The northern lights over the boreal forest of sub-arctic Alaska.

Hey Folks

Just returning home from some real March Madness. Alaska March Madness. I left home around the 20th of February, and other than one night between trips, have been gone since then. Good times. Photographing some awesome arctic winter landscapes, great northern lights and aurora borealis photos and a fantastic week based out of a cabin, skiing and snow shoeing in Wrangell – St. Elias National Park is what i call March Madness. Can’t wait til the next one!

Cheers

Carl

The post Alaska March Madness – Aurora borealis photo appeared first on Skolai Images.

Winter snow load bends the small spruce trees of the boreal forest in arctic Alaska, along the Dalton Highway. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

Just a quick post between trips here. This image is from a recent trip to northern Alaska, poking around along the Dalton highway looking for some aurora borealis and nice winter arctic landscapes. We found these spruce trees up north, and had a grand afternoon photographing them. It’s a treat indeed to find trees like this, as winds and slightly warmer temperatures will quickly move all the snow and hoar frost from the trees.

I love how the snowload bends those trees over in such cool shapes.

Outta here for another week.

Cheers

Carl

The post Snow covered spruce trees appeared first on Skolai Images.

Polar bear (Ursus maritimus) on a barrier island of the coast of arctic Alaska. Please click the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

Recently, a federal judge in Alaska, handed the US Fish and Wildlife Service (F&WS)  some homework, when he decided that the agency had been a little overzealous in their designation of critical habitat for the polar bear. In 2010, the Obama administration set aside nearly 190 000 square miles of onshore and off-shore critical habitat for the polar bear. That’s an awful lot of land (larger than the state of California). But polar bears, it seems, are an awful lot of bear.

Last month a federal judge ruled that it’s apparently ‘too much’ land. Which is in itself noteworthy, as the judge isn’t really there to decide what’s too much and what isn’t too much land for a polar bear. The judge is supposed to simply review the decision and see whether it follows the law.

The judge also said the F&WS decision had some “procedural deficiencies”; much better. This means, they hadn’t quite followed the law. So what was one of those deficiencies? How about this one?  Section 1533(i) of the Endangered Species Act

• (i) Submission to State agency of justification for regulations inconsistent with State agency’s comments or petition
  If, in the case of any regulation proposed by the Secretary under the authority of this section, a State agency to which notice thereof was given in accordance with subsection (b)(5)(A)(ii) of this section files comments disagreeing with all or part of the proposed regulation, and the Secretary issues a final regulation which is in conflict with such comments, or if the Secretary fails to adopt a regulation pursuant to an action petitioned by a State agency under subsection (b)(3) of this section, the Secretary shall submit to the State agency a written justification for his failure to adopt regulations consistent with the agency’s comments or petition

In short, this requires the FWS  to send a written response to any state agency, when the FWS regulation is incongruent with the petitions or comments from that state agency. So if the State of Alaska Dept of Fish and Game, in commenting on the proposed designation of critical habitat, said ‘the FWS haven’t shown why so much land is needed’, the US F&WS would not only need to address that comment in the published rule itself, they would need to send a letter to the Alaska Dept of Fish and Game containing their (F&WS’) reply. Simple enough.

So the F&WS actually sent their response to the Alaska State Governor; in other words, the guy who the state Dept of Fish and Game work for. I’m pretty sure the Governor should be able to, easily enough, forward that letter to his own state agency.

Instead, the federal judge pings the F&WS with “procedural deficiencies”, and the designation is back to the drawing boards.. What a clown. I mean, it’s a good thing polar bears aren’t endangered or anything. 190 000 square miles hinges on a letter that went to the State Governor, instead of his Dept of Fish and Game. Seriously! Talk about “procedural deficiencies” alright.

So what else is there? Well, Judge Beistline also wrote that the designation was “went too far and was too extensive”. What a tool. Here’s a link to an image showing the designation have a look at how much of that is onshore. Something like only 10% of the designation is onshore.

But the judge’s position isn’t to decide on what is and is not critical habitat. It’s to decide on whether the designation is legal. And, essentially, because of things like sending a letter to the State Governor instead of his F&G Dept, or not actually providing “support for the second and fourth features outlined by the Service” – referring to access routes from the coast to onshore den sites. In other words, the F&WS didn’t show evidence that the polar bears need the land between, say, the beach where they come ashore, and the the dens they might dig 10 miles in from the coast. Judge Beistline recognized that the F&WS showed documented evidence of the dens themselves, but that they didn’t show how the polar bears got from the sea ice to those dens. Classic. I wonder what options he thinks they have other than, say, oh, walk.

