the bird’s colors pop.

Tech info: Canon 20 D, Canon 300 mm f2.8L IS lens, Tamron Pro 2x TC, 550 EX flash w/Better Beamer, Manfrotto tripod, -2/3 exposure compensation, -3 flash exposure compensation, f5.6 for 1/320 at ISO 200

Photographing Costa Rica’s South Pacific Coast from a helicopter

I recently had the opportunity, as part of a client shoot for Bahia Escondida on Costa Rica’s South Pacific coast, to photograph from a helicopter, and it is an amazing experience! If you ever have the opportunity to photograph from a helicopter, I highly recommend it. But before you go, there are a number of useful things you should know. Before the shoot here in Costa Rica (my first time in a helicopter), I found an article by EJ Peiker, one of the editors of Naturescapes, to be invaluable. It saved me from some incorrect equipment choices, exposure mistakes, and probably at least one lens hood flying into the copter’s tail rotor! See EJ’s article here: http://www.naturescapes.net/062004/ej0604.htm 

I shot with my 20D and Canon’s 17-40 mm f4 L lens most of the time, occassionally switching over to my Tokina 28-70 mm f2.8 ATX-Pro lens. Both of these gave good results. I shot on aperture priority at each lens’ widest aperture and adjusted my ISO as necessary to keep my shutter speed above 1/500 second or so. We flew in a Bell Jet Ranger with the doors off, and the ride was very smooth. I imagine that IS would have been helpful as it would have allowed me to drop to slower shutter speeds at lower ISO values, but I don’t think that it’s essential. The perfect lens, in my opinion, would be Canon’s 24-105 mm f4 L IS zoom. This would give you enough wide angle even on a mag. factor body such as the 20D (on the 20D, when I zoomed out to 17mm it was hard to eliminate both rotor blades and skids) and would also give you enough reach on the long end for a full-frame body such as the 5D. I kept a polarizing filter on each lens at all times. Despite the cost of two stops of light, the polarizer really helped to saturate the colors of both ocean and forest.

One morning we flew to Punta Burica, near Costa Rica’s border with Panama. This is without a doubt one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever encountered. Morning backlight combined with blue-green waves and forested cliffs to offer some truly dramatic landscape images of this uninhabited stretch of coastline. Of course the aerial view made it even more spectacular. See these images and a few more from my helicopter adventure in the gallery below (EXIF shooting data included for those interested in the tech details): http://www.deepgreenphotography.com/blog/helicopter/index.html 

 

Nos vemos en el campo,

Greg

Costa Rica photo workshop with Greg Downing

Hi to all. My Costa Rica photo travel company, Foto Verde Tours, is proud to announce our second annual workshop trip with Greg Downing, premier bird photographer and founder of the online photo forum Naturescapes. Join Greg Downing and me for an amazing trip in March 2008. While maintaining our emphasis on multiple-flash hummingbird setups, we have an all new itinerary that offers even more diversity of photo opportunities. Visit Greg Downing’s website to sign up for the trip.

[ Greg Downing's Costa Rica workshop signup page ]

I hope to see you in the field with Greg Downing next March!

Greg

Rediscovering standard lenses

Every aspiring wildlife photographer’s dream is to acquire a big telephoto. For me, the dream came true when I was able to get my hands on Canon’s 300 mm f2.8 IS L lens, one of the sharpest lenses ever made, and a perfect reach, size, and weight for the varied wildlife photo opportunities that abound here in Costa Rica. But upon discovering a creature to photograph, it’s easy to forget the other lenses in your bag. Luckily I didn’t forget my other lenses a couple of weeks ago at the Selva Verde Lodge in the northern lowlands of Costa Rica.

 While at Selva Verde for a conference, I snuck out early one morning to see what wildlife might be around the lodge grounds. Not 5 minutes later, the lodge manager told me that there was a caiman in the creek up by the reception desk. I approached the caiman as I normally do when out for a hike — armed with my tripod-mounted 300 mm lens and 550 EX flash with Better Beamer on my 20D camera body. Indeed, the caiman was there, and he was big, about 6-7 feet long, which is close to the reported limit for these tropical cousins of the alligator. I started at once to compose some portrait images with my 300 mm lens, and these turned out nice, particularly with a bit of fill flash to open up some shadows around the eye.

Tech info: Canon 20D, Canon 300 mm f2.8 IS L lens, 550EX flash at -3 flash exposure compensation, f5.6, 1/200, ISO 200

But the portrait didn’t really capture the mood of the scene that I was viewing — a caiman floating in a blackwater stream with dappled sunlight coming through the forest canopy. Luckily I had thrown a 28-70 mm lens in my waist pack, and I quickly mounted this on my camera body and moved closer to work handheld because it would have been very difficult to set up a tripod without disturbing the caiman from this closer distance. With this wider angle lens, I began to get images that looked like they could have been taken along the farthest reaches of some unnamed Amazon tributary stream. In reality I was about 100 feet from the reception desk at the lodge! I used a polarizer and varied the rotation to provide for different degrees of reflection. I also raised my ISO to 400 to get faster shutter speeds since I was handholding. I composed the frame to take advantage of the dappled sunlight on the water, which draws the viewer’s eye through the frame to the caiman.

Tech info: Canon 20D, Tokina 28-70 f2.8 zoom lens with polarizing filter, f4, 1/100, ISO 400

Tech info: Canon 20D, Tokina 28-70 f2.8 zoom lens with polarizing filter, f4, 1/100, ISO 400

Tech info: Canon 20D, Tokina 28-70 f2.8 zoom lens with polarizing filter, f4, 1/100, ISO 400

These last three photos show the caiman in its habitat and because of the light and the reflections on the water, they have a mysterious look that will make impressive images when printed big. The lessons from my 10 minutes with the caiman at Selva Verde are two. First, if you have a big lens, use it by all means. These lenses are awesome! But don’t neglect the smaller, lighter, and cheaper lenses in your bag. Second, if you don’t have a big lens, don’t neglect wildlife photography. Sometimes a photo of a creature in its habitat is more impressive than a tight closeup. Wildlife habitat photos, however, require a good eye for composition so you don’t end up with a small subject lost in a chaotic environment. Look for leading lines and diagonals to strengthen your composition and make the subject stand out.

Nos vemos en el campo (see you in the field),

Greg

Welcome to the new blog

Hi to all and a quick apology to those of you who visited before I had a chance to post on the new blog. I had to go to a two-day conference in rural Costa Rica and had no access to the Internet.

Many of you may have visited my Deep Green Photography site and noticed some changes. I wanted a more streamlined design, with flash sample galleries for added image protection and ease of uploading (I was able to create a template in Adobe Lightroom that matched the look of the site), ease of maintenance, an efficent but attractive fine art print ordering service, and professional-style contact forms for stock, print, and photoshoot clients. I’m quite happy with the new look. For those of you who are interested, the site is built around a template that I bought from www.allwebco.com. It’s the best $40 I ever spent as it allows those of us with much less than stellar web design skills to put up a professional site with a minimum of work.

I did not include a News section on the Deep Green site because I plan to house all of the new happenings and image stories with tech data right here on this blog site. This will make things much easier for me as I currently maintain two websites and will have a third on the way in a few months. With the blog, I’ll only have to post once, and visitors to each and all of my websites can access the information.

So, stay tuned for some new images in the coming days. I’ll try to update this blog at least once a week.

Cheers from Costa Rica!

Greg