Harvey Wildlife Photography

World Wildlife Fund and Nature's Best Photography Contest

2011-12-08T11:55:00.001-07:00

TIme for a little Harvey Wildlife Photography news, aka self serving promotion, aka Harvey Wildlife Photography propaganda... Call it what ever you like, but here's my news:

World Wildlife Fund Cards (Front)

First, I sold 4000 greeting cards to WWF Canada in the fall this year. The cards are selling in packs of 12. There are three tiger cards, three polar bear cards, three black bear cards and three lion cub cards. Each card has a picture on the outside, a picture on the back and a water mark picture on the inside page. The other inside page is left blank, leaving room for notes to friends and family.

The cards are printed on recycled paper, printed with vegetable dyes and are priced at $14.99 per pack. You can purchase them here at the WWF estore.

For more examples of what the cards look like you can see them on my website.

Secondly, I had a photograph recognized as "highly honoured" in the WIndland Smith's Nature's Best photography contest.

A Taste of Daisies

I was pretty happy that it even got that far considering that there were 21,000 entries from photographers around the world. My picture has been published along with the other winners in the Fall, 2011 edition of the Nature's Best Magazine. For anyone who really enjoys nature photography, this magazine is full of amazing pictures of wildlife.

The little bear cub in the picture is a domesticated little guy. He was about six months old and was trying to taste the daisies. He didn't have very good dexterity in his big paws, so he had a difficult time getting the flowers to his mouth. When he finally got a taste of a daisy he quickly realized that he didn't like the taste of it after all and promptly spit it out.

More pictures from this sequence can be found on my gallery.

Two and a half more months until I am back up in Manitoba photographing polar bear moms and cubs. Check out our polar bear gallery from 2011.

India Summary...

2011-11-27T10:58:00.001-07:00

India Summary

Words learned:

I am very weak at learning words from different languages Forgive me, as the spelling will not be correct. It will be written as it phonetically sounds to me.

Soo Korea- Thank you.

Rrokoe- STOP!

Chello- Let’s go

On safari, you use the word rookoe ( you roll the 'r's backwards if that makes sense) any time you see something that you want to photograph and Chello when you are done. And of course, Soo Korea is used a lot as I am always grateful when people help me with something. After all, Canadians are polite right?

One of the photographers in our group kept on saying “no problem” in Hindu to every stranger that he met. Kind of drove me batty to be honest, but it was also futile, as no one ever knew what he was saying. I think there must be a lot of different dialects from one area to the next as he would be told that he wasn't saying it correctly, so they would correct him, then the next place we went, they didn't understand what he was saying either and they would correct him too. This happened every time we arrived at another pit stop or another village, city or resort.

Favorite Foods:

Bada- A traditional deep-fried appetizer. It has bread, potato, and onion and is rolled in peanut crumbs. It reminds me of a really really good tater tot.

Naan- a bread that is served with lunch and dinner.

Tikka Chicken- As either a kabob or part of a meal with rice.

Aloo parathas- is a potato/bread pancake that is served at breakfast and is delicious! The recipe is in the link.

Food:

Indians truly are masters of spice. It’s lke they have access to about 100x the spices that we have access to. I hadn’t even heard of 90% of the spices that they mentioned that they cooked with. At the same time, it was my experience that of the typical six dishes served in each buffet; at least three of them each would have a curry base. According to my taste buds, regardless of how many spices you add to something when the base spice is curry, the end result flavors don’t change much. Of course, this may just be my experience and maybe my palate isn’t sensitive to different flavors. I don’t know, but honestly to me one curry dish tastes just like the next.

I found the food to be very high in fat. The curry dishes were quite rich with what I would imagine must have been cream. Also any time meat was served, it was swimming with grease. Our fast food restaurants have nothing on the way they serve their meat dishes.

From a health perspective, I loved the way they presented rice. I find in Canada I don’t eat much rice because I don’t like consuming a lot of sodium and every time I eat rice, the sauce that comes with it is almost always drenched in soya sauce. In India, it would be a healthy chick pea/curry sauce, which I thought was a much healthier alternative.

My favorite foods of the trip were the aloo parathas, bada, a chicken sausage (I have no idea what the chicken sausage is called. If it is a traditional dish and anyone out there knows, I would be delighted to find out.) and tikka chicken.

Summary:

India is a different and amazing place. I can understand how people love India. I can also understand how people hate India. I really have a love/hate view of my experience with India. I love the beauty and cleanliness of their national parks, the kindness of the people, the colourful clothing, the wildlife; specifically the spotted deer, leopards, peacocks and of course the Bengal tigers. I loved the Taj Mahal. Honestly, I could spend at least two full days photographing the Taj Mahal before I got all of the sunrise and sunset views that I would have liked to have captured. I would also have to plan to be there during the full moon as the views of the Taj Mahal during that time are supposed to be amazing! I loved some of the food and the cooperativeness of the people amongst the absurd traffic. Most of all, I really loved the people. The people I met were all so kind and accommodating and incredibly hospitable. The wildlife and Taj Mahal were the highlights of my trip, but I will never forget the beautiful people.

I have a few “hates” too and I very rarely use the word “hate” in my vocabulary, but in this case I will make some exceptions. I hate that while we have snow banks in the streets in the Canadian winter, they literally have garbage banks in the streets all year! And if it isn’t in a pile, it is plastic and paper waste strewn everywhere! Their sacred cows aren’t fenced. Unfortunately it means that they wander loose in the streets where there is no food, so they eat the garbage and die what I can only imagine would be an excruciatingly painful death. They then lay there decomposing in the street. It disturbed me seeing people relieving themselves in public everywhere and anywhere without even trying to go around a corner or at least turn their back to traffic. In cities and villages I literally don’t think I went ten minutes without seeing someone going to the bathroom..not in the bathroom!

It bothered me that men always tried to open doors for me and always offered to get my bags while ignoring my roommate who is a foot shorter than me, 80 pounds lighter than I am and a woman. I don’t need help with my camera gear. It is light to me. It is not light to a woman who is 5’1 and 115 pounds. Because she is a woman, they would always try to help me and talk to me when it was her who organized the trip for our group and had all of the information that they required. They knew she had the information too, but still wanted to talk to me.

I hate the fact that it is very difficult to even get an Indian visa because their system is so incredibly flawed that many people have to go to the visa centre four times before they are finally accepted and you can only book one visit per week unless they make an exception.

I of course hated the traffic, but was thoroughly entertained at the same time. I hated that they don’t seem to care about their animals and would just assume throw rocks at a dog as pet it. I love animals. I love pets and I had a difficult time not petting all the dogs and even the cattle that roamed without any interest, expression or enthusiasm. I realize this sounds strange, but our cattle look healthy and even though they are destined to end up on our plates, they look full of life. The cattle in India are just lifeless. As strange as this sounds, it took all I had not to reach out and pet the cattle and show them some affection. Unfortunately, I didn’t want to risk being bitten or diseased somehow so I refrained from touching any animal other than 'Pumpkin', my temporarily adopted dog. I felt especially badly for the dogs. In North America they are loved and treasured. They love people and are more often than not very exited to see their owners and many love to get a pat and some affection from any stranger who likes dogs. In India, the dogs are lifeless. They don’t even lift their heads when people walk by. It is even difficult to determine whether they are alive or dead sometimes. No one shows them affection and I didn’t see one dog that appeared to be loved or cared for. It was killing me not to permanently adopt "pumpin" from India and do what ever it takes to bring her home with me.

In summary, I loved India; the culture, the people, the history and I hated their filth, disorganization and abandoned, weak, “skin and bone” animals.

The thing that I had to/have to constantly remind myself of is that I have no business imposing my values on the way that other people live their lives. I don’t know what it is like to live on a couple dollars a day alongside 1.2 billion people, many of whom are struggling just to survive. We only have 33 million people in a country that is three times the size of India. From my observation, Canadians on social assistance without any employment who may or may not work even an hour a week have a better standard of living than most hard working Indians who have full time employment.

The big question is will I return to India? And my answer? Yes, in a heartbeat! I will definitely be back; possibly more than once. Clearly my love for India is much stronger than my hate.

Indian Accommodation Reviews...

2011-11-24T00:56:00.000-07:00

Our safari started in Delhi. The population of Delhi is 18 million. Once we landed in Delhi, we stayed at the Lalit Hotel.
The Lalit hotel is very clean, the staff are friendly, the grounds are safe and the food is very good. We went to Agra for a couple days to see the Taj Mahal, so they were kind enough to lock our big wildlife lenses in their large safety deposit boxes until we got back. The boxes are based on a two key system like a regular safety deposit box. It was nice to be able to relax while in Agra knowing that my camera equipment was safe. A tip for requesting a room? Ask for a room away from the train tracks so your rest is quieter. It was a nice stay, but I wouldn’t stay there again. When I am 20,000 miles away from home, I like to keep in touch with my business, home and I like to blog daily. If I am staying in an expensive hotel, I think it is very poor form for a hotel to charge for internet service too. There are lots of hotels that have enough class and customer service to realize that nickel and diming is low class and don’t charge for internet service. Next time while in India I will stay at one of them.

While visiting the Taj Mahal, we stayed at a hotel called The Trident in Agra. Agra has a population of 4,380,793. The Trident hotel is the perfect hotel to stay at while visiting the Taj Mahal. It is clean, safe, and a ten minute drive from the Taj Mahal. The staff are great, the rooms are quiet and comfortable, the grounds are gorgeous, the pool is beautiful, they have free internet and a free business centre and the food is absolutely amazing! The next time I am in Agra, I will look up the link to this hotel from my blog and book it again without hesitation. I would strongly recommend that anyone interested in seeing the Taj Mahal stay at this hotel.

After arriving back at Delhi, we stayed one more night at the Lalit hotel, then flew from Delhi to Jabalpur and had lunch at a really swanky hotel in Jabalpur.( I can’t remember what it is called, right now. It will come to me.) The population of this city is 1,267,564. The lunch was fantastic! Okay, now do you remember when I spoke earlier about the suggestion that we needed to bring spare rolls of toilet paper? Here it comes. Not to worry, it is PG… so, after lunch I looked for the bathroom before our four hour drive up the windy mountain roads to Bandhavgarh. The bathroom in this swanky beautiful hotel is the most gorgeous floor to ceiling marble bathroom that I have ever been in. It is architecturally creative and beautiful. I get into the bathroom stall and notice that there is water all over the place. There is less water in the shower room of a water park! It’s a good thing that I looked around before dropping the trousers as I quickly noticed the culprit of the mess. I believe it is part of the muslim culture not to use toilet paper. In many bathrooms there is a hole in the floor and a water tap to assist you in cleaning yourself. In this bathroom there was a high pressure sprayer like something you would use to spray the dirt off your car. I had visions of spraying something that I didn’t want on to something that I would have to wear in the car for the next four hours. There were just so many issues around the discomfort of that idea and my lack of experience with that method that I decided that my best option was to go to the car, sneak some toilet paper, hover and go western style!

Four hours later we arrived at NatureHeritage. This resort to me is like a three star resort or so with five star service. It is very comfortable, the people are very friendly and speak quite good English. They jump to help you and carry your gear at any opportunity. They never needed to be asked to help us with our luggage or photography equipment. Every day on safari we have bags of lenses and photography gear to lug a short distance to and from the jeeps. The staff were always at our door ready to help us and always on time. They were fantastic! The food at Nature Heritage is abundant, tasty and every lunch and supper were different on every day. I couldn’t believe the amount of different foods that they served us. They had wireless internet for us and even though it didn’t always work, even when it was down, it would only stay down for a couple hours, then would be back up again. We had a fantastic stay at Nature Heritage. I will definitely stay there the next time that I go to Bandhavgarh and would recommend without hesitation that anyone going to Bandhavgarh stay there as well.

From Bandhavgarh, we drove four hours back down the windy roads of the mountain, had another great lunch at Jabalpur at that same restaurant in the beautiful hotel (I still can't remember the name of it) then continued on four more hours to Pench where we reached our next hotel reservation at the Tiger Corridor. The Tiger Corridor hotel has the appearance of a five star resort. It looks fantastic, the rooms are spacious and beautiful, it has a fancy dining room and bar the entry to the resort is grand and beautiful. But what is it really? Well, they put 6 photographers with heavy gear that has to be lugged twice a day in the very end chalets. We walked at least 125 yards to the jeep and from the jeeps to our rooms after the game drives . We then walked to and from for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The chalets while spacious are so far away that they are very inconvenient and lacked that intimate feel that a resort would offer if the chalets were located in a closer proximity to the necessities. Also the staff do not go out of their way to help you with your bags. When we have to carry 50 pounds of camera gear 125 yards four times a day with no help it does become quite challenging. It wasn’t so bad for me, but my roommate is a lady who is 5’1. Her gear almost weighs half of her body weight and they would watch her struggle with it without offering help, so between the two of us, I had all of my gear and some of hers and it was a challenge for both of us. We were just barely able to carry all of our gear that distance and would always have to stop for a break to re-group before getting to our room. If a resort is going to have this kind of set up and are going to book photographers, they really should use their heads and either book them closer rooms or have golf carts to assist the photographers get to and from their rooms with their gear.

The food was quite good. The wait staff did a great job as did the cooks. The food was quite tasty, but they didn't offer much variety. It was generally similar meal to meal with a couple exceptions in each meal. They didn't put near as much effort into variety of meals as did Nature Heritage.

The one saving grace of the tiger corridor is their naturalist Devies. He was amazing. He went above and beyond for us and was fantastic! A couple of the managers and one of the waiters also had very strong customer service skills, but as a team they were pretty weak. Their jeeps are very comfortable for tourists with point and shoot cameras, but are completely inappropriate for serious photographers with professional equipment. I was very happy that we contracted out the jeeps and guides outside the resort as they were much more functional for photographers. Lastly the resort didn’t offer any wi fi or internet service of any kind. To me this resort is a 5 star resort appearance wise, but a 1.5 to 2 star resort service and functionality wise. I will not be back.

I hope this information helps anyone who may be interested in traveling to similar areas that I visited in India. Of course these are just my opinions. I made sure not just to rate these places, but to provide reasons why I was either impressed or not happy with the places that we stayed so you can decide for yourself if these resorts may be places that you may consider on your adventure as the reasons that I may like or dislike a place may or may not bother the next person.

Happy Trails
-Greg

Pench National Park

2011-11-18T23:05:00.000-07:00

Pench Day Four

Langour monkey mom and baby

Today Elizabeth and I photographed spotted deer and monkeys mostly. We didn’t see much, but it was a nice day and it was fun all the same.

Pench Day Five

Today I was in a jeep with Chris. We photograph really well together. We got some great portrait shots of monkeys, some nice shots of spotted deer and a changeable eagle hawk. On the way home I heard an alarm call that sounded like it was close to the road. We tried to figure out where it was coming from, but the light was quite bad at this point as it was already about 6:15p.m. so we started to head back to the main gate. About fifteen seconds later, the guide spotted an Indian leopard. It was perched on a rock and seemed to pose for us for a while. Chris had the right lens ready and got some great shots of him. I took a few as well but to really do it justice I would have needed a different camera/lens combination, so rather than set up and shake the jeep in low light, I just took a couple lousy pictures with the wrong lens as a keep sake. This way at least one of us would have the opportunity for a good shot and Chris nailed it. Even at horrible light she still pulled it off. It was still pretty exciting. Most people don’t get a chance to even see one Indian leopard in their lifetime and I saw two and have a great shot of one of them, so I am pretty happy.

Indian leopard

Pench Day Six

This morning at about 8a.m. Mark and I saw a tigress and her two cubs. She is the mother that actually has five cubs, so the other three must have been resting somewhere else. This mother has a collar and was a baby when they filmed her family in “spy in the jungle”. It was an exciting sighting that lasted a few minutes as they came out of the bush and walked down the road. Unfortunately for us, they were walking away from us down the road. One cub briefly turned around and Mark got a couple nice shots of him. I missed the opportunity. I had the other two tigers in my lens and I didn't notice that the other cub had briefly turned around. I have been kicking myself all day.

This afternoon we didn’t see much. We drove around and photographed the odd deer, an occasional peacock or two and a golden jackal in great light. We saw a blue bull male and came across a herd of Indian Gores. They are kind of like a cross between a cow and a bison.

Travel Day Pench to Nagpur to Delhi

Above is a troop of red faced monkeys. We were stopped on the side

on the side of the road waiting for the last vehicle so I thought I would

roll down the window and video them. The dominant male took exception

to this and mock charged the car screaming and showing his fangs. Kind of intimidating really!

We left the hotel in Pench at 9a.m. It was a two and a half hour drive to Nagpur, then a 90 minute flight to Delhi. Before getting on the plane I bought a pop, finished it, then couldn't find a garbage can, so I just held on to it, figuring I would give it to the flight attendant so she could dispose of it. We were on the shuttle bus heading to the plane and a guy noticed me holding on to what was obviously an empty pop can. He looked at me like I had three heads and suggested I throw it out the window. That is what they do in India. You are pretty hard pressed to find a garbage can. Garbage is just strewn everywhere. Every city and every village looks like a landfill. The country may be gorgeous, but anywhere there are significant amounts of people, the land looks like a landfil. It is truly disgusting.

We finally got into Delhi where we had a great dinner with the representative from the company who organized our trip. We had a great dinner in a really nice restaurant as we listened as he educated us on Indian foods, spices, culture and different safari options that India has to offer. We had a great meal and a really nice visit. From there we were dropped off at the airport at 10:30p.m. By the time we changed our money back, checked our bags and got through security I barely had enough time to have a quick snack at the lounge before saying goodbye to Chris (everyone else had already gotten split up).

This is turning into a long day. I am currently in the Vienna airport. From Delhi I had a 7.5 hour flight to Vienna, a four and a half hour layover, then will have an 8.5 hour flight to Toronto, a five hour layover, then a three and a half hour flight to Edmonton. That is essentially two full days of traveling before I can have a decent shower and sleep in a normal bed. I get in to Edmonton at 9p.m., home at 10p.m., then I take Gaye and Kiera to the airport at 4a.m. the next morning, then it is back to work again. I cancelled my morning clients, but will be at work at 10a.m. till 9p.m. Definitely a string of a long few days! Oh well all is good. The weekend is coming and I will catch up on Sunday.

