Actually I spent just a morning at taking pictures, but the whole experience was great. The temperature was pretty tough (5F/-15C) but the weather was all right, no snowstorm this time. Working in such a temperature is a challenge, you really have to use gloves and the fact is that manipulating photographic equipment with gloves is a mess. More than a time I had to take off the gloves and then feel the pain when touching the metal of the tripod/camera, but I just wasn’t able to do the adjustment with them. I sounds like I need a bit of practice (and possibly more pain) to understand.
- #1/#3: Same scene but different view, which one is your favorite?
- #4: Those little dots are people, they’re about to climb a giant frozen fall!
- #6: Resting in an igloo. As surprising as it might be, it’s pretty hot in there, well, I mean in comparison to outside…
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Yesterday I went to a butterfly exposition in our city park, the “Parc de la tête d’or” (Golden head park). I had never seen such butterflies, they were quite amazing, in size and color. It was a good opportunity to use my Macro lens and flash. With maybe 100 butterflies in a small room, the place was a photographic paradise, I spent something like 2 hours there but I could have stayed an entire day without getting bored. #5 and #8 are my favorite, they give a different view. Naturally, all the butterflies photographed are alive!
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I’ve been recently testing the video capabilities of the Canon 5D Mark II in the field. It is fascinating to see how a technology can impact your work. Video is my first love (short films) and it’s with a lot of excitement that I’m coming back to it. What I wanted to see here is the feasibility of shooting videos AND stills during the same day. It has been a lot of fun and in the same time a lot of work. I shot this in Full HD (1920*1080) at 30fps and edit it in Final Cut. The music I added is “Vers le Nord” from Bruno Coulais, used in the film “The Traveling Birds” (which I really recommend you if you haven’t already watched it). The lenses I used are the 17-40L, 70-200 f/4L, and the 500 f/4L. Here is some comments/advices on this short but intense experience:
- Shoot in Manual: Shooting in manual is definitely a must with the Mark II. Shooting in one of the automatic mode will more certainly make your footage to looks choppy because the camera is going to compensate on the shutter speed. Getting decent videos requires using a shutter speed of 1/60 or something around this. If you can’t achieve this because the scene is too bright, then use neutral grey filters, this is what real camcorders are using (built in).
- Don’t count on the audio: The audio coming out of the Mark II is quite terrible. Independent audio system is definitely the way to go (Zoom H4n/Rode NTG-2 is a great couple).
- Bring a spare battery: Shooting videos during a whole day completely used my 2 batteries whereas is never happened when I was just shooting stills, even when using Liveview extensively.
- Bring a lot of CF: 5 minutes = 4Gbs. It hurts mommy.
- White balance your shot: The 5D II is not shooting RAW videos (unlike the RED), so you’re not able to correct this afterward. Actually you can correct a colorcast in a Software like Color but this is a lossy correction. So have it right during the shooting by using something like a Grey Card.
- Focus: Focusing 100% right on a static shot is a must. What I do is that I’m usually zooming all the way, making the focus in liveview and zooming back to the focal I want.
- Invaluable IS: Some shots (like on windy days) are just impossible without IS, I found this feature incredibly useful. However, IS being pretty noisy (especially on the 500mm), you may not be able to use it in every situation (if the mic is close).
- Stabilize your shots: On some shots, I wasn’t able to setup the tripod to I tried to shoot without it (example: second crab in the video), but that of course doesn’t work.
- Well…dont’ count on the Mark II itself: Weird but true, at the end of the day, the Mark II went crazy. For some reasons the light meter was giving me non sense exposure. As of today, the problem is not solved and I have no idea how I’m going to shoot my Grand Canyon trip coming next week. Canon got the technology, Nikon got the reliability.
CLICK HERE TO SEE THE VIDEO.
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I’m leaving the US pretty soon and this weekend was the last one to Point Reyes. This place brought a lot to me, it is really my main (nature) photographic source of inspiration and I hope it will stay just the way it is for many more years. I say Farewell but I think I should rather say Goodbye since I’m sure I’ll be back in 2 or 3 years to visit the places I didn’t get a chance to see. I’m going to miss this huge wilderness, the excitation of not knowing what’s going to show up in the next bend of the trail, a Coyote ? a Kite ? a Mountain Lion (who knows) ?
About this specific trip, I’ve been working quite extensively on the white kite. Too bad I had forgotten my blind (looks like that), so I’ve been basically running after them for several hours. I’m very happy with #11 because it shows how magnificent is Point Reyes, with its amazing birds and environments (colors).
