Category Archives: On Location

Stories about how images were made.

A Meeting with a Painted Bunting

I had a meeting last week with a painted bunting. I came down from Raleigh; the bunting came up from somewhere in Cuba or Central America, and we met on Bald Head Island. I decided last year that the book I am currently working on about North Carolina’s barrier islands needed a photograph of a painted bunting. They can be quite common on the southern barrier islands of North Carolina, among the maritime forests, hammocks, or shrub thickets. Most people never see them, which is a shame because they are so outrageously spectacular. Some say the males look as if they have just leapt off the page of a children’s coloring book, I presume because young children aren’t encumbered by logic or previous experience when choosing which colors to use.

Since I had never worked with painted buntings before, I had no idea what to expect. I have been very lucky so far with this book, and I have learned that just putting myself in a position to succeed is often the most important thing. So many things are beyond my control that when I do succeed I just have to look to the sky and thank the universe for the gift when everything does come together.

This story began last fall when a workshop participant on Bald Head Island mentioned her friend had painted buntings coming to her feeder the previous summer. I was not interested in photographing birds on feeders, but at least I now knew a place where they would occasionally come down from the tree tops. What was even better about the location was the back porch allowed me to be up at the height the birds were perching, rather than looking up at them from the ground. The owners of the home graciously gave me permission to spend time on their property once the buntings retuned in the spring.

Fast forward to the predawn hours of last week, April 25th. The painted bunting had just arrived a week or so before to establish his three acres of territory for the breeding season. I arrived the night before so I could be on site before dawn. Although I had not worked with painted buntings before, I have worked with enough birds to know they love to sing at dawn, and the image I really wanted was a close-up of a male singing. I followed a boardwalk out to the edge of a maritime hammock and looked out into the salt marsh as the dawn light slowly started to spread across the sky.

Boardwalk to Bald Head Creek

While I watched the sunrise and waited for the birds to wake up I familiarized myself with the song of the painted bunting using a recording on my phone. You can listen to some recordings of the sweet warble of the painted bunting at the all about birds website.

As soon as light started to fill the sky, the birds started singing; northern cardinals, yellow-rumped warblers, Carolina wrens, house finches, and one painted bunting. I could hear him but I could not see him. I moved to the porch to get a better view over the vegetation. Before long the painted bunting perched in the cedar tree right by the porch and the feeder. I thought photographing singing behavior was going to be difficult, but he was singing in the first photograph I made of him.

Painted Bunting Silhouette

This image made me laugh because the low sun completely silhouetted the bird against the dawn sky and a silhouette of a painted bunting really seems to be missing the point to me. But it was a good sign that this was going to eventually work. As the morning wore on he was singing constantly. He would perch on top of a tree and sing, move to another tree top and sing, and slowly move around his territory. About once every hour he would end up back in the area of the feeder. He would perch on the live oak near the feeder and sing, fly down to the feeder and sing, eat a few seeds and sing, fly to the nearby cedar tree and sing, and then fly off to patrol his territory and sing some more.

Painted bunting singing in the tree tops

While this photograph shows him singing, it is just not good enough for the book; you can’t look into his eye and feel, just for this moment, that you know him.

While I waited the hour for him to come back, I had plenty of time to watch all the other activity in the area.

Green Anole

This anole was proudly displaying his dewlap on the same cedar tree the painted bunting liked to use. I really like the out of focus palmetto leaves in the background.

While watching the anole I noticed a second painted bunting. I could still hear the first one singing behind me so I knew this was a second bird. Unlike the first painted bunting, this one came in low, amongst the shrubs, and quiet, not making a peep. He went straight to the feeder, ate some seeds, and quietly flew off in the direction he came. It was obvious that this feeder was inside the territory of the male I had been photographing, and this second bird knew it.

I had one chance every hour to make the image I was after, but each time the painted bunting came near he was either too far away or obscured by branches. Finally, the sixth time, after about six hours, he perched right in front of me in the nearby live oak. The light was soft except for a shaft of hard light striking the green feathers on his back and his blue face.

