http://vimeo.com/83683371
Join me as I explore the process behind photographing the various species for the Daily Species and how I do it in a boat in this week’s episode of Behind the Lens.
Field Studio in a Boat
My wife Carrie holds the background for my field studio while I photograph a Grey (Mangrove) Snapper in the fish tank.
During the past week I have been working hard to document many of the species that are found in the waters around Little Gasparilla Island. To do this, I really needed to make my field studio portable so that I could photograph various species of fish before releasing them. I worked hard to set up my field studio and aquarium in the boat where space is at a serious premium. Add some strong winds, high boat traffic, and a giant white diffuser and things got pretty complicated. Fortunately, my wife Carrie was with me and could act as a flash stand (and she also caught most of the specimens I photographed).
The studio you see here looks complicated but is actually pretty simple. It is all based around a 10 gallon fish tank where the subject is held. I have a single flash above the tank with a small diffuser to light the subject itself. The white background is the large diffuser that Carrie is holding and I use two flashes to light it evenly. Not only does this provide the background, it also provides some backlighting to highlight the translucent parts of the subject. This exact setup was used for a lot of subjects, some of which will be published in the coming weeks, but if you want to see some results now, check out the Grey (Mangrove) Snapper and keep an eye out for the Gag Grouper, Spotted Seatrout, and Diamond Lizardfish coming soon.
Check back tomorrow for the next episode of Behind the Lens for a more in depth look at the effort behind creating the photographs for the Daily Species over the past week.
Where it Began
A winter sunset over the Gulf of Mexico on the beach of Little Gasparilla Island
It has been less than a week since Filming Florida officially launched and so far so great! Over the past few months, I spent a lot of time thinking about where and how I was going to start Filming Florida. Ultimately, I decided to start where it all began for me, on the west coast of Florida on a small barrier island called Little Gasparilla Island. My family has been fortunate to co-own a beach house with a few other families on this small barrier island, only accessible by boat. I can’t remember my first visit here as I was only 10 months old, but countless trips over the last 30 years has really shaped my passion for exploration and learning about the natural world.
I grew up here fishing with my dad and had an amazing amount of freedom to explore on my own, even from a very young age. I think I was probably only eight or so when I was constantly wading around the dock with a net catching small fish, shrimp, crabs, and the occasional seahorse. It was just a few years after that when I was driving around in a small skiff fishing and exploring by myself. This really is the place where I fell in love with natural Florida and I can’t think of a better place to start the journey of Filming Florida.
And it Begins!
The sun lights up the clouds over a lagoon with Red Mangrove islands at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge before dawn.
Happy New Year! Filming Florida is now live and I am thrilled. After months of planning, packing, and preparation, I am working full time on this project and can’t wait for the adventures and journey. I’ve got a ton of plans and am really excited to revisit familiar haunts and explore new locations. I invite you to join me on this journey and follow the project on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and of course on this site. The introductory episodes of both Behind the Lens and Nature Profiles are now online with new episodes coming next week. I hope everyone has a great start of 2014 and I look forward to sharing this journey with you!
Nearly Packed!
The massive pile of equipment ready to be loaded into my car for the trip south! No idea how it all is going to fit! There are so many different facets to this project that I need equipment for each and every task!
I spent the entire day yesterday packing up all my camera, camping, tree climbing, and scuba equipment. It is just about all organized and ready to load into the car. I honestly have no idea how it is going to fit. I think a couple of those big pelican cases that are buried in the back of the pile are going to have to go on the roof! I plan to leave a week from today or tomorrow, but I’ll be in New York City starting Wednesday through the rest of this week. That means loading commences tomorrow!
I am Committed
I have a quote hanging on my bulletin board on my desk in my office. I hung it up a couple years ago and while it is always there, I hadn’t actually looked at it and read it in quite some time. Just the other day, I decided to take a moment and read it again.
Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, the providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets:
‘Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!’– W. H. Murray in The Scottish Himalaya Expedition, 1951
The quote, or a slight variation of it, is often attributed to Goethe (as it is on my bulletin board), but after a bit of research I found that the entire quote is actually from W. H. Murray as he is quoting a “very free” translation of Goethe by John Aster. Whoever wrote it is irrelevant to it’s meaning and impact. Committing to something is a major step and that single action can have far reaching consequences.
Back on my 30th birthday in late October, I officially made this website public and shortly after that, I was accepted by LINC into their ArtsLINC program and they became my fiscal sponsor. The project was out there. It was public. I had backing from a pretty incredible organization. I was committed. Just last week, I was visiting family in Orlando over the holidays and started making plans for my move from Ithaca, New York to Florida for this project. After a lot of discussion and debate, I settled on a date and it is soon… I will be departing Ithaca on either Monday, December 16th or Tuesday, December 17th, weather dependent. That is less than 10 days away. I am committed and this project is happening. There is lots to do and plenty to prepare by January 1st, but momentum is building and I am excited! I hope you will join me!
