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BTVolume 12.4the biological and technical journal for wildlife photographers

F8 and Being There Remote isnt so Remote Anymore The Weblog - Can it help YOUR Business?

j o u r n a l

www.moosepeterson.com 32 BT Journal

Howdy!

I trust thIs fInds you photographIng your favorIte sprIng subjects, be it flowers or birds or scenics. Its a great summer with endless opportunities just screaming to be photographed with our new tools and knowledge!

If you happen to be a MooseNewsBlog follower, you know I havent been sitting still much. a couple of common questions have been, Will I write up the red-woods for the btj? and Will I be writing about storm chasing? the answer to both is yes, in fact, Ive already started both pieces. I have the photos, just need to finish the text. Im madly writing upcoming issues of the btj with some cool, new adventures, these are just two examples of whats to come.

b news is a whole new look at an old topic. I first wrote about photographing florida birds seven years ago in the btj and while Im biased, I think this piece blows away that one. the biggest difference, seven years! as photographers, we tend to get very impatient with our photographic growth. If you step back and not look at day to day growth but year to year, we all make big strides. b news reflects some that Ive made that I hope help you meet yours.

t news is another of those esoteric equipment pieces I am so famous for. find-ing, learning and exploiting new technology is fun and exciting to me. sharing what I learn with others is rewarding. the Wt-4a is a tool probably only a couple of you might actually give a try, but I think the tool, the possibilities and application would help everyone.

all the photos in this issue of the journal are from our florida adventures in february. We did this because, well, we simply couldnt decide which ones to eliminate. hope you dont mind.

the last couple of base camps (fL & sd) have been, well, better than we could ever have imagined. some of the florida bird photos in this issue were taken during our fL base camp. Ill try to sneak in some of the SD ones in the next issue. If you want to take your wildlife photography to a whole new level and maybe make a penny from

it, you might want to give Base Camp a try. Yeah, weve already had repeaters!

Hope you have an opportunity to stop by The Gallery. Its all new and waiting for

perusal. Enjoy!

In THIs IssueNew Nikon Glass pg. 3

B News pg. 4

T News pg. 5

Photo Bi$ pg. 25

Their Story pg. 28

New Nikon Glass

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The BTJ is produced by Moose & Sharon Peterson Wildlife Research Photography and mailed out quarterly WRP PO Box 3628 Mammoth Lakes, CA 93546www.moosepeterson.com 760.924.8632 Printed in Hong Kong through Bolton Associates, Inc. San Rafael, CA

thIs Last month has been a great month for neW

NIKON glass. nikon put two lenses into my hands that are

must owns in my book!

the 24pc-e I have to admit is probably not a lens for most

wildlife photographers, but it sure should be for the landscape

photographer. Shooting on the D3s FX sensor, the 24mm aspect

of the pc-e was simply the greatest lens for photographing the

coastal redwoods. I took it with the sole purpose of making ultra

wide panos (which I did) but I quickly made the 24pc-e my main

lens for photographing the redwoods.

the pc aspect of the lens permitted the camera film plane to

remain parallel with the trees so there was no wide lens, pointing up,

tilt to them. the shift component of the 24pc-e permits you to shift

the lens up for the perfect composition of your corrected image.

Now heres a cool insider tip for you. The new D3 firmware with

the vignetting control permits you to use the 24pc-e at its full shift

and deal with the vignetting that occurs. thats hot!

I posted a 4pg pdf on using all the features of the 24pc-e.

you can download it for free from www.moosepeterson.com.

It will help you make use of all the potential this lens can

unlock in your photography.

the new 60afs micro is a lens I wondered about because,

well, the 60af micro that I already own works really well. Why

would one want to upgrade?

As soon as I put it on the D3 and focused and saw that the

focus is If, I said hot damn! not having the lens grow in length

is huge for macro work! you can work with flash and not worry

about the front of the lens getting in the way and causing a

shadow. you can photograph into a tank and maintain the same

working distance even though you change magnification. It

makes it so much easier to handhold since your fingers dont get

in the way of the lens barrel. oh yeah, it also has afs focusing

speed. Its huge, the improvement that is!

and you know the best thing about it? Its the price. you can find

it brand new for just a little more than $400. Whats the rub you ask,

all that for that price, whats sacrificed? Well its certainly not the

sharpness. Its nice and flat field, sharp corner to corner. Its one of

those great bargains youll be happy with for years to come.

stout grove, california coastal redwods.

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4 BT Journal www.moosepeterson.com 5www.moosepeterson.com 54 BT Journal

JuST HOW OFTeN DO THey FeeD THeIR CHICKS? THIS BASIC nesting biological fact about the black swifts wasnt known back in the 1980s. Fortunately for me, I was working with one of the finest biologists/ornithologists Ive ever known who opened the doors for me to some cool species like the black swifts. on an adventure that lasted a couple of summers, I would boogie a long ways from my home for a couple days of shooting in the hopes of finding this answer through photogra-phy. youre probably won-dering what a technique in the 1980s has to do with today. In this case, not one darn thing, but it does make a point.

the basic biology for the black swift during nesting season is it builds a nest out of lichens behind a waterfall, a single egg is laid and during the day it remains by itself. during part of the day and during the night, the parent(s) come back to tend the egg. When the egg hatch-es the nestling spends the day basically by itself, see-ing its parents come blaz-ing back from the heavens at dusk. Its then under the cover of darkness that the parents feed the kids. for us humans, the problem is being behind a waterfall during the night is just not feasible (as if crawling in behind them during the day is any smarter). so how do we make observations to find an answer? my solution back then using the most advanced technology was to install at dusk an f4 with a 250exp back with two sb-16a flash units (all powered by external batteries) with a canon tm1 timer set to take one picture every two minutes. and with that, some answers started to come to light as feeding periods and durations were caught on film.

one major problem with this whole system was that results wouldnt be known for days. While I tested the rig over and over again there always seemed to be a small glitch basically

involving the power. While I did manage to capture a couple of complete series, it was nowhere what we should have captured for all the time invested. speed up the clock to the present and wow, what we can do now with todays technology!

The D3 and D300 along with the mark III have brought to the wildlife photographer the ability to do what has before only been in the realm of the rich photographer or the really, really smart dIyer. and thats to have a live remote cam-era that you can actually see what the camera sees in real time and not be physically attached to the camera. this james bond approach to wildlife photography while not being ideal can solve problems that cannot be solved in any other manner.

the problem to solve is real simple, the photogra-phers presence disturbs the subject and so, jeopardizes its welfare and prevents the making of images. the only solution is a live remote. thats where the nikon Wt-4a comes into play. With the wireless units so bloody affordable, its only a matter of jumping through a couple of hoops to make it all work for you. so, lets start jumping!

Wireless ABCsso you got the gear, what next? Well, before you ever go out in the real world

to use it, youve got to get the computer and wireless and camera all happy and then test, test, test. What follows is the information mainly for the D3 though the D300s setup isnt too much different. As for the Canon, I recom-mend looking at a canon expert like my assistant josh bradley for help there. I hear its not really too different in principle and works really well. With that said, lets get the camera and computer talking to each other. The parts you need to make this work are:

D3 or D300 WT-4a (with setup CD) Camera Control Pro 2

B news f/8 and Being There

Its oh bLoody earLy (especIaLLy noW that Im on est) as I look down to see my orange toes and gray feet ever so slowly sinking in the brown ooze. thats about all I can make out in the predawn light as the only sound my senses gather is the low chirp of shorebirds off in the distance. yesterday when I left my home, again way too early for the normal, there was a bank of snow creat-ing a tunnel down my driveway. as I headed to bed last night, I walked through the warm beach sands and was kissed by the gentle breeze off the gulf. the plane just couldnt jet me across the planet fast enough for this trip. I had a brand new 600vr lens I was just dying to hammer hard and a D3 that hadnt even been really pushed with a full couple of solid weeks of bird photography. and now Im here, stuck in ooze, staring through this gorgeous lens with my finger on the shut-ter release ready to rip off frame after frame of some of the schweet-est birds youre only g o i n g t o f i n d i n florida. Life is good!

this is neither my first nor will it be my last trip to florida for bird photography. Ive lost count how many times Ive been down here shooting and for all the different events. but I cant remember the last trip down to the sunshine state when I was so excited to be going. not only did I have new camera gear to play with (which always makes a trip better) but I was going to new locales with great promise of killer photography. and, this would be the first time in twenty-eight years that I would be an assistant again. I couldnt wait to get my feet into that ooze!

heres the deal though, with all of this past shooting experi-

ence, with the images already in the files of florida birds, just what the heck was I going to do to come back with better images? What had I learned, what new gear advantages did I have, what had lifes experiences brought to my photography that I could put into play to

produce better images? all of this went through my mind over and over again long before the 757 left the ground. I felt a lot of internal pressure to exceed my own expectations which was just short of what others expected of me. I came back with a couple of images I didnt think I had in me so I was pleased. I also missed some images I shouldnt have. this is a story of those failures and the successes that made this one of my favorite trips to florida.

