Yosemite in Winter

Half Dome Yosemite Valley, Yosemite National Park. Photographed from Sentinel Bridge

I know that winter in the San Francisco Bay area in Northern California is not nearly as severe as other places on this earth. 

While there are people in other parts of the country right now that have to dig themselves a trail in the snow just get to their mailbox, here in sunny California, our big challenge is to decide whether or not to wear shorts on a winter morning.

Like most photographers, we watch the weather and when it does turn into bitter cold up in the nearby Sierra Nevada Mountains, we load the chains up in the truck and head up to beautiful Yosemite National Park. 

Hi, this is Terry VanderHeiden, professional photographer and your host of the Nature Photography Podcast.

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I know I have talked about Yosemite National Park before and I’m sure I will again as this is one of my favorite places to visit and photograph.  

There are many reasons that Winter is my favorite time of year to visit Yosemite. 

First off, there are far less people visiting the park in the dead of winter.  Less people means easier parking and less competition for those choice locations for photography around the valley floor.

A visit to Yosemite Valley in winter starts with accessibility.  

In the winter time, there are a few less options for getting into the park as they typically shut down the eastern entrances at the first snow of the year.  This can be as early as October so even with an autumn photography event in Yosemite Valley, you must keep an eye on the weather. 

 By accessing the many available weather apps, you can see when fresh snow is expected for the valley floor.  And this is the trick. 

At 4000 feet in elevation, Yosemite Valley is where you want the snow for some breath-taking landscape images. Where the top of half-dome is at 8800 feet, there could be snow on the top of half-dome throughout the year.

It’s the valley floor snow that makes this place look spectacular.  

The edges of the Merced River covered in snow is exceptional.  Trees dusted in snow and ice lining the banks of the river that runs through the heart of the valley, can make the foregrounds of your landscape images phenomenal.

Using some snow-covered boulders sitting sturdy as the river cascades around them, makes for a gorgeous lead-in subject matter.  Having a good lead in will bring the viewer into the frame to see El Capitan reaching up into the sky.

The road to Glacier Point is normally closed during the winter months so scratch that view off your list unless you feel like making a pretty rigorous 9 hour hike up that side of the valley.

The Merced river seldom freezes over but it can offer a spectacular rare occurrence in late winter/ early spring called Frazil ice. 

Frazil ice is produced from the mist of Yosemite Falls that freezes in midair then makes its way into the flowing river.  To add to that, chunks of ice can fall off of the granite walls and drop into Yosemite creek that feeds into the Merced River.

This can look like white lava as it slushes its way slowly down the river. 

The best place to view this event is to make your way up to the Yosemite Creek Bridge, below Yosemite falls, where you can safely look down and watch the river slowly move along like a big snow cone was dropped up stream. 

Popular Tunnel View, Yosemite Valley, in Black and White

You can also find Frazil Ice at Bridalveil falls and Ribbon Falls and a few other places in the park.  This is fun to watch and it is unpredictable as it moves and slugs along.

Frazil Ice can occur most of the time when there is good water quantity from the surrounding waterfalls. This would be when the temperatures rise enough to melt the snow pack in the higher elevations but over-night temperatures fall below freezing. 

Most of the time this is visible in the early morning typically before 9:00 am. And worth planning around to check out on your next winter visit to Yosemite.

There are more reasons to visit Yosemite in the wintertime, after the break.

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Do you struggle to get sharp images of your wildlife? I’m not just talking just clear images but Razor-Sharp images.

Razor-Sharp Wildlife Images

That is the subject of my new E-book, Razor-Sharp images available for pre-order exclusively on my web site; imagelight.com.  

I take you step-by-step on how to work with diffraction, hyper-focal focusing and determining the best shutter speed for the wildlife lenses you are currently using.  

I go into detail on how to use focus stacking for your close-up work and for your landscape work and why and when you use this technique to create the sharpest images possible.

Once we solve all the variables in the camera, I also take you through my favorite sharpening and de-noising softwares that I use every day.  I show you step-by-step on how to use them to create Razor Sharp Images.

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Pre-order your copy today or if you are listening to this after March of 2022 buy it with an instant download to get started right away. 

Go to my web site; image light dot com.  That is spelled, I-M-A-G-E-L-I-G-H-T dot com. And head over to the digital products page to get your copy.

Thank you in advance for supporting my work here on the Nature Photography Podcast and by visiting my website where I have digital products for sale.  All proceeds help me afford to make more content like this for everyone to enjoy.

Now back to more on photographing Yosemite in Winter

Another seasonal phenomenon that many people are aware of is the firefall at horsetail fall.  This is where, if conditions are right,  the angle of the sun in mid-February hits Horsetail fall and the setting sun pours backlight into the tiny ribbon of water and it looks like fire is cascading down the edge of El Capitan.

The original firefall was a man-made event that started way back in 1872.  The owners of the Glacier Point Hotel would dump bon fire embers over a cliff to the delight of the onlookers below.  They said it looked like a waterfall of fire coming down off the mountain. Which, I guess, it actually what it was except there was no water involved.

By the late 1960’s huge numbers of spectators trampled meadows and other areas trying to get a view of the extraordinary event, that it became vividly clear that the park was being damaged for the viewing pleasures of the visitors.  Not to mention the fire hazard it caused each time.

In 1968 the Park service finally put an end to the practice of the hotel dumping embers over the edge.  Ironically the Glacier Point Hotel would be lost, to you guessed it, fire, the following year in 1969. 

When this natural event, the firefall at horsetail fall was discovered by photographer Galen Rowel, in 1973 and it was dubbed, firefall.  

There are a few variables that have to be in place in order for Firefall in Yosemite valley, to be visible each year.

First and foremost is there water flowing over the horsetail fall?  

In order for there to be water in the falls, there has to be a generous snow pack up on the top of El Capitan. Also, the weather has to warm enough to melt the snow and get the water to flow.

Those are too big variables.  Since this is California, the water situation has been difficult to count on.  Having enough snow on top of the mountain is hit and miss and, in some years, it just leaves everyone dry.

Even though the lighting from the sun occurs in February, the temperature has to be warm.  Even if there is a good snow pack it might not be warm enough.  While it might be nice on the valley floor, the temperature at almost 8000 feet where the water needs to flow can still be too cold to move the water off the edge.

To add to these variables, Yosemite national park has to deal with the popularity of this event each year.  

As you can imagine, tourists have brought this problem on themselves.  When this was discovered in 1973, nobody was lining up to watch this event. 

However, in recent years, people have been known to leave their cars, with the doors open, idling in the middle of the street to jump out and get a picture of the firefall.  Massive traffic jams have ensued and now all parking near the best spots to view the firefall have been shut down.  The nearest point to park is a fair distance from the best viewing spots and that is over at Yosemite Falls parking area. 

Yosemite National Park has also instituted reservations to enter the park during these times in February, but those reservations are on again off again, so planning ahead is critical. 

To add to all these shenanigans, people and photographers’ plant themselves in the best viewing spots well in advance of the 5 pm showing.  So you should make sure to arrive early to get the best spot.  Even at that, you may be sharing a tripod leg with stranger that evening. 

Lastly the big variable that is hard to nail down is the changing weather.  You see, if there are overcast skies that evening, then the setting sun will not light up the waterfall and create this cool effect of water looking like fire cascading down the side of the mountain. 

The time of year to see this is February between the 10th and the 28th.  Sunset starts around 5:00 pm so you need to be in position about 3:30 to avoid some of the crowds.

The picturesque event can also occur in October but seldom is there water at the top of El Capitan in October so that is not something you want to plan around, just get there if there is heavy rain that time of year.

You have to plan ahead for your clothing as the mid-day when you are hiking to your best spot can be warm, coming down in the cold of the night you will be wishing you had layers to keep you warm.

Speaking of keeping warm, I just received these photographer’s gloves from the Vallerett (VAL-AH-RET)  company.

These are the Hatchet style gloves and they are amazing.  The gloves are made from full leather and are very soft on the outside that also help keep a confident grip on my camera gear.  They are very warm and comfortable on the inside as well, with a soft 100 % Merino Wool lining.

These gloves make carrying a cold tripod a snap as they are very well insulated.  

The best part of these gloves is that they have what they call “flip tech” fingers.  This is where the thumb and index finger flip out of the way to expose your bare finger tips so you can have true dexterity when operating your camera dials and touch screens.  

They have integrated magnets into the finger tips to hold the fingertips of the gloves out of the way, while you are using them and then easily slip them back on your fingers to get back to warm and toasty hands.

You can pick up your own photography gloves at their website, cleverly named, photographygloves.com 

In order to photograph the firefall successfully you will need a few things.

First you are going to need that tripod. Since you will be shooting in low light, a tripod will keep your images sharp, without having to boost your ISO.

The lens you chose is dependent on your choice of composition and shooting location.

Some folks are content with standing in one of the viewing areas and shooting like everyone else.

While others will go do some hiking to find the unusual angle that no one has seen before.

This might mean being a fair distance away and using a long lens to capture the fall through the trees. It’s best to experiment with locations during the day, because since the setting sun drops pretty quickly, you won’t have much time to change positions.

When it comes to exposure, consider that the final shots where the light is just perfect, will be a sliver of sunlight, lighting up a small portion of the otherwise black mountain.

If you were to use Auto exposure, you might find that your camera meter will try to boost the tones on the black mountain to medium gray, thereby blowing out the waterfall itself.

So this a time when you want to be on Manual exposure and do some test shots as you go along, to get the proper exposure when the sun finally sets.

One pro tip for you: DON’T LEAVE EARLY. One of the most disappointing things I see all the time is people leaving too early from a sunset shot.

In the case of the firefall in Yosemite valley, wait until after the sun is fully set. Many times an afterglow of purple, violets and reds can pop up and make the most stunning photograph of all.

Also, some people will be in place by the early afternoon and wait all day for the shot. They see clouds come in and think, that today is going to be a bust and sunset won’t be seen. However, if you just wait it out, the sun may drop below the cloud cover and light up the waterfall. This can be extra spectacular with brightly lit pink and purple clouds in the sky of your background. So don’t leave early.

Photographing at Yosemite National Park is great any time, but the winter is really a time that shouldn’t be missed. 

Thanks for listening to the Nature Photography Podcast, until next time, this is your host, Terry VanderHeiden saying thanks for listening.

Bird In Flight Photography

This is special in-depth episode all about getting better Bird-In-Flight photographs. In this episode, we interview Steve Perry. Steve is a popular author, YouTube Creator and wildlife photographer.

Steve hosts a very popular YouTube channel - Backcountry Gallery where he shows the viewers precisely how to operate many different equipment brands and discusses wildlife photography techniques.

We discuss in depth - Steve's new book, Secrets to Stunning Bird-In-Flight Photography. Everything from equipment choices to exposure to auto focus. This is a comprehensive interview that is our longest podcast episode to date, so settle in to absorb a ton of great information.

Fall Colors

Walking through a forest of deciduous trees in the fall, can be one life’s most calming feelings.  

The quiet in the trees and the sound of leaves crunching under your feet. 

Unlike summer time, the air is crisp with a coolness that reminds us of winter coming on the horizon but for now, it’s time for fall colors. 

