Moose News Blog

While I have real problems with some of the unreal imbellishments of global warming and its cause and effect as seen on TV lately, being an arctic traveler and witness, I have no doubt things are changing and not for the better. Those in the endangered species business know that what typically causes a species to become extinct is some small coup de grace able to take advantage of a weakened system. For some arctic species, the handwritting is on the wall of a coup de grace a comin. I’m not saying the sky is falling, but many of its support beams are buckling, severely. Become educated and voice your opinion one way or another. It is your wild heritage!

This photo was taken a couple of summers back at the end of our ANWR float trip, it’s what’s left of the ice pack in June in the Beaufort Sea. We saw five Polar Bears, way off in the distance, one was a family group with spring cubs. We never saw though any of their main food source. There’s way too much open water in this photo.

We’ve had snow 71/2 of the last 8 days with two of those days with 30+mph winds. Needless to say, the wood pile and wine supply has been dented. You’ve probably seen a few of my snow photographs from Yellowstone and while Mammoth is beautiful in snow, let’s just say I can’t find the same character in the snow here. With all the winds, we’ve not had any birds for the last couple of days either. So to avoid getting cabin fever (couldn’t get out of Dodge either, road closed) I thought I would look at other avenues of photographic expression.

One of the vacation homes in the neighborhood has someone in it (who must be scared of snow, has every light on). The glow out the windows and the pattern of light on the tree and snow hill caught my attention. Cranking up the ISO to 6400, I went out in the falling snow and made two exposures, one for the window light and one for everything else. I than cameback to Photoshop and combined the two. I used Dfine to smooth everything out and baam, alternative to white is done.

Photo captured by D3, 24-70AFS on Lexar UDMA digital film

Was it cold in Yellowstone we’ve been asked? Heck no, a walk in the park. Look at that face mask, it barely has any ice on it!

Here’s another example of fashionable photographer faceware. Note, there are no icicles coming from the nose so it ain’t that cold. Of course, he was standing in the middle of Norris Geyser Basin. The temp rose to -3 when you were out in the middle of it.

No rouge needed here, no Photoshop either. That glow is from a brisk -7 afternoon at Upper Geyser Basin. What this photo doesn’t tell you is that Joe’s lips were stuck like this for the next hour until we went in for lunch.

We have a tradition at DLWS, the group hug. It took on a whole new need in Yellowstone! It’s the warmth from all of the participants that made even the coldest times pass without even a shiver. Many thanks!

I have received LOTS of emails (& print orders, thx) from the images I blogged last week from Yellowstone. It was an incredible experience from the grandeur that is Yellowstone to the great folks who were DLWS. Those folks, you know we had them going at 06:30 and were with them until midnight everyday (there was no time off) and all they did was smile and make some incredible images! One helluva a week!

A common question about the images tends to be “Were the images worked in Photoshop?” Darn good question and the answer for all the landscape photos is, darn tootin! None of the wildlife see Photoshop, but my landscape images sure do. To be specific, they see Capture NX. I find that especially true with the D3, NX does it all for me. Here’s an example.

The top photo is right out of the D3. The biggest problems are two fold. First is the horrible color cast caused by the steam coming from Castle Geyser next door. Second is the lack of light in the pool itself. Now McNally & I thought about throwing an SB-800 into that sucker to light it up for the one shot, but there’s a big sign saying “No Flash Fill Permitted in the Pools” so we went to plan B. Knowing these two facts that I would have a color cast and no light getting down into the pool, I composed accordingly knowing the tools I have back in the computer. After finishing the image (which is totally different from fixing), it looks like this…

See a difference? The finishing took only seconds with NX doing the lion share of removing the color cast and than pulling the color out of the pool. In Photoshop, all I did was to use Tonal Contrast in Nix’s Color Efex 3.0 for the finishing touch. This isn’t some Moose voodoo, all of you can obtain the same results. If you don’t know how, come journey with us on DLWS, we’re more than happy to help you find your vision!

Photo captured by D3, 14-24AFS on Lexar UDMA digital film

We’ve received a whole lot of emails this past weekend wondering how we’re doing with the recent CA storms (thanks!). While it was predicted we’d have blizzard like conditions, all we had here in Mammoth was killer snow! We badly, badly needed it and while not the real wet stuff (which makes shoveling a whole lot easier) it’s still white and makes great water this come spring.

What does it look like, all this white stuff? Well, in the top photo you can see the day before the storm and the day it ended. We received here at the house about eight+ feet. What do you do when it’s snowing that much? You enjoy the fire, fine music, good bottle of Merlot cured up with a good book. And when it comes time to taking the dogs out, we play. Our oldest dog Benson who is now eight takes his snow and snowball catching very seriously. It just amazes me how much air he gets off powder snow to catch them flying white balls. I had to shoot from the 2nd story office deck, snow to high to shoot from ground level.

Photos captured by D3, 14-24AFS / 200f2VR on Lexar UDMA digital film (D3 trivia, all photos taken in Dynamic 51-3D)