That Darnn Homeworkthere was no doubt in my mind that coming back with better images depended in large part upon understand-ing what Id done in the past. there were way too many images in my files of, oh, theres a bird, lets take a picture of it and way too few of, thats cooL! that ratio bothered me so dig-ging through the files and determining what made the difference between the two was an all consuming task. It started by going back to the dark ages, the slide files. you might be asking yourself, just what

can be learned there?With loupe in hand and slide file drawers open, I began by

pulling out the slide pages. What did I look for without digging through lots of old field notes for shooting data? I started by looking at what images on a twenty image slide page grabbed my eye without the aid of a loupe. since the images are filed by species, only one species at a time was being looked at. this helped because it made the one thing I was looking to stand out, stand out. I was looking for color!

the vast majority of the time, the bird would be photographed

T news Remote Isnt So Remote Anymore

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www.moosepeterson.com 76 BT Journal

portunity and biological knowledge all come into play in that base-ment and ceiling shutter speed. since those factors are different for all of us, any number that could be thrown out isnt truly relevant. more important is going through your own images, doing your own homework to find your own basement and ceiling shutter speed. but there is a number I want to talk about and give to you.

It was at this point I started to look outside my own files for thoughts and inspirations for the upcoming photography in florida. there are many spectacular, gorgeous and spellbinding images of florida birds out there. that in itself puts pressure on our own photographic pursuits. In looking at those images, look-ing for a common thread in those images we admire the most is the challenge. because once we have narrowed that something down, we then have to discover precisely what that something is so we can incorporate it into our own photography. fortunately for me, those images of other photographers that I identified as being special to me had one very important piece of information, and thats the aperture they used.

With that piece of the puzzle, I went back to my digital photos to compare the f/stop I had used against this new piece of infor-mation. there was a discrepancy; I had not shot at that aperture that I found worked in the photographs of others that I admired. at this point youre probably speeding up your reading, telling your spouse or kids not to bother you because moose peterson is going to tell us all that aperture, the magical aperture he found as being the key to better florida bird images. Well, I am

going to give you that number, in a moment.Whats in an f/stop? the number three email in popularity that

I receive is, Whats the best f/stop? I typically send back a simple reply (which to this date has never produced a reply back) and is honest yet probably useless, I dont know. We know the minds eye first goes to white/bright elements and then next to sharpness. We have to focus on the subjects eye, thats a must in wildlife photog-raphy. how much in front of that point of focus and behind it that is in focus is what were determining by selecting a particular f/stop. that range of sharpness, that depth of field, totally affects how we manipulate the viewers eye and lead it through our image. that f/stop is a powerful force in photography and one that should not be taken lightly and just because I or anyone else provides a number doesnt make it the f/stop. With that in mind

Looking back through my previous images from florida, f/4 and f/5.6 were it, aperture rarely ventured from there. prob-ably in large part to keep the shutter speed as fast as possible to freeze action (not a smart solution). very, very rarely did the f/stop veer from that point. What I discovered in those images of others that I admired was the common f/stop of f/8. the degree of sharpness throughout the bird, no matter the species or size in the frame, appealed to me. you could easily say it spoke to me. So in Florida, f/8 was what the D3 was always set to. If a teleconverter was attached to the 600vr, the D3 was set to f/9.5 so the actual f/stop remained f/8. All the images youll see accompanying this piece were taken at f/8.

in water so you might think that the colors are kinda locked in, the color of the species and blue. Well, those colors are not locked in because differences could be seen in the images, big differences. these differences are what had to be zeroed in on to be more successful in the upcoming trip. What would cause a change in these colors?

What would change these colors, especially the water? the light changes the colors, and more importantly, the direction of the light that lights the scene. taking this an important step further, it is the direction of the light as it strikes the background that is reflected in the water. We can vastly change the color relationship of the species of bird and the water by the selection of our background. this was the first lesson learned by looking at those slides. Was there more to be gleaned?

the next thing that smacked me in the face was the subject size in the frame. the relationship of color, subject size and eye catch appeal was an important one that had to be concentrated on this trip. not that the subject had to physically fill the frame, but its presence sure did. this harkens back a lot to color, light and background. progressing deeper into the slide file of a spe-cies, the evolution of more years and years and years behind the camera and successive trips to florida unfolded. While totally unconscious of these elements in a successful photograph, there was a trend with the years to incorporate them more and more. the problem was I was unconscious to the ratio of successful

images (success being measured as those that visually commu-nicated and grabbed the heartstrings); it was way too low. thats also reflected in how few of those images actually got published.

moving forward, my last half dozen trips to florida were with a dsLr so more could be gleaned by looking over these files. color, light and background still came through as critical elements. In the digital age, color is as much an issue of light itself as well as the re-lationship of how the cameras sensor sees and records that light.

With digital comes all the shooting data. this is a great aid when doing ones homework! sharpness is such a critical element in bird photography with sharpness being a factor of focusing on the eye, shutter speed, DOF and contrast. What does the eXIF data tell us about these elements? eye sharpness starts with the focusing of the lens but the deal is sealed with shutter speed. Looking through image after image and noting the shutter speeds that more commonly delivered the critical sharpness provided me with a starting point and ending point of shooting. Knowing that basement and ceiling might tempt some to simply crank up the Iso to stay within those limits, personally though, I just enjoy the view until the light levels are within those limits.

Its at this point youre probably asking, What is that magical shutter speed that I discovered? those who know me know whats coming next. that shutter speed I gleaned came from my past experiences and images most likely wont match up exactly to yours for a number of reasons. camera gear, experience, op-

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and Im very, very pleased with the results.and what if you dont have any images to look back on or youve

never been to florida? how do you do your homework for your first visit (because you can never go just once)? that is pretty darn easy these days. there is so much out there in book, magazine and web form that looking at images is readily available. you have the images right here and the information Im passing along to work with as well. What is really important is that you head to florida with the ability to avoid buck fever. Whats buck fever, especially since were photo-graphing birds? When a deer hunter goes out for the first time, typically they are so darn excited that when they squeeze off that very first shot, it goes 180 degrees in a different direction from the deer. for bird photogra-phers buck fever material-izes in the form of the panic walk, bad camera technique, shooting before getting in close, and a hundred other simple mistakes. going prepared (which includes techniques well talk about momentarily) helps prevent this from the start.

You need more than a bucket and shovel!as my good friend artie morris first said in a long ago issue of the btj, If you dont go out with your longest lens, youll come back short! amen!

Its real simple; you need a 600mm lens and a tele-converter. thats it pretty much in my opinion.and with that statement, I can hear owners of the 200-400vr saying, Ive captured great images with the 200-400vr in florida and I bet that is very much the truth. but to that I would say, more importantly, what great images did you miss because you were shooting with the 200-400vr?