Here’s (part of) what Alaska Senator Murkowski said in support of the decision: “The only real impact of the designation would have been to make life more difficult for the residents of North Slope communities, and make any kind of economic development more difficult or even impossible. The fact is that our polar bear populations are abundant and healthy, and occupy their entire historic range.”

She’s wrong, more than once. Part of the impact of the designation, and the purpose of it, is to protect polar bear populations. Making life difficult, she’s wrong again. In effect, by designating such a large area, it actually makes things EASIER for local communities; permits, etc, would be easier to attain if the designated area is so vast that a small thing live even a drilling pad is but a spec on the entire designation. if a smaller footprint were made, specific to den sites, etc, then any permit needed that might impact such a site would be about impossible to attain. Lastly, polar bear populations are not all abundant or healthy. A 2011 study found 7 of 19 subpopulations in decline. Projected impact on habitat and populations for the foreseeable future, given even conservative climate change estimates, are grim. But that’s another topic. The point is, her comment is as asinine as it is ridiculous.

Cheers

Carl

Links

1. Critical Habitat FAQ
2. Decision
3. A law professor’s review of the recent decision
4. Another commentary on the decision

The post Polar Bears and Critical Habitat Designation appeared first on Skolai Images.

Polar Bear Picture

Hey Folks,

It’s time for another polar bear picture!

One of the large male polar bears off the coast of the Arctic National Wildlife refuge, ANWR, Alaska.

Cheers

Carl

The post Polar Bear Picture appeared first on Skolai Images.

A screenshot of how google images displays photos, hotlinking the original file, with a “Save Image” option.

Hey folks,

So, by now a number of people around the web have commented on the new Google Images display; some even talking about how nice and clean the interface looks. What I haven’t seen is anyone discuss how the Google Mobile App now works.

At left is a screenshot from my iPad of how Google Images, using the google app, displays photos on mobile devices. Underneath the image is a tiny thumbnail showing where they’ve extracted this photo from (and where the source file is hosted – in this case, my website).

When the visitor clicks “Options”, under the file, the 3 options are
“Save Image”, “Similar Images” and “View Web Page”. That’s right, the very first option is “Save Image” – Google grant you the option to save the full size jpeg right from my website, without you ever having to actually visit my website.

This is a pretty ballsy move, I must say. There’s been quite a bit of chatter around the ole interwebs about the new google images, on various web masters forums and so on, as well as some of the social media. Twitter, Google plus, etc. See Official Google Rollout, or Webmasters World. Safe to say, a lotta people are peeved. I’m surprised no one has mentioned this (that I’ve seen, anyway).

If you’re unsure of how this might be a problem, think of it in terms of non-photo content. Let’s say the new york times have a great article on cool Alaska widgets. Their reporters did weeks of research, put together an awesome article, and they finally published on nytimes.com. Now you do a google search for cool Alaska widgets and first up in the results is the nytimes article. You click on the link, and instead of being directed to nytimes.com, you stay on google.com and they simply display all the information from the article, with a “save as pdf” button beside it. The folks at nytimes would be reasonably, quite upset.

This is exactly the same thing for photo content. Google, instead of sending traffic TO a website, are bringing content from a website to google visitors. Which is completely unreasonable, unethical, and downright shady. Shame, shame, shame on you, Messrs Page and Brin.

To see how some of this has changed recently, here’s a screen capture of how Google Images used to work – until late last month:

Screen shot showing how google images previously displayed images.

You can see here the image display pops up overlaid the source webpage the file comes from; my breathtaking blog.  The image being displayed here is about 600px wide — less than the actual file size of 750px wide. But the key things, I think, are the difference in the interface. Here, clicking on the “x” takes the visitor to the webpage displayed underneath the file – the only way to return to google is hit your back browser. Most people won’t, they’ll hit the X, and be directed to my site. Which is were they should land, having just clicked on a link to my site in the search results (the thumbnail). This is as it should be. The visitor clicked a thumbnail for my image, which google create as a ‘snippet’ of my content; akin to me quoting a sentence or 2 from a longer piece of text.

What’s not OK is for google to simply collate the content from around the web, store all of it on their servers, and then present that complete content as search results; that’s, plain and simple, copyright infringement. Of course, there are always gray areas around issues of copyright infringement; lawyers far more clever (and highly paid) than I will argue themselves blues in the face building ridiculous arguments to defend this. We’ll see how that goes, I suppose.