Painted Bunting

I was only able to make two images before he started singing. It turns out photographing him not singing was the difficult thing. He lifted his head to the sky and let out his sweet warbling song. When he lifted his head he moved it out of the shaft of hard light that was striking his face, rendering more feather detail and more saturated color. His posture seemed to mirror the way I give thanks to the universe in moments like this, when months of planning, serendipitous conversations, and 6 hours of constant vigilance all come together to make an image. You will have to wait for the book to see the image of him singing, but this last image gives a sense of the intimate connection I was trying to capture.

Down the Wild Cape Fear

3 Replies

One of my photographs will appear on the cover of a new book by Philip Gerard about the Cape Fear River. The book will not be available until March, but you can check out the description and reviews and pre-order a copy on the UNC Press web site.

The cover photograph was made from the Lee County side of the Avents Ferry Bridge over the Cape Fear River. I wanted to make a wild landscape without any signs of human development. I also wanted to shoot from a bridge rather than the bank or a boat for a high vantage point to help the river appear to recede into the distance. Rather than spending a day driving to all the bridge crossings to scout locations, I used street view in Google Earth. In just a few minutes I was able to scout all the bridge crossings and identify the best location to make the image.

This is the same location viewed in Google Earth Street View in midday light.

I posted another image on the web site from the same morning back in September. The low bank of fog and calm water picked up the pink pastel color in the predawn sky.

Cape Fear River. Click to see a larger version.

2012 Bald Head Island Photography Workshop Results

5 Replies

I thought I would share some of the images I made during the Bald Head Island photography workshop last week. When we arrived at Cape Fear Point just after 4pm the sun was too high to make dramatic landscape light but it was making interesting shadows with the sand fences.

I’m not happy with this image but it is the best I was able to do under the circumstances. I would have preferred to find a perspective without any grass so I could make a more abstract image of just the fence and the shadows on the sand.

As the sun moved closer to the horizon it started to light the sand in interesting ways, especially near the point where the tide had sculpted repeating patterns in the shore. Eyes are naturally drawn to the sun as it sets but it is important to look around you at what the light is doing.

I made this image to demonstrate how the setting sun was causing the sand to glow and to show the colorful effects of mixing the warm light of the sun with the cool light of the shadows lit only by the blue sky.

The moment the sun dropped below the horizon I swung the camera around and started shooting in the opposite direction of the sunset. Here the sky is often lit by a range of pastel colors. Water and wet sand easily pick up this color.

Some participants did not have tripods and as the sun dropped below the horizon it became more difficult for them to hold their camera steady enough in the fading light. Rather than fight the slow shutter speeds I suggested they use it to their advantage and make intentionally blurred images.

I made this image to demonstrate for the workshop participants the effect of panning the camera horizontally with a slow shutter speed to create an abstract painterly effect.

The next morning we returned to Cape Fear Point before dawn to photograph the sunrise. There were a lot more pelicans, terns, and gulls to photograph during the morning session.

Three of the participants at the Bald Head Island photography workshop photographing the sunrise from Cape Fear Point.

I liked the curve of the shore and the sun reflected in the wet sand but not quite enough to make an image. When the pelicans flew through the scene it added some additional interest.

One of the participants photographing birds in flight.

Brown pelicans and terns over Frying Pan Shoals.

But the coolest images I made were at night. I invited all the workshop participants to join me at Cape Fear Point for a bonus free session to photograph the peak of the Orionid meteor shower from 3 to 6 am. No one took me up on that offer so I had the beach to myself, except for a fox that hung out with me for a while. Somehow, in the light of the milky way, I noticed the silhouette of a fox trotting down the beach. I watched it trot to within about 30 feet of me where it sat down as if this was the exact spot it had been determined to reach. We sat there together for about 5 minutes, looking south toward the milky way, but the fox evidently had a busy night and could not stay long.

The Peak of the Orionid Meteor Shower from Cape Fear Point. This is a composite image of 34 minutes of exposure time resulting in 29 captured meteors. Some of the more faint meteors are not visible in this low resolution jpeg.