Next trip; polar bear moms and cubs in Churchill in March.

2011-11-18T21:49:00.000-07:00

Pench Day Two

Today I was paired up in a jeep with Mark. The morning drive was a bit of a write off. I’m not sure that I even got my camera out. Sometimes we are so focused on photographing tigers that we forget about all of the other really cool animals that the park has to offer, so in the afternoon I decided to take pictures of any photogenic animal if it was in good light.

Changeable Eagle Hawk

We photographed bee eaters, an Indian roller, a changable eagle hawk and a red faced monkey. Still no tiger, but I enjoyed that game drive. Tomorrow I am with Elisabeth. She doesn’t like photographing birds or monkeys, so I am going to suggest that we focus on spotted deer. They are very pretty and I don’t have many pictures of them anyway.

Pench Day Three

Today I was paired up with Elisabeth. We had fun. We didn’t have many stellar photo opportunities, but it was fun all the same. We photographed languor monkeys, spotted deer, Alexandrian parrots mating and a serpent eagle. A fun day considering we didn’t see any tigers. It can get a little frustrating when nature doesn’t cooperate with our plans, but as wildlife photographers we learn early on that some days you’re the pigeon and some days you’re the statue.

Travel to Pench National Park and Day One

2011-11-18T21:34:00.000-07:00

We had a long drive from Bandhavgarh to Pench. The countryside is beautiful, but if you've seen one village, you've seen them all and even in the tiny villages you will see people relieving themselves right on the street. They aren't even modest enough to turn around. I would have thought they could at least go behind a building, but nope. They don't seem to need any more privacy than any of the other animals do. Seems bizare to me, but what do I know. Below is a typical countyside traffic jam.

By the time that we got to the resort, it was still four hours away from dinner time and we were all hungry. Dinner time was late at this resort and we were starving! It was finally dinner time and we were all quite anxious to get some food. Between the hunger and a little bit of disorganization at the lodge, amoungst the six of us, three photographers were trying to lead the group. Unfortunately only one of them should have been speaking as she was our leader. I felt badly for the Indians at the resort. They have a difficult time communicating with us with their broken English at the best of times and they were getting conflicting instructions from three different photographers. This; combined with hunger and a long day set off world war III! Two photographers were all of a sudden not so happy with one another to say the least. I was a tad embarrased and could only imagine what the people of the resort thought of us.

Pench Day One:

Considering that we almost had world war three between two of the photographers that turned into the entire group, the air was cleared and everyone was very friendly and civil this morning which was nice.

This resort is quite nice, but a little disorganized. The service isn’t as good as in Bandhavgarh and they have no internet connection here. Arg! I will have to catch up on the blogs when I find some internet again.

Game Drive Day One:

On this morning’s game drive we saw lots of the same game as in Bandhavgarh. We did see a blue bull though. (which is a large antelope that Bandhavgarh doesn’t have) and lots of peacocks. Pench National Park is 800 square kilometres with each game drive route being 50 square km’s where as Bandhavgarh is only 500. They estimate that there are 33 tigers in this park as opposed to 25 in Bandhavgarh.

So far Richard and Janet are the only ones who have spotted a tiger, but I am optimistic about this park as the grass isn’t as high and the forests are not nearly as thick. In most places you can see up to about 75 meters into the bush as opposed to 0-10 meters and in some places up to 30 meters in Bandhavgarh. Because the bush is much less dense here, it should be much more conducive to photography. This morning we photographed a golden jackal and some monkeys for a few minutes, but that’s it. Hopefully we will have more luck on our coming drives.

Indian Roller

On this afternoon’s game drive I would like to report that we saw at least one of the three tiger families. One tigress in this national park has two cubs, one has three and the third has five cubs. We did see some tracks, but that’s it. We had a fun game drive and did bring out the cameras a few times. We photographed two different coloured spotted owls, a purple headed eagle and a sambor mother and baby. Hopefully before we leave I will have a better chance to take a few pictures of the spotted deer in good light as they are very pretty and there are hundreds of them all over the forest.

Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve Day 6...

2011-11-08T17:57:00.000-07:00

Bandhavgarh Day Six

This morning as we were on our game drive we heard the monkeys sounding their alarm calls, so our guides started looking for a tiger.

Baby Langour Monkey

The next thing I heard was “leopard! Leopard!” A leopard was pretty far away in the forest. He ran to the left and we lost him in a valley, then he sprinted the other way actually coming toward us. I was trying to get the right camera ready and meter it and our driver told us he’d be coming out of the bush behind us on the road. Sure enough, seconds later he jumped across the road and disappeared in to the bush on the other side. I was really lucky to get one good shot of him as he jumped across the road. I didn’t really know it at the time, but leopards are very rare in India. In fact the leopard that we saw this morning was the first leopard that our guide had seen all year. That would make it a once in a lifetime sighting for tourists like us on safari. About half an hour later we heard alarm calls again and came around a corner to see a beautiful tiger walking into the bush. For the first time this trip, the light was perfect and she wasn’t far away from us. Unfortunately she was walking away from us and didn’t look back, so we didn’t get any decent pictures of her.

Rare Indian Leopard sprinting across the road

The afternoon game drive was okay. We saw tracks and heard alarm calls, but didn’t see anything exciting. The tigers amaze me. When we are in Africa the lions in the parks are the kings of the jungle and they know it. They don’t try to hide and really don’t care about any humans. These tigers are in the same position and yet, they are rarely seen outside the cover of the bush. They don’t run away from humans, but they certainly don’t hang around either. Between the sightings that all of the jeeps in our group had, the sightings averaged about 20 seconds to 90 seconds at the very longest. If I had to guess, I think the reason for the skittishness of the tigers is because the tigers in National Parks in India are still poached quite frequently.

This evening one of the guides invited us to his home. He lives in a house about the size of our living room and kitchen combined. In that house live six people. One room has three beds together and a tv and the other room has a kitchen and two cots against the wall. The water and bathroom is outside. They were a very gracious family and welcomed the four of us and were very proud to host us. The family has a 30 year old daughter who is married and doesn’t live with them anymore, then two boys and a girl in their 20’s. Their mother didn’t speak any English, but you could tell she was delighted to have us in her home. They sat us down in the kitchen as our guides’ daughter started preparing a meal for us from scratch on a cutting board on the floor, then cooked it on an element powered by a propane bottle. Our guide apologized for not having very much food, but insisted on feeding us a special treat called “bada”. It was a special occasion, so they opened up a bottle of coke for us and we chatted as the daughter cooked the treat that is served on special occasions. Bada is a potato and parsley? And bread and some other spices that is kneaded up into small sections, then is rolled in finely crushed peanuts, then is deep fried. It is served with an optional dip of tomato and green chilli peppers.

We had a really enjoyable evening with the family, but then had to get back to the lodge. Before we left, they insisted on giving each of us small presents (stickers and pictures of tigers with Bandhavgarh National Park on them).

I have really enjoyed the Indian hospitality here so far. They are such a kind people. They are inviting and proud, soft spoken and polite everywhere we have gone. Our visit with the family in their home really showed us how kind they are. They didn’t have much food in the kitchen and wouldn’t eat any of the food that was prepared as they wanted to make sure there was enough for us. It was very important to them that they serve their new North American friends.

Tomorrow morning we get up early and drive eight hours to Pench National Park where we will have five more days of tiger safaris. We are crossing our fingers and hoping that our tiger sightings will improve.

2011-11-08T09:48:00.000-07:00

Bandgavharh Day Five

This morning was pretty much a bust for everyone in regards to tiger viewing. None of us have seen a tiger in a couple days, but that’s the way it goes with nature sometimes. I think people sometimes have the misconception that wildlife photographers get off the plane, take a few pictures, have a few laughs and go home with great images. When there are a lot of good sightings it almost feels that way. When there aren’t any sightings, it is 7 hours a day of driving around on bumpy mountain roads, hanging on for dear life. That’s okay though as it is still driving around a beautiful forest and mountain side. To be fair, there are tons of spotted and sambor deer and monkeys all over the place, but we are here for the tigers, so 90% of the time we speed on past them. Thankfully I have a few pictures of them. Spotted deer are beautiful. They are much prettier than any deer that I have ever seen before.

Large Male Spotted Deer

On our way home from our morning game drive, we did come across a large troop of languor and red faced monkeys as well as a herd of spotted deer. The deer and the monkeys work as a team as they both send out alarm calls if they see a tiger. It is entertaining watching them as the monkeys will break off large leaves the size of my foot from the tree tops and drop them. The deer love to eat the lush green leaves and don’t leave any behind.

I was trying to ask my guide some questions today and he tried his best, but gets frustrated with me when I don’t understand him. The Indians are very nice, but they say certain syllables in ways that we have a difficult time repeating and we say words that they have difficulty with as well. That, combined with the broken English that they speak and we often have communication difficulties.

My question for my guide this morning was “Have you been to Pench National Park before?” We are going there in two days and I was curious what the park was like. The response came back “Yes it is very beautiful. The forest is teek”. I nodded that I understood. “Yes, your forests here in India are very thick.” I replied. He looked at me like I had a hole in my head and responded “teek, teek. “The forests there are very teek.” This game continued for about two or three minutes until I figured out what he was saying. What he was trying to say is that the forest is very teak. The forest has a lot of teak trees in it.

That is just one example of the communication break downs. We have them daily and sometimes it’s kind of entertaining.

This sign is located at the exit gate of the Bandhavgarh National Park.

Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve Day 4...

2011-11-06T05:49:00.001-07:00

Tigers Day Four

Finding a tiger in the Bandhavgarh National Park is somewhat like finding a needle in a haystack. The park is only about 30 square miles and the tigers roam in and out of the park, so it is difficult to say how many there are, but they guess about 25. We drive around all day looking for fresh tiger tracks on the sandy roads. Both sides of the road is thick jungle in most places with the occasional open field or sparse forest. From there it is guess work and signs of nature.

This morning we found tracks. Based on the tracks the guides can tell whether the tiger is male or female or cubs. Based on the area of the park and where the last sightings were, they can tell which tiger it is because each tiger traverses a territory. We were driving this morning and came across a terrible sewer smell, so based on the tracks and the area; the guides knew which male tiger it was. Due to the smell, they knew that he was on a kill (I would imagine that when the tiger perforates the bowel or large intestine of an animal, the stench from those organs was probably what we smelt). We knew approximately where he was and figured he was resting after a big meal. There was a watering hole about a kilometre away so we figured that he might like a drink after his meal. We positioned ourselves on the road between the smell and the pond. Then we waited quietly listening for alarm calls. There are a lot of monkeys in the tree tops that we don’t see. Once the tiger starts to walk, the monkeys start making an alarm call and that is what we were listening for to determine where to position the jeep and where to look. This system of course is used by all of the drivers in the park. With 11 jeeps per route, once the drivers see the tracks and hear the monkeys, a group of jeeps converge on the area that the tiger is in quicker than a squad of police cars on a thief.

With no tiger sightings in our route we stopped by an owl nest on the way back. The nest is just a big hole in a tree and the male and female owl were perched on the edge of the hole sunning themselves. Unfortunately they weren’t going to let us spoil their rest and wouldn't even open their eyes. Oh well, the pictures of them are still pretty cute even though they were sleeping.

This afternoon we found mother and three baby tiger tracks, but unfortunately couldn't find them. We waited near where we thought they might be and a monkey was quite busy sending out regular alarm calls.

We have three jeeps (two photographers per jeep) and we all got skunked today. Hopefully we will have better luck tomorrow. We have two days left here at Bandhavgarh. From there we drive about eight hours (so they say, but I will believe it when I see it. What ever they say drive duration is, it is wise to add two hours. This is India!). Once in Pench, we have 5 more shooting days, then we drive a couple hours to the local airport, then we fly back to Delhi and back home.

So far this trip has had a lot of cultural lessons...and a few faux pas. No, I didn't mention all of them. Some of them didn't include me believe it or not:)

I have been in Muslim countries before and I've always enjoyed my time with the people. They are very kind. Always smiling and very accepting and welcoming of strangers. Although we must stick out like a sore thumb I never feel like any more of a tourist than if I am in the States. Actually in many ways I feel more comfortable here because they know that we are foreigners and go out of their way to make us feel welcome. It is kind of funny. In some countries you don't dare take the locals' picture as they feel that you are "stealing their soul". Here when people see you with a camera, they almost ask if you could take their picture. They love posing for the camera and showing off their pretty saris. The women of any age take it as a compliment that you want to take their picture. They love the attention and don't ask for anything in return.

Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve Day 3...

2011-11-05T09:54:00.001-06:00

Day Three

We didn’t have any tiger sightings this morning in our jeep. Chris and Mark had a sighting for a minute and a half. It is difficult photography as it is very common to only see the tiger in plain view for up to two minutes. This doesn’t give a person much time to get the metering and settings right. You kind of have to do it on the fly and you either get good images, or they are all throw-a-ways. Again we stopped to photograph the langur monkeys near the end of the drive.

My highlight this morning though was feeding “pumpkin”. There is a stray dog with a broken leg that was never set. She walks with a pretty bad limp, but is very sweet and doesn’t beg, so you can’t help but to sneak her some food. I’m sure that is why she hangs around the entry gate to the park. If it weren’t for the tourists, she likely wouldn’t get fed at all.

We named this stray dog 'Pumpkin' and
and temporarily adopted her during our stay.
We smuggle her food from our meals.

I couldn't put my finger on what exactly bothered me about the animals here. I think I finally figured it out. The dogs in North America are often happy to see people and get a pet and some affection even from the average stranger. Here, no one pays any attention to them, so most of them just look lifeless. They have no expressions; they just look like blank slates. The other interesting thing is that I have only seen one domestic cat so far. Apparently cats are bad luck, so no one will have them in their homes. The only cat that I have seen (except for the tigers of course) is a very small grey cat that was very skittish and I am assuming wild.

Afternoon drive- We kind of slowly wandered around the park, taking pictures of monkeys and spotted deer. We puttered around at a slow pace and the park was pretty quiet. Then we heard that there was a sighting of ‘broken tooth’ and the pace picked up significantly. We got a couple brief sightings of him through the bush, then one last sighting as he crossed the road. When he went into the bush the last time, our driver looked back and said “hold tight!” We had 30 minutes to get back the gate before the park closed, so our driver drove like a maniac to get there on time. I was trying to hold three cameras and lenses so they didn’t

bang into one another while attempting to hold on for dear life. My colleague photographer in the front seat looked back at me and said “If anything happens my blue cross insurance card is in my passport in my jacket pocket.” I had to laugh although when we’re going that fast through the bush and on windy mountain roads I suppose it is a reasonable comment. :)

Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve Day 2...

2011-11-04T10:34:00.000-06:00

Tiger Safari Day Two:

This morning we started the same as yesterday. We were on route D-B and saw some peacocks and a barking deer, then quickly saw tracks on the side of the road. The guides said they belonged to Contucky. She is a mother of two cubs. I wasn’t getting too excited as we saw lots of tracks yesterday. Basically you are on a sandy/rocky road and there is dense jungle on either side of the road and occasionally you come across a small open field or small watering hole. We made our way up the mountain on this very twisty, rocky road, then started back down again. On the way down the guides heard an alarm call. (When the monkeys see a tiger, they freak out and sound an alarm for the other monkeys that a tiger is in the area. The deer hear that and they go into a tizzy too). Coming down the mountain side, we come around a corner and see 5 jeeps on the side of the road.

First Tiger Sighting

Our guide briefly talks to one of the other guides, looks back at us and says “hold on”. All of a sudden we are flying down this small twisty road with hair pin turns. He slams on the breaks and about ten seconds later this large male tiger meanders out of the bush on to the road. He walks toward us a bit, then the driver again puts the pedal to the metal so we can wind down the road one more turn to get us into position for a few more shots. Sure enough the tiger appears from the jungle again, walks towards us 20 feet, then heads back into the jungle again…And that was my first sighting of a male Bengal tiger in the wild. A sighting that I will likely remember for years to come.

On the way back to the lodge we found a troop of lamur monkeys and although the sighting wasn’t as exciting, the light was perfect and we sat and photographed them for about half an hour.

On our afternoon safari, we went back to the area where the male was seen in the morning drive and waited for a couple hours. Drivers were taking this opportunity to have a little snooze, everything was quiet, there were 11 jeeps full of tourists and photographers just waiting. All of a sudden we heard one alarm call (It sounds like a high pitch “oo”) from across the valley. Seconds later, eleven vehicles were started and went racing down the narrow mountain roads. (The Japenese have nothing on our Indian drivers with their controlled slides). All of the vehicles lined up and we watched as the tiger was about a kilometre away on the mountain side. He was too far away, so one by one we headed back. We got to a corner and spotted a female tiger and the excitement began again! The idea is to get ahead of the tiger and guess where she is going to go so we can get good pictures of her. So we take a few pictures, then the driver says “hold tight”. That is your two second warning. By the time he starts the engine, you had better be in your seat and holding on because it is pedal to the metal within seconds. The guide doesn’t just want to get ahead of the tiger, but he also wants to get ahead of all of the other vehicles, so he can position his photographers for the best shot.

All in all a very exciting day. The only good pictures that I got today were pictures of baby langures, but we have about ten more days of tiger safaris, so hopefully on some of those drives we will encounter nice tiger photographic opportunities in nice light.

A fun day. On the way home we even stopped for a quick sunset picture showing the mountains in the background where we were photographing the tigers.

Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve Day 1...

2011-11-03T07:18:00.001-06:00

Tiger Safari- Day One:

Bandhavgarh is set up into four zones and each vehicle is assigned a zone for each drive so some areas don’t become too congested. There are 11 vehicles allowed per zone.