The “Save Image” button, on the other hand, has to go. Google have no right, whatsoever, to offer, even encourage, google visitors the right to download my content for free, and particularly when that visitor now doesn’t even have to actually visit my website to do so. For that fact, google can should be ashamed of themselves. And they should take that “Save Image” button off their app right away.

Cheers

Carl

The post What The Hell Is Google Thinking – Google Images appeared first on Skolai Images.

Mt. Sanford, Mt. Drum, the Copper River and the Night Sky. The moon rise to my left threw a nice soft light on the fog over the Copper River Basin. Click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

With a host of people heading north this winter/spring to photograph the aurora, I thought it might be of some interest to talk a little about the process of shooting photography at night; I know a lot of people have little experience with that, and it really can be a challenge at times. Particularly on a cold frozen night in Alaska when the northern lights start going crazy overhead.

So, the first thing I’d suggest, if you haven’t already, is read over my 3 part article on shooting the northern lights. There’s a downloadable PDF at the end of that article you can keep for future reference.

So, now that you’re prepared, consider the moment. It’s dark. It’s cold, maybe minus 20 degrees F; cold enough that your hands start to really feel it after a few minutes. It’s dark. You have a headlamp on, and that gives you a little bit of vision out to maybe 30-50 yards or so. After that, you can’t see too much at all. The aurora starts to fire up, and you want to shoot it.

You can’t see your foreground and composition. Its dark. You don’t even know if the foreground is worth shooting. It’s dark. You can’t walk around all over and use your headlamp to see, because (a) there isn’t time, (b) there are other people trying to shoot, (c) you don’t want to track up all the snow by stomping around in it. So setup your test shots. This is probably the most important part of the process. Set up and do your test shots.

Test Shots.

Increase your ISO. I feel pretty good using either my D700 or my D600 at ISO 1600 for northern lights photography. That’s a pretty good ballpark to start with. So, for my test shot, I jack the ISO up all the way; whatever it goes up to; ISO 6400? ISO h1, h2 h3? On my D600, it’s HO2.0 – 4 stops higher than 1600. I turn Noise Reduction off. And I crank DOWN my shutter speed; if the correct exposure is, say, 1/15th second at HO2.0, I’ll add maybe 2-3 stops .. so let’s just say 1/2 second. That’s way over what the correct exposure should be.

But … the brighter image that results helps me review the LCD more closely for the test shot. I’ll take a shot.

Review the Scene

I’ll use the test shot method to discern whether a location is even worth shooting. Driving down the road at night, the aurora kicks on, and I’ll pull over at the first available location to shoot it. I’ll do a test shot or 3 to review whether the scene works or not. I don’t worry about fine tuning focus here, my first priority is ‘does this scene work for me?’ If not, I’ll take one more shot to make sure; can I turn around and shoot further to the left, right, etc? No? Then back in the vehicle and move on. There’s no point shooting a scene that doesn’t work for you (unless the aurora is so absolutely mind numbingly amazing right then and there that I have to shoot it anyway, of course).

So I drive down the road and find a nicer location, maybe with some nice spruce trees in the foreground, or a cool mountain ridge beneath the sky. Stop, test shoot, and review the scene.

Check focus

Is it sharp? No? Fix my focus. I don’t care how crooked my horizon is if my photo is out of focus. So I’ll fix my focus (read the article linked above, closely, for info on focusing at night time). Shoot another test shot. Is it sharp? No? Then fix my focus. Repeat. When I’m confident my focus is on,

The Horizon

I’ll check things like the horizon. Is it level? No? Fix it. Shoot another test shot. Is it level? Yes? Awesome.

Compose

Now I fine tune the composition. Is the composition something I like? No? Then change it. Don’t fix it, change it. More than likely, it’s not right. So adjust it. Get rid of that weird branch coming in from the side, the footprints in the snow in the foreground, the dead tree sticking up into the frame. Remember moving my location will mean I have to check my horizon again, and possibly my focus as well. But get it right, don’t stay in one place and shoot simply because that’s where you stopped and set up.

Exposure

Now, my image is sharp, level, well composed? Awesome. I’ll start figuring the correct exposure. I’ll bring my ISO back to the ballpark I want it to be in (approx. 1600, usually). Adjust my shutter speed and fire another test shot; review the histograms. Historgam”s”? Yes .. the RGB histogram, Red Green and Blue. Don’t waste your time looking at the single luminosity histogram; you NEED to review the RGB histograms (this is one of the most common mistakes I see photographers make). Do I need to touch it up? Probably. Tweak it, test shot again. Get that histogram correct.