If youre shooting by yourself you can get away with using a shorter lens, there is no doubt. but in florida, when are you ever shooting by yourself? a great example is working any of the great beaches from tampa to sanibel. they are never empty, there are always folks beachcombing, walking or running on those beaches. head to any of the great refuges/sanctuaries and youll find other

photographers as you should. go to a rookery like venice where you cant get close physically, unless youre happy with flight shots all day; the shorter lens just doesnt make the cut.

you need the 600mm for all of these and many more reasons. the biggest reason is its ability to totally control the background. background is everything in this business so when you control it, you control the viewers eye. the 200-400vr or any shorter focal length does not give you that control. When artie said, youll come back short, he was saying a mouthful!

heres the rub for nikon shooters (and not for canon). We dont have the perfect flight lens. canon makes the 400f5.6 and has for a long time, which is simply a killer flight lens to have on a second body on your shoulder. nikon has no such focal length avail-able. the closest thing is the 300f4 AFS, but its a heavy lens and a tad short. on this trip, I didnt work with a second body on my shoulder because I wanted to concentrate on just big lens photography. there were a couple of times though we had opportunities for killer flight stuff as youll soon read. on those occa-sions I used mainly sharons 70-300VR AFS lens. I did pull out the 200vr but that was not doable, simply too short for anything but point blank range pelicans. at this time, I dont have an answer to this problem.

being that we shoot so much in sand and muck, your tripod has got to be some-thing other than a Kmart spe-cial. Im still blown away when I see folks take three toothpicks out and place their $10k, 10lb

long lens on them in the sand and within minutes theyre out of business with shock written all over their faces. We pull and tug, push and prod that big lens around as we chase our subjects; the tripod has gotta support all of that like a rock. to be honest with you, I just cant see using anything less than a gitzo 5540 and a Wimberley head. yes, I know others have used less and come back with great images. again I would ask, what great im-ages did you miss because of the compromise in tripod stability?

While were on the subject of tripods, Id like to point out a couple of things. When youre working in sand, muck or both, extend the

Being this was our first visit to north Beach, I didnt know what

it use to be like before the big hurricanes hit a couple years back

or just what treasures wed find on our adventure. We found bird

photography there even when there were only literally a couple of

birds to be most outstanding. In fact, it was so much so that we

filmed episode three of my Kelby Training series at north Beach

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bottom leg section to its fullest. this keeps leg joints out of the sand, muck and water. every time, every time you put down your tripod, push the leading leg down into the sand and muck so its not riding on the surface to maximize your stability. Lastly, each night give your tripod tLc, making sure the sand doesnt work its way into joints and moisture doesnt get trapped inside the legs.

yeah, if you want to make the great shots a vast majority of the time youre going to get wet or real sandy at the very least. youve got to take this into account so for example, have a clean towel each day (Im not promoting hotel theft) to dry your hands on and to keep sand out of the camera/lens workings. sunblock really sucks up the crap and moves it into gear, so be very careful. mud on your tripod legs thats wet when you first put it in the back of your vehicle will dry and turn into sand that transfers to the bottom of your camera bag that will transfer to your gear if you are not real careful. so stop it before it begins and use a towel to clean off the bottom of your tripod legs. (most beaches/parks have places to wash off your feet; make use of them to clean off the bottoms of your tripod legs.)

speaking of your feet, if you want the shot, get em wet! Im always amazed how shy most adults are at first of getting wet in the pursuit of bird photography, but once wet, the kid always seems to reemerge. the same beaches that are so famous for shell collecting is where were walking and shells, especially

broken ones are dang sharp! many of the places we shoot have concrete in the water from leftover days of beach construction. Whatever the obstacle, without something on your feet, youre going to get cut. take it from me who, on his first visit royally opened up his big toe, dont go barefoot! I highly recommend fivefingers for your feet (www.rei.com). they are gloves for your feet. there is a slot for each toe and the sole is vibram, which is bullet proof; you can even walk on hot blacktop without any problem. they weigh nothing and they do provide better stabil-ity in the muck than any type of sandals. yes, they look really funny and at times are a pain to get on since you cant control your toes to get them into their individual slots. but darn if they dont work slicker than snot!

this is the first intensive bird photography Ive done with the D3 and man, did it ever perform! What youve got to look for in your camera body is frames per second, fps. you want a whole bunch and the more the better. action is hot and heavy in florida waters and beaches and you want your camera to be able to capture it all. yeah, the portraits are nice but the action shots are nicer. at the same time, 100% viewing through the viewfinder is a must. there are so many little things that can work their way into a photo, like the bill of another bird, that if you dont have 100% viewing, you are going to capture. Lastly, having two cf cards loaded at once is a killer thing to have, it makes non-stop

shooting real easy. oops, the only camera that has that option is the D3. Well, there you have it :-)

a tool many dont think of as a tool that works real sweetly is the teleconverter. the magic aperture for me this trip would be f/8 and that was for the dof. While I wanted the extra sharpness in the birds body, I also wanted to control the background. get-ting low and changing the angle of attack makes a difference, so can using a teleconverter. as I mentioned when one was attached I would close my lens down to f9.5 to maintain my desired f/8 dof, but at the same time the region beyond dof would be more out of focus because of having the teleconverter attached. so more than to get a particular image size, the teleconverter permits us to control the background even better.

after talking about the importance of light, you might be asking yourself, wheres the flash? I decided after doing my homework that I wasnt going to use flash this trip if at all possible. It was packed, SB-800, Wimberley Flash Arm, shortened SC-29 and SD-8a battery pack, but it was left in the truck the whole time. everyone has to make their own call there and in this particular trip, the light the photo gods provided was all that was going to be used. and I have to admit, there were times when it was just spectacular!

Where to go, who to seegoing to florida to photograph birds is like that family vacation to see your relatives. so many too see and not enough time to see

them all. We had two weeks this trip and even that wasnt enough to see and photograph them all. this particular trip we worked out of st petersburg, which afforded us a couple of new spots that I would really like to highlight.

Fort DeSoto was completely brand new to us especially the treasures at north beach where we were never disappointed. north beach is not really where you go shooting, but rather the large, very flat and shallow lagoon behind it. (you drive to the very, very end and park and then walk a short distance through the trees to reach the lagoon.) being this was our first visit to north beach, I didnt know what it use to be like before the big hurricanes hit a couple years back or just what treasures wed find on our adventure. We found bird photography there even when there were only literally a couple of birds to be most outstanding. In fact, it was so much so that we filmed episode three of my Kelby Training series at North beach. are there secrets to making the most of this locale? you bet!

the biggie is truly the tides. the lagoon is very large, very flat and very shallow so the rising tide pushes birds literally right into your lap. the best scenario is having the tide crest about an hour after sunrise. this brings in the largest number of wading birds, tricolored and great blue heron, reddish and great egret, White Ibis and we had three very easy going Wood storks join us on most mornings. at the same time the shorebirds are about, especially the Willets (but always look for rarities) and Laughing gulls (killer subjects for those

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who just give them an ounce of time). the next big tip is, dont sit! this is a locale youve got to get out

and experience to make the photographs happen. for example, the reddish egret or White Ibis, are always on the move. move with them to make the shot! once you enter the water and if you walk slowly, you can basically go up and kiss these birds, so working with them pays off.

Lastly, keep an eye on the skies. you never know when a mas-sive flock of double-crested cormorants might fly overhead or a lone Wood stork will come cruising over the sand dunes and glide in to land right in front of you.

Brandon Rookery is simply way cool! Its a young rookery so its only going to get better (heron rookeries have a finite life). In a way, its like venice in that it is in the most unlikely spot for a rookery as you can ever, ever imagine! Its literally behind the brandon harley davidson dealership, I kid you not! It appears to be some kind of seepage pond or mitigation pond because they

are man made and smack dab in the middle of the city.It is a sunset shoot simply because you can only access the west

side of the rookery pond. the other three sides are inaccessible because of terrain and fences. the west edge of the pond is sloped but on the south end there is a two story platform, ground level and then a slight ramp to water level. With what might seem to be limited access (in a way it is since it can only hold ten photographers) it provides plenty of room to work the rookery itself.

the island that is the rookery requires a 600mm lens with a teleconverter and even with that, you wont fill the frame with a single bird, not even perhaps a pair. no matter, the activity levels at brandon are just staggering! What makes brandon so unique in my mind is the whopping number of White Ibis and as the sun sets, the hordes of glossy Ibis that fly in. It is just spectacular! and its a rare spectacle!

