Waterfalls in California

In spite of all the drought conditions that are very apparent every where you go in California, there is at least one place where the revitalizing feeling you get from gazing at a waterfall can still be had. Burney Falls, in northern California even in late July is still a  thriving waterfall scene. 

McArthur Burney Falls

It's official name is McArthur Burney Falls and is located just north of where Highway 299 and Highway 89 intersect.  From the Bay Area it will take you about 4.5 hours to drive there but there are many other activities to keep you busy for a couple of days in that part of the state.

The falls are fed by an underground spring that is in turn fed by high elevation snow melt. The underground spring, filters through the rocks in the face of the cliff and spouts out at many different spots, giving it a surreal effect of hundreds of waterfalls in one place.

If you go, and want to photograph it, bring a tripod with you.  Because the falls are so abundant you will want to slow your shutter speed down to capture that dreamy feel of water cascading down the cliff.  You may also want to try a Polarizing filter to cut down on the glare off the rocks and to help you reduce the light that is seen by you camera  sensor.  This might be just enough to let you shoot at a few seconds or slower for your shutter speed.

Most people would show up with a just a wide angle lens but a fellow photographer David Bozsik, alerted me to the prospect of using a 70-200 zoom to capture parts of the waterfall for some unique perspectives.  Another tip I got from David was to go early in the morning before the sunlight has a chance to create too much contrast in the trees and mountain side.  Also keep and eye out for Osprey as we saw a few nesting nearby.

Shooting Low

There are many options out there for support for your camera and not much can substitute for a good tripod. However, your day to day tripod may not work in every situation.  As is the case in shooting low to the ground. 

I use the Induro Hi-Hat tripod.  My short tripod  is fitted with a Really Right Stuff ball head, so that I can fit all my accessories with Arca Swiss attachments (camera plates).

What I like most about this little dude is that it's very sturdy and it can get me very close to the ground. The legs can splay all the way out to get shots only a few inches from the ground.  The bowl supports a 100mm bowl that quickly can get you square and with the bubble levels you can make sure everything is plumb.

With this trip to Moab, UT, I found myself one morning looking at small temporary, rain filled ponds that had formed on the rocks from the storm that just cleared before dawn.  This kind of subject matter can offer all kinds of opportunities to see your surroundings a little different.

Since these small ponds will be dry by about 11 am, you have to work fast and get the camera down low.  This is where the Induro is perfect for being able to shoot with a wide depth-of-field to capture not only the water but what's reflecting in the water.

Try getting your camera down low and see things in a whole new way.

Calling turkeys

This time of year there are many opportunities to photograph wild turkeys.

While they are normally very timid and avoid human contact, the male turkeys have only one thing on their mind in the springtime; female turkeys.  

As a photographer, you can use this season to your advantage and with a little practice you can get them to come right up to you. 

The first thing you will need is a Turkey call.  These can be found at Cabelas Sporting goods, among other hunting outlets.  There is quite a variety in turkey calls, since turkeys respond to different sounds.  This is depending on where you live, and what time of year you are trying to attract the wild turkeys. 

Luckily for me, my brother is an experienced turkey hunter and he had several different calls to choose from and is an expert at creating the precise sounds that get the turkey's motor running.  

The turkey call is in many cases a sounding plate that is scratched with a special wand to mimic the sound of an interested hen turkey. These are not tools that you can just pull out of the box and attract an interested Tom.  These take a little time getting the pressure just right.  However, when you do get the right sound, the turkeys will run right to you. 

I set up my Nikon D4 and 600mm lens along the side of the road, (since I didn't want to have to carry this rig too far.)   My brother started his calling and within seconds we could hear a couple of turkeys make the gobbling sound that there were interested.  A couple of minutes past with a back and forth conversation between the Turkey and the artificial hen call as the bird came closer and closer to check out the sound. 

I was fascinated by how much the color on the bird would change based on his mood.  The face would turn bright blue and his neck would get vibrant red.   In the sunlight the turkey will become an iridescent copper color that is quite magnificent. 

Also interesting was how the bird reacted to us.  Once he saw it was just a couple of dudes with a turkey call, he stopped running towards us, but he kept up the conversation. Shortly after that, the turkey started putting on his display.  Even though he was pretty certain we were weren't interested hens, he kept up the display for quite some time.  Probably just in case a hen happened by. 

Book Cover Photography

There is a place for professional photography that often goes unsolicited and that is book cover photography. You do have to be aware of the needs of your client and help them create a cover that will sell their book.  I believe that the book cover has one job, stop you and make you pick up the book. Or In the case of today's digital readers, the cover makes you stop scrolling and click on the book to find out more.

However, a dilemma can occur as writers are seasoned story tellers. A writer may want to use the cover to tell a story - where I believe , the cover is simply all about advertising.

If you think about it, how long does it take you to make a decision about a book while scrolling the archives of Amazon.com?  The writer doesn't have much time to grab the attention of the potential reader and show a cover so compelling it makes you click on it find out what the book is about.

In this instance, two ideas were talked about.  Using an existing image from India with some Photoshop work to include a subject and  a close up of a woman's eyes wrapped in a Sari.

We had a fantastic model in Alexa that posed for us.  She happened to be the girlfriend of the male model we were using, so we just met then at their home to make it easy on them and us.

For Alexa, we wrapped her up and had her stand against the wall while we used a five foot Profoto RFi 5 Foot Octa Softbox as our main light.  This is a huge light that is very soft and yields a beautiful quality to the light. We also used a couple of Lasolite Tri-Grip hand held reflectors for some fill light.