As soon as we got in to the park we saw several peacocks. Nice, but not what we are here for. On the safari we have also seen jackals, owls, a lot of spotted deer and sambar deer. In the morning we saw a mahout on his elephant. It was pretty neat as he rode passed us. The park has a dozen or so mahouts on elephants within the park. The jungle is quite dense and the people can’t see the tigers in the thick bush so the mahout rides around through the jungle making lots of noise in the hopes that he flushes out the tigers on to the road or open area so that the people can get a glimpse of one.

On the morning drive we were on route B,D and we drove by three sets of tiger tracks. They were easily outsmarting us as we would drive by once and see tracks on one side of the road, then by the time we doubled back only 15 or 20 minutes later, we noticed a second set of tiger tracks on the road. One of the tigers that was in the area has three cubs under 5 months old, so we were pretty excited about the opportunity of seeing her and her babies, but no such luck.

Anyway, that’s it for day one, so the score for the first day is tigers 1, photographers- 0.

I have some pictures to edit and will add them to the blog as I edit them, so visit again in the next couple days. Hopefully I will have them posted by then.

Taj Mahal

2011-11-02T06:37:00.010-06:00

Taj Mahal

After traveling all day we finally made it to Agra. The light was perfect and we were excited to check it out. Once in Aga we hit the heavy traffic again and watched the sun starting to set as we were once again in bumper to bumper traffic. We finally got out to “The Garden” and there were no flowers, the river was mostly dried up and it really wasn’t attractive. I was thinking “really? This is all the rage? The seventh wonder of the world? What the heck is the hype all about?” So it’s off to the hotel. What a first day. We spent the whole day in the most miserable traffic imaginable, we miss our sunset and the pictures are brutal!

Taj Mahal day two…

The ladies arranged for us to get to the Taj early before it opened and what a great idea that was! We were there 30 minutes early and there was already a line up of easily 60 people. Security there is very tight at the Taj as Taliban groups have been caught twice plotting terrorist attacks on the Taj Mahal. We weren’t allowed to bring in any shutter release cords (as they look like detonators to the security guards) and no tripods, no backpacks and no food. Once inside it is obviously pretty stunning.

Moments later a guy grabs me and shows me the exact spots to stand for the best pictures. I give him 30 rupees and thank him. I thought that would be the end of it as the picture views were very good. By the time I tried to get back to my group, I couldn’t find them. Meanwhile he is dragging me all over the place. “Stand here and shoot there. Now stand over here and look there. Lay down on your stomach here.” I took some pictures and gave him another hundred rupees. (About 2 bucks. I didn’t have any more change). I thanked him and tried to get back to my group. At this point I had paid him way too much. He told me not to worry, he claimed that he knows where they are (of course I know he is full of it, but he shows me the sunrise and insists I follow him) “Hurry, hurry” he insists. Well, I don’t have anything to lose. I couldn’t find my group anyway and there was a sunrise. He took me to the exact spots with the best views of the sunrise behind the Taj Mahal. The tiles that he had me stand on are dirtier than the others. Clearly he had done this before…like every day! I gave him half of what he was asking for and he still made out like a bandit and made about $15 which is crazy considering most people would have made about $1 or $2 tops for those services. Finally I met up with someone from our group and she is with another guide doing the same thing. I tried to show her the spots he showed me but the sun had changed and opportunity was over. From there we spent time photographing adorable Indian toddlers and Indian families in the most perfect light with the perfect background.

Feeling guilty we looked for the rest of the group. As it turned out, I may have overpaid my guide and they tell us not to over-tip. He will eat well for the whole month, but he earned it. I think I got some great shots, so I certainly have no regrets.

Namastae

My one regret was that once again while we were racing around like maniacs trying to find the perfect pictures, I noticed that there were headphones and tour groups. I may have gotten some great sunrise shots, but I don’t know anything about this place. Thankfully, our guide has a degree in Indian history. He told us the entire story of the Taj Mahal with such passion. I don’t think any tour leader or recording could have come close to as good a job as he did. He had us fully engaged and completely interested in his story. I was almost teary eyed and simply blown away once I heard the story. From the reason it was built to the fact the Taj closes to the public every Friday so 2000 workers can clean and provide maintenance on it one section at a time. The city of Agra even re-located all of their factories as the pollution was causing the marble of the Taj to get dirty and hard to clean. The Taj Mahal is really is

India

’s treasure and one of the worlds most amazing wonders!

I will have to order a good coffee table Taj Mahal book when I get home. (I don’t have room for anything extra with all of my camera gear) and I will butcher the history of the Taj, but will try to summarize the story briefly.

Two teenage sweethearts fall in love. She was 14 years old and he was a just a few years older. Although she was part of a harem, he only loved her. He had 14 children with her and she also had three miscarriages.
She never left his side. Even in battle they were together. This was unheard of as women never socialized with their husbands.
After 19 years of marriage she became septic and died. On her deathbed, her last wish was that he didn’t re-marry.
For two years he was stricken with grief and didn’t leave his home
He decided that he was going to build a monument in her honor.
The Taj Mahal took 22 years to build with 20,000 workers. It is built entirely of marble and the decorations that you see on the wall aren’t paint, but precious stones that are inlayed in the marble.
The Taj Mahal had a ramp that went around the building. That was two miles long, so they could get the marble to the top.
The Taj Mahal was built in 1630.
Taj Mahal loosely means beauty beyond comparison.
The four pillars around the Taj are built at varying angles. One is 92 degrees, one is 91.2 degrees, etc. Each one is at a slightly different angle. The reason for this is it can withstand an earthquake of 8 on the richtor scale. If there is an earthquake that is significant enough to damage the pillars, the pillars will fall away from the dome one at a time, ensuring that the dome is not damaged.

A close up view of two small sections of the court yard wall surrounding the Taj Mahal. On the left, you will notice that section looks older than the section on the right. 2000 workers come every Friday to clean and perform maintenance on the building and grounds. As shown, this includes replacing the fancy trim around the perimeter of the grounds.

From a photographers’ perspective, the Taj Mahal is amazing for architectural and lighting reasons.

As the sun rises and sets, the Taj Mahal lights up differently, accentuating different parts of the monument and grounds. It is simply amazing!

Heading for home, I kind of had to laugh at myself. Yesterday I was annoyed about the crazy slow congested traffic with the incessant honking that just never ends. This afternoon on the way back, I was relaxed with out a care in the world. We came very close to getting in to two accidents, came very close to hitting a pedestrian at least twice. We saw the effects of three accidents and yet I was completely relaxed. It is amazing how quickly our senses adjust. There were as many starving cows eating garbage today as there was yesterday, we still saw dead animals on the side of the road, the honking, congestion, dirt and garbage was still everywhere, but it doesn’t take long to dull your senses and get used to it.

The Ultimate Faux Pas

2011-11-02T06:08:00.003-06:00

The Ultimate Indian Faux Pas…

There is always a story with me. This time I don’t know what my excuse is. Maybe it was because I arrived in Delhi at 4a.m., then just a few hours later headed out on our Agra excursion or if it was because I hadn’t eaten in so long or the heat? The lack of sleep? The crazy drivers in

India

? Or maybe I can blame it on a little culture shock? Or perhaps all of the above. Regardless, I definitely committed the ultimate faux pas in India.

We drove for hours in bumper to bumper traffic. Cars and trucks were constantly honking, the smog is unbelievably bad and it seems that everywhere you go there’s wall to wall and curb to curb people and vehicles. It is stressful witnessing near accidents so regularly. Traffic lights, one way streets and painted lines on roads are merely suggestions. I don’t even think they know why there are street lights, lines or stop signs seeing as I didn’t see anyone adhering to any of them. I think they just figure they are for mere decoration.

So, I am low on sleep, low on sugars and trying to gain a little rapport with our driver. We are chatting about their festival Dariwal, he tells me about how much Indians like to move to Canada, he answers my various questions quite politely and we discuss his religion briefly as we pass by various mosques. It was then that my hunger started really getting the better of me. I was light headed, feeling a little weak and queasy and we were still several hours away from Agra in bumper to bumper traffic. So what do I do? I of course get a snack out of my bag and start munching. I couldn’t possibly imagine being rude to my new friend. He is busy driving in the nastiest traffic you could imagine, so I offer my bag of food by putting it up near his face so he can see it. Nice right? I’m hungry, he’s probably hungry. He’s busy with both hands on the wheel, swerving, and honking etc. But what do I offer him?…BEEF JERKEY!! I am such a fool!! Cows are sacred to Hindus. Reincarnation ring any bells?!! I may as well have been eating his ancestors in front of him. Then I ask him if he would like to share them with me! Insult to injury I had to hold the beef jerkey up near his face so he could get a good wiff of it! As I was offering, Chris; one of the other photographers was trying to say “No”, but she was just a little bit too late. I had already practically shoved my dead sacred cow in his face.

Okay, the beef jerkey thing was not the highlight of the day, but it was just weird all around. I saw several people urinating or bathing in the street, entire families of 4 or 5 on motorbikes, babies sitting on mom’s lap as dad swerves the bike in and out of traffic without the appearance of anyone other than the driver actually holding on to anything. We saw a lot of things for sale along the side of the road, the most common being motorbike helmets. Ironically though, we only saw a handful of people actually wearing helmets.

We finally got to Agra late, took a few pictures of the Taj Mahal in bad light from across a mostly dried up river then drove an hour back to the hotel that is located ten minutes away. Supper was good though and I’m really looking forward to sleeping in a bed tonight!! Tomorrow’s another day. I will try not to exchange beef recipes with my Hindu friends. I did apologize, but somehow an apology just doesn’t make up for eating their sacred animal, then offering them a taste!

Arrival in India...

2011-10-31T17:41:00.001-06:00

Arrival in Delhi

Well all the flights went perfectly. I didn’t even have so much as a layover where I had to sit down to wait. On paper it looked like the flights were spaced out well, but when you factor in the time that it takes to get through security and time changes, there was just enough time to get from one flight to the next. This flight plan could have been a disaster if any of my flights were delayed, but thankfully they weren’t.

The Turkish airlines that go over seas are still my favourite carriers. Their planes are awesome.

On my flight from Istanbul to Delhi we were about 30 minutes outside Delhi so I decided to use the bathroom one last time. I hope this isn’t an omen for things to come, but an Indian woman in her 50’s was coming out of the bathroom before I went in. There was urine all over the seat, she didn’t flush and there was water every where and the sink was plugged. ! I couldn’t believe someone of that age would behave like a pre-teenager. Actually that's not fair. Most children aren't nearly that inconsiderate or disgusting! Oh I hope she is the exception. I don’t know that I would want to deal with that kind of behaviour on a daily basis!

Arrival in Delhi- The first thing I noticed in Delhi is the smog. We got in at 4a.m. and the smog is just brutal. It is even bad in the airport and hotel. I’ve only been here two and a half hours now and already my throat is bothering me. The driving wasn’t a shock to me. The landscape, the traffic and pollution reminded me a lot of Kenya (except the pollution is worse and they have lots of these three wheel green motorized carts called tuk tuks).
Okay, so the travel wasn’t exciting…I’m glad it wasn’t! My only entertainment was the Indian checking my passport and declaration card on the way in. He must have had a long shift because he would flip through my passport, then fall asleep briefly, then he'd wake up and start flipping through it again. He did this about three or four times. I think it took him about ten minutes just to find the page in my passport that had my Indian visa.
Well, I should check out. I need to get a shower and some clean clothes before heading on to Agra.

India here we come...

2011-10-28T20:41:00.001-06:00

It is "India eve" for me. Tomorrow I start on my journey to India. I will be leaving Saturday night and arriving in Delhi at 4a.m. on Monday morning. At 11a.m., four of us get in a van and head south six hours to Agra; home of the Taj Mahal. From there, we go south to two national parks to photograph Bengal tigers for the remainder of the trip.

I have never been to India before, so this will be new to me. At this point all I know is our main photo subjects on this trip are the Taj Mahal and Bengal tigers. I have my shots, took my dukorol, I have my antibiotics, diarrhea medication, malaria pills and two rolls of toilet paper. I have been here and there around the world but the last time I was asked to bring my own toilet paper was our trip to Tajikistan. At a rest stop, I walked into a bathroom, (witnessed what I don't think I will ever be able towipe from my memory), then went around behind the restroom and relieved myself in the bushes. You know you are going somewhere outside your comfort zone when you are told to bring your own toilet paper!

And so for good or bad, another adventure begins. I will blog from India every day that I have access to the internet. On the days that we don't have internet access, I will keep a diary and blog when I am online again. Sign up to my blog if you like and email posts and a few pictures from the day will go automatically to your inbox. I don't blog a lot, mostly just when I am on safari, but check it out.

I hope this trip will go smoothly, but inevitably there is always some catch somewhere whether it is the France security guards questioning an "animal paparazzi", having visa "issues" in Russia or spending two days in a South African hospital because a cheetah attacked my step daughter, there is always something. Equally entertaining to Gaye was last year when I suffered the effects of food poisoning in a hot, bush plane ten minutes before landing in Tanzania. Seriously, does this stuff only happen to me?? (Well the cheetah thing didn't happen to me, but I have never heard of anyone else ever being attacked by a cheetah.) :)

In the land where bribes will be a necessity for us and toilet paper isn't taken for granted, I expect there will be a story or two.

Pictures from previous safaris can be found on my website gallery.

Harvey Wildlife Photography Scotia Place Exhibit; Bears, Bears, Bears

2011-08-05T22:05:00.001-06:00

Three weeks after I got back from my Alaskan brown bear safari, my exhibit at Scotia Place was due.

Three weeks wasn't quite long enough to comfortably go through 10,000 images from the brown bear safari, organize, them, print, treat, stretch and frame canvasses, while working 80 hours a week at my main business but somehow I found the time.

This time I wanted to add a few City of Edmonton evening skylines for city people who don't appreciate wildlife. Watching people standing in front of the exhibit, the people seem to be split. Some ignore the brown bears and polar bears end, while others ignore the city pictures, while still others will spend time in front of both.

Sales are slowly trickling in now, but they never seem to be as much as I would like to see them be. That being said, I do get a genuine feeling of fulfillment when I see people standing in front of the prints enjoying the moments that were captured.

Time to stop procrastinating and get back to printing, treating, stretching and framing. Wildlife photography is rewarding. Setting up an exhibit feels great, but preparing prints for people's homes and businesses really is the best part.

If you are in the Edmonton area, feel free to drop by and check the exhibit out. It can be found in the lobby area of Scotia Place at 10060 Jasper Avenue, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. My exhibit is on the wall of tower number one. The lobby of Scotia Place is open to the public from 5am. to 11p.m. The exhibit is best viewed during the day and will be up from August 1st to September 30th, 2011.

My next adventure is photographing the Taj Mahal and bengal tigers in India in November, 2011.

Brown Bears- Heading back to Edmonton...

2011-07-11T16:43:00.000-06:00

Bye Bye

They are so hospitable in Alaska that even the bears see you off. We took a small plane out from Lake Clark National Park directly to Anchorage. We left at about 11a.m. The flight took about an hour. From there I had enough time to check in, get some lunch and board my flight to Vancouver. I had a comfortable amount of time in Vancouver to stretch my legs, then caught my flight back to Edmonton. I was home by 11p.m. Not a bad travel day. I will definitely be going back to Lake Clark National Park. It was a great experience.

Video from the passenger seat of a small bush plane leaving the Lake Clark National Park runway (the beach).

Brown Bears Last Day...

2011-07-11T15:45:00.003-06:00

There were five people in our group all week. Three of them were leaving this morning, so after our first game drive and lunch we saw them off. It was quite a dramatic departure as two boars were sparring on the beach.

Boars fighting on the beach

Although that was a nice farewell for them it must have been bitter sweet for them as all of their good glass was packed, so they just watched and enjoyed the show.

After supper I decided that I would stay at the lodge rather than going out on the last game drive because the bears inevitably came back to the lodge area in the evening anyway, so I thought I would wait for them. Sure enough, the blonde twins showed up. I got my camera gear together and went out to photograph them. I was just a few feet away from the driveway of the lodge. I decided I wasn't going to wander too far off on my own. I was photographing one of the twins when out of the blue he ran at me a bit, so I yelled at him and he backed off. At this point he was far too close for my big lens so I thought I would back up a bit. I got a little distracted as I was trying to focus through my lens and didn't realize what he was up to. Thankfully a guide on a quad from the lodge next door came speeding to my rescue and scared the little trouble maker off as he was running at me and I didn't realize it. You really have to pay attention to the bears as they can really cover a lot of distance in just a few seconds.

Starting to Charge

In retrospect I should have known better. This teenager is last years cub, so is about 16 months old. He started walking like he was bowl-legged. This was an aggressive walk. One second he was eating grass, the next he started walking like in the picture, then stupidly I took my eye off him and the next thing I knew he was coming at me at a good clip. He ran off pretty quickly when the quad came speeding up. Thankfully I was able to learn this lesson unscathed. I will know better for next time.

That's it for the brown bear and puffin photography for this trip. I invite you to visit our main gallery and website. In addition to brown bear and puffin prints, I will be making brown bear greeting cards shortly.

If you are an Edmontonian, my next exhibit goes up in Scotia Place from July 29th to August 31st. I hope to see you there.

Brown Bears (And Puffins!)- Day Six

2011-07-08T01:31:00.005-06:00

This morning we went out to see the puffins at Duck Island. I am not a bird person but this was a welcome break from the bears. As much as I have enjoyed photographing them, we have had limited subjects in a lot of different environments. Moms and cubs in the fog, in the sun, in the field, on the ocean, in the field... Moms and cubs are great subjects and I have been delighted with the results, but the birds at this point were definitely a welcome change.

We still managed to get out to see the bears for a couple hours before and after supper. Again, we had some interesting sightings. This time I videoed mom and triplets as the babies nursed. I got a kick out of how they viciously fight over their favorite nipples:)

This trip has been fun. Long days, nice people and great bear activity. One last day of bear viewing before coming back home. Although I have enjoyed the bear photography, I will be delighted to be back home.

Brown Bears- Day Five

2011-07-07T02:26:00.002-06:00

Cubs on the beach at low tide.