I ended up shooting at brandon four times in two weeks and each time, the glossy Ibis appeared the same. you would see a

couple, very dark birds coming in from the back of the rookery, over the trees in the east (not to be confused with the double-crested cormorants which nest here). they come in low and circle typically counter clockwise to the rookery. they are soon followed by a mas-sive flock of 100+ individuals. typically, you only have two maybe four passes overhead before they dive down into the foliage and disappear. on our last visit, we had a coopers hawk come in and really stir the pot. It didnt leave and so the flight of glossy Ibis circled for nearly forty minutes, well after the sun was down and the shutter speed too slow to stop any type of action. It was fabulous!

another unique bird here is the Little blue heron and in good numbers too. When we were at the rookery for our last visit (mid march) the little blues were incredibly active, protecting and setting up territories. In fact, the great egrets, White Ibis and double-crested cormorants were all very busy making babies.

on our first visit and on our last, there was a single bird surprise that was quite cool. on the first visit, we had a Limpkin. never got any glass on it, but its a cool bird to see, and stalk if only to get skunked. on our last visit we had a full blown breeding plumage roseate spoonbill. It had a limp but we found it foraging at the north end of the fountain pond and it let four of us approach as close as we wanted to make some really cool shots. When you add up all of the experi-ences, it makes brandon rookery a must place to return to!

Venice Rookery is changing but still well worth the adventure. venice rookery is slowing dying out as all rookeries do with time. If youve never been to venice, youre in for a royal treat. Its a spectacle of life you rarely get to see, so close and so easily. the main attraction in the past and still in the present is the great blue herons. you can

easily get a full frame shot with just 400mm and if you work a nest with a pair present, you can do it with 300mm. It is magical. Dont get me wrong though, 600mm with a teleconverter I still think is the win-ning ticket for working the rookery.

you need to get to the rookery before the sun rises. Quite often there is a fog around the

rookery. shooting through it can be very cool and at times, the fog remains long after the sun is up. once the fog burns off, the light is hard, nasty hard. If there is no fog, then the period of great light doesnt last long. and if the action is hot and heavy, the good light definitely doesnt last long enough. the only way to make this all work is to arrive to the rookery early, before the sun is up.

If youve been going to the rookery for fifteen years like I have, youll notice it has slowed down. the nest platforms have changed a little, the prime two top nesting platforms are no longer. these were great because of the clean backgrounds possible from the right vantage point. the supporting foliage is gone for the large nest platforms so the majority of the nests are now lower in the trees. clean backgrounds are a thing of the past.

one thing that still remains is the great flight shots of herons / egrets flying back to the rookery with nesting material. If

you come to the rookery early enough in the season, the birds are busy building their nests so they fly to the bank, darn close, and then fly back to the rookery with a branch in their bill. Its a great shot that you can get if not the first time, then the fifth and if not the fifth the twentieth because they do it over and over and over again. just that alone makes venice rookery a cool place to spend the morning.

Honeymoon Island, what can I say but just wow! I wish I could take credit for finding this great place, but I cant. I received a couple photos from my dear friend at napp, photos of an osprey in flight she had taken and was very proud of. shed taken the photos

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with her short zoom! Well, I knew it was a place I had to venture to. on our next visit to fL we went right to honeymoon state park to see it for ourselves. Ive been back many times since and on this trip we were there a couple times as well.

honeymoon Island has a number of great bird photogra-phy options, the king of which is the osprey. at the end of the road youll find the osprey trail. you walk the trail and youll come across not one, two or five active nests but this year, there were an even dozen active osprey nests! and, these nests are right next to the trail, easy 600mm range. and, this year there was even a pair of bald eagles! and (yeah, theres a third and) there was a nesting great horned owl this year as well. dang, all that and were on just one trail in the park!

you gotta watch out for the armadillos though! I was standing there in the middle of the trail, minding my own business, tripod set up in front of me while waiting for the osprey to fly into its nest. all of a sudden an armadillo comes out of the brush, walks down the trail some dis-tance and then wham, smacks right into my tripod leg! after picking itself up and shaking its head, it wandered off down the trail.

Honeymoon Straights is a hit or miss locale but when its hot, you aint got enough card space! on your way to honeymoon state park you cross over a narrow, narrow stretch of land I call the honeymoon straights. Ive gone

from seeing only a single gull to photographing Wood storks, rose-atte spoonbills, black skimmers and american oystercatchers in just minutes! you simply drive the straight and when you see birds you want to photograph, you pull over and photograph them. If you dont see any, you keep going into honeymoon Island. morning or afternoon when its hot, its smokin!

North Pier is a treasure of a find that Laurie introduced me to. the north pier is tucked alongside the skyway bridge on the north end as the name implies. While we saw an albatross go cruising by, the big attraction is the killer flight shots of the fL brown pelicans, great & snowy egrets, Laughing gulls, assorted terns and other passersby. I would never have ventured onto the pier if Laurie hadnt taken us there first!

youre probably scrunching up your nose saying something like, fishing pier, you went all the way to fL and a fishing pier is the best you could do? Well, let me tell you, being able to shoot flight shots either eye to eye, literally, or down on great birds is not a normal opportunity. plus the birds are at point blank range! It gets better because the fishermen, at least most of them, love to feed the birds their scraps so you have all of these birds literally forming a line on the pier, waiting for their scrap. It was such an awesome place to go, I went there numerous times over the two weeks!

If youve never photographed a fL brown pelican in the spring, had a mature male in the viewfinder, then you probably wouldnt understand the huge attraction to photographing these guys. all it takes is once and youre hooked. here at the pier they are in the water under the fish cleaning tables like a giant WWII naval flotilla. they swim in unison against the tide until the scrap leaves the table and then its a massive scramble on pelican scale to get that scrap. Its simply an amazing photographic opportunity.

Pass-a-Grill is a killer beach! If you do a web search on it youll find

it described as a great place for beachcombing and birding. I dont know about the beachcombing, but darn if they arent right about the birding! the birds youll find here vary with the time of day, tides and seasons. the highlight during our visit was a massive flock of red Knots, most in breeding plumage. Sanderlings (I just have a thing for them) and Willets were also more than cooperative. sandwich and royal terns were flying past us non-stop and diving for meals point plank, right in front of us. I didnt name the place but Im telling you, you dont want to pass up pass-a-grill!.

the beach itself is one long sucker! We found that during our visit, the best place to head out was about dead center, where 20th street comes into the beach. youll find boardwalk crossings of the small sand dunes leading over to the beach (be sure to pay for your parking!). from there, a glean of the beach through your long lens will give you an idea of which way to head. I highly recommend you look not only for birds, but also beachcombers and folks walking their dogs. It is a public beach so we have to share but looking for possible bird flushing obstacles before you lay in the sand can save you some frustration.

another thing you must, must partake in at pass-a-grill is a wildlife photographers tradition that goes way back, long before I started to shoot. across the street from where you park is a yellow building on the corner that has the most amazing homemade ice cream! Ice cream and wildlife photography go hand in hand and there is no better way to start an afternoon on the beach than with ice cream!