Hi, this is Terry VanderHeiden, your host of The Nature Photography Podcast.  This episode is all about photographing fall colors.

 Autumn is my favorite time to travel, and for me, the best time to take landscape photographs.  If you go to the right places, the colors from the trees are spectacular.  I Always try to make a point of going to those right places this time of year.

My home base is in California so generally we experience fall a bit later than the rest of the country, but rest assured we do have nice fall colors. 

Instead of the reds and oranges of the east coast, we mostly rely on the golden aspen trees to change color.

For this we head up into the high country of the Sierras and sometimes over to the eastern sierras and take a drive south, down US route 395.

This stretch of road between Reno and Mammoth lakes holds some great spots to get some nice fall colors. 

The time of year that you go on your trek to see fall colors is critical.  Unfortunately, there is no set time that the fall colors are at their peak, it changes slightly every year.  

In the high Sierras, colors can change as early as late September but usually early October is best.  In the lower land areas of California fall colors can emerge as late as November and December.

What needs to happen in a best-case scenario, is a warm summer followed with a sudden, dry, cool down in the fall. Nights should be in the 30s to 40 degree range while the days can reach 60 or 70 without having an effect on the color.  It’s the cold at night that brings on the color. For this reason, waking up in the morning can be like Christmas day, eager to see what new color as emerged.

I would encourage and early morning drive down 395 and looking mostly to your right – or to the west.  You are looking at the Eastern side of the Sierra Mountain range.

It’s on these slopes you will see groves of yellow color spilling down the mountain.

Most of the time these groves of aspen follow a natural water source down the hills.  Where a crevice will form a creek, these aspen groves can thrive.

Aspen trees are unique in that each grove has been started by one seedling that grows and the root system sends out shoots call root suckers, to start other trees. 

A grove is one big organism rather than a bunch of individual trees. 

Interestingly, some Aspen trees can live for up to 150 years but the root system can live thousands of years. 

There is one grove in Utah that is estimated to be 80,000 years old.

The aspen groves are blast to shoot.  You can focus on a singular round leaf, on the while bark, the density of the grove.  If you find a water source, capture leaves floating down the stream.

You can get back and capture images of the entire grove, or up close for individual trees.  Consider getting to the base of the trees and looking up for a nice angle of white trunks shooing up into the sky of yellow colors against a blue sky.  

The peak color of these trees don’t last very long.  You need to keep going back day after day to capture the best time where the color is.

If you head up to June Lake or any of the other destinations along this trek, look for the groves that are reflecting on the water.

Your best bet is to travel to these designations during the mid-day and find the best scenes to shoot. Then plan which ones you want to go to at dawn.

Yes, dawn photography means getting up in the dark and making your way out to the spot that you have already scouted the day before.

The window of light can be from about 7 am to 9 am so be ready to shoot.  You can always get breakfast at 10 or so when the light is not as good.

While color is the whole reason you are out driving around in the dark, do consider shooting some images that will be destine for black and white. The contrast of the white tree trunks with dark knots in them can be very interesting.

Shooting in black and white also a great fall back when you have missed the peak color in a grove of trees.

When on  your search for fall colors, start early in the season and start at higher elevations.  The colder nights of the high elevations will make the colors change earlier.

The rule of thumb that you can use is if you are too early in the season go higher up, if things are looking like you missed the peak colors, go to lower elevations.

Photographing aspen groves is a fantastic subject all over the west.  Colorado, Utah, Wyoming all have fantastic seasons for fall colors.  Keep in mind that while the fall colors make the image good, having a beautiful scene makes the image great.

Take Grand Teton national park for instance. You almost can’t go wrong with photographing the Teton mountain range any time of year but when you have fall colors in the foreground reflecting off the lake, its unbelievable. 

I can’t make a podcast about photographing fall colors and not mention the popular destination for fall colors in the US.  New England. More on that after the break.

 Knowing when to go to New England to see a vibrant show of colors in the fall will have you planning your vacation months in advance. Understanding how to forecast your getaway to the North East to see the peak of color is very important to the planning process.  

The states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont are the first to get fall colors.  If you remember, north to south is how the color moves through the states.

We know what makes the trees change, cold nights, with comfortable day time temperatures.  However, seasons differ from one another based on how hot the summer time was to how much water the trees have access to.

 In New England, you’re looking at several species of maple and other trees that will get yellow, orange and a bright red, making every lake and stream you come across the photographic dream.

Storms that make their way into the North East can be devastating if they happen to arrive at the wrong time.  Some leaf-peeping seasons can be cut short by wind and rain that removes the color leaves prematurely. However if you are patient, you maybe able to drive to where the storm doesn't effect the color burst of the leaves. 

Keeping that in mind, it’s generally colder in the north than in the south. The fall colors will gradually sweep down from the mountains and work their way to the flat lands as the season progresses. 

Trees are more apt to change from green to color when they are more exposed to the cold night air. For example, trees along a river or lake will change faster that inland trees that might be protected from the cold.

As a good guideline, start your trip in northern Maine. October 1st.  While Bar Harbor and the Acacia National Park are great places to visit, you will have better color as you go inland away from the coast in early October.

 Up in the area of Baxter State Park is a good place to start or head over to the White Mountains in New Hampshire or drive to the Green Mountains in Vermont.  

These higher elevations will yield more color early in October.

Around the second week of October a fantastic drive is in New Hampshire along the  Kancamagus Highway. 

 This 34 mile stretch of road follows the Saco River with several turnouts along the way for photographs of covered bridges and tumbling water and rocks. 

To get there, Drive to North Conway, New Hampshire, do some shopping and then drive a mile south to pick up the Kancamagus Highway heading east.  Allow a few hours or as much as a full day to enjoy this scenic drive.

As the month of October progresses so does the color down into Southern Vermont, up-state New York, southern Maine and New Hampshire, working its way down to Massachusetts, Connecticut and beyond. 

So let the time of year be your guide.  If you have the time to spend in New England from late September all the way through October you will surely have some great opportunities to see the fall colors at their peak.

 If you only have a one or two week window, then be ready to drive a little north or little south to see the best colors. 

Once you have found yourself in and amongst the fall colors, whether it be northern Maine or the eastern Sierras of California, you need to know how to capture the beauty and color of the fall season. 

Most of the great locations for fall colors only give you but a week or two of peak color so you have to act fast. 

The first thing to consider in any photography  is the light.  What kind of light are you working with?  

The tried and true times of the day to best make photographs still apply; sunshine in early morning and late in the afternoon are usually the best conditions. 

However, don't put the camera away if you find you have overcast, gray skies. This soft light can bring out the colors quite well without having to deal with the extreme contrast of a sunny day. 

Look for contrast in color and in texture of the image.  

The fallen leaves make a great lead-in to blanketed trails and waterfalls.  

The lower light of an overcast day, coupled with the shade of a forest  may enable you to shoot slow shutter speeds without the use of a Neutral Density Filter. 

With your aperture being set with a tiny opening and a very low ISO, you might get the shutter speed down to an 1/8th of a second which should be slow enough to get soft blurry water falls.  

Do remember to bring a tripod or figure some way to stabilize your camera.  Maybe using a sandbag or some extra clothing to create a support.

 Also remember to bring some sort of camera trigger.  I would suggest a cable release but if you don't have one, try using the self-timer to fire the camera without it being moved.

If you don't have a big budget for camera equipment I would still encourage you to put a Circular Polarizer filter at the top of the list.  

Not only will it knock down reflections from rocks and allow you to see into rivers and streams, it will give more depth to the color of the leaves.

 Also, most Circular Polarizer filters will cut the light by about a stop and a half.  That could be just enough light reduction if you are trying to get a slow shutter speed for shooting waterfalls.

While most people are on the look-out for the reds, oranges and yellow colors in the leaves, don't forget the cool colors.  The accent of green pine trees and the blue of a lake will make the warm colors pop off the page.

Keep an eye out for reflected color. Using a longer lens can compress the color in the image to make a beautiful background shot. Since you are likely shooting digital, give yourself options. 

 Shoot one of just the reflection, then go ahead and include the actual trees in the composition and shoot both vertical and horizontal. That way, you will have lots to select from when it comes to the editing process.

If you are shooting with a tripod, make sure you utilize your range of aperture to get images with full depth-of-field  as well as some with shallow depth-of-field. 

Lead the viewer through your images with your composition. Have them linger on what you want them to look at by using depth-of-field or lack there of, to your advantage.

Be sure to look around, both up in the sky and down on the ground.  You might find a tree with a root structure that is interesting or a blue sky that contrasts well with the autumn colors.

For your camera settings, put your white balance on "clouds". This will yield a warmer set of tones that will help enhance the fall colors. 

Avoid using the "A" mode for white balance as the camera will see large sections of yellows and reds and try to compensate by cooling the image down (adding blue and cyan). 

The most important part is to keep shooting. Shoot from before the sun rises and until at least an hour after it sets. 

If the sunlight makes the scene too contrasty, head under the canopy of leaves and shoot in the forest. 

 If the light still doesn't cooperate, spend those brightly lit times of day searching for where you want to be at sunset and sunrise. 

Capturing the colors of the short fall season is challenge but it can be most rewarding with hues that can only be seen in certain locals and during a season that just doesn't last very long.   

 ***

If you are enjoying these podcasts, please, take a moment to tell another photographer about it.  Maybe even make a post telling your followers about this podcast on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter.

The Nature Photography Podcast  can always be searched on any of the leading podcast players, Apple podcast, Spotify, Overcast and Amazon music, plus many others. It is important to include THE in the title, THE nature Photography Podcast.

I know it’s a pain but if you have time, it would be great if you could leave a positive review on any of those platforms, it could really help keep this podcast high in the ratings.

Feel free to visit my web site, imagelight.com that’s I-M-A-G-E-L-I-G-H-T dot com for photographs and links to all the things we talked about in this podcast. Feel free to  email me with comments or suggestions.  My email is: Terry at Imagelight.com 

Until next time, this is your host, Terry VanderHeiden with THE Nature Photography Podcast. 

Seals and Sea Lions

I’m over at the very popular tourist area in San Francisco, Pier 39.  It’s here that we should find some of the most popular tenants of the pier. The California Sea Lion.

In Northern California, there are three main species that most people just refer to as seals. The ones found at Pier 39, are Sea Lions, the seals found along the pacific shore are Harbor Seals and the mammoth sized seals found at Año Nuevo are usually Elephant seals. 

This was where I wanted to place some music by the artist SEAL, but it would have cost me too much for the music rights.  So you will just have to imagine “Kiss From a Rose” playing right now. 

Let’s start with the easiest to find and easiest to photograph, the Sea Lion.

If you are in Northern California and are planning a trip to San Francisco, make a point swing by Pier 39, to photograph the sea lions, close up.  

If you aren’t familiar with Pier 39, it’s a tourist spot where people come from all over the world to buy key chains of the golden gate bridge and sweatshirts that say Alcatraz Swim Team.

While parking can be expensive, its free to go in and walk around

In the north west corner of Pier 39 there are several docks call the K docks, that are now home to dozens of Sea Lions.

Back in 1989 very  few sea lions were seen resting on the docks in that marina. 