Today we were all over the place. First we spent time with a mom and triplets right near the lodge, then as far down the island as we could and watched a mom and single cub for several hours. The bears were in tall grass, so we couldn't get good photographs of the cub, but he was fun to watch as he entertained himself by playing with a stick, weeds and just about anything else he could find. After lunch we spent a couple hours on the ocean floor at low tide filming the mom and triplets clamming. After supper as we were leaving the yard the blonde twins and mom came strolling into the yard. They were trouble makers this afternoon. Apparently a couch was purchased for a new cabin that they just built. It had to be specially wrapped and was put on a boat to get here. It was wrapped up in plastic to protect it from the journey, but the twins didn't care and ripped through the plastic and chewed at the corner of the brand new couch before the had a chance to get it into the cabin. In the field we found a blonde mom and single cub that we hadn't seen before. The light was good and they were great looking bears, so hopefully the pics will be good. On the way back I wanted to go home early as we were passing the lodge anyway, I figured I would call it a night as there wasn't much action. That was the plan.

When we got to the lodge the blonde twins were there playing and chasing each other across a creek and back, then fighting. It was too cute,

Yearlings Fighting

so we stopped for them. I must have taken several hundred pictures just of them playing tonight. From there, I went back to the lodge to start downloading my pictures when out the window in my room we see a mom and triplets. It was 10p.m., but still fairly light, so I videoed the triplets for 45 minutes or so. They are pretty addictive to watch.

Our puffin trip got postponed due to the rough ocean today, so we are going out tomorrow morning. I love the bears, but the puffins will be a nice change. In the meantime, I put together another small facebook brown bear gallery for you to check out. You can find our main website here.

Til' tomorrow...

Brown Bears- Day Four

2011-07-06T00:50:00.004-06:00

Today we woke up to thick fog everywhere. It was pretty difficult to photograph the bears as the fog makes everything look pretty hazy, but in some instances it added an interesting look to the scenes.

In the morning we saw a mom and two cubs near the ocean so we decided to photograph them from a slightly lower vantage point on the bank of a small stream (well the stream is quite small when the tide is out. When it is in, it is another story).

Anyway, we were happily taking pictures when I figured I should get my smaller camera lens out of my back pack. My camera was dead as I had forgotten to put the re-charged battery back in the bag. Luckily I had packed a third camera body, so I was switching camera bodies when I heard our guide say "I'm just going to stand in front of you." I thought that was pretty weird until I looked up. The mom and two yearlings were less than ten feet away. They had kept coming towards us and were curious, so he had to shoo them away. Fortunately before they were shooed off and before I clued in that I should be nervous, I managed to get a few pictures off. Good ones too. It wasn't until after all was said and done that I realized how close they really were.

After lunch we went out on to the ocean at low tide and photographed the mom and triplets clamming. It was extremely foggy so the pictures were quite unique.

From there we went out to the field and waited most of the afternoon as the triplets and twins slept. After supper was great. The light was near perfect. We came upon a mom and single cub that was quite curious. She kept on standing up and leaning against mom and just standing in general. Between the great light and the behaviors we did quite well.

Tomorrow we go to Puffin Island to photograph the puffins. I haven't seen them in the wild before, so I'm looking forward to it. Another small facebook brown bear gallery from Alaska

Till tomorrow...

Brown Bears- Day Three...

2011-07-05T02:01:00.002-06:00

Last night as I was saving to my hard drives the elusive mom and three cubs that the guides keep talking about walked through the yard of the lodge with a quick stop off to roll in the ashes of the camp fire.

This morning we made it about 100 yards down the bushline when we saw them in the trees. Eventually they came down and we spent a couple hours with them. From there they crossed a little creek that was too much for us to cross, so we went out to the ocean to see if we could find some bears looking for clams at low tide. We walked about a kilometer out to a mom and two cubs and were photographing them for a while. When we looked back we noticed that mom and triplets were headed toward us. That was nice, so we photographed them for a while. By the time they left, it was time for lunch. After lunch we caught up with a mom and two cubs in a field. A couple hours later that same mom and triplets came toward us, so we photographed them for a couple hours again. It was fantastic as we got footage of them playing and nursing. By the end of the day, we photographed them in trees, long grass, on the beach and in the field. It kind of made us really particular as what we would stop for to take pictures of after that. In fact we were so spoiled that when we came home there was a mom and two cubs in the yard of the lodge and I was the only one who stopped to photograph them. The light was good, but everyone was tired so they just went to their cabins. The twins played a bit, nursed a bit then took off.

This lodge isn't for the faint of heart if you want great images, but they are definitely here to be had. Today we walked a couple miles which doesn't sound like much, but when you add the camera gear and walking through mud and swamp it definitely wears on you. That being said, the guides are terrific and among the hardest working guides that I have ever worked with. They are up early and with the guests until 9:30 at night.

It is midnight as I am writing this and my guide just informed me that he found another mom and two really small cubs. That brings the number of bears that are being viewed in the immediate vicinity to 21. Their record is 25 so it looks like they are on track for a great bear viewing year.

The picture count is great. The first day I took about 2700 and somewhere near that on day two as well. In the next couple days we are supposed to go to an island to photograph puffins. I am really looking forward to it. I have never seen them in the wild before and as much as I love the bears, I am ready for some variety. Another small facebook gallery to wet your appetite. More pictures are coming. In the meantime, feel free to visit our gallery...

Brown Bears- Day Two: Arriving at the Lodge and Day One Photography

2011-07-04T02:47:00.002-06:00

Brown Bears- Day Two.

Getting to Lake Clark National Park is quite the journey. After our day in Anchorage, we flew from Anchorage to Kenai via Grant Air, which is only a 30 minute flight. From there we were driven to Soldotna. Soldotna is only about ten minutes from Kenai. From Soldotna we flew 30 minutes across the mouth of the ocean to Lake Clark National Park. This place is beautiful. Not very many people and so far lots of bears! We arrived at our lodge at 11a.m.. Even on our descent we counted several bears and cubs on the beach. After a short safety orientation, we went out to photograph the bears. The light wasn't the greatest, but not bad either, but the bears were really plentiful! We photographed sows, boars, moms with yearling cubs, moms with this year's cubs and generally just a lot of bears.

Juvenile cub on the beach

The bears we wanted to photograph the most however seem just a little to shy to be hanging out in the open just yet. There is a mom with new triplets. While I was backing up my pictures, the owner of the lodge called me. Sure enough, there she was 20 feet from the house. She came into the yard and her cubs rolled around in the ashes in the fire pit. It was pretty cute. From there, she and her babies went back into the woods.

Waking Up

I took over 2700 pictures today already, so as long as the weather holds, I think we are in for a great week....

I have all of my pictures posted on my website, which I will get to in future blogs. In the meantime, here is a very small facebook gallery to tide people over.

Til tomorrow.

Brown Bears- Day One. North to Alaska

2011-07-02T23:49:00.001-06:00

Day One- North to Alaska
Today was just a travel day. No travel challenges really which was nice. The flight from Vancouver to Anchorage was almost full and I think I was one of the few people on the flight that didn't have blue or grey hair:) Seriously, I think most of the people on the flight were going to Anchorage to get on a cruise ship. Young people go on cruises in the Caribbean, while the older generations choose Alaska cruises I suppose.

The Anchorage airport is nothing like I expected. It is beautiful. I pictured the typical small old airport. I surprised and completely wrong. I met another photographer in Anchorage and we went out to lunch then hit the markets. Fourth Avenue is a string of souvenir shops and behind it is a farmers market type set up with 50 or 60 tents of souvenirs. I am not a shopper, but had fun checking out the exhibits for a couple hours anyway.

Tomorrow we take a small plane from Anchorage to Kenai. That will take about 30 minutes, then we will drive to Soldotna and take another small plane across the ocean north to Lake Clark National Park. With any luck we will be able to start photographing brown bears by noon or so if all goes well. My fellow photographer doesn't know about my small "stomach problems" on little planes in Tanzania. Oh well, what he doesn't know shouldn't hurt him and now I know where the leak proof bags are so I should be okay. :)

Photographing black bears in Minnesota and Canada has been fun. In 2010 and 2011, I photographed polar bear moms and cubs and really learned a lot, but up until now, the only grizzly bears that I have photographed have been in Canada, so I am excited to see what the bigger Alaskan Brown Bears look like.

Brown bears tomorrow. I heard that there are three moms with cubs in the area we are going to be in, so hopefully we will find them.

Till tomorrow...

City of Edmonton Evening Skyline Photos

2011-06-06T21:38:00.000-06:00

I got permission to photograph from the roof of one of the tallest business towers in Edmonton. Although I am not particularly fond of special effects, I thought I would live on the edge (so to speak) and try using a fish eye lens. I called Canon's CPS program requesting to rent one from them.

Of course, just my luck, it was miserable, cold and raining on Saturday night, so although I tried to dress for it, my camera equipment and I weren't very comfortable by the end of the night.

I am still not sold on using a fish eye for photographing buildings, but I have to admit, I kind of think it does give a neat effect.

The other thing I have been having fun playing with is panoramics.

The panoramic picture above is two pictures stitched together in photoshop. It is pretty simple to use. You just need to make sure that you overlap one image and the next by about 30%, choose those two pictures, photomerge them together and photoshop does the rest. I have a few more panoramic pictures in my gallery.

I enjoy photographing the city skyline. No crowds and it's peaceful. Probably what I enjoy about photographing in nature too except animals are much more fun than buildings.

My skyline galleries can be found here...and here.

Alaska for brown bears and cubs in a month...

Polar Bears on ABC

2011-05-07T18:59:00.001-06:00

While we were in Wapusk National Park photographing polar bear moms and cubs, ABC and the World Widlife Fund were there doing a piece on polar bears, wildlife photographers and global warming. They came out with a six minute piece. It aired on mother's day weekend. Quite appropriately considering that the segment is about moms and cubs.

http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/video/polar-bear-cub-nature-wild-13550756?tab=9482930&section=1206872&playlist=1887643&page=1

Polar Bears: Nature's Cutest

abcnews.go.com

Get up close and personal with polar bear cubs.

At the end of the segment you will notice a mom and triplets. It is difficult to say how well they will do. We left them at about 6p.m. one evening and by the next morning our trackers caught up with them by the next morning. Surprisingly they had already traveled another five miles of the forty mile trek to Hudson Bay. Unfortunately they were just out of our range, so we weren't able to photograph them again.
And here is the story from the WWF perspective.

Polar Bear Photo Safari Day Eight... Our Last Day.

2011-03-16T21:13:00.000-06:00

We got out to the dens by 10a.m. and waited for a call from the trackers. The momma bear and cubs haven't been out of her den since it snowed three days ago. The trackers found a bear and cubs, but she was in the bush and stayed there for the better part of the day. In the meantime, we waited at the dens for about seven hours. At around 5p.m., we started making our way back home. On the way back we watched a red fox hunting out in the distance for a while, but that was about the height of our excitement for the day. It was a great safari this year. It was good enough to want to come back, but not so good that we won't want to come back next year a little more prepared in an attempt to get those elusive shots of active triplets in great light and a nice background.

My next safari will be July 3-8. Brown bears and cubs in Alaska.

Polar Bear Photo Safari Day Seven...

2011-03-15T21:51:00.001-06:00

We went to the den this morning and waited for a call from our trackers. I took pictures of the den sites yesterday, so we knew that there weren't any fresh footprints. I guess she must have decided that her babies weren't old enough to travel yet and went back inside. The trackers found some prints that led to a mom and two cubs. We got there around 3p.m. and photographed her in a couple locations. It was an easy day as we spent most of our time in the van chatting and snoozing until we got the call. By then the light was quite poor, but we still got a few good shots here and there.

Mom had enough of the animal paparazzi, so she decided to take off.

We had word from the trackers regarding the triplets that we saw yesterday. They followed the tracks for five miles. The triplets were found eight miles away from the lodge as it was, so another five miles is getting out of range. Considering how small the littlest triplet was, it is remarkable to me how far they could travel in one day.

Our final photo day is tomorrow. Hopefully we will find active cubs in a good clean location in good light. Time will tell. It is a bit of a reach to ask for so much on the final day, but I'll keep my fingers crossed. I will upload pictures to all of the blogs when I get home and have a better internet signal.

Polar Bear Photo Safari Day Six. Triplets!...

2011-03-14T22:58:00.001-06:00

I didn't get a chance to see triplets last year and have been looking forward to it. Finally today we hit pay dirt!

It snowed a couple inches last night which meant that all the old tracks would be covered over and that only the freshest tracks from the morning would be seen. We started out by finding two day dens and a main den with tracks coming and going from each, but not leaving the area. We set up and waited for a couple hours. The backdrop was perfect. The lighting was perfect. Triplets would be the tri-fecta. Unfortunately the bears never came out of their den.

Polar Bear Den

After a couple hours we got a call that Morris had found a mother and cub about 8 miles away. We packed up and headed out. On the way, we found more tracks. A mother and triplets. We followed the tracks and found the mother and cubs. She rested in a day bed surrounded by spruce. It wasn't a view that showed off her cubs really well, but one by one they did pop their little heads up. The smallest cub was just a little runt, about half the size of the other two. After a couple hours, mom got up and took her cubs up the hill. The pictures on the way were pretty good. The ABC guys got stunning video footage of the mom and little ones. Perfect timing too as they are catching the train to Churchill at 3:30a.m. tomorrow morning. All in all a great day. We never did make it to the single cub that Morris had found and I'm not sure that the mom and cubs that we were watching for this morning came out of their den. By the time we drove by it was dark, so it was difficult to see if there were more tracks leading out of the den or not.

Triplets! The third bear was just tiny. About half the size of the other two.

I got a refresher from Mike, the owner of the lodge on what 'Watchee' means and the history of it. Mike's family owns this land and the lodge was built by the Canadian Navy. They used it, then left it. Mike and his brother Morris decided to use the lodge as a polar bear safari lodge for moms and cubs. Although their father thought it sounded strange, he gave his blessing and today the lodge has a long waiting list of people wanting to get in each year. Watchee means trees on a hill. The lodge is at the top of a hill surrounded by trees.

Tomorrow. Day 7 of 8. I have a good feeling about tomorrow. The forecast is supposed to be similar to today... Which by the way was sunny and the thermometer showed -13 this morning. I dressed a little down thinking it would be warm. Although it wasn't bad, with the wind it certainly wasn't balmy. My fingers are still burning from trying to change a camera card.

Polar Bear Photo Safari Day Five...Forty Below and a High Wind...

2011-03-13T23:00:00.003-06:00

My dad used to always kid that it was forty below and a high wind any time it was cold outside. Being from Edmonton, I don't think I have ever actually truly experienced that kind of weather. And if I did, it was only very briefly as we hustled from one building to another. Today was definitely that day. Not only was it exactly that day, but to get the images we were looking for we stood outside in the wind for 6 straight hours. We only went back into the vans very briefly in case of necessity, not wanting to miss out on a potential great shot.

Today we found the bears after lunch around 12:30 ish. We found another mother with only one cub. The cub was busy and posed a bit for us, then curled up with his mommy and went to sleep. For most of the day they just stayed curled up. As the wind blew, they got completely covered with snow. Finally as we were starting to pack up close to 7p.m., the bears heard the snowmobiles and looked up briefly. I have to credit all of the photographers who stood outside all day waiting for that one shot. We wouldn't dare take a break any longer than absolutely necessary in case we missed "the shot" that we were all looking for... The picture of momma bear standing up and shaking the snow off her back. In the end we didn't get that shot, but we did manage to get some shots of her shaking the snow off her head.

The same bears after three or four hours of wind.
The snow almost buried them.

The hardest part of the day for me was exchanging camera cards. It was so cold that taking off a glove, and switching cards took about ten minutes. (in the summer it would take literally 15 seconds). When your hands freeze instantly, they become much less nimble and the cards are very small. Not to mention that the cameras are made of metal, so touching something metal for any period of time with bare skin in that weather is not pleasant.

Tomorrow we cross our fingers and hope for the Wapusk National Park trifecta; active triplets, good light and a nice background.

Polar Bear Photo Safari Day Four...

2011-03-12T19:36:00.001-07:00

We caught up with the polar bear mom and cub that we left last night. The mom had a collar on her. When we noticed her collar the photographers sighed and the WWF crew were elated that they were watching a bear that is being studied. It was kind of a funny contrast moment. This mom is apparently 22 years old. This year she only had one cub, so it was really healthy looking as it gets all of mom's milk.

After the bear and cub took off, we had lunch. The trackers didn't see anything today, so we drove all day looking for dens. We didn't find anything of significance, but we did get stuck five times. Everyone gets out of the van and they tow us out. Considering the tracks get buried completely and the snow is up to the frame of the truck, the van tows out pretty easily each time.

Photo opportunities were pretty slim today. The cub was pretty active, but was behind and amidst a lot of willows, so the few pictures that we took certainly weren't the greatest.

It was somewhere between -30 to -35 today. Much nicer than yesterday. Still pretty damn cold if your gloves are off for any period of time.

Myself and the others that I came with have four photo days left. We're half way through. We have enjoyed nice clear weather and have seen bears every day but one. Unfortunately so far we have had nice light, bears and nice backgrounds, but not all at once. When we have the background, the bears don't come out. When we have the bears, the background is nasty. Now hopefully, we will get the light, the bears and the background all at once. Triplets would be nice too. In the past two years I have yet to see triplets.

Until tomorrow...

Polar Bear Photo Safari Day Three...

2011-03-11T21:48:00.002-07:00

On Wednesday we spent the day with a video team that is partly responsible for the filming of Disney's African Cats Nature Series. Gaye and I were in Kenya while they were filming this movie in September and saw them videoing for the movie. The videographers from Disney were up doing a documentary on North American animals. From here, they were off to Florida to video the aligators. Yesterday we not only had a slow day with no bears, but half the photographers in the lodge left, so we were down to 9 photographers yesterday. Last night another crew came in. Today we had a crew from ABC. They are doing a piece for nightline on polar bears. Along with the ABC crew are a crew from WWF (not the wrestlers, the world wildlife fund).