Tampa Bay has some opportunities you just cant imagine; I know I didnt realize this jewel was waiting there! this is another Laurie find. james shadle (www.inthefieldworkshops.com) runs trips out to the roseatte spoonbill rookery in tampa bay that has to be one of the top ten bird photography trips on the planet! there are about 1000 nesting pairs of spoonbills in fL with the majority being in fL bay

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but you wouldnt think that after this excursion. oh man, the bird photography was simply to die for! all the spoonbill pho-tos in this piece were taken in just one afternoon on james twin pontoon boat. some of the White Ibis photos as well were taken the day we were out. and the White pelican pano, yeap, you guessed it, taken on the same trip. simply put, you gotta go!

after motoring out to the islands, james helps you out into the water where you work the birds. the water here is a little deeper than youll find at north beach but its not a problem (he even has a ladder to help you back into the boat). and for a very small price, he has tripod leg condoms. Im sure they have a real name but I dont remember it, yet they are plastic sleeves you can put your tri-

pod legs in to keep water and mud from getting into your tripod. the water depth is greater than one leg extension of your tripod so I thought the sleeves were a killer idea and they work real slick!

ok, so Ive given you the tools and the locales, but youre say-ing what about the techniques? Well, the techniques are pretty universal and can apply from one locale to the next pretty easily. so, lets delve into those techniques I find work the best when photographing florida birds.

Hit the sand, or perhaps mud, the water at the very leastthe pace of florida beaches is a perfect way to approach the bird

photography there. With a slow, deliberate stride, looking down at your feet, walking in no particular hurry, if you didnt have a big lens over your shoulder the locals would think youre just beachcombing. thats just the way you should enjoy and make the most of the bird photography in this paradise. I really hate to go beyond this basic philosophy of florida photography, but we must.

approach is everything! youve got to think through the situation, think it through biologically and then move accordingly. venice and brandon rookery are locales where you are limited on how close you can approach. the watery moat around the islands gives the birds enough of a safety zone that you can not only approach as close as you want without fear of scaring off the birds, but also move about to fine tune the background or follow the action without worry of flushing anything (and you never want to plant at venice!).

on the flip side is working the birds at pass-a-grill beach or honeymoon straights. these are locales where you are point blank on top of the birds and your slight-est misstep can send the entire beach into the air and away. this is what Id like to suggest to you, a thought on making the most of each approach.

you need to first select the ideal background you want behind the subject. you do this long

before youre in shooting range. If youre thinking background youve got to think of what else? thinking about the back-ground means youve thought about the subject and if youve thought about the subject then youre thinking biology. thinking biology means youve thought through the possible action you might be seeing and photographing, how to get close safely so then, you can concentrate on, you guessed it, the background.

the more and more you do this, the more all of this becomes second nature, which puts you even closer to making the perfect photo. just how do you get physi-cally closer? the first thing is, keep your feet low to the ground as you approach. most photographers dont look at them-selves through the eyes of their subjects. When birds on the beach look straight what do they see? they see our feet mov-ing towards them, the jolly green giant coming at them with the world beneath their feet vibrating with each step. If those feet coming at them (which in many cases are larger than they are) are going up and down and moving fast, thats enough to make them take flight.

avoid making huge movements with that tripod and that big lens. the act of tak-ing it down from your shoulder and plac-ing it on the ground for some shier birds is enough to make them move off. since the legs of the tripod are rigid, dont bend or move on their own, we can use them as a means of getting closer if we are clever about it. the way I like to work is to have the tripod in front of me set up and ready to use. I then step up on the tripod so Im so close to the tripod I cant physically shoot. I then pick up the tripod oh so carefully and slowly and lift it up just a tad above the sand and move it forward only as far as my arms can reach. I then slowly walk up to the tripod as I just described, repeating the process until Im as close as I want to be physically. When I am in the place I want to be for shooting, I push down on the leading, front leg of the tripod so its pushed into the sand/mud to provide the greatest amount of stability possible.

Were using the tripod as a pseudo portable blind. to make this work, going slow is important. What if youre not shooting stand-ing up, how do you make it work? this brings up a very important point, shooting angle. If at all possible, you should be shooting on your knees if not on your belly a majority of the time. Knee pads can work wonders in permitting you to get around on the beach with-

out a seashell piercing into your knee (oh, just the thought of that gives me the willies!). If youre going to be shooting both high and low, using the performance action of your gitzo tripod is the fastest and easiest way to go up and down. If youre going down for the count then just use enough leg extension as needed (being sure that last leg is extended enough to keep the joints out of the sand). With this, you just slide up on your knees, picking up the tripod with your arms and working your way closer.

Working the birds on pass-a-grill beach, lying flat on the ground to completely blow away the background is a killer technique to make the subject visibly stand out. the locals will give you a funny look, but the photographic view from down there is killer!

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getting down flat means taking the lens out of the tripod and putting it flat on the ground. the visual echoes panning plate is the only way to go here. this ground pod permits you to pan with the lens while youre flat on the ground and is a rock solid support. I personally like putting the panning plate in a frisbee, which makes sliding it around on the sand/mud a snap. Knee pads still help here as well (pass-a-grill beach is a world class seashell collectors beach) to keep them sharp *^%#! from jabbing into you.

Whether on your knees or lying on your belly, have a small wash cloth sized towel with you. In the process of getting up and or down, you will at some point put your hands in the sand. sand sticks to your hands and if you rest your hand on your lens barrel to stabilize it like you should or you manually focus, the sand from your hand transfers to your lens and then problems start.

When youre at north beach, its very doubtful youll be working on your knees or lying on your belly because youll be standing in water. typically, just being out in the water a short distance (which might be ankle high water) is all it takes to get on the same level as the wading birds and putting them at ease. all you need to do to approach them is just remember not to splash your way through the water. Keep your feet below the surface and shuffle your way up closer works wonders. many photographers make the huge mistake of planting themselves once they are in the water. Wrong-o! move with the birds! they are constantly moving as they are feeding. Keep up with them. After a very short period they will just

ignore you and thats when the great images emerge. just work behind your tripod, push the leading front leg down into the mud, use proper long lens tech-nique and capture the magic before you!

Its not all groundedWhats so incredibly cool about bird photography is, its bird photography! If youre photographing a grizzly bear, you know its going to walk right or left but its certainly not going to take flight. but with birds, you can get the portrait, you can get the

feeding shot and you can get the flight shot! birds in flight are such a transfixing feat of nature that Im often mesmerized by the sheer effortless ability they have to take the wind and go with it. how do we take this feat and bring it to life in our still medium? that is the challenge.

first and foremost youve got to have some basics so second na-ture they are no longer basics, but natural. Lets cover the basics briefly. panning while handholding first requires proper handhold-ing technique (if you dont know that, head to the website). then, you want to be sure you twist at the trunk to follow the bird in the viewfinder. dont be rude, stop shooting when its a butt shot! track the subject and continue to track it until the fir-ing of the shutter is complete. shooting on a tripod is the same approach. use proper long lens technique, then pan and shoot with the bird until its basically dead in front of you. these are the basics youve got to have so down pat that you dont have to even think about them. you want to do only one thing and that is concentrate on the subject.

there are very few rules in photography I pay attention to let alone pass along, but this is one I follow the majority of the time. When the skies are solid overcast, dont photograph birds in flight. the gray background besides being a real sucky color (and poor substitute for blue) presents us with an exposure range that our camera cant capture. that exposure range is between the gray sky itself and

the underside of the bird in the shadow area. Its a no win situa-tion so dont do it. Why not use flash? Well, that takes care of the shadow detail but is the sky any bluer? Its your call of course, Im just passing along an old established rule that I actually think is pretty darn accurate. (and if youre photographing birds on water on a totally overcast day, what color is the water?)

one thing many dont pay attention to when they are shoot-ing birds in flight is the birds feathers. you have plenty of birds in florida to pick from so be choosey. make sure they have all their pri-maries and secondary feathers and not only have them, but also are in good shape. (If you dont know what Im talking about, add that to your homework list.) once that has been determined, place the bird in the viewfinder. dont feel you have to have the camera plum with the earth. you can if you have the skills, tilt the camera so the bird flying is rendered in the viewfinder and final image at the angle your want for your photograph. you might be thinking that you have a hard enough time just getting the eye sharp to be attempting anything like this, but give yourself some credit. It might take time but its something worth striving for in your flight photography.