After making the meteor image I noticed the planet Venus rising within the almost vertical band of zodiacal light. It is difficult to describe the feeling of standing on the edge of the sea, bathed in starlight, with the universe wheeling overhead, but I think this last image captures something of that feeling.

Venus rising in zodiacal light. Click the image to see a larger version.

The Oldest Known Longleaf Pine

7 Replies

A few days ago I spent an afternoon and evening with the oldest known longleaf pine. This tree is not the largest or the most symmetrical tree in the forest. Its gnarled branches and crooked trunk show the signs of 463 years worth of hurricanes, droughts, and fires. The tree lives on the Boyd Tract of the Weymouth Woods Sandhills Nature Preserve near Southern Pines, North Carolina. The Boyd Tract is the only old-growth longleaf pine forest left in the Sandhills region of North Carolina; it is a remnant of the kind of forest that once covered much of the Southeastern US.

The tree stands now in a landscape very different than the one it lived in for most of its life. Decades of fire suppression have allowed hardwood trees to fill in the once open pine forest, shading out the wiregrass that once covered the ground. The age of this tree was discovered by a graduate student studying tree growth rings in an attempt to learn about long term climate history. However, most of the old trees of the Boyd Tract have not been aged, and it is possible there is an even older tree here.

I made three images of the tree as the sun set and the stars appeared. It was a calm evening with almost no wind, and the tree stood still and silent.

The Oldest Longleaf Pine #1

The Oldest Longleaf Pine #2

The Oldest Longleaf Pine #3

Dancing with Fireflies

12 Replies

Common Eastern Firefly

This week I worked out a method for making a close-up photograph of a firefly in flight, at night, with its lantern lit. It is an almost impossible photograph to make, but that’s why it was so fun. This is the story of how I did it.

The first problem I had to solve was how to get the firefly in the frame and in focus. They are impossible to see through the viewfinder and shooting from the hip is just not accurate enough for the narrow angle of view of a macro lens. Autofocus is also out of the question because there is not enough light for the autofocus sensor and the subject is too small and fast for autofocus even in daylight. So I invented the Blevins Firefly Pointing Device (patent pending) to make shooting from the hip more possible. It is a wire coat hanger bent into a loop at one end that is attached to the camera tripod mount and bent into a right angle at the other end that points toward the center of the composition (but positioned just out of frame). With the lens manually focused to the same distance as the end of the pointer, you just need to position the subject above the pointer to hopefully capture an image with the subject in frame and in focus.

The Blevins Firefly Pointing Device in action

Photographing a firefly with its lantern lit required a lot of practice and luck. The first three evenings I spent chasing them around my yard taught me the characteristic flight pattern of this species. These are the Common Eastern Firefly (Photinus pyralis), also sometimes called the Big Dipper Firefly because its flight pattern is somewhat like the shape of that constellation. To attract the attention of a female, the male will start from a hover, then accelerate horizontally, often with a slight downward slope, then pull up sharply into another hover. The flash occurs just as he begins to pull up and creates a J shaped streak of yellow-green light. Learning to recognize this pattern made it possible to anticipate when the flash would occur, which was helpful. Unfortunately, the flash occurs while the firefly is moving and changing direction which means the camera needs to be moving along with the firefly.

The other challenge was balancing the exposure from the light that comes from the camera flash with the light that comes from the firefly so both will show up in the photograph. Here are a few images from early in the process where I was trying to work out how to balance the light.

This image was made with a small aperture for maximum depth of field to increase the chance of capturing an image in focus. The firefly's lantern was not bright enough to show up with such a small lens aperture, only the light from the camera flash registers in this image.

This image was made with no camera flash, just the dim ambient light of dusk. The high ISO required to achieve a fast shutter speed to freeze the motion of a fast flying insect rendered noisy images and overexposed the firefly's light.

I eventually arrived at the best settings to balance these two approaches, with just enough sensitivity to render the firefly’s light as the brightest part of the image, and just enough light from the camera flash to capture the details of the firefly. I eventually settled on an aperture of f/16, a shutter speed of 1/250th of a second, and an ISO of 1600. I set the flash to minimum power and held it 10 to 12 inches from the subject.