It was an interesting day. At about -45 with a wind chill, we stayed out for about 6 hours, only coming in about two or three times to quickly warm up and get a bite to eat. (It amazes me how warm those parkas are!). We were watching over a fresh den. At 2p.m., a cub poked his little head out of the den. Just my luck, I was in the van warming my toes up! Finally by about 6p.m. tired and cold, 20 photographers started taking down their gear and loading up the vans. With only a few people left outside, the little guy poked his head out of the hole and started almost posing a little bit. Most of us rushed back out. The light was great and we got some pretty good baby polar bear images. 15 minutes later, the light died and we left back for the lodge. I got about 3 or 4 pretty good images. In the end, not bad for 6 hours in the cold.

On the drive home, we found another set of tracks. I think this bodes well for tomorrow. We have one den that should serve us well tomorrow along with tracks and another den that they know of that may be active. Also, the sun is supposed to come out tomorrow and polar bears photograph the best in nice sunlight.

Polar Photo Safari Day Two...

2011-03-10T19:38:00.000-07:00

Bears one, photographers one. We got skunked today. Not much to report. -35 degrees. Bad light. I was sick, sick, sick. Damn motion sickness! Eight hours of nothing but motion sickness.It is difficult when you can]'t see any horizons. Yucky! On a bright note, they found two active dens at the end of the day. We will go check them out first thing tomorrow. It is supposed to be -45 tomorrow. The light will still likely be yucky for one more day. Fingers crossed, but the forecast is looking good after tomorrow.

Polar Bear Photo Safari Day One...

2011-03-10T01:28:00.001-07:00

A respectable first day. We found a mother all curled up at about 11:30a.m. We watched her for an hour or so, then finally one cub emerged. It was pretty active and played all around his mommy for at least an hour. We figured that he must be alone, when a second cub emerged. Although the background was horrible, it was still a pretty fun sighting as we stayed until 6:30p.m.

The weather was pretty decent. It was only about -20 to -25 which is really warm for up here. That being said, we stood at our cameras for six hours until we lost the light. Crappy background, but all in all a fun day and a good start to our safari. I took about 3400 pictures today. I have been trying to post some pictures to this blog, but they won't upload easily for some reason. I guess I will have to try later. In the meantime, you can see a few shots on my facebook page.

Polar Bears: Travel Day...

2011-03-08T23:55:00.000-07:00

Interesting first day. The flight from Edmonton to Winnipeg was fine. The luggage arrived, all was good. I saw a photographer standing over by the check in area with what seemed like camera equipment coming out of every orfice. Oldest trick in the book. Weigh yourself down with camera gear in every pocket imaginable (Richard was wearing a photo vest with pockets all over). Then when they weigh your bags you remain under weight. As soon as they weigh your bags, you put all the equipment back in the bags again and load the plane. For some reason it doesn't register that perhaps the photographer is wearing 20 pounds in camera equipment. They only look at his bag on the scale. Anyway, we go to register and we of course each have a few bags, so they ask us "which bag would you like to go to Churchill? Which one is necessary?" I don't know about you, but I always go on photography excursions with unnecessary equipment. We are stunned and both reply "All of them." To which they explain that we can only choose one bag and the rest will get sent to us in a day or two. Miss two days of photography in the mean time??Yeah, that doesn't work so well for us, so after a lengthy discussion, we figure out that we can call a cab and go over to the cargo hanger and have it sent up as cargo. That works. Glad we thought of it.

Okay, so we get to Churchill and eventually so does our gear. We pick up my parka and get a bite to eat. Low and behold there is a bone in my hamburger. Go figure. A bone?! Oh well, it was good and now it was free. I was hungry. I didn't care. It kind of makes me wonder what kind of "burger" I just ate though.

The train to Chesnae is broken down, so we pile in the van and off we go. Two hours later, the van breaks down. The transmission is leaking, so we wait for reinforcements to come and pick us up. Finally at 11:30p.m. we arrive at the Lodge. Long day, but we are looking forward to tomorrow. Hopefully we will see bears. Sounds like it has been hit and miss this year with the bears. Some good sightings, a few really good sightings and lots of sitting on dens waiting for them to come out. Sometimes a whole day of waiting on a den empty handed. Oh well, win a few, lose a few. Hopefully tomorrow is the day for us. We'll see. I'll blog about it tomorrow night when we get in.

Ten Biggest Safari Mistakes and Lessons...Number 1

2011-03-06T22:03:00.000-07:00

Work flow... Okay, not the most important lesson, nor the least. No chronological order. This is trial and error. I think everyone has their own system and that's okay. I don't believe there is a right or wrong way. It is more what works best for you. When I go on safari, I typically take between 6,000 to 20,000 pictures per safari, so I really need a good way of organizing my images, so I can easily and quickly find any pictures that I am looking for at a later date. In this blog, I am going to share how I organize my work flow.

For my work flow I like to make a folder, title it according to the subject and date it was shot. I do this between each safari drive or at the end of each day. I Copy the pictures to that folder on the first hard drive, then copy it again to a second hard drive. Sometimes the computer gets interrupted copying the files somehow. Be careful because if this happens, not all of your pictures will be copied to your hard drive. Make sure that the number of pictures on your card corresponds with the number of files in each folder before you delete the camera card.

A lot of photographers catalogue with lightroom. It is convenient and you can edit them from there, but I don't like that work flow for my own reasons, so I guess I am a rebel. I just don't like it. Don't get me wrong, I love lightroom. I just don't like to use it for cataloguing my photos. Instead, my pictures are all in a folder and I open them in bridge within photoshop. Likely not the most common way, but at the end of the day, I think you have to do what works best for you.

My next issue with workflow is organizing your pictures from good and bad. I go through all of the pictures and pick out my favourites and make a copy of each picture in a favourites folder. Over the next year, I will likely go through all of the pictures once or twice more. Each time I go through them I tend to find another couple images that I missed the first time.

Not the most exciting blog, but believe it or not, I did go through quite a bit of trial and error before I figured out a system that I like.

Tuesday I fly out to Wapusk National Park to photograph polar bear mom's and cubs. I will try to blog daily over my safari as a diary. The sightings aren't guaranteed. Some days you have great sightings, some times we blank and sometimes the storms and weather prevent us from going out at all. So if you are curious about what a wildlife safari in the arctic is like, follow my next week of blogging from March 9th to 17th.

Polar bears starting Wednesday. Until then...

Ten Biggest Safari Mistakes and Lessons...Number Two

2011-03-04T22:07:00.000-07:00

Ten Biggest Mistakes and Lessons…

Number Two:

Traveling with camera equipment can be challenging. It costs a fortune and it's fragile. For that reason, I always try my best to bring my camera equipment on as carry on. I have heard horror stories about airlines losing baggage and have seen their workers throwing around bags as though they are playing some kind of “bag toss game”.

As a photographer, my worst nightmare is discovering that my camera gear has been stolen or damaged en route. Especially if I am going to the safari destination as opposed to coming home.

My first tip is to buy camera bags that are meant for airline travel. I really like think tank bags as they have a line of camera bags that have been specifically designed to fit in over head compartments and underneath seats. The other thing that I like about them is that the main compartment locks the zippers into a combination locking mechanism thus keeping your gear safe. My think tank bag also has a lock on the end of a wire that is hidden away behind a zippered pocket. I love that feature because sometimes I find myself traveling straight for two or three days. I don’t sleep very well on planes, so sometimes in airports I find myself having a difficult time staying awake. If I think I might doze off, I simply take out this cable, lock it around my other camera gear and lock it all to my chair. That way, all my gear is locked and secured together in case I fall asleep for a few minutes.

Sometimes when traveling domestically, you can find yourself on smaller planes and can't carry on any of your equipment with you. Remember this phrase. “May I valet my camera equipment?” Often the people at the airline counters will say no immediately. It is important to stay calm and explain that you understand that there isn't any room in the over head compartment on this plane, but please could you valet your equipment to the plane so your gear is carefully stored on the plane last. That way, you can see them put it on the plane. This gives me piece of mind regarding how it is handled and I know it is going on the right plane. Secondly, it comes off first, so it is waiting for you right at the door when you get off the plane. This gives me extra piece of mind that it won’t be thrown around by the guys in the back and there is less likelihood of the equipment being damaged or stolen if you are watching them loading and unloading your gear and delivering it to you.

Ten Biggest Safari Mistakes and Lessons...Number Three

2011-03-02T19:28:00.000-07:00

Lesson number three...This is the easiest and yet the hardest lesson of them all.

First shoot in raw. Stop shooting in jpegs! Jpegs are compressed files to begin with and every time you edit them, you lose even more image clarity. Every time you edit a jpeg, it is like passing a handful of sand from one person to another to another. At the end of the line, the product isn't the quality that it started with. With Raw images, you can edit them a million times if you like. If you don't like what you did, it is simple to start again from scratch. Sometimes, I look at pictures that I edited four years ago and think "I didn't do that picture justice, or I think of a technique that may make the picture look more appealing.

Mother and daughter elephant in
Tarrangire National Park, Tanzania

Having fun with sepia. Same picture,
different interpretation.

Second, learn to use photoshop and lightroom and/or other types of editing software. We are in the digital age and part of digital photography is digital editing.

One of the great things about photography is the option to continue learning and never master. There are always new techniques to learn and different ways of viewing and interpreting what you are seeing. Photography also provides a wide spectrum of ways to capture experiences and moments that you can celebrate, record and recall for the rest of your life; and beyond your time, potentially touching lives for years after you are gone.

Ten Biggest Safari Mistakes and Lessons...Number Four

2011-02-25T13:24:00.001-07:00

Learn how to clean the sensor in your camera...

I have always been really careful changing lenses. But having big hands and being somewhat klutzy, I have always been a little paranoid about the inside of a camera, so probably like most people, I learned how to clean inside the camera with a little dust blower and figured that would be sufficient. I figured that inevitably I would have to take the camera in to be professionally cleaned, but in the meantime, I felt I was pretty good not rocking the boat. Last year I went up north to photograph polar bears. I hadn't realized it before, but I had quite a few spots of dust on the sensor. Now when you are photographing normal things with colour, you likely won't notice (as I didn't) that there are any problems. When it comes to photographing subjects that are white on white however, the imperfections show up.

This picture of a red panda is a good example of what dust spots do. Look in the top
right hand corner of the picture. They aren't difficult to remove in light room or
photoshop. They are just annoying and time consuming. I would rather just have
a clean sensor than to waste time removing what shouldn't be there in the first place.

My advice? Check your sensor before you go on safari. Take a picture of something white, then enlarge that picture and look for dust spots. They will show themselves more easily on a white background.

Did you find dust? Whether or not you did or didn't, you should go to the local photography store and buy some lens and sensor cleaning supplies. They are expensive, but inexpensive compared to the price of your cameras and safaris!

Visible Dust has great products designed to carefully clean your sensor. I highly recommend them.

In regards to cleaning the sensor, I simply referred to video's that I found on you tube such as the one linked here. I found them to be informative, easy to follow and I successfully removed my dust issues.

My one tip before cleaning a sensor is to use a butterfly dust remover first. I prefer that over using a blower as a blower just blows dust from one corner of your sensor to another where as the butterfly creates a charged environment that actually attracts the dust to the gentle bristles of the butterfly. Please note that I am not a professional sensor cleaner. The guy in this video is. I really don't want to be held accountable for your sensor successes or failures. I'm merely pointing you in the right direction. I believe that a sensor cleaning kit should be in your camera bag for every safari. Especially the dusty ones! If you find yourself in India or Africa and you find dust on your sensor, you had better know how to get it off, because there aren't any camera repair shops in the bush.

Well, now we're down to number three. Oh, so many things for me to learn the hard way. Until next time...

Greg

Ten Biggest Safari Mistakes and Lessons...Number Five

2011-02-22T10:45:00.000-07:00

One year we were on a boat on the ocean whale watching when a black bear came out of the dense bush. It was early in the morning, there was a slight fog on the water and yet the lighting was perfect. The light illuminated his fur and the images were just perfect. I snapped away for about ten minutes. I was feeling cocky as I was the only one on the ship with a 600mm lens. No one else could really get the images that I was getting and although I would never want any of my fellow photographers to have a bad photography day or experience when the opportunities presented themselves, part of me was feeling quite proud and cocky of the images that I was recording. The bear left and as the captain of the ship moved on, I figured I would scroll though my shots to find that "perfect" image that I knew must be in one of these pictures. After all, the lighting was perfect, the bear was almost posing and the reflection off the water was breathtaking. It was such a great moment that even the photographers who were out of reach of the scene were still in awe of the moment. It was such a perfect moment that the other photographers seemed to want to see my images almost as much as I did.

Black Bear Cub

Now for the lesson. When I went to check my pictures, I discovered that I forgot to put the memory card back in the camera after downloading the pictures on to my computer from the day before. OUCH! Five years later I am still pissed off at myself about that one. Note to self... When setting up the settings in your new DSLR camera, make sure your camera is set to "Shoot without card off". This setting disallows the photographer from taking pictures if no card is in the camera. Had I set up the camera that way, I would only have missed out on one shot, not ten minutes of shots!!! ARG!

The picture to the left by the way is not from that day. It is another cute little cub from another day on a different safari. This one was in Minnesota at the Vince Shute Wildlife Sanctuary. I spent two days with the wild bears in an unfenced area. After giving me a bear safety lesson and staying with me for about 30 minutes, the guides then left me on my own to photograph the bears in their environment. It was a thrilling experience. They are habituated to people, but are still wild and would come and go as they pleased. If you enjoy photographing black bears, I would recommend checking it out.

Ten Biggest Safari Mistakes and Lessons...Number Six

2011-02-18T21:29:00.000-07:00

Bring a second camera body...
When we first started going on safaris, of course we could only afford a camera each and when that is all you can afford, then you make due with what you have. In the meantime, I saved and learned lots of things the hard way. From showing up on safari and realizing that the sensor was dirty and I didn't know how to clean it, to missing shots because I had the wrong lens for the situation. Unfortunately wildlife doesn't wait for you as you change lenses.

My dad used to say "hope for the best, fear the worst and..." well the rest is inappropriate, but I did learn that that part of hoping for the best is also preparing for the best. Start by bringing a minimum of two camera bodies.

There is nothing worse than traveling half way around the world to discover that your only camera is malfunctioning for some frustrating reason that you can't figure out or is broken or magically some smudge of some sort has appeared on the sensor that you can't seem to remove...Learn to clean your sensor...A topic for another blog

Baboon Portrait

On a bright note, a second camera body isn't just insurance. It will give you the opportunity to get shots what you wouldn't be ready for otherwise. Keep a long telephoto lens like a 500, 600 or 800mm on one camera body and a wide angle or medium range telephoto on a second camera body like a 100-400mm on the other. This way you can very quickly get different views of the same shot. Another option is to put a 70-200mm on one camera body and a 100-400 on the other. If the action is close, I will set a small large aperture of f-16 or so on one and a fast speed of 1000 or so on the other.

Baboon Fight

That way if I am interested in taking portrait shots, I am ready with the high aperture camera and if the animal runs, I am ready with the camera with the high speed. Otherwise you will be fiddling around with settings while you are missing the shots.

Another tip is use camera straps that enable you to carry two cameras comfortably at the same time. I use R straps. They are comfortable and enable me to switch cameras quickly.

If you can afford a second camera body and a second lens, get them. Both cameras and lenses can malfunction. Last year when I was photographing polar bears, one of my cameras froze up and the image stabilizer on my 600mm lens was locking up. Thankfully, my camera thawed and my lens started working again. In the meantime, I was very frustrated, but I still had back up equipment.

Next blog. Lesson number 5. Hmmm, what will it be? I have made soo many mistakes and learned soo many lessons. I seem to have an unlimited supply of material in that area.

Ten Biggest Safari Mistakes and Lessons...Number Seven

2011-02-17T11:27:00.000-07:00

Back Up! Back Up! Back Up!
I can honestly say that I haven't learned this lesson the hard way, but I have seen it happen to others. In 1998, we went to South Africa and Gaye had all of her pictures on SD cards. The cards are small and difficult to keep track of. When we got home, she discovered that she was missing three of these cards. Those cards represented at least two days of her safari that were completely wiped out. Never mind losing the cards, they can become damaged and sometimes for no apparent reason, the information on these cards can become damaged as well. You may think that this only happens to amateur photographers, well it doesn't. When I was in Northern Manitoba photographing polar bears, one of the professional photographers was doing the same thing. I know it is extra work and after the safari, people are back at the lodge socializing and enjoying a snack before dinner and talking about the events of the day. Yes, who wants to miss out on fun. I don't either, but did you travel around the world for the snacks and some socializing that you can do later or for the photography? Some people leave pictures on their cards from the previous day and buy extra cards. Their card fills up more quickly in the field and inevitably you end up missing some great photo opportunities as you search for the next card instead of backing up your pictures at the end of the day, then deleting the pictures on the card, so you have a fresh start each day with empty cards. Some people are scared to erase their cards. If this is you, don't fret. I am always paranoid about it too. That is why I down load to two different locations, then I double check that all of the pictures backed up properly by noting the picture count on each hard drive. Once I am positive that my work has been backed up twice, then I erase my cards.

A Taste of Daisies. Minnesota, 2009

My advice is to back up all of your pictures after each photo shoot. Go to your room, turn on your computer and back up your pictures on a portable hard drive and then back those pictures again on a second portable hard drive. Remember that hard drives have moving parts. Anything with moving parts can become defective for one reason or another. I label the hard drives, then store them in separate places. When I get home, one hard drive goes in the safe and a second hard drive goes in the safety deposit box. I also have unlimited storage in cyberspace, so I intend on uploading the pictures in cyberspace one day, but unfortunately at this point, they take forever and a day to upload each one, so until I can figure out how to upload them quickly to cyberspace, I will continue doing what I am doing until I figure out how to more efficiently upload to cyberspace...I think I will learn that trick and save it for another blog.