NR?

Now that I have this epic histogram, I know my exposure is where I need it to be. Do I need to turn (long exposure) Noise Reduction on? Well, maybe. Some folks I know say no. Some say yes. A general rule of thumb is exposures over 4 seconds might require NR turned on. The problem can be that it effectively doubles your exposure time between shots, turning a 4 second exposure into an 8 second shot, and so on. If you’re taking 30 second exposures, that means one minute between shots. That can mean not shooting an awful lot of photos.

On the other hand, some folks say that temperatures in the vicinity of 0 degrees F and colder, NR really isn’t an issue, because the sensor doesn’t heat up enough to yield noise anyway. This is somewhat camera dependent, so do some tests on your gear, if you can. I generally leave NR on if my exposure is over 10 seconds, but it also depends on how active the aurora display might be.

Now, take my final test shot. This photo should be right on it. Focused, well composed, level, correct exposure; I’ll review it closely to make sure I got it right. Good? Yes. So I leave everything as is, and shoot and watch the sky. I’ll review things as I shoot them, but be careful not to move anything, or adjust any settings, etc. Even bumping the tripod can mess up the horizon.

Now, I want to switch to a vertical shot? Move a little to my left? I go through the entire process again. Always, always, always shoot those test shots.

Remember -it’s dark. Don’t waste your time trying to capture what you can’t see. Use your camera and shoot the scene to get a view of what’s in front of you. Shoot those test shots. You’ll be glad you did.

Cheers

Carl

The post Night Time Photography – the Test Shot appeared first on Skolai Images.

A silhouette of a bald eagle, perched in a giant Cottonwood tree, against the St. Elias Mountain Range at sunset. Chilkat Eagle Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks

One of the things I see happen most frequently in the field with groups of photographers is this kind of herd mentality that almost invariably works against the photographer. Particularly when things are not going perfectly. It’s cold, the eagles aren’t doing much, everyone’s been out for a long time, and soon enough, people start talking of packing up, of food and hot drinks, or editing images or watching TV, and before you know it, as the light ebbs, ever so slightly, people pack up and head for home/motel/town.

We all know once the light, on a gorgeous clear afternoon, goes down, the photography for the day is over, correct?

No.

I think photographers do much better, in general, on their own than in a group. And it’s weird for me to say this, of course, when I take people out in groups to photograph. But I find it’s true. More often than not, I’ll be in a place like the Chilkat Eagle Preserve (outside Haines, Alaska), the light is absolutely killing it, and there might be a sizable number of other photographers in the area. On the afternoon I took this image, there were probably 25 photographers, in various groups and workshops and tours, along the river. Maybe 30 minutes before I shot this photo.

When I shot this bald eagle silhouette (above), I was alone, not a Canon camera in sight, only the hushed tones of my nikon clicking away, my breath against the cool evening air, interspersed with the occasional, albeit raucous, calling of bald eagles. Every single other photographer I’d seen, not much earlier, was done for the day and headed for town.

I’m not saying this to too my own horn, of course. The image is nothing special (though the experience of being there certainly was). But I think it’s very easy, too easy, to get locked into the herd mentality, the “sheep thing”, when we’re around a bunch of other photographers.And only rarely, very rarely, do I see that kind of group dynamic work in everyone’s favor; most often, it works against creativity, and is counterproductive.

I enjoy shooting with a group of friends, and I enjoy being around other photographers at times. I enjoy experiencing the excitement each other feel when we’re out in the mountains, watching the eagles, or the bears, or the aurora or the mountains themselves. But I think we do well to be cognizant of how often that kind of group think thing works against us, and not let the herd take us away from what might happen. Certainly, it’s easy to stay and shoot when the light’s rocking and the eagles are active and cameras firing. But when things aren’t so hot, when it becomes work, and we simply have to wait and wait and watch and wait, the group think can become our nemesis.

So stay and watch; wait a little longer, and look for what might yet happen. it may not be happening right now, but it MAY happen. I stayed out and shot this silhouette, then spent about an hour shooting the mountains against the deep night sky and myriad different stars, and even caught a little glimmer of the aurora this particular night. Nothing special, for sure, but well better than sitting in a bar eating a burger.

Cheers

Carl

The post Stay til later – Bald Eagle Silhouette appeared first on Skolai Images.