Shortly after the Loma Prieta earthquake in the the fall of 1989, the sea lions started converging on to the Fisherman’s Wharf – K docks.  By early 1990 there were hundreds of them. 

It was a big deal at the time.  Since commercial fishermen had their presence there, they weren’t too keen on sea lions crowding up the docks.  While environmentalist saw this as an opportunity to give a safe haven for some interesting creatures.  

The Sea Lions ultimately won, and are a permanent fixture there at the docks. 

Each winter, you find as many as 900 sea lions basking in the winter sunshine and of course, barking. 

The Sea Lions that are barking are mostly males that are claiming territory.  This mostly happens during mating season, but at haul-outs like at Pier 39, the barking goes on for most of the day.

You can find them at this San Francisco location most of the year, with higher concentrations of them in the winter months.  However, during the summer months, June through August, the docks can be completely abandoned. 

This is because its mating season they head out to the open ocean to mate and give birth.

The females’ mate during the summer and “at least most of these animals” all give birth about the same time in middle of June each year. Most of the time they are born on the Channel Islands in Southern California. 

It’s not just Pier 39 where you can find these entertaining animals. Sea lions range from the tip of Baha to Vancouver British Colombia. Traveling all around the west coast you can find them cavorting in the water and in the relative safety of the harbors.

You can also find them with much more natural backgrounds than Pier 39.  That is just and easy location to find them.

These animals are protected by the Marine Mammal Protection Act that passed in 1972. So don’t interact with them, but do photograph them from a safe distance. 

The Sea Lion’s biggest predators are Orca Killer Whales, great white sharks and of course, man.

Humans are responsible in many ways for sea lion dangers, including loss of habitat, hunting and pollution.  The plastics found in the ocean are becoming one of the biggest problems for the California Sea Lion. 

When the sea lions return to the docks in San Francisco, they might bring with them some pups that have survived ocean life, and these are the most popular to photograph. 

Most of the resident sea lions at Pier 39, are males but here is how you can distinguish the gender. 

Males can get pretty large, up to 850 pounds and over seven feet in length. While females only get to about 220 pounds. 

At about five years old, males develop a bump on their heads called a crest.  This doesn’t help with the young ones but it’s a start. And since these sea lions can live up to 25 years old it’s a good aspect to look for. 

The sea lions in San Francisco are pretty easy to photograph but you need a few things in your favor first.

You have to go at the right time of year.  The winter months are best, as they grow in numbers on the docks.  

While most of the viewing is done from the Pier 39 viewing area, move to the left or right to get a lower angle perspective of the animals.  Avoid the middle of the day, as the lighting is not very good, early morning is the best as the viewing area will show the sea lions fully lit by the rising sun.

Consider that you are in San Francisco, known for its fog, so you may very well have overcast on the day you visit, which does make the lighting easier work with.

Isolation:  Use a long lens for isolating an individual sea lion.  Capture him when he’s yawning or barking. On a cold winter morning, you might even get some fog showing their breath as they bark.  This will be better when the sea lions are back lit by the setting sun later in the day.

Keep your shutter speed high when shooting these animals as any quick movements in your viewfinder might be blurred with anything lower than a 1/2000th of a second shutter speed. 

One big confusion that occurs is the question, is this animal you are looking at Pier 39, are they seals?  The answer is no, they are sea lions.

If you head out to the ocean beaches in Northern California, there you can find Harbor Seals.  These are indeed seals.

The way to tell them apart is that seals have an ear hole, while sea lions have an ear flap.

Seals will spend most of their time in the water but will haul out on land to rest or certainly to mate.  Seals can sleep underwater and have a thick layer of blubber under their skin to keep them warm.  

The way I use to tell them apart is that seals are streamline blobs that sit on the land kind of like a football would. Their fins point backward and cannot be rotated.   Sea lions on the other hand, will sit up with their head much higher than their bodies and can even walk around with their flippers as feet.

If you think of the image of a “trained seal” who would bounce a ball on their nose and swallow fish that are tossed to them, you’re likely seeing a sea lion not a seal.

The attraction of the harbor seals is that they are darn cute.  Round, innocent little faces that don’t emit a bark, so much as a little grunt.

Low tide is best time to go out looking for Harbor seals and again go at a time of day in your area that has the best low angle of light to light up those faces.

Faces are what you are looking for with these animals.  If you can get them interacting, so much the better, but a lot of times they will be by themselves.  Focus on their faces and when they open their eyes, be ready to shoot a bunch of frames. 

These harbor seals are not found easily in abundance, like the sea lions of Pier 39, so it will be more of a challenge to find them and photograph them.  

Lastly in the pinniped family to consider making a photography trip to photograph are the Elephant Seals.  

One of the most popular places in California to view the elephant seals is Año Nuevo Coast Preserve. 

Año Nuevo is located about the middle of the state or lower Northern California, obviously on the coast. 

It is here you will have the opportunity to see these massive beasts in their natural surroundings.

If you go from April though August you will hit molting season.  This is where they shed the outer layer of skin and fur.  Frankly this looks nasty but it is part of their life cycle and you may want to photograph it. 

During this season, you don’t need reservations but you will need a free permit and there are no guided tours available at this time.  You just go out on your own and you need to be back by 5:00 pm when they close.  

The hike is about an hour from the permit station and its mostly through sand dunes so be prepared for that.

Next up for the park is the fall juvenile season.  That begins September 1st, and lasts through November 30.  This is the time of the year where the young elephant seals haul out and lounge around on the beaches.  Though they are not in large quantities and the seals are only 1 to 3 years old.  However, there could be some nice photo opportunities.  

This time of year, is also only self-guided tours with a free permit. 

The next big event and the most exciting time is from December 15th through March 31st.

This is elephant seal breeding season at Año Nuevo.  

During this time frame, adult elephant seals come ashore to give birth and mate.  You should see bull seals fighting combats to gain breeding access and it can be exciting to watch and photograph. 

Gigantic lumbering beasts battle it out on the sand.  Also, in late December to early February, pregnant females come in to give birth to cute little baby seal pups. 

These are all great photographic opportunities. 

 This is quite a bit different than any of the other times of year, it is much more structured. You can ONLY go with a docent guide, ONLY on a scheduled tour. 

  You can’t go by yourself and hang out watching for as long as you like. You will get moved along as if you are in a museum.

There is also a cost for these tours, about $11 and of course, you need to make reservations.

The reservations go on sale on October 20th and then the tickets are sent out 56 days before the ticket date. It sounds all very particular and it is.

You can’t bring a cart with equipment; you have to walk only and carry all your gear.  So, plan accordingly for this 3 to 4 mile hike over sand dunes and plan for about 2 to 3 hours of time on the tour.

The tours are conducted rain or shine. No refunds and the park is only closed on Christmas, New Years Day during this segment of the season.  Also, you can’t bring an umbrella, so pack your rain gear is you want to stay dry.  California doesn’t have much of a rainy season, but if its going to rain, this is the time frame for it.

To make a reservation, go online and search for Año Nuevo Elephant Seals guided walks. 

The first thing you need to know if you are going to view and photograph the elephant seals during the winter season, is that you will get no closer than 25 feet.  The truth is, it will likely be much farther.  Therefore, bring that long lens.  

Preferably a zoom lens if you have one.  You won’t want to be changing lenses out on a windy beach, so consider bringing a second camera or just live with your lens choice.  

You will also want to bring a tripod.  This will be essential for support of that long lens or if you want to record some video, you’ll need it.

Bring some drinking water for hydration on your long walk, as there are no services to rely on once you are out there.  Food is forbidden to take on your walk.

There could be in mud and sand as you walk so good waterproof hiking boots are a must.  Consider that to get the best angles of these huge beasts, is to get low with your shot angle.  You may very well be laying in mud or sand to get that low shot.  Just dress prepared for muck.

Lets talk about Lighting.

This is all happening on the west coast of California.  The rising sun will be at your backs, and illuminating the seals from the side.  Most of the walks will have you heading out to the sea, where the light will be coming in from your right.  At some point, you may get to stop at the shore, where light will be directly behind you.

In some of the places, there is a steep drop off, where you may be shooting downward to the elephant seals, or if you get the opportunity to get down to their level, the cliff behind you might block that morning light. 

Because of this, there is no need to get there at sunrise.  In fact, I think the tours don’t start to about 8:30 in the morning.

The way the tours are, there is not much to look at on the way back so get your shots in early.

Again, at the California coast that time of year, you are likely to have overcast, fog or rain clouds, so don’t expect sunshine, though I have seen it that time of year.  

This kind of lighting will make the scenes bathed in a much softer light witch can be really nice. 

Keep in mind that you will be shooting action, If all goes well.  These 3000 pound animals thundering across the sand to defend a territory is fantastic. Keep your shutter speed high to make sure you capture all the action, sharp.

These are three options for you to make some great captures of sea lions, harbor seals and the big daddy of them all, the elephant seals. So get out there and make the experience happen.

If you are enjoying these podcasts, please, take a moment to tell another photographer about it.  Maybe make a post on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter as that would be a great way to tell others about this podcast. 

The Nature Photography Podcast  can always be searched on any of the leading podcast players, Apple podcast, Spotify, Overcast and now Amazon music, plus many others. It is important to include THE in the title, THE nature Photography Podcast. 

 It would be great if you could leave a positive review on any of those platforms, it could really help keep this podcast high in the ratings.

Feel free to visit my web site, imagelight.com that’s I-M-A-G-E-L-I-G-H-T dot com for photographs and links to all the things we talked about in this podcast.

Until next time, this is your host, Terry VanderHeiden with THE Nature Photography Podcast. 

Bats in Motion

Image courtesy of David L. Bozsik - Bozsik Imagery

I’m driving through vineyards and almond orchards on my way to a special location to help a longtime friend and fellow photographer construct his elaborate stop motion set up.  He’s going to make images of some creatures that are very fast and only come out, when the sun goes down.

The subject of tonight’s journey is the Mexican Free tailed bat.

Mexican Free Tail bats roosting for until we have all the gear set up to photograph them. Image Courtesy of Dale Jantzen

Just outside of Stockton, California,  there is a location where every night during the summer months, these bats emerge from under a specially built causeway and hit the skies in search of food. 

And with a colony of about 60,000 bats, each night their insect consumption can reach up to 10 tons of insects. That is 10 TONS of insects, each evening. 

Mexican free-tail bat with its almost transparent wings makes a great subject for the stop motion set up by David L. Bozsik - Bozsik Imagery

 As much as these bats are the nightmare of insects over a hundred-mile radius, these flying mammals have predators after themselves. 

 Snakes and racoons are known to get into the roost and can cause significant damage.  So much so, that if a baby bat should fall out of the roost to rocks below, the mother will not fly down to its rescue.  They do this in order to NOT make THEMSELVES a meal of predators. 

 In this particular case, each night the Swanson’s hawks and peregrine falcons are also waiting in the trees nearby the causeway.  

 These birds are looking for their own smorgasbord to begin, when the nightly emergence of the Mexican free tailed bats give the birds and opportunity to be picked off one by one as they emerge into the night sky.

Baby bats are borne at a rate of one per summer season. They roost separately from their bat mothers, as high up as they can.  Higher up in a cave or other area will be warmer and this warmth will promote a healthier growth period. 