You travel around the world and work hard for your pictures. The picture of the bear smelling the daisies is a one in a million for me. What are the odds that I am going to get a picture quite as unique as that one again? That being the case, why would I risk losing it? I wouldn't. And truth be known, he wasn't smelling the daisies. He was trying to eat them. I have a couple more shots from that day here.

Another trick is to buy a picture viewer for the field. I use an epson 7000 picture viewer. Between shoots, if you would like to quickly see a larger version of your pictures without firing up your laptop, this little device is a great option for you. You can also download your pictures on to the viewer in case you are getting low on card space. I personally don't use the device for storage very often unless it is a third option for saving. Like I said before, for me, I am not comfortable until my pictures are backed up in a minimum of two separate locations.

So to recap; lets see, this one is complicated... BACK UP! BACK UP! BACK UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ten Biggest Safari Mistakes and Lessons; Number Eight...

2011-02-14T22:17:00.000-07:00

Do your research.
Safaris can be very expensive. To me, too expensive to go purely on a guess and a hope. The internet is an amazing tool! The first time we went to Africa, I researched ahead of time for months. My first priority was to photograph leopards. Most of the people I have spoken to who have gone to Africa were lucky if they got even a glimpse of a leopard.

Mother and son leopards in Mala Mala

A quick internet search and I found out that the most dense population of leopards in Africa are in an area called the Sabi Sands. From there, I narrowed it down to the game reserves that most appealed to what I wanted to get out of my safari experience. Some people like pampering, amazing food and fancy rooms. Personally, as a wildlife photographer, I was just interested in the best wildlife game viewing experience I could find within my price range. A great tool is trip advisor. I searched and looked up questions on this site for months and when I was ready to book my trip, I was confident in my decisions. The trip was amazing. It was such a great trip, that we will be going back to the same spots in South Africa and some of the same game reserves in Masai Mara in Kenya in 2012. South Africa was amazing for leopard viewing, while Little Governors' camp in the Masai Mara was fantastic for viewing lions.

Little baby; big yawn!

In 2012, we are hoping to experience the best of both worlds.

I have spoken to a lot of people who have been to Africa and most of them seem to be at the mercy of what ever their travel agent chooses. When we were in South Africa, we saw leopards almost every day. In fact one day we saw 5 different leopards in one day! I was so grateful for my homework. Most travel agents wouldn't know about the specifics of what kind of animals you will see on safari, just that you will see lots of wildlife. Safaris can be very expensive, not to mention that you don't go to Africa every day. My lesson today is to do the research. Think about what kind of wildlife you would like to see, research it and then book accordingly. Sure, hire a travel agent if you like, but my advice would be to at least research what your travel agent recommends and make sure that the trip that is being designed for you is the sort of trip that will be the ideal trip for you.

To recap:

Decide which wildlife you are most interested in seeing on safari.
Research which area will provide the best viewing for those animals.
Go to trip advisor then to individual websites and research the safari camps in that area that would best suit your needs and your budget.
Hire a travel agent and share your information or book it yourself.

Ten Biggest Safari Mistakes and Lessons; Number Nine...

2011-02-11T21:39:00.000-07:00

Be aware of people when you are trying to photograph wildlife
In National Parks, it is common to see signs that say "Be aware of wildlife". I think the signs should also warn photographers of people who scare wildlife :)

In Jasper a few years ago, I was on a highway when I noticed an osprey in a tree with a fish in his talons. I was so excited. I pulled over in the ditch, got my camera and lens ready and quietly got in range of the bird as he enjoyed his meal. Tourists noticed me with my camera and pulled up beside me. I was so excited as I don't have any pictures of ospreys. They asked me what I was up to, so I pointed out the creature and whispered "osprey". I figured the whispering would be a dead give away that they could quietly enjoy the sighting from their car. The next thing I knew, four doors slammed and of course the bird flew away instantly. I still don't have a picture of an osprey. Lesson number one: If you have a great wildlife sighting and a tourist asks you what you are looking at, remember this phrase "pretty flowers". If you don't I can almost guarantee that most tourists will scare the animal away. They will get out of their car and attempt to get closer with their point and shoot cameras. Many people will even attempt to get closer (too close) even if that animal is a bear or an elk during the rut, so if they don't see the animal, the safest thing for many tourists is to know that you are looking at pretty flowers or something else boring.

Beware of people on safaris. When we hire a guide on safaris, we save longer and pay extra to have a private guide when ever possible. Several years ago we were on a grizzly bear safari. At $500 per person, we got in a boat with a guide and another family with two small children. We boated out two and a half hours to the estuary where the grizzlies were. We got within 150 meters of them when the mother panicked and insisted that we leave. She figured the grizzlies were going to attack the boat. I suppose it would have been a terrible photo shoot anyway because the children were bored and fidgety, so any pictures that day would have been very challenging anyway. The guide obliged, my ten pictures were terrible and for a thousand dollars, we got to spend about ten minutes 150 meters away from grizzlies on shore. What a waste of a day and money!

The next year we went out to the coast again. We tried again, but this time photographed them from the tree stands. Thankfully, our second experience was much more successful. No children, only a group of adults who actually wanted to see the grizzlies. We went with Tide Rip Grizzly Tours. Our grizzly pictures this time were much more successful. We watched 17 grizzlies as they fished, played, ate and had the occasional play fight. It was a lot of fun.

I am delighted that I learned this lesson before we went to Africa. It is one thing to have a bad photo day or two when you are a two hour flight from home. It is another thing to learn this lesson after you have saved up for a year to fly half way around the world, only to sit in a land rover with fidgety tourists who may want to go back to the camp early so they can have drinks and a massage.

Long story short: Most people enjoy a quick view of wildlife, but aren't necessarily interested in trying to get a great image. The average tourist and the average photographer are interested in getting very different things out of the safari experience. Be aware of people while on safari and be very aware of the people who you are on safari with!

Ten Biggest Safari Mistakes and Lessons...

2011-02-10T22:20:00.001-07:00

I have been going on wildlife safaris for the past 12 years two or three times per year. Some safaris I have been alone, while on other safaris there have been a group of us up to as many as 15 photographers. Over that time I learned lessons on every one of those safaris. Sometimes I learned from the other photographers, but too often I learned some hard lessons myself that still plague me today. The good news is I try not to make the same mistakes too often. In theory I wouldn't learn the same mistake twice, but unfortunately I can't give myself that much credit.

I don't want to bore you with all ten mistakes and lessons on the same blog, so I will start with my mistake that I would rank at number ten and we'll count back. Hopefully this information will be helpful to those who are just starting out in wildlife photography and looking for some direction and answers...

Mistake Number Ten:
Thankfully I am not alone on this one. I have seen many photographers make this mistake. "Don't cheap out on equipment." Wildlife safaris are often quite expensive. If you can afford to pay two to thirty or forty grand for a safari, you can afford appropriate equipment.

Years ago, I was on a kayak off Vancouver Island. My dream at the time was to photograph an eagle catching a fish. I craved to capture the image of a wide wing span, the splash on the water, the animal interaction, the attack, the talons and the action. All of these aspects of this kind of picture intrigued me then and still catch my attention today. It sounded like a long shot, but on the off chance I had the opportunity to capture this sort of image, I would go home a happy camper. Well, we kayaked around for a couple hours, then came to a quiet eddy in the ocean. We stopped to watch a fidgety bald eagle in a tree. I got out my camera and he swooped down right in front of us. He was facing us as his talons hit the water. His wings were spread, he made a great splash and missed the fish, but it was still a spectacular "in the right place at the right time" moment. To this day, I still remember that exact moment. Unfortunately for me, I was using a cheap lens and my memory of that event is still much clearer than the picture was.

My lesson? I skimped on the price of the lens and ended up with a fuzzy image. Now I can't guarantee that my picture would have been crystal clear if I was using one of the lenses that I use today. Many of my pictures today aren't crystal clear either. The difference is that there was no way that picture could have turned out as I would have liked. I just didn't have the right tool for the job. The lens wasn't fast enough, images it produced weren't clear enough and it had no image stabilization capabilities and I was in a kayak!

What lens should you be using for wildlife photography? People ask me that a lot. Go for a lens with image stabilization and reach.People often skimp on camera equipment, suggesting that it isn't in the budget and yet will spend thousands on the safari. These people come home with fuzzy images of tiny little specs on pictures that represent bears, whales and other exciting wildlife. I am not trying to be critical. I have spent thousands on wildlife safaris years ago only to come home with yucky pictures. I also have friends who went to Africa a few years ago and spent an absolute fortune on a three week safari. They had a good camera, but neglected to buy or rent a good lens. Although they rave about their vacation, admittedly, their one regret is that they should have spent another 1700.00 for a great lens! This coming from people who don't claim to be photographers and don't want to be photographers, but experienced such amazing wildlife in Africa, that today they still regret not bringing a good telephoto lens.

My suggestion? Research the lens first. I am a canon guy myself. I love the IS L series white lenses and won't use anything else, but that is just me. Research the glass, then choose the camera that fits the glass. The lens is the most important investment of a photographer's arsenal. The camera is second. Now you may tell me that you can't afford it, but I would suggest that if wildlife safaris are what you enjoy and you enjoy wildlife photography, then I would suggest that you can't afford not to buy the appropriate equipment. I started with an EF 100-400mm IS f4.5-5.6 lens. Again, I am not suggesting that is what you should get, just that is what I bought several years ago. I love that lens and still use it regularly on safaris today. If you already have a good DSLR, and can't afford to buy the glass, then consider renting a great lens for a couple weeks while on safari.

I had much less money then than I do now, so I scrimped and saved and bought my lens one year and a great camera the next. In the meantime, I went on safaris that were inexpensive so I could afford the camera equipment. If you feel that you can't afford a good lens, there are lots of places I can recommend that people go in Alberta where you can camp at night and find bears, deer, deer fawns, coyotes, elk and a host of other exciting wildlife during the day. That way you can still save up for the good glass...but that blog will have to wait for another day...

Next blog from Lessons that I have learned. Mistakes and Lesson Number Nine: Be aware of people when you are trying to photograph wildlife!

Fun With Photos; Photography That Tells A Story.

2011-01-26T11:30:00.005-07:00

Part of the enjoyment that I get from going on safari comes long after the trip is over. From sorting through the ten or twenty thousand pictures to cleaning up the good ones (sharpening, slight colour corrections here and there and a little cropping) to posting them on the websites, creating greeting cards, printing, displaying and selling them are all fun and a lot of work! It takes up to six months after I get back to finish this process. That is part of the reason that I only go on two safaris a year. I wouldn't be able to run my businesses and keep up with the photo process otherwise.My latest fun I have been having is with GIFs. I like telling a story when I take pictures. At 5 to 8 frames per second (depending upon which camera I am using), scrolling through the pictures is sometimes an interesting way of telling a short story of what is going on without taking a video. I really enjoy looking at my pictures this way as it brings back the fond memories of what was going on with the animals that day.

For the first GIF I made, I chose a picture of three zebras. They noticed a lion off in the distance and immediately perked up and started wagging their tails. Each picture is interesting as they seem to be wagging their tails in unison. Unfortunately just one picture doesn't display the anxiety that I could imagine that the zebras were feeling at the time (especially the pregnant one on the left), so it was fun to make a gif showing a little bit of movement in that brief second of time illustrating a little more of a story behind the image.

Click on the picture to see a larger gif of the zebras wagging their tails.

Lion on the Horizon- Click on image to see animation

The next one that I had fun with is 14 pictures of two male lions in the Masai Mara. This one was much more difficult. I didn't know that the lion was going to yawn. My camera was hand held and I certainly didn't know at the time that I would try to make a gif out of it, thereby telling a more of a story about the image. Without a stable surface when taking the pictures, they were difficult to line up, but it still turned out pretty good in the end.

Click here to see the lion animation

Four Months Post Africa...

2011-01-23T12:11:00.000-07:00

Four months after we returned home from Africa and I am finally finishing up with the pictures. As soon as we returned home, I started printing and framing pictures for our Christmas exhibit. It took months to set up, but was worth it as it was really well received. I had animals Mostly consisting of North America on one wall and animals from Africa on the other.

My next delightful surprise was winning the Governors' Camp's 2010 photo contest with this shot.

Gotcha!

I just finished updating my pictures from our African adventure to the websites. If you are curious, you can find the galleries here:

Lions, cheetahs, elephants, giraffes, zebras and miscellaneous African animals.

We also have one website dedicated just to animals from South Africa, Tanzania and Kenya.

Sadly, I am mostly done with the pictures from our Kenya and Tanzania safari. Our next African Safari will be South Africa and Kenya in 2012. My next safari will be polar bears in March of 2011. I am looking forward to blogging about the polar bears It is an interesting experience at 45 below with no running water and three roommates who I haven't met before. And yet, if it will be anything like last year's polar bear experience, it will be incredible.

Our main website can be found here: Harvey Wildlife Photography

My next big project with these pictures now is to create greeting cards. Another huge undertaking, but one that is really rewarding. That should pretty much take me the next few months to finish. I'll have to post pictures of Harvey Wildlife Photography greeting cards on one of these blogs. In the meantime, I have a few of them here.

The Right Tools for a Great Safari

2010-09-30T14:18:00.000-06:00

I have been on safaris around the world. After each safari I inevitably examine what I did and how I could have done it better. A big part of this equation is the equipment that you bring. If you don't do your homework and the wildlife viewing isn't very good, then your images are going to be limited. At the same token, if you bring the wrong equipment for the light, or lenses without enough reach in an area where the guides aren't allowed to drive off road, your images will be equally limited.

On our safari to South Africa, I brought all the equipment that I could get my hands on. I would have brought the kitchen sink too if I thought it would have helped in some way. On that trip, I was traveling with Gaye and my step daughter, so I had a litte more room for carry on as I assigned a camera bag to each of them each flight as a carry on. This satisfied the airlines as I wasn't traveling with three camera bags. Instead, three people were flying with one bag each. The issue of "carry on" is a big part of how I decide what to bring or not to bring. The last thing I need is to put 35 grand in camera equipment in with the luggage and get to my destination in Africa only to disover that my equipment is in Spain, or it has arrived but is broken to bits or stolen. I am very protective of my equipment!

I came back home after our first African first trip realizing that I needed to pack lighter. For example, I realize I need extra hard drives, so this past trip, I bought small external hard drives. You can now buy a terabyte hard drive that is the size of a deck of cards. I brought two. One to store the pictures and one for back up. On our past trip to Kenya and Tanzania I scaled back considerably. I normally have two full camera bags full of equipment plus a 600mm lens. On this trip, I managed to fit all of the camera equipment into one think tank camera bag. I would highly recommend these bags. Think Tank literally thinks of everyhing a photographer needs in a camera bag. They are sturdy, practical and they don't look like they contain camera equipment. They just look like a regular carry on bag.

Here is a list of what I brought on safari to Kenya and Tanzania:
Canon EOS Mark III 1Ds
Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Canon EOS 7D
Canon Powershot- a point and shoot camera for videos and snapshots that I kept in my pocket.
I bought the 7D for this trip and really enjoyed it. I bought it because it shoots 8 frames per second and I figured it would help with the action shots. It was fantastic for catching the action. It shoots about three more frames in raw in a burst than my Mark III shoots (approximately, I can't remember exactly), I think it focuses quicker and crop sensor really helped in Tanzania where they don't drive off road and the animals in the Ngorongoro crater are 100 meters away...at least! They aren't always that far away, but more often than not, they certainly seemed to be. Needless to say, I got much better photo opportunities in the Masai Mara.

ISO 800 7D 600mm IS- I didn't think the
7D performed very well in low light

Where I thought the 7D was quite weak was shooting with higher ISO's. Don't quote me, I am not a camera analyst or anything, but it seems to me that the Mark III 1Ds performs much better in the lower light scenarios.

In regards to lenses, I brought a 24-70 wide angle lens for my 5D Mark II, a 70-200 IS, 2.8 (which I never used once), a 100-400mm for my 5D Mark II and I put the 600mm, f4 on my Mark III 1Ds. The idea being that Africa can be very very dusty in September and you do not want to change lenses. The last thing you need is dust and gunk on your sensor. The other reason is because if you see a pretty sunrise, but have to change lenses to get the shot, you may not bother as it might just be too much effort. For those reasons, my system worked extremely well. I think people probably thought I was nuts, but I didn't care. I was there to get the best images that I could get, not to fit in. On a side note, if you do decide to try this system out, make sure that you ask to book a private guide and landrover. If you don't, you won't have room for your equipment. It will get bumped around and will constantly be in everyone's way.

I thought my system worked really well until I got back home and started thinking about it. In 2012, I will be going back to South Africa and the Masai Mara. In learning from my past experiences, I have decided that I can improve upon my current system in a few ways:

I will still use my 7D on my 600mm lens. That was my bread and butter in Kenya and Tanzania and worked like a charm.
I will put my 70-200 IS. 2.8 on my 5D Mark II. Interestingly enough in Africa, the use of a wide angle lens seems pointless to me. I took better pictures of the sunrises and sunsets in the Masai Mara and Tarangire National Park with my 100-400mm lens than I did with my wide angle lens.

