New Blog on the Way

Hi, this blog will no longer be updated. I am currently working on a major redesign that will be much more attractive and user-friendly and will allow me to update much more easily.

Cheers from Costa Rica!

New Images at Deep Green

Hi, I have updated the flash slideshow on my Deep Green Photography website with lots of new images, along with a number of favorites. There are dozens of images in the slideshow. You can view them all or enter the site at any time.

I hope you enjoy the images — as always these are full-frame (non-cropped) images that have little or no Photoshop work. These are real photos!

Cheers,

Greg

Subscribe to Feeds to keep up

Just a note that you can click on Feeds: Posts at the top of this page to subscribe to this blog and be automatically notified of new and updated posts.

Cheers,

Greg

Advanced Digital Photography Tour

I’m proud to announce that my company Foto Verde Tours is offering two Advanced Digital Photography workshops in Costa Rica in 2010. This itinerary has been specially designed by me along with Foto Verde Tours’ associate photo instructor Monica Quesada with the intention of helping photographers to take their photos to the next level. If you understand the basics of digital photography but want to learn to get creative with multiple flash, long exposures, and artistic compositions, this is the trip for you.

See this link for more details: http://www.fotoverdetours.com/advanceddigitalphoto2010.html.

And don’t hesitate to e-mail with any questions regarding this trip.

Cheers,

Greg

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