After several evenings of really getting into this I found myself dancing around my yard in big dipper patterns with my flash going off just as I moved up sharply, just like a firefly. I suddenly became self conscious and hoped the neighbors were not becoming concerned, I am sure I looked ridiculous.

By the fifth evening I finally had the technique down, but even with all the practice it still took a lot of luck and most exposures were out of focus or otherwise unusable. I also discovered I was not the only one that got lucky that night…

Common eastern fireflies mating

Nuthatch Couple

Leave a reply

A few days ago I spent a morning at the top of a 20 foot ladder photographing a brown-headed nuthatch couple building a nest. I made about 200 photographs trying to catch those moments that tell their story.

Brown-headed Nuthatch Series.

Clouds softened the early morning light for the first two images in the series above. I concentrated at first just on capturing a typical nuthatch pose next to the nest cavity. After a while the clouds parted and direct sunlight fell on the nest. The brighter light allowed me to use faster shutter speeds so I could capture some of the action. Instead of just dropping wood chips out of the hole, one of the birds would carefully perch at the opening and flip its head several times back and forth in a complete circle flinging the wood chips in every direction. It was very funny to watch but almost impossible to catch in a photo because it all happened so fast. At one point one of the birds took a break from excavating the cavity to just take in the morning, and perhaps to wonder what that human was doing on the ladder. This image made me laugh because the feathers on top of the birds head were all messed up from the work it had been doing down at the bottom of the cavity.

A little later some high thin clouds diffused the harsh sunlight and provided the perfect amount of contrast. It was bright enough to use the base ISO on my camera and still have enough shutter speed to avoid motion blur.

Brown-headed Nuthatch Pair

Finally, everything came together. While one of the birds was excavating the cavity, the other one was stuffing it with dried grass. It seemed to me that it would be better to wait until the excavation was finished before bringing in the grass but no relationship is without its challenges. Anyway, at one point the removal of wood chips and the bringing of dried grass coincided so that both birds were at the nest hole at the same time. At this moment the light was perfect, bright, diffuse, and warm, and I was ready.

Meditation on a Cypress Stump

Leave a reply

A few weeks ago I visited New Lake in Hyde County North Carolina with the Carolina Vegetation Survey. We were looking for natural lake shore vegetation, a type of natural community that grows along these shallow bay lakes. No one in our group had been to this lake before so we hoped the community was in good condition. I had seen natural lake shore vegetation at other lakes and they can be quite lovely, large cypress trees marching out into a shallow lake with grasses swaying in the waves. We were disappointed to discover that the cypress trees had been cut long ago. Weathered stumps marked the places where ancient trees once stood. A new forest of young cypress now lined the lake shore.

If I had been alone I might have turned around and gone somewhere else, but the team I was with decided the rest of the vegetation was in good enough condition to sample so we decided to stay the rest of the day.

Carolina Vegetation Survey

The trees I had hoped for were gone and the light was too harsh for landscapes. After a few minutes of dreary thoughts that were not producing photographs I decided I should see what sort of macro subjects I could find. It did not take long to discover tiny sundew plants growing in the shade of the young cypress trees.

Water Sundew

One advantage of young trees is the foliage is easy to reach. These trees were mostly pond-cypress, very similar to the better known bald-cypress but the foliage is more like a rope than a feather and it points up from the stem rather than out.

Pond Cypress Foliage

After making the pond-cypress foliage photo I was out of ideas so I decided to sit quietly and observe until an idea was revealed to me. There was just one problem, there was no where to sit. The ground went from damp to soggy to shallow lake. The only dry place I could see to sit was the old cypress stumps along the lake shore. Most were weathered into very uncomfortable shapes, but after searching I found one with a very nice dry top that fit my bottom quite nicely.

Meditation on a Cypress Stump

My photography process has a lot in common with meditation. I sit quietly without thinking and just let the images I see wash over me. I try not to judge or think, I simply observe. After a time an idea for a photograph is usually revealed, provided I can remain open enough to see it.