Sunrise taken with canon
100-400 IS

I will buy a 400mm IS, 2.8 for my Mark III 1Ds. Most of the pictures I took in both South Africa and Kenya and Tanzania with the 100-400mm lens, the lens is almost always extended out to 400mm anyway. My biggest issues were around ligthing. Either early in the morning or late afternoon, having to use high ISO's. When considering why my shots weren't better, I would say part of it was high ISO's, due to a lens that is f5.6 rather than f2.8. I think the 400 2.8 would take care of a lot of those issues.
I picked up two 32 gig memory cards for my cameras which were aweome! Even at that, one day the light was good, the lions were playing and I took 3900 pictures and almost ran out of space. Once the morning safari was over I had to rush to try to download and back up the pictures so I could format the cards. I didn't really have enough time to finish and so was flustered not wanting to erase anything. Next time, I go to Africa will be two years from now. Hopefully the 64 gig cards will come down in price and I will pick up a couple of them. Having two 32 gig cards and two 16 gig cards was nice and only put me in a pinch a couple times, but I need more space.
Solar charger. I was just introduced to solar chargers that are big enough to charge a laptop. I think that is ingenious! I don't know how big or heavy they are off hand, but it is definitely something that I am going to look into. When we were in Tanzania, the only chargers were in the vehicle. The vehicle had a difficult time charging my laptop. Without a charged laptop, I couldn't download my pictures. If I couldn't download the pictures, I couldn't back up my shots, then format the cards and start again. The ability to be able to always have a charged laptop is essential! The idea with these chargers is you take them out on safari with you and let them charge all day, then they should be able to charge your laptop for a few hours and that is all you need. The other problem I have run into in the past is bringing the wrong adaptors in foriegn countries. Sometimes it is only a minor inconvenience until you get things sorted out, but bringing a solar charger would just be a nice back up just in case. For that matter, if you are really roughing it and absolutely have no access to any sort of power source, then these chargers might be essential to your sanity while on safari. When you think of it, charging is pretty essential. Three camera bodies, a laptop, picture viewer and an ipod or two, they all need charging and your trip is screwed if for some reason you can't keep these things charged.

That is all I can think of right now that I would and will do differently on the next trip. I am always looking for better photographic opportunities; thus better prints. Boring for most, but for me it is the ultimate pursuit.

Check out our main wildlife photography website and our Kenya/Tanzania blog.

I Miss Africa!!!

2010-09-24T15:06:00.000-06:00

Well, we have been back from Africa for a week now and I am trying to figure out how soon and when we can get back again. Our blog from our Kenya/Tanzania trip is now done. I set it up so I would learn from my mistakes and repeat my successes from this trip. I tried to be as specific as possible listing what camera equipment I brought, which gear I used and more importantly, which gear I could have gone without.

Elephant taking a dust bath in
Tarangire National Park

I listed how we needed to dress to be comfortable and reviewed the hotels and tour companies that took care of us. I logged three days at Giraffe Manor, two days at Tarangire National Park, two days at Ngorongoro Crater, five days at Little Governors' Camp, along with a few travel days.

Now, after having been to Africa twice and having some really great experiences and some not so great experiences, we are planning on combining the great experiences from 2008 in South Africa with our best experiences in 2010 in Kenya and Tanzania to hopefully create our best trip to date...2012 South Africa and Kenya.

Check out our main wildlife photography website and our Kenya/Tanzania blog.

Afrca, here we come

2010-08-11T13:10:00.000-06:00

Africa is every wildlife photographer's heaven on earth. On a wildlife safari in North America, you may see animals, or may not. On our polar bear safari for instance, I had 6 photography days and we only saw bears on two of those days. In Africa, the wildlife is so dense in many areas that you can't seem to go five minutes without at least seeing an unguate of some sort. It gets to the point where you take the scenery for granted that you just drive by them without giving them a second thought.

In twenty days my wife and I will be going back to Africa and I am pumped! Two years ago, our experiences in South Africa were so amazing, that I don't think we will ever forget our first time on that amazing continent. This trip we are going to Tanzania to see the Ngorongoro Crater and the Masai Mara in Kenya. We are hoping to catch some of the Great Migration. With any luck we will catch the end of the great migration or as it is also referred to as the greatest show on earth. This is when 1.5 million wildebeast and several hundred thousand zebra and impala travel across Tanzania and Kenya looking for greener pastures. This is not a once per year event, but a constant event as they are migrating to Kenya, then back to Tanzania to give birth and start again. Along with the migration, we will be focusing on photographing cheetahs, leopards, and lions. These animals love when the migration comes to their area as it provides an unlimited food supply for them.

I will post our results when we get back. I am really looking forward to the trip as this photography adventure as it will be much different than South Africa. South Africa is all about photographing animals in the bush. You see a couple animals here and a couple animals there. South Africa's Sabi Sands area is one of the best places to view and photogaph leopards. In Kenya and Tanzania however, they have wide open savanah and herds of animals. I anticipate this trip to be much different than our South African adventure.

Until my next post...

Enjoy your photography,

Greg

To Print or Not to Print...

2010-07-11T19:30:00.000-06:00

For several years, I couldn't decide whether or not to invest in a large format printer. Printing costs for a professional photographer can be extremely high. If you like printing your images on canvas, printing costs are ridiculous. This makes your costs really high which in turn mean that the price you pass along to your client is very high as well.

The good news is if you print at least weekly, in my experience purchasing a large format printer is definitely worth it. The day I set up my printer, I was instantly printing better paper prnts than the best professional printer in town. Your printer is calibrated to your monitor, so what you see is what you get. In the case of a professional printing company, they get a file and they more or less guess at what the colours should be. This may make the prints fairly close, but often not nearly as close as you would like. Now that I am printing my own work, I control the papers used, the colours and I don't have to drive across the city to approve a print, then again to pick it up.

The bad news is that there is definitely a learning curve involved when dealing with stretching canvases, but once you find the canvas that you like, learn how to stretch canvases so that your corners are perfect and find the canvas treatment that works for you, your costs drop by about 80%. At the end of the day, that is what makes me happy! The best part about stretching canvases, is that I can print up 20 canvases for an exhibit. When the exhibit is over, I can take the canvases apart that don't sell and re-use the stretcher bars on my next exhibit.

If you haven't printed on canvas before, sharpen your image just a little bit more than you would otherwise. Canvas prints show your image a little bit softer than photo paper. That is why the canvas look is great for wildlife, because you aren't usually looking at many sharp edges when you are looking at fur. That being said, I have had many city sky line canvases done as well and they have been great sellers, so I suppose it comes down to a matter of personal taste. Some of my favourite animals to print on canvas are tigers, leopards, lions, cheetahs, foxes, wolves, bears and especially polar bears.

Below is a typical picture that would look great on canvas. Deer are a soft subject and you just want to cuddle a deer fawn. They are just too cute!

So, to print or not to print? I suppose it depends how much printing you intend on doing, how much of a perfectionist you are and how much you are interested in learning a new trade. Personally, I have really enjoyed it. I bought a 44" printer, I try to print weekly and I have really enjoyed creating prints from shutter to print. Now I am thinking about learning the framing trade. I think there will be a big learning curve there and framers charge an arm and a leg! Hmmm, to frame or not to frame... Anyone have any suggestions?

Check out our main wildlife photography website and our Kenya/Tanzania blog

Eleven Tips on Photographing Polar Bears

2010-03-01T13:02:00.000-07:00

Photographing polar bears can be very rewarding, but also very challenging. Polar bears live in a very cold environment. Photographing in these conditions can create a host of issues. In this blog, I will list some tips on photographing polar bears, or for that matter any animals in cold environments.

Bring the longest lens and the most high end camera that you can afford. Unless you are spending time in a comfy tundra buggy, where the bears are curious about you and you are out of harms way and have the luxury of only going outside to take the odd picture, you will need a long lens and a camera that can withstand cold up to -50. I was using a 600mm with a 1.4 teleconverter and a full frame camera body. We were out on the tundra 100 meters away from the bears. At that distance several people were using 800 mm lenses. I would rather have a full frame camera, so I think the ideal would be an 800mm lens with a 1.4 teleconverter.
Bring extra batteries. Camera batteries do not like the cold. A great trick is to buy hand warmers, put them in your pocket with your extra batteries. At least every hour or so, switch your batteries. One day that I was taking pictures, it was -48 with the wind chill. The batteries in my 5-D Mark II lasted about 30 minutes. The battery in my Mark III 1Ds lasted about three hours and still had lots of life in it at the end of the day. You just never know how your batteries are going to perform until you are in the cold, so keep a spare set and change them out regularly. When they are getting low on power, putting them in a warm place will energize them and give them a little more juice.
Dress warmly! I rented a goose down parka and snow pants. I bought expensive winter boots and mitts. I also attached the shutter release cord to the camera and kept it in my mitt, so I wouldn't have to touch the camera very often. At -48 with the wind chill, when I had to make adjustments on my camera, my fingers literally burned as they touched the metal of the camera body. Even at -48 with the wind blowing in my face, I was toasty warm (until I had to change a camera setting) It is amazing what a couple layers of clothes and goose down winter clothing will do.
Use a camera sleeve and an eye piece to prevent your eyepiece and viewer from fogging up. When it is really cold, any inadvertent breath on the back of the camera will fog everything all up. I noticed one professional had a sleeve over his camera and an eye piece. This contraption seemed to prevent the eyepiece and the back of the camera from fogging up, which is more than I can say from my experience. At that temperature, it wouldn't just fog up, it would freeze up if your breath was anywhere near the back of the camera. You may even get a little crazy and breathe through a small tube to ensure your breath is no where near the eye piece. One of the photgraphers had a sleeve that went around the camera. On either side of the camera the sleeve had pockets to keep hand warmers. I don't know how well her set up worked as she was just coming as I was leaving.
Noon time warmers- Around lunch time, it is wise to put your foot warmers in your boots. My feet would tend to get a tiny bit damp, then they would get cold. I took a pair of socks off to make room in my boots, put one foot warmer on the top of my toes and one on the bottom of my toes. (the foot warmers have a tape to keep the warmer on the right place on your foot) I can't say that my feet were "warm" at -48, but they certainly were comfortable and not the least bit cold. Another lesson learned from this trip, I am now keeping hand and foot warmers in my car in case of emergencies. The warmers last for 6-10 hours and work very well! At night remember to take the liners out of your boots at the end of each day and put them on a register or near a wood stove or some place warm. Your boot liners may not appear or feel wet, but they will likely be damp on the inside. They will absorb any moisture and hold it. When you go to put your boots on the next morning, your feet will get cold very quickly if your liners didn't have a chance to completely dry out.
Take two camera bodies!! Always take two camera bodies in case something happens to one of them. You never know what may happen and for sure, you never know how your camera is going to react when it experiences -40's and colder. The best part about taking two bodies is you don't have to change lenses as often which gives you a much better opportunity to "get the shot".
Before you bring your camera and lens into room temperature from the extreme cold, make sure to wrap your camera and lens in a plastic bag, so when the camera thaws, the water builds up on the outside of the bag, rather than on your camera sensor and inside your lenses. The last thing you need is water droplets and or water stains on your sensor.
Bring a thin pair of gloves that you can wear under your mittens to change the camera settings. It is 6 of one and a half dozen of another. On one hand if you wear thin gloves in your mitts, your hands will get cold much more quickly. On the other hand if you don't have a thin glove that you can keep handy, your fingers will just burn when you try to change camera settings at -40 to -50!
We were photographing bears in Wapusk National Park in Canada. Wildlife is unpredictable, so make sure you spend a little more time out on safari than you think you need. I was originally offered 4 days, then later was able to upgrade it to 6 photo days and we saw the bears on two of those days. The other days we blanked. In the end I am happy with my polar bear pictures but had I gone for only the four days that I originally booked, I think I would have been pretty dissapointed as I would have only had one sighting of the bears at that point.
Book in advance if possible. Polar bear photography trips are quite expensive. There aren't many places in the world that you can go to photograph these amazing animals and a lot of people would love the opportunity to photograph them. If you are interested in going, save your sheckles and book early.
One photography problem I had was the sharpness of the photos. I did struggle a little bit here. I think because the polar bears are off white and the background is often white and the little ones are white, I think the camera had problems focusing on the right spot. Speaking of sharpness, just as with photographing other wildlife, polar bears can move around a lot. Even if it looks like she is sound asleep, you never know when she is going to jump up and get the kids moving or when the kids are going to wake up and start playing. Keep your shutter speed at a bare minimum of 320 and your aperature as small as possible. I found the best aperature was to be at least 13 to 20. I found that even an aperature of 7-10 just wasn't enough in this environment.

That is all the tips that I can currently think of to ensure an enjoyable polar bear photographic adventure. Good luck with your shoot if you go. It is certainly a very memorable experience. For anyone interested in seeing our other galleries, you can visit us at Harvey Wildife Photography

Overcast to Brilliant Prints!

2010-01-28T11:47:00.000-07:00

I'm sure everyone has seen those beautiful pictures that are taken in the early morning light or the soft evening light just before dusk. And yes, more often than not if you can get a subject to pose at either of those two times of the day, that soft lighting can make an average picture breathtaking! Unfortunately when shooting animals in the wild, they don't necessarily pose when the light is right. A lot of people get quite discouraged because of poor lighting, but poor lighting is no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are advantages to an overcast day.

You don't have to worry about any shadows. Shadows can be very distracting in a picture. Sometimes you can have a great shot, but the shadows can get in the way even if you have perfect light.
The picture won't be harsh due to bright or harsh lighting.
You can use fill in flash easier to bring out the highlights in eyes, hair and or fur.
If you feel your picture is too dull due to the lighting, you can raise the saturaton, or temperature of the picture or both in post production software.
If the weather conditions show overcast all day, you can shoot for hours on end all day long without worrying about bright light and shadows.

This picture of a siberian tiger is a really big seller for me. It was a pretty dark February day at about 3p.m. I was disappointed as I thought the photo shoot would be a flop due to the lighting conditions, but I was determined to make the best of it. This picture was taken in the mountains in a field. The sun was going down over the mountain on an already dark overcast day. On the bright side, there are no shadows and the sun isn't interefering with the picture with harsh tones that are difficult to fix in post production software. It turned out really nicely. See here for more pictures from the photo shoot from that day in Montana (click on tigers in winter, the tigers in the summer are another example of light that is just too bright). To compare, I photographed a cougar in the early morning light the next day. I was lucky as the light was very nice and so I had both extremes in 12 hours. On the contrary, in Africa, photographing cheetahs, I got away with a few good shots, but the light was too bright and many of the pictures of the cheetahs running just didn't work out as well as I had hoped they would. They were just too harsh.

The moral of the story is, don't stay home just because it's cloudy out. Some of my best pictures have been taken on an overcast day, where the light is actually quite bright (but not harsh). Another good example of that is from last Sunday. I was taking pictures of the tigers at the zoo. Once again, no shadow, lots of good light providing nice easily edited pictures.

Greg

Check out our main wildlife photography website and our Kenya/Tanzania blog

Amateur Photographer; Professional Prints

2009-12-20T11:38:00.000-07:00

I am not a professional photographer, I merely create images to sell on the side. Each year however, I sell more and more prints, canvases and greeting cards. My goal is to someday retire as a full time photographer. That being said, alhtough I am not a profesisonal photographer, I do feel that many of my photos are every bit as good as any wildlife photographer out there and yours can be too. Here are a few tips on how to make your photos look more professional.

Tools of the trade: Research what photographic equipment the pros are using and buy the same equipment. I use canon cameras and lenses and photoshop and lightroom for processing. Yes, the equipment and software is expensive and yes, that is a big part of the reason that the professionals images look so good. You can race a pinto against a ferrari on a race track, but the only thing in common between the two will be the track that they race on. There is absolutely no way that a pinto is going to compete with a ferarri on a timed lap and there is no way you are going to compete your point and shoot camera up against the equipment that the pros use.
Homework and practice: the beautiful thing about photography is there is a never ending amount of techniques to learn and practice. The nice thing is that you will be rewarded and will learn more on every photo shoot that you go on.
Research where pros photograph their subjects and go there. Do as the pros do.
If you want to produce images like the pros, then keep on top of R and D; Rip off and Duplicate and add your own signature or style to your niche. How do you think the pros became pros? They pretty much followed these simple steps.

To photograph these leopards I had to research where to go to find them. Many photographers travel across the world and never get a chance to even see one leopard. We saw them every day on safari. You can't photograph them if you can't see them, so do your homework.

To photograph these lions, I needed the right equipment. I needed a long lens, so I could keep my distance without getting eaten:). The right equipment in the right place.

You definitely don't want to be close to bears when you are photographing them. A 600 mm lens with a 1.4 teleconverter comes in pretty handy when you want a picure of something that may just eat you if you get too close.

All the rest you can learn. You can learn photoshop. That is just hours in front of a computer, googling questions when you need to know step by step instructions on how to improve an image. You can learn about speed and aperature, composition from books, trial and error.

Keep snapping. The professional equipment is expensive, but the lenses are pretty much timless. The canon lens technology hasn't changed much in years, so invest as much as you can in good lenses and enjoy your photography.

Greg

Wildlife Photogaphy; Tools of the Trade

2009-11-29T12:28:00.000-07:00

Your success in taking great wildlife pictures begins with the right equipment.

I still remember being on holidays years and years ago. We are in kayaks in the ocean. The water is crystal clear without so much as a ripple. The sun is just barely peaking out from behind the clouds. The light is soft and I see an eagle in a tree staring down at the water. I get my camera ready and focus on him. He swoops down right in front of us to pick up a fish. Now most shots you see of eagles picking up fish out of the water are shots from the side. Intresting, but not dramatic. This eagle was facing us as he dropped down out of the sky to grab this fish. I had perfect timing. his talons are sunk into the fish, wings spread wide, you can see the splash and water droplets from his wings and talons leaving the water. I could see his eyes as he was looking up as he was taking off from the water with his prize. It actually looked like he was looking right at me! Absolutely perfect timing. Perfect picture. Exciting, interesting, dramatic. A picture that you coud hang on your wall and spend hours looking at it in awe. Literally one of those once in a lifetime shots...

The result? A somewhat blurry picture of a perfect opportunity. I was so crushed! I knew right then what my problem was. I bought a crappy lens and ended up with a crappy result. If I had the camera equipment that I have now, the picture of that eagle would have been enlarged, framed and the center piece of my livingroom as it would still be hanging over my fireplace to this day. Instead I have a picture of a cougar in that spot. I love my cougar, but that eagle picture would have been truly amazing.

So, a few tips, so you don't miss out on your once in a life time opportunity. If you haven't decided on which camera equipment to buy here are some tips for you.