When a mother bat returns in the morning with food, she can distinguish her baby from thousands of other bats just by recognizing the baby’s unique call. 

An adult Mexican Freetail bat can weigh about a half an ounce, they are about 3 and half inches in length and their wingspan is about 12 inches.  

My longtime friend and fellow nature photographer David Bozsik is at this location setting up his gear as I arrived. 

Five strobe units and the Cognisys Sabre to trigger the camera trap.

The spot we are at is under a busy road that was rebuilt about 15 years ago to accommodate this colony of bats. 

His gear is somewhat elaborate with strobe units on light stands, a camera on a tripod and a specialized sensor for capturing images of these animals in flight. 

There is a river not far from here that is a great place for these bats to find food, so the location is perfect for bat life.  I asked David how many bats are up in the ceiling of this area..

Image Courtesy of David L. Bozsik - Bozsik Imagery

They have large ears that help them locate insects via echolocation. This is where the bat emits a call and listens for the echo that is returned to their ears.  This system will allow the bats to find flying insects by listening to how quickly the echo is returned and if they need to fly left, right, up or down to capture it. 

The bats in this area do an interesting behavior as they start to drop down from their roosts just as the sun sets.

What is the actual set up that David is using on this session: 

Image Courtesy of Dale Jantzen

The idea here, is to leave the shutter open for a short time, and the saber unit will fire the flashes when a bat passes through the triggering zone. So as not to get too much exposure on sensor, David has his camera set up this way:

The camera will cycle every three seconds to keep from building up noise on the sensor or if something flies through the shooting zone, the camera will cycle again even if it hasn’t hit the three second limit.

David will shoot about 1500 frames with only about 100 images being successful.  So, the percentages are low, but he can always just delete any images that are blank from the camera cycling. 

Inputting the proper settings in the flash is an important factor in this whole production

Now it’s a waiting game.  It’s always better to get to a location early to set up and in this case, we will be shooting when it starts to gets dark. 

The area we are working in has a slope of about 45 degrees and there is no flat ground under this habitat. Large concrete boulders have been arranged under the causeway. 

 Each step is dicey, since your footing is always on an edge of a rock.  The light stands are arranged so that they can be as level as they can be.  There are two tripods, fitted with ball heads on each one.  One tripod is for the camera and one for the motion sensor to keep the sensor parallel to the sensor plane. 

  Negotiating these large boulders in the dark will be difficult, So setting up in daylight with worth the extra time. 

As we wait, the mosquitos start to feast on any exposed flesh.  The outside temperature was about 95 degrees when I arrived, but under the well-insulated road way, it’s at least 15 degrees cooler.  

 Right now, I’m regretting not wearing long sleeves to give the mosquitos less of a food source  but we can start to see a few bats drop from the ceiling and start swirling around.  Its go time.

Image Courtesy of David L. Bozsik - Bozsik Imagery

 The bats are starting to swirl into a whirlpool of bats.  They are gaining numbers as more and more are dropping from the ceiling getting into the whirlpool.  It’s kind of like skaters entering a busy ice rink as more and more start to fill up the area.  A fact I read the other day was that bats always fly left when they come out of their roost.  And its true in this case as they are flying counter clockwise.

Interestingly, no more mosquitos are bothering us.  The bats are starting to swallow them up as they begin their nightly flight. 

As the vortex of bats gets more populated, its starts to widen under this causeway.  The widening of these circling bats now puts several bats flying though the photography zone and the flashes are firing off quite often now. 

The bats continue to fly in this counter clockwise direction exposing hundreds of frames as they go by.

After a few more minutes, the bats start to direct themselves to fly out from under the causeway  and off into the night sky.  Up above, several people gather to see the site of thousands of bats heading out for their nightly feeding.  

The sky is darkened for a short time as the bats make a massive cloud, cruising over the river and out into the farmlands.

And just like that, most of the bats are gone from under the highway.  A few stragglers, but for the most part, all the bats are gone.  We need to load up all this equipment in the dark, before the mosquitos are back.

You can see some of David’s bat photographs at my web site, just go to imagelight.com that is I-M-A-G-E-L-I-G-H-T-dot, com.  and click on the The Nature Photography Podcast.

You can also go to his web site: Bozsik Imagery on your search engine. That is spelled:  B-O-Z-S-I-K – IMAGERY.

If you are enjoying these podcasts, please, take a moment to tell another photographer about it.  Maybe Make a post on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter as that would be a great way to tell others about this podcast.  

It can always be searched on any of the leading podcast players, Apple podcast, Spotify, Overcast and many others. It is important to include THE in the title, THE nature Photography Podcast.

 It would be great if you could leave a positive review on any of those platforms, it could really help keep this podcast high in the ratings.

Until next time, this is your host, Terry VanderHeiden with THE Nature Photography Podcast. 

Honey Bees

The Honey bee.  

In the spring time they are easily found and can make great subjects for our digital cameras.  Today we will learn a ton of information about honey bees from a local bee keeper, that will give a much better understanding of this valuable cog in our ecosystem.

This is Terry VanderHeiden, professional photographer and you host of The Nature Photography Podcast.

I traveled a few towns away from where I live to meet  with Ronni Brega from Oaktown Bees and she was kind enough to spend an afternoon with me, enlightening  me to the world of honey bees.  

Bees are indeed a keystone species.  We as humans need honey bees to keep our plants thriving. 

Photo Courtesy of BozsikImagery.com

 By that definition, a keystone species is one species that plays a major role in the ecosystem.  With the removal of a keystone species, it could create a ripple effect across the ecosystem where the whole system could collapse.

The term Keystone Species comes from field of architecture and the building of an arch.  The keystone is the center stone at the top center of the arch, that if were to be removed, it would cause the entire arch to fall down. 

Recording unclose sounds of bees in the hive. (See the microphone under the hive.)

The bees take on this role by pollinating our plants that we enjoy and consume every day.  With out plant life flourishing, we as humans would have a very difficult time surviving. 

It goes like this: The bees land on a flower of a plant to gather nectar.  By doing this, they gather the pollen as it sticks to the hairs on their bodies. Then they fly over to the next plant and bring some of that pollen with them, there by pollinating THAT plant. The honey bees also bring pollen back to their hive to use in feeding the young and supplementing their diet.  

The bees, while wearing this pollen sweater, run into other bees in the hive and crisscross the pollen from one bee to another.  Those bees then go out and land on different plants there-by creating cross-pollination that will maintain the genetic diversity of the plant community. 

Bees communicating and exchanging nectar.

At some point, the bees go out to specifically gather pollen for the hive. In this case, the bees brush the pollen from their bodies down to their hind legs into what is called pollen baskets.  These will collect and hold the pollen until the bee gets back to the hive. When the baskets are full, the bee makes her way back to the hive to dump off the pollen and then back out for another haul of pollen. 

The bees consume the nectar as their carbohydrate and they consume the pollen as their protein for a balanced diet. In fact, honey is mixed with pollen to form a sort of  “bee bread”,   that is fed as the first meal to a new emerging bee.

There is a danger of Honey bee colonies collapsing so I asked Ronni, her take on keeping honey bee colonies safe: 

What is the life cycle of the honey bee? I asked Ronni how does this all work?

The life span of a queen can be about five years, where the life span of a worker bee is only 6 weeks. 

During the last three weeks of their lives, they become the foragers,  the bees that we see most often visiting the plants in our gardens. One of their jobs is to swallow up nectar and they start processing that, in their bellies.  When they get back to the hive, they regurgitate that processed nectar to yet another bee, who processes it even more, then that bee, regurgitates it once more into a cell, a honeycomb, and seals the top of it with wax.  That is where honey comes from and Storage like this can last a very long time.

That is the food that the hive survives on during the winter when they can’t forage for fresh nectar and pollen. 

An interesting fact is that those forager bees don’t keep track of “How Much” honey the hive has created, they only knows to keep going out and brining home nectar and pollen. Over time, the hive has an abundance of honey because they usually make much more than they can consume as a hive. 

This gives an interesting look inside a birthing cell. The capped cells are sometimes removed during the pupae stage if mites or something else is suspected. Sometimes the cells are re-capped and other times if the infestation is too much, that signals the end of the road for that young bee. The health of the colony always comes first.

That is where beekeepers come in.  They can harvest a portion of that honey, without damaging the interworking of the colony of honey bees. The honey can be kept for a long time as it has a tremendous shelf life. 

Honey is also linked to helping people with allergies.  For instance, if you were allergic to acacia blossoms, by eating honey from an area where the bees collect from the acacia trees, you would essentially be micro dosing on acacia to start to gain an immunity toward defeating your allergy.  

When I got to the hives that Ronni keeps a watchful eye on in Oakland, California, there was a daily ritual that occurs called the orientation flight.  

Along with honey bees that are many times being kept and supported by bee keepers like Ronni, there are native bees that are also out doing all the same good things honeybees are doing.

 If you would like to start photographing honey bees, it’s an easy process to find your subjects.  Obviously, the weather has a lot to do with finding bees, as they prefer a warmer climate or the warmer part of the day.  So, in areas that have a defined winter, look for the bees in spring and summer. 

Photo Courtesy of BozsikImagery.com

Situate yourself in an area that has lots of flowering plants that will attract bees.  I have found it best to sit on the ground and watch what the bees are doing.

After a few minutes of observation, you will see the bee’s kind of develop a pattern. They will fly from one flower to the next, digging in to gather nectar.  You can also observe them filling their leg saddlebags full of pollen.  

Since you are shooting close up, your depth of field will be shallow.  Even if you are shooting at f/16 or f/22 your field of focus will be a challenge.

It’s probably easiest to rack your macro lens out to full magnification and then back it off just a small amount.  Then leave your focus alone.  That way, you can lean into the flower to capture the bee portrait. 

Very likely, your auto focus on your camera will not be fast enough to capture the changing movements of a honey bee.  

Native bees doing the work of pollinating our plants. Photo Courtesy of BozsikImagery.com

What can also happen with a macro lens, is if you try to use the auto focus, you might be close to the bee, then the auto focus grabs the stem of a plant two feet behind the bee. And your bee is way out of focus. By the time the auto focus comes back to the bee, your subject is on to another flower.

The strategy is to watch the bees and see which flowers attract them the most.  What will attract one bee, will likely attract another.  Get into position and focus and frame your camera on that one favorite flower. And wait.  It likely won’t be long before a bee lands on your flower and you can tear off a few shots.

Make sure your shutter speed is elevated, as you are dealing with a lot of movement in the camera since you are shooting close up. 

Also, the plant itself can move around a bit.  One product that I have used and I have talked about it before, is the Plamp.  Spelled P-L-A-M-P,  this device can be anchored to the ground or a tripod leg and extend out and gingerly clamp the stem of the plant to keep it still during photography.   It’s made by Wimblerly and can be found at their web site,  tripodhead.com along with their other products.  

The next thing to consider is, lighting. 

I like to use a ring light when photographing insects.  A ring light is a flash that attaches to the front of the lens and projects light right on your subject.  

Without causing any shadows from being back on top of the camera, this flash will be much closer to your subject as well, so you don’t have to use it on full power.  This will let you balance it better with the ambient light to NOT make the light look like it came from a flash.