Getting the Image – 1 in 98
Black-capped Chickadee taking off. The image I was after!
After a couple mornings shooting in my field studio at my backyard bird feeder, I felt like I had pretty much nailed down the setup. I’ve got a few tweaks to figure out once I get a couple pieces of gear, but overall, I’m good to go. Now that I have the basics covered, I decided it was time to take the next step. My goal was to capture something more than just a bird sitting on a perch, I wanted some action! I had been sort of trying it for a few days, trying to get a picture of a chickadee taking off. I’d had a tiny bit of luck but mostly was getting out of focus images. So on Saturday, I decided to make that my single goal.
This image came from the previous morning and was so close. However, the wings got clipped and the bird’s head isn’t in focus. It provided the inspiration to do better.
I setup my background and flashes a little bit differently. The flashes got moved closer to the background and closer to the bird. Basically, I set it up like I would a high speed flash setup to capture hummingbirds. Flashes get closer and their strength gets lowered and then the duration of the flash gets shorter and therefore the action gets frozen. I then focused on a single perch and waited. I set my frame, racked the focus a little bit forward from the perch, and used a cable release to take the shot anytime a chickadee landed on the perch.
Here is what my Lightroom catalog looked like once I imported all the images into my catalog. You can see the one image I ended up keeping that is highlighted in blue.
In my morning session, I took 98 frames. I kept 1. As you can see, the timing was the issue. Getting the bird in the frame, much less in the right part of the frame, was crazy difficult. The small chickadees are just so fast that it was nearly impossible. A few Blue Jays came in and the timing was a ton easier but they were so big they didn’t fit in the frame. At the end of the morning though, I got a single frame that is in focus, sharp, and a dramatic moment with the wings raised. Proof of concept established and my setup and technique is solid. On to new tasks this week… Stay tuned!
More Testing and Higher Diversity
American Goldfinch (Spinus tristis)
Towards the end of last week, I spent a couple of mornings sitting in my blind and photographing in order to test out my field studio for birds for the Meet Your Neighbours project and my Daily Species. It was nice to get some additional species diversity for fun and test exposure across different color patterns and plumages. After four sessions, I believe I now have the setup basically dialed in and ready to go. I will have at least two mornings of shooting in Florida over the Thanksgiving holiday so I need to be sure I have it all ready since I will have very limited time. Here are some of the resulting images. Let me know what you think!
Downy Woodpecker (Picoides pubescens)
Blue Jay (Cyanocitta cristata)
Carolina Wren (Thryothorus ludovicianus)
Hairy Woodpecker (Picoides villosus)
Partnering with LINC
Red-bellied Woodpecker feeding on the bloom of a Stiff-leafed Wild Pine.
Today, I am pleased to announce the first major support I have received for Filming Florida and hopefully this will lead to many more opportunities. I am honored to say that I have been accepted into the ArtsLINC program offered by the Legacy Institute for Nature and Culture (LINC) (UPDATE: LINC is now officially the Florida Wildlife Corridor and this is reflected on the support page). This means that LINC will act as a Fiscal Agent for Filming Florida. This essentially means that LINC will extend their 501c3 non profit status to cover Filming Florida. This will benefit the project immensely, opening the door to many fundraising opportunities. I would like to take a moment to thank photographer Carlton Ward Jr., who founded LINC, for his vision and dedication to conservation through photography and art. Additionally, executive directory Mallory Dimmitt has been great in her support for this project through the ArtsLINC application process.
I first learned about LINC a few years ago when Carlton, Mallory, Joe Guthrie, Elam Stotlzfus, and others started the Florida Wildlife Corridor project a few years ago. The incredible conservation work that they have done through that project as well as the multitude of other projects uniting a large group of talented photographers and other artists across the state is inspiring. I am both honored and humbled that Filming Florida will be affiliated with this organization.
The Art of Juggling
Over this last weekend I have been working hard on Filming Florida and planning for my upcoming start in January. I quickly realized that I am going to become a master juggler as I work on this project. There is so much to do and since it is just me, I am constantly working on different aspects of the project. Just this weekend, I spent time working on a fundraising strategy, initial startup budgets, technicals for the Daily Species, sourcing parts and pieces of various photographic kits, web design and planning, and a few other things. Having so much to do is a bit overwhelming but exciting as well.
I am finding that if I can focus on one piece of the project at a time, when my mind gets tired or burnt out on that subject, I can move to a totally different subject and be able to continue working. For example, yesterday I spent about 6 hours staring at spreadsheets dealing with budgets as well as complete lists of vertebrate species found in Florida. When my eyes started going cross-eyed after staring at the grids and small text of these massive spreadsheets, I was able to move to a different task, sourcing fish tanks and butterfly nets, which engaged a different part of my brain and allowed me to keep working. There may be a lot for me to do on this project but at least it is a diverse range of things so moving between tasks results in a refreshing change of pace or thought.