you will more than likely have lots of opportunities with a particular species of bird in flight so think outside the box. While at brandon rookery the night we had the coopers hawk keep-ing the glossy Ibis aloft, I tried everything in the book, which

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included shooting vertically rather than horizontally and with the camera at an angle not truly vertical. the goal was to in-crease the angle of the flight to emphasize what seemed like a panic in the ibis caused by the coops.

just like earthly photographic pursuits you want to place your flying subject in front of the best of backgrounds. this is the biggest challenge. photographing the roseatte spoonbills at sunset was a challenge because there was only a sliver of light coming through the clouds on the horizon. there was only a sliver of sky that didnt have trees and other obstacles in the background. so, by ignoring all the other birds and focusing in on this very narrow shooting alley I was able to capture one of my favorite flight shots, the roseatte spoonbill looking down its crazy bill at us.

there are only a couple locales I know of in north america where cool photos of big flocks of birds can regularly be cap-tured and florida is one of them. Large flocks often befuddle photographers because there is so much happening its hard to narrow the focus, literally, down to just one bird in a flying mass. I would like to suggest that you pan with the large flock and watch for the design pattern to unfold in the viewfinder and then press the shutter release. If after a couple of seconds a pattern doesnt emerge, then start the pan over again until you do find the design pattern. typically when you find a design that works, its literally

the bird in the dead center of the frame that you want to focus on.

Cut yourself some sharpness!OK, I told you about f/8, which Im sure is now etched permanently onto your bird lens barrel. We need to take sharpness a step further by tricking the mind into seeing our images as sharper than tech-nically they might be. have you ever heard of exposing for contrast to pump up apparent sharpness? Its really quite simple and an age old trick. but increasing the contrast in a photograph, we make the very slight black edges along feathers blacker. In doing so there is more separation between the feathers so then our mind sees more detail, which it relates to us as being sharper.

this apparent sharpness comes from a simple minus 1/2 expo-sure bump. seriously, this will increase the apparent sharpness of your bird photographs. now, if the image is not sharp to start with this same technique will make them look less in focus so only use it if youre brave enough. Keep in mind this extra con-trast bump via underexposure at the same time will saturate your colors a bit. thats not a bad thing but a good thing.

How uncommon is the common?yeah, yeah, weve all photographed a gull just sitting there. gulls are great, we can practice on them, make fun of them but hardly

does anyone give them their just rewards. they are the perfect example though of what Im talking about, taking the common and making an uncommon photograph. artie morris always said that if you watch a gull for ten minutes it will do something stupid that makes a great photograph. how right he is!

all birds do things that when frozen in time look funny, elegant, biological, human or simply impossible. the trick is to press the button to capture it! Im probably the worst at watching this great stuff in the viewfinder and after a laugh or amazement doing a homer, doh! this particular trip I wanted to not have any of those moments and Im so happy to report that I didnt and captured a whole bunch more of them than ever before (the photo of the reddish egret peering under its wing is an example). how did I get past the doh!?

I mentally kept asking myself, What biological thing is it going to do next? then the moment the answer clicked in my mind I clicked the camera. typically that click started a chain of events in a matter of heartbeats ending up with the motordrive blasting and the moment captured. many times my imagination would get the best of me and in my mind was some crazy thing that never materialized but it kept me on my toes, kept me watching and I ended up with my biggest library of uncommon images coming from a shoot in florida.

I do have to give credit where credit is due. the Laughing gulls

were a huge part of this success. I focused in on them every single moment I could. I worked them over and over and over again for two weeks. the Laughing gull file was by far the largest file of all the species that came back from florida. the silly images were great but it was the amazing elegant images of the Laughing gulls doing what they do best, being birds and flying that made a huge impression on me and just what is possible when we strive to make the common, uncommon.

And next time, what?thats the best part of all, I didnt capture everything so darn it, I will have to go back again, and then probably again and again! I know there will be new tools next time I go. I know Ill be a bet-ter photographer and will know more biology, which can only help me improve on my next excursion. heck, I learned from my homework things like f/8 was what I liked and after shooting at just f/8 for two weeks, I know its what I like for the birds of florida. I learned about some new locales that I have to venture back to. tampa bay and brandon rookery are only going to get better and better with time. Its all real simple, capturing great florida bird photographs when you boil it all down. there are only really two things you need to come back with great bird photographs from florida, f/8 and being there!

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you start by running the cd software that is included with the Wt-4a. (In the us, its the 4a, other countries it might be 4, 4b, 4c etc but set up is all the same.) It installs two programs, Wt-4 setup utility and thumbnail selector. you dont have to load either one of these technically to make things work, but it is a whole lot easier to use with the Wt-4 setup utility installed. and before you try to get the camera and computer to talk to each other, youll want camera control pro 2 installed on your computer (you can get a trail version from the nikon website at the very least).

the Wt-4 setup utility is a cool little program and vast improvement from the past for programming the D3/D300s settings for connecting wirelessly. you can still peck away on the cameras menus at all the settings, but the utility is already paid for (comes with Wt-4a) and works really well so I highly recommend using it. Being on the Windows / D3 side, thats what I connected up. using the supplied usb2 cable that comes with the Wt-4a, you connect your camera to your computer. the Wt-4a comes with a small rubber door for the end of the usb cable where it connects to the uSB port on the D3 / D300 (different from the one that comes with the D3 body). It does a good job of keeping the usb cable attached to the camera so I recommend using it. once the cable connects the camera to the computer, turn on the camera and let Windows go through its discovery

mode and once done, launch the utility.once you click past the battery warning, the select action

menu comes up; you want to click on add/edit and then click next. click on add new profile > next. you need to give what youre creating a Profile name; I chose D3-1, D3-2 and D3-3 for each of my three bodies. next, select profile type, which with the Wt-4a, computer and Interface type Wireless & ethernet >next. this is the only tricky page of the set up, Wireless settings. your D3/D300 & WT-4a are going to be their own wireless network so you have to name it and remember that name for when it comes time to set up the new network on your computer. so you need to come up with a network name (ssId) and enter it. next, the majority of you will go with ad-hoc for communication mode since well be on location with our notebooks talking directly to the WT-4a/D3. Channel can be any number you want; I went with 1. authentication is open since out in the middle of a forest there arent too many other shooters around. (If youre using the unit where others might be online, you might want to select another option.) encryption is none > next. check obtain Ip address automatically works the majority of the time for our needs > next. you have a profile information screen appear next. person-ally, I made a screen grab of it so I could refer to it later if needed without having to hook up the D3 because thats the only way you can see the info (would be nice if you could just print it out).

With that, once you turn off your camera its programmed for wire-less connection. (The same steps apply to the D300.)

Ive been told (dont know this firsthand) that the next step is real easy on the mac side, not always so on the Windows side. you now have to tell your computer that there is a wireless network out there (the Wt-4a and camera) that you want to connect with. using a Dell M4300, I personally rely on the Dell Wireless utility to manage my wireless connections. Its pretty simple, click on add, type in the ssId thats created in the Wt-4 setup utility, click on ad hoc network, set channel, network authentication and the computer is up and going. Is there a possibility it wont go as smoothly for you? oh heck yeah! there are a lot of variables that could prevent easy connection from wireless board in your computer (maybe you dont have one and then its external) or you have an older computer or version of Windows (were on XP Pro), entering the wrong number or letter case, to a whole list of other things I cant think of.

here are a couple of ideas on set up, if things dont go real smooth. first thing to do is reboot and then let the computer and Wt-4a have some time to talk. connection is not instantaneous but might take a minute or two, so be patient! the Wt-4a has three Led lights, one means its turned on, one means it has established a network con-nection and the third is an orange light (the other two being green) which indicates youre screwed. the second or middle light, the net-work light, blinks when the connection is up and strong. the speed of the blinking indicates the health of the signal. be sure you have two

green lights when looking at whether you have a connection prob-lem at the computer or not. If you have any other wireless network connected, turn it off. Lastly, be sure you turn on the Wt-4a and then turn on your camera. Its how the system wants it to broadcast. check to make sure if you set ad hoc in the setup utility you clicked on ad hoc on the computer network setting. If that doesnt work, put it aside for a day and come back to it fresh.