You can also take it another step further and use a scrim.

A scrim is usually a translucent fabric that can be stretched across a frame or clipped to some stands or a fence to suspend the scrim over your subject.  Since you are shooting close up, you don’t need to scrim off a lot of area.  Maybe 2 square feet should cover everything you need.

You can buy a scrim already in a frame.  I got mine from Lastolite called a tri-grip diffuser. It pops out to stretch the fabric and create a diffusion panel to shoot under. This is a simple way to create that soft light that will make your images look a lot less contrasty.

You can hold it with one hand or sometimes it’s easier to have a friend hold it over your flowers. Or, you can suspend it by clamping it to some light stands or other tripods. 

This will soften the sunlight over your entire subject, the same as if it were an overcast day.

Now, without all those shadows, you can work with the bees in almost perfect light.   To make it better, maybe use a bounce card to bring some light into the underside of your subject.  

This can be easily done by adding a white card underneath to bounce the light up into the flowers and the bees.

Make a point to try photographing these very important subjects as they forage for their own food and helping all of our plants thrive.

 Look to capture them with their leg baskets full of pollen and capture them from all kinds of angles. When you get good at that, then try photographing the honey bees in flight. That’s a whole other set up we will talk about someday.

  Join me in celebrating the most valuable of animals, the honey bee. 

If you are enjoying these podcasts, please, take a moment to tell another photographer about it.  Maybe Make a post on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter as that would be a great way to tell others about this podcast. 

It can always be searched on any of the leading podcast players, Apple podcast, Spotify, Overcast and many others. It is important to include THE in the title, THE nature Photography Podcast.

 It would be great if you could leave a positive review on any of those platforms, it could really help keep this podcast high in the ratings.

Until next time, this is your host, Terry VanderHeiden with THE Nature Photography Podcast. 

Long Lenses

Long Lenses

A question that most professional photographer’s get asked is; what is your favorite lens?

I guess with the thought that if a new photographer could buy one lens, what would it be

As you can imagine, there is no right answer to this.  But I will let you know what lenses I use most for wildlife photography.

Hi, this is Terry VanderHeiden I’m a professional photographer and your host of the Nature Photography Podcast.   Welcome to my episode on lenses. 

The first aspect that we need to look at is what is the wildlife we are looking to capture in our cameras?  Are the subjects large?  Am I safe when I get close to them? Or, are they small and nervous animals that live their life like…,   like the prey animals that they are?

Let’s start with small subjects.  Really small subjects like tiny insects are mostly shot with a 28mm lens. What???  A 28mm is a WIDE ANGLE lens!

The way I use my 28mm lens is I put on a reversal adapter on the front of the lens, it threads on like a filter, then I  flip it around and attach it to the camera in reverse. In fact, I attach the 28mm lens to a set of close-up extension tubes in reverse.  

 Think about it like this:  A wide angle lens takes a large scene and projects it onto a small sensor.  If you flip that lens around, you now have a lens that projects a tiny subject as a large subject on that same sensor.  In normal configuration, the wide lens makes large scene, tiny. So, reversed, the wide lens makes a tiny subject larger.

This, all coupled with extension tubes, will allow you to get super close to your subject.  In some cases, only a few millimeters away from a subject.

If you want to get a photograph of an ant’s head – that’s how you can do it.

The first drawback to this system is shallow depth-of-field.  So shallow, that the ant’s head might be in focus but the body of the ant is totally out of focus. 

This means that you cannot hand hold this kind of shot.  Just your slight movement will put your subject in focus, then you inadvertently move a bit, it will be totally out of focus. 

 This rig has to be on a tripod.  In fact, I use a set of focusing rails to zero in on the exact thing I want to focus on.  This also allows me to stack focus if I want to.

The next thing you lose is infinity focus.  If you are out in the field, photographing bees on flowers and a UFO lands in the field right in front of you, you won’t be able to swing your camera up and refocus and capture that.  The focus range is very small when the 28mm lens is configured this way.

The last thing that might be considered a drawback is that you lose any automated features that the lens was giving you.  Not auto focus, no auto aperture – it becomes a complete manual lens.

The next wildlife lens I use is the 105mm macro. I use all Nikon products so the length of these short telephoto macro lenses varies from each manufacturer.  I think Sony makes a 90mm, Canon makes a 100mm and so on.

The great thing about a macro lens is it is very versatile.  You can use it for your close up work as well as anything else.  Because the focus works very close-up as well as for subjects that are far away.  You do not lose infinity when working with a macro lens.  Everything is available to you.  This makes the macro lens, one of the most all-around lenses you can buy. 

The next lens that I use in my wildlife work is the 70-200mm zoom lens, f/2.8

You’re probably thinking that this is not much of a wildlife lens, but think about it like this:

If you end up getting surprisingly close to a subject you will need something with a zoom that you can pull back still get your subject in the frame.

If you think about it, one of the most used tools in wildlife photography is your vehicle.  Your car or truck can be used as an excellent blind when photographing wildlife.

As it turns out, if there is an animal along the roadway, a passing vehicle doesn’t necessarily register as a threat to that animal.  Certainly not like a human can.  Slowly approaching wildlife in a car is sometimes the best way to get really close. Plus, you have the personal safety of the car in most cases. 

In order to do this kind of photography, when in the vicinity of wildlife, roll your windows down in advance.  While a car rolling up is not a problem for many animals, rolling down the window when you get there, is usually a sound that strikes panic in your subject. Even if it’s cold out, drive around with the windows down already.

Next, and this should go without saying, but turn your radio off, turn your cell phones to silent mode as well as any two-way radios you might have working.  No talking, keep communications to a whisper if need be. 

When you are shooting like this, a short telephoto is a good idea to have attached to a body in the car, at the ready. You never know when subject appear just around the bend in the road, and a shortish telephoto might get you the shot.

Next up for me is the 300mm f/2.8.  This is where you start getting into the more high ticket items and it revolves around the wide f/stop. 

You can buy a new, 300mm Nikon lens, for about $2000.  A lot to pay for one fixed prime lens.  However, that lens is an f/4 lens.

To buy the new Nikon 300mm f/2.8 lens – just one full stop brighter than the f/4 – that will cost you around $5,500 – well over twice as much.

How can you rationalize a purchase like that?

Not only is price a factor, weight is another.  The f/4 version weighs in at about 27 ounces or about a pound and half.  While the f/2.8 version weighs in at 6.3 pounds. 

The bottom line is speed and quality.  When you are buying the more expensive lens, you are getting the best glass your manufacturer can produce.  You are also buying a lens that not only allows you to shoot earlier in the morning and later in the day without boosting your ISO, you also getting twice the shallower depth-of field.  

This will often be the difference in making your subject pop off the screen as it will isolate them against just about any background This is an effect that is not believable when done with software.  

It’s a look that cannot be done, any other way. 

I’m sure there are professionals that buy lenses and equipment for the status of it.  However, most professionals will save some money if they can.  Professional agree, lens buying is not the place to become frugal. 

 Yes, the f/2.8 version costs way more.  Yes, it weighs 4 times as much as the smaller lens. Then why would anyone purchase this lens?

 The answer is simple.  Professionals see the difference in quality.  They see that the backgrounds are pleasingly softened, they see that they can shoot things in the low light times of day that other photographers can’t. They can create images that stand out.

Here is my take on spending good money for top-of-the-line lenses.  

I know that camera bodies come and go.  Next year they will have a body that shoots at a faster frame rate, higher ISO, better color etc.   You will change out your camera bodies every few years.  That’ just how it goes.  The technology advancements are too good to pass up. 

Lenses, however, are a lifetime investment.  If you save up and buy a long telephoto lens when you are in your 30’s, you will be shooting on that same lens when you are in your 70s’.  That could be 40 years of use!

If take the cost of a prime top of the line 300mm lens at $5500 today’s price and extrapolate that out over 40 years, that is a cost of $137 per year to have the best lens money can buy. Or .38 cents a day if that is easier to visualize. 

At some point the weight of the lens may become a problem as you get older.  Carrying it around in the field just may not be fun anymore, or just may be too exhausting. 

Since you paid good money for it when you bought it, you can sell it on the after-market. This is assuming you take good care of your expensive equipment, and if you spend that much on a lens, I’m pretty sure you will. 

At the time of this recording, That $5500 lens is being sold for about $3500 today.  That is about 64% of your initial investment, can be returned to you if you sell it as a pre-owned lens.

If you buy the substandard f/4 lens, spending $2,000 on it.  Today, you can turn around and sell it for about $300.  That is only 15 percent of your initial investment. 

Since I didn’t get into nature photography for the mathematics, let’s move on.

The last lens on my list is a big one.  I use the Nikon 600mm f/4 for most of my shots of birds, and larger animals that I can’t or don’t want to get close to.  Occasionally I put on the 1.4 teleconverter to boost it even more, but generally I don’t like giving up the extra stop of light that the 1.4 teleconverter requires and I don’t think that the images are as sharp as they are without the teleconverter. 

The large, fast super-telephoto lenses are quite a commitment.  First, they are very expensive.  They are also quite heavy.  This weight  factor is a item that not often considered, but should be.

 This lens is not very conducive to hand holding.  So you have to have a tripod or at least a monopod.

 If you go with the tripod, you should also consider getting a gimbal head to go with the tripod.  On that tripod should be a leveling base as well.

The way this system works, when you go out, have your Gimbal head attached to your tripod.  I know I have talked about this product before, but what I like to use is the Wimberley Gimbal head.

When you get to your location, you set the length to your tripod legs and secure each knuckle on the legs.  I always do this twice.  I had a rig crash to the ground one time and I don’t want to experience that ever again. So, I check all the connections twice.

Next, since I have a leveling base on the tripod, I can very quickly get the Gimbal head, that sits on top of the leveling head, nice and level with the bubble indicator.

Now I slip the foot of the long telephoto lens onto the Wimberly head and I then have to balance that.  This is done by moving the foot on the tripod head forward and back, tightening it down each time, until I can get the up and down pivot of the lens to hold its position when I let go of it. 

This is the beauty of using the Wimberly or just about any gimbal head.  Once it’s all level and balanced, you can follow subjects and leave the lens trained on the subject without having to hold the lens.  You let the head and the tripod to all the heavy work. 

One of the ways to get around the heavy costs of using long lenses is renting them.  I highly recommend using rented lenses BEFORE you buy.  That way you can work with the equipment before you buy, to make sure you are getting the right products.  Also, it lets you test two different styles of lenses if you want.  Paying only the small rental fee as opposed to the big price of a long, fast telephoto lens.

The company that I turn to when I want to rent equipment is Lens-Pro-To-Go.  

To tell us more about renting equipment, On the line with us today from Lens-Pro-To-Go is 

Mike Duval, 

The folks at Lens Pro To Go has offered the listeners of The Nature Photography Podcast a discount on their next rental.  Use the code  TERRYV10 at check out. 

If you are enjoying these podcasts, please, take a moment to tell another photographer about it.  Maybe Make a post on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter as that would be a great way to tell others about this podcast. 

It can always be searched on any of the leading podcast players, Apple podcast, Spotify, Overcast and many others. It is important to include THE in the title, THE nature Photography Podcast.