After sitting there for a time I realized the images of all the stumps I had searched while looking for a place to sit were running through my mind. When I first arrived at the lake I looked at them in a negative way, they represented the loss of something great that once existed. But now I was seeing them without judgment, just the physical objects detached from their meaning. Each was different, weathered, and spectacular in its own way. The Universe had spoken, I needed to photograph the weathered cypress stumps!

Weathered Cypress Stump #1

Weathered Cypress Stump #2

Florida Birds

3 Replies

I recently returned from a bird photography trip to the east coast of Florida. I spent most of the time at the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge just north of Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center. This is a huge undeveloped area teaming with wildlife.

Salt Marsh and Palm Hammock

Well, you can’t see any animals in that picture but trust me, they are in there!

My friend Lee invited me to join him on his trip to the Space Coast Birding Festival. I used to work with Lee in forestry at NCSU before he retired. Lee has more money than most people I know, yet uses coupons to save ¢50 on a hamburger. This works out well since I have less money than most people I know, and I could not afford to hang out with him if he lived closer to his means. On the drive down he suggested we split a $5 foot long subway sandwich. Lunch for $2.50, even I can afford that!

Each day Lee went on one of the festivals birding tours, and he let me borrow his Saab. The weather was perfect, and I had good luck finding and photographing animals.

I had a great time photographing the large wading birds. Each species has a different personality, resulting in behavior that I find visually inspiring. I can really identify with the little blue heron. They hunt just like I make wildlife photographs. They wait patiently, methodically, hardly moving until the time is right.

Little Blue Heron

You get a sense of the bird’s patient stillness in this photograph. I had to wait for it to move a little to create the circular ripples in the water.

The reddish egret looks similar to the little blue heron but has a completely different hunting style. This bird chases fish by running at full speed through shallow water, sometimes flapping its wings and spinning around. This reminds some people of drunken staggering, but I think it looks more like unbridled enthusiasm.

Reddish Egret

You can get a sense of how fast this bird is running from the forward leaning posture and the wake it is leaving in the water.

The green heron is a much smaller bird and likes to hunt from a branch over the water, especially when the water is too deep to stand in.

Green Heron

You can’t see its long neck in this photograph because it is coiled up preparing to strike. Just seconds after I made this photograph, it caught the fish it was watching and flew away.

I also had an interesting interaction with an anhinga. These birds swim under the water and spear fish with their sharp bill. They often swim with just their head and neck visible, the rest of their body submerged. This behavior gave them one of their common names, “snake bird”. I was surprised to see this one swimming toward me. It made for a very elegant composition to illustrate this type of swimming behavior.

Anhinga

After I made the photograph it just kept swimming toward me until it climbed up on the bank just a few feet from where I was sitting. I could not figure out why he was being so friendly until I noticed what was swimming right behind him.

American alligator

I guess the anhinga felt safer on the shore with me than in the water with the alligator. After the alligator swam away, the anhinga started drying his wings.

Anhinga Drying its Wings

A woman was nearby explaining to her daughter how these birds are not very well adapted to their environment because they have to dry their wings after swimming. I am always glad to see parents teaching their children about nature but it irks me when they just make stuff up. These birds are perfectly adapted to their environment! By absorbing water they become less buoyant and can stay under water without effort. Most birds that dive trap air under their waterproof feathers and have to constantly expend energy to stay under. As soon as they stop swimming they pop up to the surface like a cork. The anhinga can stay under without effort as it chases fish; the only downside is it can’t fly until it dries out a bit.

On the last day of the trip Lee and I planned to spend a few hours at dawn in the wildlife refuge before driving back to North Carolina. We were late getting out to the refuge because Lee discovered the hotel had slightly overcharged him. By the time he got that straightened out the sun was already up. This turned out to be a good thing. For the past three days I had driven past a marsh with palm hammocks on my way to the refuge. This is the same place pictured in sunset light in the first photograph. The light before dawn at this location was not interesting the previous three days. But this time the sun was up as we drove by the marsh and the light shining through the early morning fog was spectacular.