And with that, your D3 or D300 is on the air!

Camera settings youve got to enterWhile the utility does set up the wireless portion of the camera, the method in which the camera functions when connected wirelessly is set up by you. setup menu >Wireless transmitter gets you into main menu on the D3 for setting up the rest of what you need. youll need to be in pc mode to make ccp2 and Live view work. any other mode does not permit use with Live view with the Wt-4a. When you select pc mode another screen appears, the profile you created in Wt-4 setup utility should appear, select that Profile and then click OK.

If youre like most normal photographers, youll poke around the other menus just to see whats up. When youre not in pc mode, you might find an option not to transmit your photos but rather, just simply store them in the cf cards in the camera. you might say, ah ha, I can se-lect this and permit me to use Live view and not lose it while shooting! While that might not make sense to you now, it will in a moment and hate to tell you, but been there, done that and no such luck!

T news Continued from pg 5

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Peek-a-boo!now were talkin literally to our camera and remotely with no wires attached. this is dang cool! this is when we launch camera connection pro 2 (I have Windows autoplay set to automatically launch CCP2 when the WT-4a/D3 network is detected). For those of you not familiar with ccp2, it permits tethered or wireless operation with your D3 or D300. you can connect hardwire just like you did during set up and with ccp2 operate the camera, change settings, enter info and use Live view to operate the camera entirely from your computer monitor. everything you can do hardwired you can do wirelessly with the Wt-4a. yeah, you can use Live view wirelessly!

the main objective of this system didnt take into consideration of us wildlife photographers (whats new) so there are a couple of items you need to take into consideration: Battery life of the WT-4a is about 90-120 minutes using Live View Live View after an hour warms up the CCD which might create noise Operational distance isnt miles, more like 100 yards line of sight It wants to transmit images to be stored on the computer

In my humble opinion, some of this could have been opera-tionally thought out a little better (maybe a firmware upgrade will add some options). the battery life doesnt concern me be-cause thats about how long at max you should spend at a nest (my main use of this technology). operational distance isnt a big problem either because were not backpacking miles with this rig. noise isnt really an issue since were not working at night. but the transmitting of images is a problem.

so far I havent found a work around for this. When the Wt-4a/D3 is talking to your computer and CCP2 is launched, you click on camera > Live view (tripod) and another window appears. Its this window that once you click on start Live view, you can see on your computers monitor the actual scene realtime that the camera sees through the lens. this part is really cool! taking a

photo though has a hitch or two (as alluded to a moment ago).If you need to change the aperture or shutter speed, you have to

close this window and go back to ccp2 (bad programming). from the Live view (tripod) window itself, you can fine tune focus (start af) and thats it. but theres a bigger rub, you click on shoot and the Live view turns off as the camera fires and starts the uploading of your images. If youre shooting raw +jpeg, both files are going to be uploaded and while that is happening you cant fire the camera or activate Live view again. I havent found a way to stop the uploading of files or have Live view stay on, yet.

so heres the deal, youve got to think through your shots. While you might have the camera set to ch, youre not even close to that type of firing rate.

A couple thoughts on physical setupjust having the gear isnt enough, photography still rules. because once you have all this very cool technology working for you, youve got to get it in front of a subject. and before you do that, youve got to find the subject and determine the rest of the gear setup you need and be ready. and before that, test it all!

you need to set up your camera and flash and have a game plan for that rig before you even think about connecting the Wt-4a. once you have the basic camera flash setup in sync, you need to make sure your flash is in sync with the light you think youre going to be shooting. a great test subject is a glass christmas ornament, something shiny and will give you instant feedback on your flash placement. once that is done, you need to think through all the rest of the variables and then and only then, test the whole rig with the Wt-4a up and running. If photographing nesting birds is totally new to you, youll find this large paper Ive written on the topic available to you anytime. www.moosepeterson.com/photo-tips/nesting.html

Can we take this further?oh yeah, I dont think weve even begun to see the potential with this technology. Im more than sure there are dIyers out there who are much smarter than me who will take this whole technology to a new level. a great example of this can be found at www.sports-shooter.com/news/1925. This piece takes remote photography to a whole new level using a cradlepoint rather than a notebook.

Is this a cure-all for remotes?being removed from the camera is the last thing I want to do. there are too many subtle changes that can be made to a photograph from behind the camera for creating dramat-ic impact to leave a camera in a static setup. but simply there are times when being behind the camera are not an option. just like photographing the nesting biology of a black swift at night. for those times, this is the best option weve got going for us. I want to encourage you to give it a try and publish your successes and any tips so the rest of us can learn. Its a small world, remote isnt as remote anymore!

Its the begInnIng of the month and the maILs In, IncLud-Ing the latest collection of magazines. you thumb through your favorite ones, looking at the article titles and scanning for some-thing that grabs you. you check out this and read that as you look for that word of advice or wisdom that lights up your imagination and sends you out the door with your camera. you flip page to page to page and then it hits you. theres a photo glaring up at you of a subject youve photographed many times before and youve got some really great shots of it. the problem is as you see it, the photograph on that page before you sucks! youve got bet-ter, way better, but why isnt it your photograph on that page? the challenge of the ages is how do you get your photograph in front of the photo buyer so that your photograph, the better photo-graph, ends up on that page?!

money is tight again, but unlike the old days during economic hard times, buyers of photography are still buying. they are perhaps buying even more than normal. for the business savvy photographer, this might just be the time to work a little harder to get your foot in the door. prepare now to break out when the better times come (and they will come). but like I said, money is tight. With capital being tight and being spent on being behind the camera (as you should), how do you get your name and images out in front of buyers?

many are turning to the web, thousands actually! Why not, its

free, right? you see lots of photographers with web sites and blogs; if its working for them then why cant it work for you? In 1997 when the internet was not really even a decade old, a handful of sites were on a list that fit what today are commonly known as blogs. today whole websites are dedicated to tracking blogs. ac-cording to blogspulse, there are over 78 million pages on the inter-net, fitting the criteria of a blog while blog herald say its closer to 34.5 million actual blogs. That was million with an M! you still think a blog will help you get your images in front of a photo buyer? Lets just explore that thought for a moment.

It begins before the mouse clickthe blog only does you good if folks come to it, come to it regu-larly and, this is the biggie, like what they see and read! making this all happen begins long before you log in to post your blog!

photography, its all about photography, you cant lose sight of that! a successful blog requires entertainment and education and in our realm, that means good photography with good anecdotal stories. the blog isnt the same as a website, which might have everything from a-Z on a topic, but rather a means to quickly get caught up or enlightened. We need to take this a step further if we want to use our blog to bring in and find photo buyers.

the goal here is to make the most of our time and money to get our images in front of the photo buyers to make the sale. this means youve gotta have the photos to start with. Without this cornerstone your odds of success are dramatically low-ered. to move forward, were going to assume then youve got the images required to make this proposition a worthy business venture. With that great image then, how do you get it in front of the photo buyer in all its splendor? how do you do that when were talking about a 200k sized file that is only 495px across at 72dpi?

this is where photoshop and knowing it is really important. youve got to finish your photo-graph for the blog. In some cases, this might not be the same as

finishing the image for print. It all

depends on the photograph itself. to get black and white images to look really good on a blog I find challenging and takes a number of iterations until I feel somewhat good about how the b&W comes across. there are a number of things youve got to do to your

Photo Bi$ The Weblogcan it help your business?

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image before blogging it to make the photograph shine. the biggest thing is to convert the profile to srgb!