 It would be great if you could leave a positive review on any of those platforms, it could really help keep this podcast high in the ratings.

Until next time, this is your host, Terry VanderHeiden with THE Nature Photography Podcast. 

Dirty Crows

Photo courtesy of BozsikImagery.com

Crows.  How do they know its Wednesday in our neighborhood?

Every week it’s the same thing.  The garbage trucks come by early in the morning and then in comes the sound of crows squawking in the trees and perching on telephone poles nearby.

 This fascinating bird, gets vilified by many, even two-year-old Makenna has an opinion on crows.

Hi this is Terry VanderHeiden with the Nature Photography Podcast.  This week, we are talking about crows.

 Many western cultures associate crows with bad omens, disease and even death. Also associated with witches, many people believe crows are responsible for reducing the population of other birds by eating eggs right out of the nest. 

If that’s not bad enough reputation, when a group of crows gather together it is called: a MURDER of crows.

In spite of what you may think of crows, these are fascinated birds that are quite intelligent, very plentiful and not really easy to photograph.   Let’s learn a little more about crows so that way we can become better wildlife photographers. 

The first thing to know about crows is that they are almost everywhere. The crow belongs to the Corvid family of birds, that includes, not surprisingly, its often-confused cousin, the common raven.  

 They are also related to the magpie and blue jays.  Corvids are found everywhere on earth other than the tip of South America and on the polar ice caps.

 You won’t however, find too many crows in the desert, as they have a preference for wooded areas and also areas that are created by man.  Like city parks, golf courses, and parking structures. 

One thing that happens quite often is people mistake crows for ravens and visa versa.  

There are a few things that make it easy to tell them apart.  The Common Raven is quite a bit larger than the American Crow. Think the size of a red-tailed hawk for the Raven.  

 The raven also has a wedge-shaped tail, while the crow’s tail is more fan like when its flying overhead. The crow’s tail feathers are basically one length.  When the feathers fan out its more of an even spread.  The raven however, has longer middle feathers so fanned out it looks more like a wedge. 

Also, Crows like to hang out in groups, where the Raven is solitary or at best seen cruising with just one other raven.

Photo courtesy of BozsikImagery.com

The term “murder of crows” came from medieval times, where words were used to describe a group of animals based on perceived qualities.  Such as a pride of lions or a flamboyance of flamingos.

The crows, seen scavenging over bodies on the battle field, or often gathered around a dead crow, along with the current superstitions of those times, were fitted with the descriptive name; MURDER of crows. 

Crows are very social animals and are frequently seen in groups.  

They are also, one animal species that have been known to,    conduct funerals. 

They can be seen gathered as a group, surrounding a deceased crow.  

They seem to be paying their respects to the fallen family member. These birds almost never touch the dead crow, so if you were unconvinced, those actions rule out scavenging. 

In fact, what the crows are doing is they are learning about what happened to the dead crow and often they will not return to place where another crow met his demise, even if the food source is plentiful. 

Crows are known to mate for life.  While the mating pair will often gather in large groups, when it comes to mating season, the same two crows get back together. 

 The crow’s family order is something to admired.  It has been studied that juvenile crows, stick around and help at the family nest.  These young birds will stay and protect the nest from predators, bring food back to mom and dad and even help feed their younger siblings in the nest. These juvenile birds don’t just do this for one season, they stick around and help out at the nest for up to five years!

How smart are crows?

Most people think of the term bird brain to illustrate how stupid someone can be. But in the crow’s case the brain is quite large.  When you consider the brain to body ratio, the crow’s brain is amazingly large.  While coming in at only; point two ounces, the ratio to body weight is 2.7 percent of the entire bird.  In contrast, the human brain is only about 1.9 percent in the brain to body ratio.  

Only Ravens and Parrots have a larger brain to body ratios. 

So clearly, crows are often smarter than some humans. 

Researchers have found that the crow’s brain is on par with the great apes. In some circles the crow is called “feathered apes”. Even having more capabilities than the apes when it comes to cognitive reasoning. 

Cognitive reasoning is measured by things like sustained attention, speed of information processing, working memory and pattern recognition. 

 These are really smart birds.

There is a common Aesop’s Fable called; The Crow and the Pitcher. 

This story tells of a thirsty crow that comes across a pitcher of water that is just too low to drink.  The crow figures out that if it starts dropping pebbles one-by-one,  into the pitcher, the water level will slowly rise and enable the crow to quench his thirst.

This was indeed the case.  Scientists employed a comparable on test crows.  They did a test with a floating worm in a pitcher of water.  The crow thought it through and filled the pitcher with pebbles to raise the water level to get at the worm.  The test crows also knew enough to be even more effective by bringing larger pebbles to drop into the pitcher  to get the task done even quicker.  

How clever are these birds?  In California, crows have been observed watching traffic signals to help them prepare a meal.

When crows came across some tasty walnuts, they were seen flying down and placing the hard-shelled walnut onto the asphalt of city intersections.  Then, they would wait for cars to roll over the nut, crushing it to expose the meaty center. 

  How did the crows avoid getting run over, you ask?  Well, they would watch the lights and only go down to pick up or drop off a nut when the light was red. They’d show patience and wait a complete traffic light cycle and only then pick up their crushed walnuts. 

Another cool story about crows is about a study a team from the University of Washington who did some tests on their local crows.  The idea was to see how well crows could identify human faces.  

The group went out and bought some Halloween masks.  One was a caveman mask and another was of, at the time, Vice president Dick Cheney.  The idea was that the caveman mask would be the test and the Dick Cheney mask was for control status. So it had nothing to do with political preference.

At five different locations, the caveman masks were worn when trapping and banding some of the wild crows.  Crows don’t go for that capturing business. 

Photo courtesy of BozsikImagery.com

When they were being released, the crows squawked and scolded the caveman looking human.  Even other crows nearby joined in the ruckus cawing and dive bombing the caveman.

Over several years, the masks were worn on casual strolls through those areas and were always greeted with harassing calls and swooping behaviors to the caveman and the Dick Cheney mask was generally ignored, well at least by the crows.

The trapping and tagging of the crows were only done the first few times, so scientists were amazed that the swooping and angry calls continued years later when someone appeared with the caveman mask. 

What is really amazing, is that some birds where not even alive when the study started.  But they still scolded the mask wearer anyway.  The “Attack the mask” was clearly passed on to younger birds and so the grudge was passed on through generations. 

A pretty impressive bird indeed.

Crows have also learned to use tools.  When faced with extracting food from a hole in a tree, they have been seen finding a twig and using it to extract their next meal.  But what is fascinating, is the crows in research test, had learned to manufacture a hook at the end of the twig to work as a BETTER tool.

Now that you know more about these amazing birds, it’s time to talk about how to photograph them.

As with all wildlife targets, you have to go find the crows.  One of the easiest ways to find crows is to just listen.  They have a very distinctive sound.    

Start with going to your nearest public park.  Since crows are opportunistic feeders, they have learned that humans can provide quick and easy meals.

I recently witnessed a crow event at a Target parking lot. Someone dropped a bag of Doritos in the parking lot and pigeons were standing around it looking at, befuddled by this sealed bag. It looked interesting, might have smelled like food but there was nothing the pigeons could do.

 Not long after, a crow swooped down, the pigeons gave the crow a wide birth and watched the crow open the bag and take a chip back it’s nearby nest.  With crow gone, the pigeons were greedily scarfing up Dorito chips.  That was up until the crow came back for a second helping when the pigeons spread out and waited their turn, once again.

 Just about anywhere is good crow habitat.

 Since there are many opportunities for viewing crows in action, you can begin your quest simply by listening. The repetitive “caw caw” sound is distinctive and it is the best place to start. 

 Next, consider their food source. Crows will eat just about anything from discarded human food, to insects to small animals, aquatic animals, to just about any dead creature. 

While consuming carrion is traditionally thought of as vulture’s domain, crows seldom want to miss out on an easy meal.

 As with any wildlife photography, start by watching the behaviors of the crow. He might have found some tasty food on the side of the road, you pull up and give him some comfort space to have his meal.

He might start on one limb of a tree and hop to another branch, down to the ground and over to the food source. Watch him a few times and see that a pattern will develop.  

Using a long lens, focus on one of the spots that you know is part of his pattern. And wait.

There is an obvious problem with photographing crows.  First and foremost is that they are all black.  A totally black bird can really mess with your exposures.  My suggestion is to shoot in manual mode.  This will ensure that you’re in-camera meter will not see all that black of the bird’s feathers and try to adjust the exposure to make the bird medium gray. 

The best way that I have found to do this is once you are in your preferred photo spot, shoot some test shots on aperture priority mode.  Get the scene the way you like it as you look at the back of your camera. 

Note that exposure, as that is your starting point exposure.

Switch the camera to manual mode and plug in the exposure you just determined. Take some test shots to confirm you did it right. Now increase the exposure one stop.  

Lets say you started with f/8 at 4000th of a second, boosting it one stop will be, in this scenario,  f/5.6 at 4000th of a second. This shot should be lighter over all.  This is likely all you will need to compensate for the extreme darkness of the crow.

Next consider your background.  With a dark bird against, say against a light background, the contrast may not be pleasing to the eye. If you have the opportunity, try shifting your position to get a much darker background.  That way, when you lighten everything up with the boost of exposure, you will be lightening up an already dark background.

Try, if can, to get to eye level or slightly below the crow’s eye line.  This is a good rule of thumb with all wildlife photography but especially important with your bird photography. Eye level or slightly below, might mean you are on your belly in the dirt, but it will be worth it. 

Enjoy capturing this much maligned bird.  They are pretty easy to find, but you will find it to be a big challenge to getting a good shot of them.  That’s because they are very smart and don’t want to put themselves in any perceived danger posing for you. 

I would like to thank all of you who have been listening over the past season.  The Nature Photography Podcast has thousands of downloads and is climbing in the charts and is now being listened to in almost every state in the US and it’s being listened to in over 30 countries. So, thank you for that.  

I would like to ask a favor you if you are enjoying these episodes.  Take a minute and tell another outdoor photographer about it. Maybe make a quick post on your Instagram or Facebook page. It would help a lot in getting people to discover this podcast. It can easily be found by typing in THE Nature Photography Podcast.  For some reason the THE in the beginning is important. 

Another way to help spread the word is to leave a positive review on the site where you get you podcasts, apple podcasts, Spotify etc. 

As always, you can contact me with questions or suggestions for future podcasts, I answer all my email. Just send it to; Terry@imagelight.com – that is spelled:  T-e-r-r-y  AT  I-M-A-G-E-L-I-G-H-T dot com

Until next time, this is Terry VanderHeiden with The Nature Photography Podcast. 

Photographing Tide Pools

We are out at the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve in Moss Beach, California.  We came here today to do some tide pool photography.

 If you live near a coastal area, you usually can find a safe, rocky coastline, that when “Low Tide” happens, a whole host of sea creatures and life is revealed. 

I’m Terry VanderHeiden and this is The Nature Photography Podcast

To prepare for this, we first checked when low tide was. Tides change about every six hours. In keeping with WHEN this area is open to the public, our low tide choices on this day were 9 am or 9 pm.  