While the plain wall worked fine, I noticed they had a freshly painted red door that I wanted to use as a background and though it was a tight squeeze in-between the sofa and the five foot soft box we made a few more images. The green eyes of the model just popped against the red background.

Here is how the other cover was developed:  Since a fair amount of the book takes place in India, the writer wanted to create a feeling of what it was like being in India.  While doing research on the book, the author spent time traveling in India and while he was there, took some photographs. I highly encourage writers to do just that, take photographs while they travel on research.  The quality may not be cover material but if nothing else it could inspire your cover designer or you might do what  we did and use some parts of images to create a cover.

One of a couple of images the author supplied from his research trip.

Another image shot in India to be used as a book cover.

The author wanted a young man in the street so we photographed a friend in his home and then stripped away the background so we could fit him into the street scene.

 I knew from previewing the background scene the author supplied, that we wanted light coming at the man to give the same feeling as the light in the street.  So I used a Profoto RFi 1 x 3 strip light pointed right at the subject to provide the backlighting.

After many layers in Photoshop we finally constructed the two book covers. One more simple, just a woman in a Sari showing just the eyes.  The other one a more complex image telling the story of a man, alone in the streets of India.

Here are the final two covers:  To find out which cover the author went with, follow this link and check out  the new novel by Phil Ribera: Sadhana found on Amazon.com

If you have an opinion on which cover you like better,  I'd love to hear it. 

Stand Up desk for Better Golf

There are many, many ways to improve your golf swing and lower your handicap. Some are complex and need the expertise of a PGA professional golf instructor. Some fixes involve hours and hours of repetitive work at the range and putting green.  However, what if you don’t have that much time to devote to perfecting your golf swing? What can you do?  The answer: stand more.

Poppy Ridge Golf Course, Livermore CA - Copyright 2014 Terry VanderHeiden

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I am a professional photographer and filmmaker and an avid golfer. It used to not be uncommon for me to spend upwards of seven to eight hours sitting in front of the computer working on images and film clips on a daily basis. After years of enduring frequent neck pain and occasional lower back pain, I started to do a little research on some of the benefits of standing at the computer versus sitting all day.

I found that sitting for extended times was not good for me. There are the obvious negative aspects of daily sitting as a way of life, such as developing poor posture and increased obesity. However, there are some internal issues that I didn’t even know about. One article I read documented the increased risk of colon cancer, and lung cancer by up to a “10% more likelihood”  just by sitting for only two hours per day! Another article noted the connection between cardiovascular disease along with diabetes and hypertension from simply sitting all day at work.  It is  no surprise that sitting all day is as bad for you as smoking, or it might even be worse.

Last summer, I invested in a Next Desk electric stand up desk for my business. There are many options out there, but the Next Desk product was the best fit for my style of workflow. It has solid construction, powerful motors to lift my heavy monitors without rattling  and the desk has generous  real estate at 63 inches.

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Standing everyday at my desk took a little getting used to.  I started out by standing for an hour and then sitting for an hour.  Over a week or two I increased my standing time to an hour and thirty minutes for each block. Within a month of using my stand up desk, I was standing for about seven hours and only sitting for one, on a full day of computer work.

It has been about six months since the desk arrived and here’s what has happened to me.  First, the neck pain is gone.  I noticed that over a day of sitting, my posture would change and I found myself leaning into the computer, putting a strain on the back of my neck.  Some mornings I would wake up immobilized from neck pain.  That hasn’t happened since I started standing.

Aside from all the good things I’m doing for myself internally one huge attribute I have gained from standing, is a better golf game.

Six months ago, I was a 13 handicap. Today, I’m a 10 handicap.

One of my golf issues, I’m sure others have had this problem, is that during the golf swing my base can become unstable.  What I mean by that is, I would start to sway from my heels to my toes and then back again during the golf swing.  This would result in thinly hit shots or shots where I would hit it fat and scoop up a pound of turf.

Another issue I had was that my swing would radically change by about the sixteenth hole.  My legs would get tired and I’d stop driving through the ball with my legs. Thereby not getting the power in my swing as I had earlier in the day. The results were week fades and slices of the golf ball that nobody likes. 

The improvement has been gradual but over the last six months my legs have become stronger.  I attribute that at some level to standing all day rather than sitting.

The connection between my ankles and feet has had to improve in strength from the days of standing.  The muscles that are around the pelvis that works to keep the hips steady as we stand are becoming stronger.  My feet have become more flexible and have improved in strength as well as my back muscles have improved. My core gets some attention from keeping my body stable while standing at my computer as well. All of this daily therapy has benefited my golf swing.

It’s no coincidence that the professional golfers are spending many hours per day in the gym exercising their core muscles, strengthening their legs, their feet and back. This kind of physical work is proven to better your golf game!

What about the weekend golfer that doesn’t have a conditioning coach to keep them in shape or the time to spend hours a day at the gym?  Try standing more.  You can do it while you watch television and other activities, however, the time you spend sitting at work can be turned into time to make yourself healthier and to improve your golf game without ever hitting an additional practice ball. 

With all the health benefits of standing at your desk it might be time to consider a change. Try standing as you work, you might gain more for yourself than just a better golf swing. 

Terry VanderHeiden is a photographer, filmmaker and golf writer since 1993. He can be reached at terry@imagelight.com