While I save my images to the prophoto rgb space and I shoot in the adobe rgb space, when it comes to posting the images they are converted to the srgb color space. this is because that is the color space of the web. to make the colors as accurate as we can on the widest variety of computer monitors (because not everyone viewing your image is using a calibrated monitor), srgb is the least you need to do to your image.

your image needs to appear with some little extras to be important. drop shadows, borders, even the look of a gallery poster can make your image take on a life on the blog even though very small but very important. that perception can catch a photo buyers eye and while the perception doesnt always match reality, for our purposes, thats a good thing.

selecting an image for a blog requires you think through the size of the subject. the images on a blog are little bigger than thumbnails. this small size requires that the subject, content of the image be large enough to be seen in that small scale. this does not mean you have to have all eyeball images, quite the contrary. but you need to use all the tools available to catch the minds eye so in that small thumbnail the photo buyers atten-tion is grabbed and reeled in.

once youve selected an image, I highly recommend you fin-ish it as normal. this means you use your normal workflow all the way into photoshop. here is where you might want to make some changes to your normal workflow. the first thing is the sharpen-ing. because of the small image size of the blog photo, sharpening typically is not required and in fact, can cause the image to look pixilated if not done correctly. think about color. over processing in photoshop really shines through when that image is sized down and saved as a jpeg. everyone knows when youve screwed up.

to facilitate the quick and consistent look of the images on the moose news blog a set of actions was created in photoshop. the file is saved as a psd prior to blog prepping. this is so if anything gets goofed up in the next step, there is a quick fall back position to make a quick rescue. there are two horizontal and two vertical blog poster actions that Ive created. the actions do everything from changing from 16bit to 8bit, to converting to srgb to plac-ing the poster title on the image. the majority of the time, the image makes it quite obvious to use either a white or black border around the print. sometimes I dont know how I want to post it so Ill get one of each and then look at them to decide.

the bottom line is, the image is selected and finished based on one very simply yet very important precept. the photo on the blog looks the best it can and is presented in the most profes-sional and attractive way it can be, consistently. dont think for a moment that once a photo buyer finds your blog they wont go back to see what else youve blogged. that record or body of your work represented on your blog must shine through. If it does, then there are really good odds the photo buyer will take the next step.and after that initial mouse click?

OK, youve got a blog and youve got some fine looking im-ages up, what next? obviously the blog has some basic contact

info so the photo buyer can find you, but there needs to be more. this is where the website comes into play. What, you thought a blog by itself would do the job?

Its possible it will, depending on how you set up everything. If you are successful in grabbing the photo buyers attention, they are probably going to want to see more images and learn more about you. this back end info is way too much to include in the blog itself so you need to have actual web pages set up to provide greater info about you and your photography.

one great page(s) to put up is a stock file list. a stock file list is no more than a listing of all the images in your files. you dont list every one verbatim, but rather you would do something like have a category for birds, then list under that the families included in your files and then the individual species under that like, birds > raptors > bald eagle, northern harrier, peregrine falcon. this is just a simple list that with a simple scan provides the photo buyer with an idea of the breadth of your files. just as the name implies, stock file list is a list of your stock (photos) you have on file.

you might want to have some type of gallery of images page. this is a page where youd highlight some of the images that you really like, and/or those you think a photo buyer would re-ally like. the goal is that the page loads really fast, is super clean and is updated/changed regularly.

another page you might want to consider creating is a bio page. this page gives such details as the size of your stock file (quantity), where youve been published, stock file strengths (you specialize in birds for example), accomplishments (awards) and affiliations (organizations). this is a simple page that again youd keep up to date and it would at a glance basically give the photo buyer more information about you and more confidence in giving you a call. and thats what you want, the phone call, the opportu-nity to talk one on one with the photo buyer so your charms and personality help clinch the deal your blog started for you.

Gotta watch that click!Image protection is a must! I can tell you firsthand that the theft of images on the web is a serious problem that youve gotta take into consideration. you obviously want your images out there so the photo buyer can see them, youre using a blog to maximize your capital, but you dont want your time eaten up chasing those who grab your images. What can you do?

to be totally honest with you, nothing. the most you can do is keep honest people honest. If someone wants your image and its on the web, they can have it. yes, Ive been told by many, many folks that if you make the file real small, no one will grab it because its too small to do anything with. tell that to the person who sent me an 8x10 image made from one of our web images, asking that I autograph and return it. or ask the folks who email you saying they love waking up to seeing your image on their computer in the form of wallpaper. Weve had this and a Lot more! Its the risk you take and in the long run, we feel its one worth taking.

one thing I highly recommend you do is be very careful how you name your image files and any tagging. there are a number

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of search engines out there that have their robots looking for im-ages by file name and tags and then place what they find in a data-base that the public can grab (and do) thinking its public domain. you might be asking if you dont use names or tags that can easily be searched, how do you grab the photo buyers attention? Its a two edge sword, having the right person find your images while preventing the wrong person from grabbing them.

When you upload your images and you post your blog, you have the ability to tag. each blog program is slightly different. I highly recommend you very carefully read how your program inserts the tags before you use them. Wordpress, which is the free blog program we use, provides you with tagging the blog posting and the images separately. personally, because I already have a huge blog following (thanks to you!), I try to minimize image theft by using no tagging. you might want to do differently especially if youre just starting out.

most think of just the left mouse click, but dont forget the right one. the right click is how many grab your images. oth-ers have a pluggin for their browser so when they do so on an image they can see all the eXIF data. Many photographers worry about their secrets getting out so destroy their eXIF in photoshop in the web image creation. personally I dont worry about it so you can read all the reported eXIF on my images. these are the little things youve got to take into consideration when youre selecting and posting that image.

How many blogs did you check today? personally, there are half a dozen blogs I check first thing each day to see whats happening that I should know about. then during the day, there are another dozen or so I ramble through for the fun of it. In the overall scheme of the blogess-sphere, thats nothing. While weve asked the question, weve never had a photo buyer tell us how many blogs he/she checks out (or even more importantly, which ones). but just doing the math of how much time it takes to look at blogs youve already found, how do you go about finding new ones to check out? how do

photo buyers go about finding new blogs to zero in on?to find the answer, I went asking the person I count on to put my

web pages and blog at the top, jan allinder www.dig.us.com. to the question, What advice do you give the new blogger for get-ting seen? her answer was:

one of the best ways is to have highly ranked sites like yours & Scott Kelbys link to it. Another is to submit their sites to the search engines. Google: http://www.google.com/addurl/ http://google.com/webmastertools and yahoo: http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html. And not to leave out MSN: http://beta.search.msn.com.cn/docs/submit.aspx?form=Wsdd2. there are plenty of other tools as well. just have them visit the Wordpress forums (http://wordpress.org/support/) and do a few searches.

so were kinda right back where we started, how do you get the photo buyer to your blog? you start now by posting strong images and consistently posting. our son jake is a great example. he got his blog up last fall and while he isnt in the business yet, his blog gets lots of traffic and it is driving the photo buyers to his door. yeah, dad helped in that I put a link on my blog for his blog, but he has to do the work. he had to shoot and post strong images every week. thats really much easier said than done, but it does pay off. sorry, I cant put everyones blog link on my blog, but I firmly believe that right now if you blog every week at the very least, fresh, new and strong images, you can in six months see a business difference and for the price, there is no better deal right now!

putting up a blog takes very little time. Ive seen my assistant josh have one up for a client within what seems like minutes and it looks stunning. having your blog work for you takes more than a good image, cute titles and a copy of Wordpress on your server to get the photo buyers a comin. We have seen firsthand the change in the last six plus months in clients turning to the blog to find new material. If you have the photography, and thats the biggie, you can make the rest happen with some simple thought and execu-tion. It is strictly up to you what the answer is to the question: The Weblog can it help your business?

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Cover reddish egret peeking while preening. D3, 600VR w/TC-17e

Page 3 stout grove at sunset, jedidiah smith state park, D3, 24PC-E

Page 4 great egret preening in a single shaft of light. D3, 600VR w/TC-17e

Page 5 tricolored heron right after preening. D3, 600VR w/TC-17e

Page 6 roseatte spoonbill coming in at dusk. D3, 600VR

Page 7 White Ibis landing way after sunset, D