#10 is also a surprise, it is a long-tailed weasel, the first I’ve ever seen in Point Reyes. This guy was REALLY curious about me, and came out of his hole several times to make sure he wasn’t dreaming.
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I spent the entire Saturday in the Big Sur area. Mostly at the Point Lobos State Reserve but also at the Pfeiffer Beach and along the coastal 1 road. The day actually begun quite badly because once there (around 7am), the fog was so thick that taking photography wasn’t an option. I enjoyed the experience and the ambiance though. Later in the morning, I decided to head toward my traditional place for photography in the area, the Point Lobos State Reserve. I went to my “secret” bird place off trail and was lucky enough to find a Cormorant colony there. The light was awesome, the birds didn’t seem to be scared so I spent quite a bit of time with them. I think something special happened. One thing that I am often trying to do is to show the beauty of something that is not obviously beautiful. It’s the case with the Gulls. They are not obviously beautiful but when you really look at them, you notice a lot of amazing details. I’m really happy of #3 because I think it shows the bird on a new angle. It shows how its colors make so much sense in its environment. Later I went to the Pfeiffer Beach to photograph the famous Arch at sunset, the shot #6 gives you a sense of this stunning place.
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Abbotts Lagoon in Point Reyes is well known for its large collection of shorebirds. I hadn’t worked that much on that kind of bird in Point Reyes so I decided to spend the weekend along this lagoon, looking for Blue Herons and Great Egrets, and I found some ! I actually ended up spending a lot of time with one egret and a heron, they both have a very different behavior. The Egrets are more nervous, they don’t mind to fly every 10 minutes for almost no apparent reasons, which is good for the photographers of course because of the fly shot opportunity. The blue herons have more patience, but both hate gulls, I witnessed several fights between these two large birds and the gulls.
#1: Point reyes wreck, 90 minutes of exposure. Foreground lit with a flash light.
#2: This skunk hesitated to treat me with its famous attack, but fortunately I wasn’t scary enough that morning.
#6: Yes, herons are eating rodents.
#11: The reflection was spectacular. It didn’t last long, just something like 10 minutes at 6:30pm, a magical moment.
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With my laptop being broken (actually just fixed, that’s why I’m able to write this), I ended up with a lot a free time and decided to focus on the Palo Alto Baylands Preserve. This place, just 10 minutes from where I live is a real paradise for Nature Photographers. I went there 5 days in a row from 6pm to 8pm and had a lot of fun playing with the silhouettes of the Avocets. Please note that no color corrections have been done on those images, I didn’t even modify the white balance chosen by the camera (auto mode). I particularly like the picture #6 because it really shows the grace and even the femininity of the Stilts. I have been working on this shot for 3 days before getting it. At exactly 6:45, the light in a specific place of the Baylands comes through a tree and light just some areas, which result in a subject having some parts in the light and the rest in the shade. Here is a small selection of the pictures, courtesy of mother nature.
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From Saturday 11am to Sunday same hour. I slept something like 3 hours in my car before I got arrested by the Park Rangers, it is apparently forbidden to sleep in a car, Oh well, let’s take pictures then. Point Reyes was extremely foggy and humid this weekend, kind of dangerous for the equipment but everything held on nicely.
1-3: Estero Trail at 7am. Foggy and rainy. I don’t know the name of the pink flowers in the #1 picture, if you do please let me know !
5-6: Point Reyes Wreck lit by the moon and a Flashlight, 5 minutes of exposure. Don’t get fooled by the light, it was completely dark when I took the picture.
8: My big friend the turkey vulture.
10: Young mule deer frightened by my presence.
12: If you are following this blog, you probably already know this image, this version is the new 40 Megapixels one 
All images available for purchase there.
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Summer is never the best time for waterfalls. I remember being in Yosemite last summer in front of an almost dying waterfall and thinking to myself how too bad it was to not have been able to come earlier. However, this is not really applicable to the Shasta’s waterfalls, they stay strong and beautiful throughout summer. The pictures below are from the Mossbrae Falls, flowing into the Sacramento River in Dunsmuir. It is a quite unique waterfall with a very tropical look.
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A month since I hadn’t been to Point Reyes and I really missed it. I was actually planning to relax and spend time on the beach but the weather decided things quite differently by sending us a LOT of fog. It was really freezing on the beach, I still fell asleep for an hour but the cold woke me up (survival instinct I guess…). A good thing about Point Reyes is that the trails are completely empty when the light is beautiful, so between 5am and 10am and between 6 and 9pm, this is still a kind of mystery to me. Again, I saw 2 bobcats but didn’t get a chance to take a picture, highly frustrating but a nice experience. I hope that these pictures will give you a sense of the great wilderness that Point Reyes is.
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