 For obvious reasons, not the least of which is navigating slippery rocks in the dark, low tide at night is not going work for us. So that left us with choosing a daytime tide that worked. Here’s how we arrived at that:

The tides change from day to day, advancing about 40 minutes.  That means that when low tide is at 6 am on a Monday, Tuesday, morning low tide will be about 6:40 am.

In the case of the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve, the hours are from 8:00 am  to 7:pm and we wanted make sure we were here and ready to photograph at low tide.  Our low tide today is at 9 am, so getting here at 8 am would give us the best opportunity to move out with the lessening tide and not be worried about the tide coming back in making use move back in right away.

The other thing to know about shooting at a tide pool is that you are ideally looking for ultra-low tides. 

It’s pretty simple, the lower the tide, the farther out you can explore and the farther out you can go, the more species are revealed.

Tides are easy to follow and determine.  I use an app on my phone that is called “Tides Near Me” and it seems to work pretty well.  But I am sure there are many apps out there or just a simple internet search that will give you accurate tide tables where you are.

Off the coast of California, the lowest tides we see are in the winter, because the moon is closer to the earth and increases the gravitational pull of the moon.  This yields high tides that are usually higher than normal and also the opposite effect that low tides are lower.  These low tides are called “minus tides”.

Also in the winter, in the Bay Area, there is the real possibility of sleeper waves. This is a phenomenon that happens every year when storms gather in the pacific and huge waves can unexpectedly sweep beach goers into the ocean.  The winter also brings a stronger undertow so the victims that are swept off their feet are rapidly pulled away from shore into very cold water, sometimes never to be seen again.

As a warning, when you are out photographing and concentrating on what’s in your viewfinder, keep vigilant about the possibility of rogue waves.  Always do this type of shooting with a partner just to keep each other safe. 

What kind of gear do you want to bring to a tidepool shoot?

Most cases, all you will need to bring is a macro lens and flash.  Since you will be photographing in shallow pools that form when the waves recede.  

You can also skip the flash and just use available light.  If you decide to go this way, not using a flash, you will need to bring a polarizing filter.  This filter will help cut the reflection on the surface of the water and reflections on kelp and such.

Let’s do a quick refresher on how to use a polarizer filter.  A polarizer is one of the two filters I recommend to my students and other photographers, to have in their camera bags. (The other filter is a Neutral Density filter which we can talk about another time.)

The polarizer works like your sunglasses to cut the glare.  And just like your sunglasses, they only work when the direction of the sunlight is at the correct angle. 

The advantage to the Polarizer filter is that most of the time it has a rotating lens front. Sometimes this filter is called a CIRCULAR polarizer. This allows the photographer to rotate the polarizer filter to do the most elimination of glare.  On top of each circular polarizer filter usually a painted-on dot.  This dot is for orientation.  The simple way is to just keep the dot pointed at the sun.

The best way to use a polarizer filter is to attach it to the camera and look through the lens and rotate the filter.  This will show you when the filter is in the best position to eliminate the most glare. 

When you do this, you will lose about a stop and half of light, so you may need to raise up your ISO to compensate for the outside light.  The nice thing is you’re at the beach!  So there should be plenty of light.  

If you didn’t’ know already, now you know how to properly use a polarizer filter.  This is not a filter to KEEP on your lens.  I see this all the time; photographers leave the polarizer on the lens.  Think of the Polarizer filter as a filter to be used between 10 am and 3 pm.  The polarizer does little good for early morning and late afternoon shoots because of the angle of the sunlight isn’t there yet. 

There is seldom a reason to use the polarizer at night, or with a flash, since you don’t’ have the sun creating glare you need to eliminate. So take it off when the light is not creating glare.

If you want to use available light and a polarizer, find your subject and put it in the frame of your camera.  Rotate the filter so the glare disappears as you look through the viewfinder.  That is the most fool proof way of using the polarizer.

At the tide pools, some of your subjects will be under a few inches of water.  This will cause a few issues, so you need to know how to shoot through a few inches of water. 

Lets go back to the beginning and talk about how to prep for all of this.

The first thing I start with is to wear my waders and wading boots.  These boots have small metal nubs on them to help reduce slipping on rocks.  As you can imagine, stepping over tide pools on to moss and seaweed covered rocks can result in a nasty fall.  That’s why I use the waders and studded boots.

I desperately try to avoid stepping in the tide pools.  After all, this the home to many creatures. Just because I have waders on, doesn’t mean I can go slogging wherever I want. It’s important to be cautious where ever you step while visiting the tide pools. Don’t go bulldogging over areas where muscles are attached or other sea creatures trying to survive until the tide comes back in. 

Another reason not to step into the tidepools is that you will unsettle silt that will cloud up your photographs and make the pool unusable for quite a while. 

Be sure to know and follow the guidelines at your destination.  At the Fitzgerald reserve, there is no touching of animals, no removing or even moving them to a better spot for photography. Just shoot as you find things and do no disrupt the animal’s lives.  That way, yourself and others can keep coming back again and again.

With the waders on, depending on what I’m shooting that day, if its close up, I will just bring my macro lens attached to my camera and a ring flash attached to the lens.  That’s it. 

I also carry with me a kneeling pad.  These are made out dense foam and only cost about $4 at Harbor Freight. I think they are meant to be sold to gardeners who have to kneel all the time. This is perfect for getting down on the rocks to get yourself low to your subject.

It takes a little getting used to, to photograph in the tide pools.  You have to deal sometimes with water between you and your subject and the glare from the sky reflecting off the surface of the water.  While we already talked about using a polarizer, if you are using a ring flash like me,  there are some other considerations.

What I did, is some practice in my back yard a few days before I went over to the tide pools.

I’m outside in my backyard and what I am doing is making a test tide pool to work on a few shooting techniques.

I found a shallow bucket and I have lined it with a black garbage bag.  I then filled it half way with some small rocks I have in the yard. I’m trying to replicate what I will find at the tide pools in terms of how my light is going to work and how to avoid reflections from overcast light.

I need to place it in an accessible location so I can easily photograph it.  if I don’t need to lay on the ground to do it, so much the better. I’ll be doing plenty of that when I get to the tide pools. 

I’ll place it on my picnic table for my tests, and let it sit overnight to settle any of the floating material in the water.

Ok, it’s my little test tide pool has been sitting overnight so all the things that were swirling around in the water have settled into place.  I happen to have an overcast morning, which should be similar to what I will find at the coast.

I have decided to mostly use my ring flash for the lighting. And I have discovered that as long as I shoot into the shallow water at an angle, I don’t have any reflection problems.  This eliminates the straight down shots but that is no big deal.

On a ring flash, the flash hangs onto the front of the macro lens.  This makes it easy to shoot close up subjects because I don’t have to worry about holding the flash with one hand and trying to get it to the right position.  Also, I don’t have to be concerned with shadows caused by the flash being on top of the camera hooked into the hot shoe.  Sometimes, the flash from that angle can cause shadows of the lens, since it will be lighting behind that lens. 

What I use as a ring light is the Nissin, MF18.  I chose it because of the power, flexibility of the ring light – being able to change the intensity out of one side or the other as the ring light is divided into two halves the A and B side.   This allows me to have a stronger light coming from the right side if I want and the left side is fill in light.  I also can rotate it so the light comes from above and is balanced with some fill light from below.

There are several ring lights available so go check them out and see if you might want to add one to your camera bag.

I’m back at the tide pools and just walking around I can see many things that were living under water a short time ago.  Star fish clinging to the rocks right out in the open, muscles in large groups attached to the rocks.

I like the smell of the fresh sea water as it crashes over the rocks in the distance.  Since I am here just before low tide, each wave pulls back a bit, revealing more wildlife subjects.

Hey look at this, a tiny crab is making his way around the seaweed.   This is a fun subject to photograph.  When you try to get close up, he moves quite a bit faster than he seemed to.  Since everything is magnified that is one of the challenges. So, I just watch him for a few minutes and see if is developing a pattern.  Then I will set up and try to capture him as he goes by. 

Here is nice find.  A bright green sea anemone.  He’s just under the surface of the water, with his tentacles extending and moving slightly. 

Since the tide has moved away, this little pool has really still water, so the sea anemone is very clear.  I do have some overcast reflections on the surface of the water but since I tested this the other day in my back yard, I know how to deal with this.

First, I have to shoot at an angle.  Since this subject is clinging to an edge of a rock, the angle is already set up to me.  In order to get a straight shot, I need to come in at an angle that is about 45 dregrees to the surface of the water, now there is no glare.  

I am shooting with my ring light so the illumination is great.

I learned from shooting in the back yard in my fake tide pool sample that I do lose some light that has to penetrate the water to get to my subject.  This is an easy fix, to either pump up the power of the flash, open the lens or bump up my ISO.  I’ll just increase the power to the flash.

This is fun stuff shooting out in the tide pool. Let’s get back to the studio to take a look at these on the computer and see what the next steps are. 

I have brought up the image of the sea anemone here in lightroom and there are few things that I need to work on.

First off, since I was photographing through the water, my contrast was dropped quite a bit.  So all I need to do is add contrast by moving the contrast slider.  Once I get to the desired look, I pull it back a bit and then go down to the DeHaze slider.  This is kind of like micro contrast, so I can creep up on the contrast I am looking for. 

When bumping up the color in Lightroom, you have two choices.  Vibrance and Saturation.  Saturation will increase all the colors in the image.  This can work well, but it can also be over down pretty quickly.

Vibrance on the other hand, will increase colors that are not too bold to begin with.  Kind of think of it as raising the intensity of the mid-tones of your photographs.  I find that it works well with the cool colors like teal and green to intensify those colors.

 Luckily, the sea anemone is  mostly green so I can be a bit more free with this slider to bring up the colors that were lost through those few inches of sea water in the tide pools.

 If you have accessibility to tide pools, or are planning a vacation to a coastal area, check the tide tables in that area and make some time to go shoot at the tide pools.

As always you can head over to my web site, IMAGE LIGHT dot com and see some of the images we shot during this podcast to get a better feeling of what we’re doing on this shoot at the tide pools. 

I would like to ask a favor of you if you are enjoying these nature photography podcast episodes.  Take a minute and tell another outdoor photographer about it. Maybe make a quick post on your Instagram or Facebook page. It would help a lot in getting people to discover this podcast. Its been getting quite a bit of traction of late and I would like to keep that going. 

The podcast can easily be found by typing in THE Nature Photography Podcast.  For some reason the THE in the beginning is important. 

Another way to help spread the word is to leave a positive review on the site where you get you podcasts, apple podcasts, Spotify etc. 

As always, you can contact me with questions or suggestions for future podcasts, I answer all my email. Just send it to; Terry@imagelight.com –

Until next time, this is Terry VanderHeiden with the Nature Photograph podcast. Thanks for listening.

Yosemite National Park

This is one of my favorite places to visit.  Living in the San Francisco Bay area, I am lucky that California has NINE national parks. Best of all, Yosemite national park is only about three and half hours from home so its close enough to go up and back in the same day if I want.

HI I’m Terry VanderHeiden, and welcome to The Nature Photography Podcast. In this episode we are going to talk about one my personal favorites, Yosemite National park 

Yosemite was established in 1864 when Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite grant to protect the park set in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. This is an incredibly popular national park that attracts some 4 million visitors each year. This was the first public land that was deemed protected by the federal government and paved the way to Yellowstone becoming the first national park in 1872.

