The Cognisys Sabre - 3
I finally got a chance to go out and play with my new Cognisys Sabre. The Sabre is a camera trigger that uses a LIDAR (light and radar) based sensor which emits a pulse of light and then measures the time it takes to return. When something breaks the beam it fires the camera. One…
Light Painting Red-eyed Treefrogs
I am leaving soon for back to back Costa Rica Photo Tours. I had to remember to bring a powerful flashlight to light paint the nocturnal Red-eyed Treefrogs we will be photographing. A flashlight? Light paint? Huh… why not flash? We do not use flash because it is thought that repeated exposure to flash can…
Speke’s Weaver Building Nest
This is a Speke’s Weaver in the beginning stages of nest construction. These birds nest in large colonies. The male weaves the nest from grass in an Acacia tree. Then uses his “new house” to try to attract and win a mate. If the female does not like his efforts she destroys the nest and…
Friday Photo Tip: The Chess Game
One of the things I love about nature photography is what I like to call “the chess game”. Whenever I am photographing a wild subject I try to get in it’s head and anticipate what it is going to do next. By trying to stay one step ahead of my subject I can be sure…
Making Photographs
Snapshot- An informal photograph taken quickly. Snapshots are not my intent. I am a photographer, I want to make photographs. Cameras, lenses, filters, flash, aperture, shutter speed, these are some of the tools of my trade. I use these tools to create the images I have in my head. More importantly, I make conscious choices…
High Speed Photography – Bullfrog
I have had this image in my head for quite some time. The first step was to build the stage for our star “Billy Bullfrog”. A trip to the local swamp with a couple five gallon pails was required to collect all of the materials for the set. A lovely moss covered rock would be…
Floating Blind Photography - 6
The sun won’t be up for another hour on this cold crisp March morning in Southern Michigan. It has taken three trips to carry my gear down to the water’s edge. As I begin to assemble my craft by the narrow beam of my headlamp, I hear splashes and the rustling of my quarry from…
The Yin and Yang of Photography - 2
One of the things I love about photography is it appeals to both the geek and the artist in all of us. On the geek side you have the technical considerations of making an image; the f-stops, shutter speeds, depth of field, histograms, dynamic range, all the stuff we must all master in order to…
Merry Christmas
Super honored to have PetaPixel (the worlds leading photography blog) share my Christmas poem! Here it is for you. A Photographer’s Night Before Christmas By Me (with a wink and a nod to Mr. Clement Clarke Moore) T’was the night before Christmas, when all through the house. Not a creature was stirring, not even a…
Friday Photo Tip: Creating Silhouettes
Silhouettes are some of the most graphic images we can make as photographers. Silhouettes take vision! They are a bit of “photographic magic” the scene before the camera very rarely looks like a silhouette with the naked eye. They are created when we expose for the bright background. This under exposes the subject rendering it…