Sunrise over a Palm Hammock

We spent a few more hours in the refuge and then headed back to North Carolina; on the way we shared another $5 foot long subway sandwich.

Accidental Abstraction

Leave a reply

For years I have been toying with the idea of making very abstract photographs. One thing that intrigues me about abstract images is how they free the viewer to imagine their own meaning. Also, I find trying a different style or subject matter teaches me things I would not learn from my usual photography. This photograph of storm clouds over Boundary Bay in British Columbia was one early attempt.

Blue

It was the color and contrast that attracted me to this scene. I used a telephoto lens to isolate the most interesting part of the sky and eliminate the horizon and any sense of scale. Although this is more abstract than my typical landscapes, it is still recognizable as storm clouds.

Another attempt at an abstract image was with a flame azalea flower. The stamens on these flowers are very long and extend quite far from the petals. I pointed a macro lens straight down the center of the flower with the stamens pointing into the lens and with the petals filling the background. A wide aperture resulted in a very shallow depth of field which rendered the petals in the background completely out of focus.

Orange

I did not want the details in the petals to show because I wanted to make this image more about the color than the structure of the plant. But the sharp focus on the stamens anchors this image in reality and tells the viewer this is a flower.

While these images are more abstract than what I typically create, there was something about them that did not sit well with me. I liked them but they were just not the abstract images I was after. I did not understand what I was missing until I had an interesting accident.

Back in June I was trying to photograph a plant in an open field but it was far too windy. In desperation I dispensed with the tripod since it does no good to hold the camera steady when the plants are swaying in and out of view. Instead, I hand held the camera with the fastest shutter speed I could to avoid camera shake. To improve my odds of a sharp, detailed photograph, I set the camera to allow the shutter to release only when focus had been achieved. Then I manually focused the macro lens to give me the close framing I wanted. My plan was to just keep trying to frame the plant as it moved in the wind and hopefully the camera would only fire when the plant was in focus. My plan worked, by the way, but that is not the point of this story.

While trying to get my body into position for this shot I must have had my finger on the shutter release because the camera suddenly went off. Some random blade of grass had passed through the autofocus sensor at just the right distance and triggered the shutter. You can see the point of focus near the center of the frame.

Green

Although I gave this image little thought at the time, something compelled me to keep it. Only now, seven months later, do I think I understand why. This is just the sort of abstract image I had wanted to make! I usually base my compositions on some unique character of the subject. My earlier attempts at abstract photography were still locked into this way of thinking. Even though they were more abstract than my usual work, the idea for the photograph was still based on something visual about the subject. This composition is completely abstract; it is not based on anything! Maybe now I will be able to consciously break out of my usual pattern and make an abstract image on purpose.

The beach is very different at night

Leave a reply

I was reminded how different my experience is from most of the visitors to wild places while waiting for the passenger ferry to take me to Hammocks Beach State Park. Several families were also waiting for the ferry. I could tell from the coolers, lawn chairs, and swimming clothes that they were going over for the day to frolic on the beach. They could tell from my backpack, tripod, wide-brimmed hat, long sleeved shirt, long pants, and hiking boots that I was not. One man asked me if I was going camping. I said “yes.” Then he asked his young son if he would like to go camping sometime. The son said, without hesitation, “no!” The father asked, “why not?” The son said, “There are spooky things at night!”

I had forgotten about that feeling of being afraid to go into wild places at night. I love wild places, and the night can sometimes be most impressive. When the sun is high at the beach, I struggle. The sun takes a lot out of you, especially when you have fair skin. My favorite time at the beach is when the sun is near the horizon or at night.

When the sun is near the horizon, it highlights the patterns formed by the wind on the sand. I have always been fascinated by these patterns. The same shape line will repeat over and over again but with slight variations.

Sand Pattern

The beach is very different at night. It becomes a soft and gentle place. Soft starlight is bright enough to see by when it is clear, and if you are far enough from city lights, the stars can be spectacular.

Beach by Starlight