While it was protected in 1864 it wasn’t until 1903 that naturalist, John Muir, took then president ,Theodore Roosevelt on a camping trip to Yosemite. This trip persuaded the president to bring Yosemite into the fold and brought it under the umbrella as a National Park. Finally becoming official when the National Park service was formed in 1916.

When you enter the park from the west, you have a couple of options, highway 120 is most direct route from San Francisco, or you can take 140 from Merced or 41 up from Fresno.  Today we took highway 140 as I think it’s an easier drive and very scenic. 

When you come into the park, you drive down into Yosemite Valley.  This is essentially a loop that will take you to the end of the valley then it gradually turns you around and you can head back to the beginning of the loop. So the first part of the loop is the south side of the Valley, while the other side is the North side of the valley.  These roads are separated by meadows and trees and occasionally a few curios visitors. 

My first recommendation is to take 41 to Glacier Point and make your first turn off, the parking lot of “tunnel view”.  This gives you a spectacular view of Yosemite valley – where everything is laid out in front of you.

As you stand on this popular overlook, you will have the awe inspiring El Capitan on the left.  El Cap is a granite rock formation that is about 3000 feet tall.  Its sheer vertical walls make it a favorite place for rock climbers to scale each year. 

Near the center of your view you will have Half Dome in the distance and then valley is framed by the fragilely appearing Bridalveil falls on the right.

From this angle you will have the setting sun at your back and sometimes storm clouds will boil in the sky in the background.  You can’t go wrong getting a good overall shot of the valley.  This is also a great place to create a panoramic image.

To create a panoramic image, put on a lens that is about 50 to 100 millimeters using one of todays digital cameras. Then set your camera up on a tripod, making sure to set your camera in the vertical position.  Set up your tripod legs to make a level platform for the camera and shoot from left to right. Over lapping each image by about a quarter of the frame. 

When you are shooting a pano, move quickly so that if you have clouds in the sky, they don’t move too much between images to lesson some of the work you may have to do in post processing.  

As you move your camera across the horizon line, you will end with Bridalviel falls on the right side of the valley.  Here, you may want to be using an exposure that will blur that water so consider that before you start to keep all your exposures the same .

When you come out that parking lot you will have a two choices of what you may want to see next, depending on the time of year you go to Yosemite.  

If you take a right, you can take the 45 minute drive up to Glacier Point to see some fantastic views and an almost a close up angle of Half Dome.  This road is only available in the summer and fall seasons, as they close it on the first snow of the year.

This you can elevate your photography here at sunset, since the sun will light up the face of half dome as it sets. Making for some spectacular photographic opportunities. 

If you take a left out of the parking lot of tunnel view, you can go back down the hill into the valley.  As your drive slowly around, you will have a lot of options.  First on the right will be the parking lot access to the hike up to Bridalveil falls.  This location has a fair amount of parking  and is a pretty easy hike with camera gear up to the base of the falls.  

Bridalveil falls is a modest 620 foot plunge down the vertical granite wall.  Normally these falls are flowing all year long with, of course, the largest capacity surging in the spring time.  

You can find lots of different angles as you shoot the falls.  There are many opportunities to shoot slow shutter speed shots to blur the water, as long as you remember to bring your Neutral Density filters. 

As you leave the falls parking lot, you will have only one option and that is turn right and remain on the one-way road traveling the south side of the valley.

Now that you have shot in at least two locations by now, you hopefully will have noticed something. Most everything you have shot are neutral colors.

White waterfalls, gray granite and dark, contrasty shadows.  This is one of the reasons, Yosemite is one of the best places to photograph in black and white. 

While it’s not to say you can’t create some beautiful color images, because you certainly can, but this is a great place to try out your skills in photographing in black and white. 

The light in the high sierras where Yosemite Valley resides, comes with crystalline air and very contrasty light. Where this may make your color images a bit harsh, switch to black and white and you can make some phenomenal captures.

After all, this national park was put on the map, essentially, by one man’s black and white images. None other than Ansel Adams.

After the break, we’ll talk more about Ansel Adams and the endless possibilities of black and white photography in Yosemite. 

Ansel Adams started photographing Yosemite almost 100 years ago. It was in 1927 that he captured the famous image, “Monolith, the Face of Half Dome”,

The shot is of the face of half dome in the snow, catapulted him and this new national park, into the international spotlight.

Today as photographers we can retrace his steps in Yosemite and attempt to view some of his subjects, in our own way.  We can use our modern equipment to create some spectacular black and white images.

Ansel Adams created a system by which black and white photography was measured, it was called the zone system. Since Adams shot with a view camera, one image at a time, he was able to shoot an image with a certain exposure and then go back to the darkroom and process that image precisely how he wanted to, based on how he exposed that one sheet of film.  

The idea he worked with was this term: “Expose for the shadows and develop for the highlights”.   This meant that when he was shooting, he made sure that his shadows would have detail, then in processing, he could make sure that the highlights would also have detail. 

His zone system divided each image into zones of gray.  Using roman numerals, he would define a gray tone for each numbered zone. Zero though 10. There were nine zones that had detail, and zone zero was absolute black and zone 10 was absolute white.

While Ansel Adams worked to always have some detail in the shadows and some detail in the highlights avoiding absolute black and absolute white, he didn’t have the technology we have today, so let’s use it to our advantage. 

Today with modern digital photography, we can have a tremendous amount of latitude over our images, especially if we can shoot in HDR mode. High Dynamic Range.

If you don’t know, HDR mode allows us to shoot the same image with varying degrees of exposure and then digitally we are able to sandwich them together and create an image with detail in the blacks and detail in the highlights even in the contrasty light of Yosemite Valley.

To do this type of shooting, set your camera on auto bracketing.  Most cameras have this feature and it allows you shoot the same image with three different exposures. One, right on your exposure, then one a couple of stops over exposure, and one a couple of stops under exposure.  

When I am shooting HDR, I will usually use three exposures, but cameras are built today that will allow up to 7 exposures in this auto bracket mode.  Seven exposures appears to me to be overkill. You can preset how many stops under and over you want.  I have mostly found that two stops over and two stops under works pretty well. 

With this setting, I just hold down the shutter and three shots fire off, changing the shutter speed on each one to compensate for the difference in exposure. 

It is best to use a tripod for this type of shooting since it will be easier to keep everything aligned.   I also use a cable release or a remote shutter release to make sure I’m not moving the camera during the three exposures.

The processing is pretty easy out of lightroom, just select the three images in the series and right click and use the menu to select HDR, the software will stack these images and take the best of each one and build you an image with a tremendous amount of dynamic range. Lots of latitude to slider up the shadows and bring down the highlights. 

 Back to our tour of Yosemite Valley.  As you leave Bridalveil falls area, you are still on the south side of the valley.  You will come across meadows and other beautiful views. Off to the left you should start to see some views of Yosemite falls. 

Yosemite falls is one of the tallest waterfalls in North America and certainly the highest water fall in the park.  At more than 2400 feet it cascades down a sheer granite face and is actually made up of three sections. 

The key to seeing Yosemite falls in all its spender, is to go see it in late spring.  That is when the snow melt is churning and the water fall is at full capacity. 

Come fall and into winter, the falls appear to be just a dribble as all the water at the top is all but drained out by then. 

If you are a hiking type, plan on an overnight hike up the Yosemite falls trail, to the top of Yosemite falls.  While it can take 6 to 10 hours to get up there, the trek including an overnight, is the way to go. 

There is a camping area up there and not only do you not have to hike down in the dark, you can wake up at dawn and get one of the most spectacular view of sunrise in the valley, by looking out over the top of Yosemite falls. 

If you do decide to camp up there, be sure to follow all the park rules of getting overnight passes and be prepared for some thirsty mosquitos and hungry black bears.

That just means to pre-spray your clothing with something like permethrin spray. This works pretty well at keeping the mosquitos bothering someone else. 

Its mandatory in Yosemite to keep your back country food, in a bear proof canister. 

The bears have figured out mostly how to get food that is hung in trees, where even if they get hold of your canister, they can’t open it. They end up just banging it around a bit and then they move on.

Traveling along, still on the south side of the valley floor, you will get some good views of half dome framed by trees and reflecting in the Merced river.  Look for Sentinel Bridge, as it’s a very popular spot to photograph half dome.

At the end where you are forced to take the turn to head back on the looped road, here you can park and take a short hike to Mirror lake, which has decreased in size since the first time I visited Yosemite.  But, It’s still worth the easy walk to the lake to make some images.

Photographed in Yosemite Valley

It is this area that you can park and hike the famous Mist trail up to two popular waterfalls.  The first you will come across is Vernal falls – about a 3 mile round trip hike. If you want to extend your hike, you can do the 7 mile round trip hike to Nevada Falls.

Both of these are usually roaring in the spring and summer and are great to photograph. 

The mist trail is aptly named as the falls along the way will create a liquid layer over you and your equipment.  So be prepared to get wet.  Refreshingly so in the summer time, but this could get you pretty cold in the spring if you have cool weather.

If you are looking for the waterfalls, skip this hike anytime after August as the snow melt can be finished by then and the falls have tapered off to just about nothing. 

As you make your turn at the end of the road, you will be heading back to the west, but this time you will be on the north side of the valley.  On the right you will see signs for lodging, the shopping center and places to eat.   

Also in this area is the Ansel Adams gallery. This is a great place to go to get inspired by some of his images.  These images were shot in the 1930s to 1960’s and they still stand the test of time. This is worth checking out.

Traveling west on the north side of the valley, keep a look out for Coyotes, Mule deer and black bears.  These can all be seen out in the meadows and along the tree line.

This road will end up right where you started and you can do the loop all over again.  

 What is the best season to visit Yosemite?

Depending on your needs and what you want to see will depend on the season that you visit.

Summer is the most popular, most of those 4 million visitors go between Memorial Day and Labor Day.  Its popular because the air is warm, the nights are cool, the waterfalls are booming, all the wildlife is out and all the park services are running.  If you don’t mind people, this is a great time to go.

Spring is the next time to go, less people but if you catch it right, the waterfalls are going pretty well and getting a campsite or wilderness pass is attainable.

Fall is also a great time to go.  Just so you know, fall in California comes in about late October and early November.  The nights are cold but the trees along the valley that do change color are vibrant yellow by then. Not much in the way of water flowing but that can be a plus as you can make your way out into rivers and streams without the worry of being swept away by the current. There is also, way less people.

The hidden gem in Yosemite Valley is the winter.  There are very few people, in comparison to the more popular seasons.   While there are fewer services, such as the frequent trams of the spring and summer, the valley is covered in snow and is a site that has to be seen. 

Keep in mind that Yosemite National Park is best photographed at sunset. Which means you don’t have to get there at dawn to get some great images.  The downside to that is that most of the key locations are best shot at sunset. So, you may have to plan a few days in the valley to get everything you want.

Go check out this fantastic National park in California and you won’t be disappointed. 

Thanks again for listening and sharing this podcast with your photographer and nature loving friends.  Until next time, this is Terry VanderHeiden with the Nature Photography Podcast.