Research the lenses first. Photography equipment has come a long way in recent years. Your lens is going to be your biggest asset. Don't make the mistake of rushing out and buying the first camera that is on sale. You can't put canon lenses on a pentax camera.
The leaders in the industry are canon and nikon cameras and lenses. Some people like one, some like the other. When on safari, I notice that most wildlife photographers use either one or the other. Personally I think Nikon cameras edge out Canon in some ways, and canon cameras edge out Nikon cameras in some ways, but at the end of the day, I prefer the image stabilization "L" series glass of the canon, so that is my camera of choice. Choose the lens, then buy the camera and build your lens collection around your brand of choice.
Wildlife isn't usually fond of close human presence, so the longer the lens the better.
The best wildlife light is dim in the morning and dim in the early evening. To take advantage of that soft light, buy a lens with the smallest aperature you can buy. A zoom or long lens starting at an aperature of f2.8 with image stabilization will go a long way to assist you in taking those amazing wildlife pictures, so spend as much as you can afford on each lens. If anything, scrimp on the camera. Camera technology changes yearly. The technology in my lenses hasn't changed since I bought them ten years ago. You will upgrade cameras every few years, but you will use those same lenses on all of your cameras throughout the years. I can't stress it enough. Spend the bulk of your photography budget on the best lens you can buy!
To reiterate; you need to bring your subject in closer, with the smallest aperature, so you can use faster speeds to stop the blur of the action with lower ISO's. Simple principle, expensive lenses to get the results you are looking for.
Learning photoshop and lightroom are a must whether you use Nikon, canon, whether you have a pc or a mac. Spend lots of time learning the in's and out's of photoshop and lightroom. These programs can be intimidating, so get some Scott Kelby help. His books and website will help you with any question that might arise with the latest in photoshop and lightroom products. His tutorials are easy to follow and written so even I can understand them.
Where to buy? Here are a couple of my favourite spots. In the states I like to go to B and H Photo: or in Canada I like: Don's Photo at or sometimes: McBain's at: I usually prefer Don's or B and H Photo. Sometimes one edges out the other, but they are both great companies!

Remember to respect nature and respect wildlife. Nature and wildlife can and will cause injury and or death to those who are arrogantly disrespectful. If you can't be respectful, inevitably one day, a guy like the beast below will teach you a lesson that you may never have the second chance to learn from. The picture below illustrates one more reason why you need to buy a long lens. This picture was taken with a 600mm lens with a 1.4 teleconverter. It is cropped a little bit, but shows the intimacy of this beast while living to talk about it because we are not invading his personal space...http://www.harveywildlifephotography.com/Grizzly%20Bears/

'The Beast'

Check out more grizzly bear pictures at our Harvey Wildlife Photo Gallery

Wildlife Photography; Focus On Good Light.

2009-11-22T11:02:00.000-07:00

Widlife Photography can be very difficult and involves a lot of time, good timing and a lot of luck....and like anything else, the harder you work and the more shots you take, the luckier you get. Every photographer understands the benefits of the soft lighting of the early morning and late afternoon. Unfortunately, you never know when you are going to see wildlife. That is where the luck comes in. Hopefully these tips may come in handy.

When on safari, increase your odds. Do your homework. Whether you are on your own or with a guide, try to figure out where the wildlife is going to be and get there early in the dark of the morning or the early afternoon and wait for that perfect light. If you are settled in and quiet, you have a better opportunity of getting some nice nature photography shots in the nice soft light than if you are just arriving to where the wildlife is as the light is softening. When you arrive where the wildlife is, the wildlife may run away due to your disturbing them etc. It is just easier to get there first, let them get a little bit accustomed to your presence ahead of time and hopefully your preperation will pay off. Not to mention, if you are there first and you are quiet, sometimes wildlife will almost come to you.
Don't be afraid of an overcast day. Very often, you will take the best pictures on overcast days. There are no shadows, the lighting doesn't get so harsh that your photos are virtually beyond photoshop repair and you can take pictures all day long. I love overcast days.
Use a long lens. If you want a deer to be a little more comfortable in your presence, it is a lot easier done with a 600mm lens, than a 300mm. The obvious problem with a 600 is the weight of the lens, but that is another issue.

This picture of a black backed jackal family is a perfect example of being in the right time in the right place and doing your homework. We knew this black backed jackal family was in this area; or hoped they would be as we saw them the day before. We had our guide take us to the same area again just before dusk. We parked the landrover in an open area. A hundred or so yards away, we could see an adult black backed jackal on the edge of the tree line. I focused my 600mm on him, a few minutes later his mate joined him. They made some sort of call, then shortly after that out popped a baby black backed jackal. He came out and greeted his parents. I took about ten shots as they were making their greetings. This was my favourite picture of the series.

In that situation everything happened perfectly.

We did our homework and had an idea where the black backed jackals would be.
We got there before the soft light of the afternoon so they could get accustomed to our presence.
We waited 100 yards away so they would feel they were at a comfortable safe distance to go about their routine.
I focused on them with a 600mm lens and waited and hoped for some action.

I got lucky that time. Wildlife Photography is just that though. Successful wildlife photography to me is defined as the moment where preparation and education meets luck.

With that, I wish you good education, good preparation and good luck with your wildlife photography. To see some more images from our photographic wildlife journeys, you can view our websites at http://www.harveywildlifephotography.com/ http://www.lionpictures.info/ http://www.tigerpictures.info/ http://www.cheetahpictures.info/ http://www.bearpictures.mobi/ http://www.foxpictures.us/ http://www.leopardpictures.us/ http://www.africanpictures.info/ or pick up some wildlife greeting cards from http://www.wildlifegreetingcards.com/

Wildlife Photography; Get it clear...

2009-11-19T00:01:00.000-07:00

Wildlife can be tricky to photograph. Your subjects rarely sit, pose, or look in the direction that you want them to, so you have to be ready for when they do. I have a couple tips that might help you with that.

Animals move a lot. Use a high shutter speed. I usually use a shutter speed of minimum of 300. You never know when the wolf you are trying to photograph is going to walk, run, jump or swat at something. Nothing is more frusterating to me than a perfectly focused picture that has a lot of blur in the feet (or worse the mouth or head) because I wasn't expecting the action. Some photographers like blur as it shows action. I don't mind blur if it is done on purpose, but even then, to me the eye is drawn to the blur and not the head of the animal where it should be. If you are using a zoom lens that doesn't have image stabilization, it can be a little trickier to get that sharp shot. Your shutter speed should be at least be equal to the zoom of the lens. If you are zoomed out to 250mm, your shutter should reflect at least 250mm, or you may end up with too much camera shake and a blurry picture. I just use image stabilized lenses, so I have one less thing to worry about.
If you are doing portrait shots, and your wolf subject is not moving much and you want a nice portrait of the wolf's head, I change my shutter to a slower speed and a higher aperature. If I am photographing a wolf for instance, because the wolf has a long nose, if I use a low aperature of f4 ish, the nose will be in focus, but the eyes will not be sharp. If the eyes are sharp, the nose may not be. This doesn't look very good. Use a small aperature i.e. f 12 or 14 or as high as you can get it, so you can get that sharp head shot. At the same time, if your portrait shot isn't very tight and you have a busy background, you may better off to keep the aperature large at F4, so that the background is blurred out.
So, large aperature, fast shutter, or small aperature, slow shutter? What do you do? Well, like I said, different shots require different settings to get different effects. I typically carry two cameras. One remains set with a larger aperature and faster speed setting so if the animal is moving, I pick up that camera and fire off as many shots as I can. If the wolf stops moving and sits down and it looks like he is in more of a relaxed mood, I will switch to my other camera (it is usually the one with the larger telephoto lens), so I can do some portrait shots. As soon as he gets active again, I switch back to the other camera.
Animal interaction is great and usually much more interesting than only having one subject. The problem however is for instance, if you are photographing foxes, one fox for can be ahead of the other one slightly, so more often than not, one fox is in focus while the other one is blurry. That doesn't very often make a good picture. Try to position yourself if possible so that both foxes are the same distance from your camera. I stole this picture from the links page on my website. It is a good example illustrating motion, both foxes are the same distance from the camera and the focus is good. Also, because there is interaction, the picture can become much more ineresting than if there was just one fox in the picture. This picture illustrates an adult fox disciplining a baby fox that has gotten out of line. I love this photo. You didn't have to be there to see what was happening in the picture. Like they say, "a picture is worth a thousand words," and that is certainly the case in this fox picture.

Yes, this picture was cropped and photoshopped for my website. If you want to see other pictures of foxes, you will have to go to my website. Try www.foxpictures.us to see the real fox picture that wasn't photoshopped and written all over:)

A Couple Wildlife Photography Tips

2009-11-15T20:30:00.000-07:00

Buy the best lenses that you can afford. You will often come across "once in a lifetime" photo opportunities." Every one of those instances will be different, but every situation will be just as exciting and just as important to you as the last one. If you have a lens aperature that starts at 2.8 as opposed to starting at 5.6 and you have 400-600 mm, you are much more likely to get a good shot of that grizzly bear and cubs that you may only get one chance at. Regardless of your photography abilities, a grizzly bear and cubs in low light and foraging for food, may only be three small fuzzy blobs on a grainy picture. With a fast lens and a good reach, your chances of capturing a great image is much much better!
Try to get eye contact in your pictures if you can. People look at the eyes of a picture. A picture of a leopard in the bush is interesting. A picture of a leopard making direct eye contact with the camera is captivating! This picture is pretty compressed. Better images are at http://www.leopardpictures.us/ This picture was taken in the evening. Ten minutes later it was too dark for good shots. I believe I shot this with a 600mm lens. At that distance, the animal appears on the same level and brings the cat in to give an the illusion that the photographer is much closer than he really is. It also keeps you at a safe range from animals that might have you for lunch, while keeping far enough away from animals that may be uncomfortable with human presence. It is kind of hard to get a good shot when your subject is either eating you or running away from you. That brings me to my next point. Keep your focus on an animal running away. Animals are very curious and will often run a safe distance, then stop briefly for one glance back. That last glance is often on the edge of the tree line. They stop, briefly, look back and then quickly disappear into the bush. That last glance often makes great pictures.

Ten Tips For A Perfect Photo Safari

2009-11-07T18:37:00.000-07:00

After years of photo safaris, I thought it might be helpful to organize a list of ten safari tips that can help make the difference between an okay safari and an excellent safari. I have been on everything from terrible safaris to some of the most amazing experiences I have experienced in my entire life!

Research, research, research. The internet is an amazing tool. You will need to know what you want to see and what your budget is. If you have the time, an internet connection, some persistence and a little work ethic, the internet will help you find the rest. For example, when I went to South Africa I started by doing a search for the best place in Africa to see the big cats. The results came back as Sabi Sands in South Africa. From there, I went to http://www.tripadvisor.com/ and read up on every safari company in the Sabi Sands (there are at least a hundred of them not including the adjacent Kruger National Park!)That didn't take long to research. Just eight months:). For a trip that took me 18 months to save up for, I figured eight months of researching every day after work was a small price to pay to for the perfect safari for me and vacation for my family. Trip advisor is an incredible tool. People who have been to hotels and resorts comment on their experiences. Not everyone is going to have comments that you agree with. You won't value the same things that other people value and you will notice the odd kook who is clearly impossible to please, but if there are 50 comments you will usually find a common theme. There are also safari travel consultants on trip advisor who have been to all of the safari resorts who can help answer your questions on which safari resort to visit that will best suit your needs.
Whether you are an amatuer or professional photographer, you may want to consider paying the extra money for the private land rover and guides especially when travel all the way across the world!. When we were in Africa I made sure to book our own land rover in advance, so we didn't have some kid in the front who can't sit still or wants to go home early. Several years ago we were in BC photographing grizzly bears from a boat in the estuary. There was a lady in the boat who insisted that we go home early because we were too close to the bears. The boat we were in had a motor on it and we were in absolutely no danger, but of course we had to leave early without the pictures we came for. Bye bye pictures, time, money, etc. What a waste of everything thanks to some fool that shouldn't have been on that boat to begin with. I don't know what she thought a "grizzly bear safari" involved, but she sure wasn't impressed when she saw grizzly bears!
Photo safaris with other photography professionals can be a great experience. The upside is everyone wants to see the wildlife, there are other people there who share the same passion as you, there are other people to talk "shop" to and you may pick up some great photography ideas from them. The trip also tends to have a great "vibe" as everyone is really excited when the wildlife shows up. The downside though can be huge. Somehow in every group, there will be one or two photographers who will walk out in front of your lens to get their picture, while you end up getting a great shot of his bald spot on the back of his head. If you are thinking this doesn't happen, don't kid yourself. There is always one jackass who won't think twice about this sort of thing. Some photographers can get awfully jealous. Not only do they want to get the best picture, but they certainly don't want you to get anything that they don't have. That downside has caused such grief that now I rarely photograph with other photographers. I know a few who I love going on safari with. If they get a nice shot, I am the first to congratulate them and ask to see their image. At the same time, they are happy for me when I get a good shot. When we go on separate safaris, we send one another our best shots. I love getting an email from a fellow photographer showing off his best images in low resolution. Seeing someone elses work motivates and inspires me while giving me the warm fuzzy "I'm proud of you" type emotions.
Always book an additional day or two more than you think you will need. Mother Nature and or wildlife don't always cooperate, so it is wise to book in a rain day or two on every safari.
Dress appropriately and carry extra clothing when possible. Be prepared for the elements. It is pretty hard to hold a camera still when you are shivering or take good pictures on day two when you have sunstroke from day one. Always bring a rain bag for your camera. Just because it's raining, it doesn't mean your pictures won't be spectacular, but you sure won't want to continue photographing if you are concerned about ruining your camera. http://www.thinktankphoto.com/ has great camera rain gear. Worst case scenario, bring a garbage bag.
When traveling across the world, give yourself a day or two as a buffer before you go on safari. Safaris can be very expensive. You likely won't get the images you were hoping for if you can't concentrate because you can hardly keep your eyes open because of the jetlag.
Download and back up regularly and keep extra back ups. memory cards can become corrupt, external hard drives can malfunction. When we are on safari, after every drive, I back all my images up to one hard drive, then I back up that hard drive to a second hard drive. If I have time, I do a quick scan and back up the best images on my laptop. I bring extra memory cards and on the way back home, I carry one hard drive on my person and one in my camera bag. I went on safari once and my safari companion refused to back up her memory cards. Unfortunately, two memory cards went missing and somehow didn't make the flight back home. She was pretty devastated to say the least!
Never lose sight of your camera gear. If you can't fit it on the plane as a carry on, you can carry it with you until the end of the ramp before you board the plane. Have a steward tag it so you can pick it up at the other end. This way you watch your equipment as it is stored under the plane and you can watch them unload it when you land. Your equipment is carefully stored with wheelchairs, strollers and other personal items that people need right up until they actually board the plane. Of course, too, this way your camera equipment can't accidentally end up on another airline somehow.
Camera bags- Go to a company like http://www.thinktankphoto.com/ They have bags that are specifically designed to fit in the overhead compartments of an airplane. They will fit exactly in those compartments. They are perfect for traveling. They have a combination lock to prevent anyone from breaking into your bag. They even have a cable with a lock in a zippered pocket. I use the cable to lock to my chair when I have long layovers in case I fall asleep by accident while waiting for my next flight.
Remember your R and D ...which of course stands for rip off and duplicate:). You can get a lot of information on photographers websites (including mine) regarding what equipment they are using, where they go on safari, etc. Why learn the hard way when you can learn from someone else's experiences.

Wildlife Photo Safaris

2009-10-26T22:56:00.000-06:00

I have been busy lately doing my best to organize images on the internet. People often ask about how my safari destinations and what they are like etc. Truth be told, the photo safaris are the fun part, but they are a heck of a lot of work! I research what animal(s) I am interested in photographing, then try to find the best places to go. I save and plan and save and plan until the day comes. After traveling for a day(s) to get to our destination, I set my goal to take 1500 images per day while on safari. Now, providing that the weather cooperates and we find the wildlife we are looking for, 1500 images is a lot of pictures and being as the safaris are expensive and we only go on a couple trips a year, I don't like to take any risks with them. The travel brochures show tourists doing all kinds of exotic fun things. Lounging by the pool, horseback riding on the beach, zip lines, etc. My time on safari? Not so exotic. We safari, and then I spend the rest of the time either eating, sleeping or editing and backing up my pictures. I just barely get the pictures downloaded and backed up and it is time to eat, sleep or go back on safari again. Not to mention that I actually only have time to sleep a few hours per night. That is literally how much time I have to spend on editing, organizing and backing up.

Getting to why I have been busy lately, no I haven't been on safari since the first week of July, but I am still editing and publishing to the internet. I think I have a pretty good system going now though. Check out our websites:

We have www.harveywildlifephotography.com/gallery.htm set up for a general gallery of our images. If you are interested in searching for more pictures of a given animal, I have set up a few more sites with more pictures than the gallery holds and plan to fill the new sites up so it is more user friendly to help you find the picture you are looking for. Here are a few more sites to check out. I think they are pretty self-explanatory...
www.africanpictures.info
www.bearpictures.mobi
www.polarbearpictures.info
www.cheetahpictures.info
www.cougarpictures.info
www.lionpictures.info
www.foxpictures.us
www.leopardpictures.us
www.wolfpictures.mobi
www.tigerpictures.info
www.wildlifegreetingcards.com (Our own brand of greeting cards.)

Needless to say, I have been working with these pictures and even some of my African pictures still and I got back from Africa in December of '08! So, yes the trips are exciting, but they come with an amazing amount of work, but I wouldn't have it any other way...

Stay tuned. I am looking forward to photographing polar bear sows and cubs in February... Sounds cool right? It is more than cool. It is friggin' cold! This isn't the tourist edition where you eat in the dining car of a tundra buggy and look out the window at the polar bears. This is freezing your toucas off waiting for mother polar bear to come out of her den with her two month old cub. Some days I will wait all day and undoubtedly not see anything except hopefully only mild frostbite:).

In September, '10, it will be photographing the great migration in the Masai Mara, Kenya. I am really looking forward to photographing cheetahs, leopards, lions, giraffes, elephants, various antelope and of course a million and a half wildebeast. And with any luck, I will have the images posted on the websites before September '11!

Harvey Wildlife Photography Contact Information

2009-10-26T22:06:00.001-06:00