2 adult brown bears playing (Ursus arctos) together in an embrace. Hallo Bay in June/July is a great time to see and photograph bear behavior like this. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

Another photo from this past summer when I led a photo tour to Hallo Bay and the coast of Katmai National Park and Preserve here in Alaska. I’ve been photographing brown bears for many years now, and return to the Alaskan Peninsula every summer to watch and photograph these creatures. They’re simply an awesome animal to see, whether its up close and personal like this, or from a distant ridge on a mountain hike somewhere.

I intentionally picked late June for this particular tour with the hope of catching some interaction between the bears, and especially mating behavior. Brown bear breeding season is anywhere from late May through mid-July, with some exceptions even being later. Generally, early summer is the time for brown bears’ breeding season.

This image was taken the first night of the trip; we had great light, and were lucky to have this interaction in such great conditions. I wish I’d had a zoom lens on, rather than my 500m f/4 lens, but wildlife photography is definitely an art of making do with what we have handy. Circumstances such as this one are good arguments for using zoom lenses over fixed primes for wildlife photography. It’s hard to beat that flexibility sometimes.

These bears came together several times during our trip, and we were fortunate enough to see and photograph them mating a little later in the week. Definitely a highlight of the trip, for me. This particular night (this image was taken close to 11pm) they played for a while, wrestling and playfighting for a while, before separating and going their separate ways after about an hour or so. The light faded and it was over.

Definitely looking forward to heading back to Katmai this year and catching some brown bear photos. They’re always full of surprises, and we never know quite what we’ll see.

Cheers

Carl

The post Brown bears playing appeared first on Skolai Images.

An adult bald eagle walking through soft fresh snow. Chilkat River, Haines, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Writing Your Photography Business Plan

Excerpt #2

Mapping out where you want to go with your business, any business, probably starts best if you understand where it is right now. There’s no point in trying to decide how to get somewhere if we haven’t first identified where we are. There’s little point in trying to figure out a place we would like to be without knowing upfront whether or not we’re already there.

So sit down and assess, honestly, where your business is. Don’t just do the accounting and look for a profit/loss sheet. That’s important, but go beyond that. Look over your portfolio/stock files and assess where your work is. For a stock nature photographer, how’s your photography coverage of bald eagles? Los Vegas city lights? Blue whales? From a business viewpoint, that’s all about inventory (what an ugly word that is). That’s part of what your ‘product’ (perhaps an even more ugly word) is, so examine it. Write down, in some brief statement, where your work is at. For you.

How about your service? Where is that at? Email response, print quality, timeliness and efficiency of getting files off to the lab, prints off to the gallery/UPS, images off to your stock agency/website. Examine it and see where you stand. And if it sucks, note it down. If it’s awesome, note that down too.

How about your advertising? Where is that at? Beyond just advertising, how about your business marketing in general? Where’s that stand? On a scale of 1-10? On a chart or graph or whatever other mechanism might work for you, what’s the quality of the work you’re doing? What about your budget? What is it? Where is it? Write 2-3 sentences that describe where you’re at with this stuff.

For most of us, our website is the single biggest portal into our work, our product, our service and business. So include a few sentences that briefly assess where your website is.

Don’t outline improvements and write a small report on any of these particulars; do that later. For now, simply describe and try to outline where your business stands. Is it actually a business, or just an idea? Is it actually a business or is it a website and a facebook page? Does it actually involve business transactions? Or likes and tweets and +1s? Be honest with yourself, and begin to define where, and what, your business actually is.

The gap between where you want your business to be, where you want it to be right now, and where it actually is is a useful thing to demarcate. Is it heading in the direction you want it to be? In order to answer that, you need to outline the direction you want it to be heading in. And you need, in order to answer THAT question, to know reasonably well where it actually is right now.

I might think I’m headed north, for example, but if I’ve moved a little further north than I thought I was, I’m actually facing south. See how it works? Knowing where you are is the key to avoiding being lost. So figure out where you are. Write yourself a few hundred words that briefly describe where your business is right now. Not tomorrow. Not where it was last month. Where is it right now?

Put it on paper. Keeping it in your head doesn’t work; it gets confused with all the other voices.

Cheers

Carl

The post Writing A Photography Business Plan – Part 2 appeared first on Skolai Images.

A brown bear sits and stares across Naknek Lake, sunset, and Mt. Katolinat, (Ursus arctos) Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

Hey Folks,

I guess, sometimes, we’re not the only ones who admire a nice scene and pretty sunset. Ya think?

Cheers

Carl

The post Sunset appeared first on Skolai Images.