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This red-eyed tree frog, ready to leap off the page, is an example of Tim Fitzharris’ shallow depth of field style that makes wildlife pop out of the background. To see more of Fitzharris’ work, click here.
To view all of our Summer 2009 issue, click here.
Cover photo: Copyright © Tim Fitzharris
No matter the obstacle, this well-published, Santa Fe-based nature shooter and educator has found a way to thrive in the competitive world of wildlife — and now landscape — photography.
By Eric Rudolph
It’s March in a southern Oregon marsh. Two black-necked stilts — long-legged wader birds — move closer to each other among the reeds in the shallow water. With no one around to disturb them, and with spring in the air, the male bird gets an age-old idea in his head. In seeming privacy, he hops on top of the female’s back and begins to mate.
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A cheetah yawns on the African savannah, unaware of |
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What the two lovebirds don’t know is that they are being watched patiently from a nearby log in the water — or at least by something that looks like a log. Inside the object is no predator, however. It’s Tim Fitzharris, one of the busiest and most celebrated nature photographers in the industry.
In this watery environment, Fitzharris is perfectly disguised in a deceptively simple yet finely crafted device of his own creation: the floating blind. A longtime student of bird behavior, he knew that avian love would be in the air at that time of year, and that the best way to capture the dance was to get up close and personal rather than to use long lenses from a distant shore. (more…)
Entomologist and photographer Mark Moffett uses his magnified images to tell the larger-than-life stories of the natural world.
By P.J. Heller
On the outside, Mark Moffett may be 52 years of age. But deep down inside, he’s still a shy little kid wandering through the woods, searching for bugs, snakes and other small creatures.
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A male jumping spider looks around frantically for a pale female hiding from him under a leaf in Sri Lanka during a courting ritual — one of the many hidden animal stories that Mark Moffett loves to tell with his camera. |
And like any playful youngster, he’s not above dumping a huge spider on the head of a terrified Conan O’Brien on his late-night TV show or handing an African bullfrog weighing nearly five pounds to a somewhat apprehensive Stephen Colbert on “The Colbert Report.”
While some may snicker and guffaw as he waxes eloquent about lesbian lizards, hissing cockroaches from Madagascar and the penis size of banana slugs, Moffett is deadly serious about sharing with the world the joys, mysteries and adventures to be found in nature. (more…)
This year’s ‘carry-around’ digital compact cameras perform nearly as well as big pro DSLRs, but at a fraction of the cost and size.
By Ed Coleman
It’s generally accepted that the Nikon D3 and Canon 5D cameras are both technological miracles, providing capabilities that we didn’t even know we needed 10 years ago. But their weight and size are not their strongest points. After a long day of shooting, they start feeling a little heavy, don’t they?
In the studio or on location, this is not a major issue for pro shooters. For users spending the weekend at the beach with family, however, the best of the DSLRs are too big and heavy to lug around all day. Most pros have, in addition to their working toolbox of cameras and lenses, a personal favorite “carry-around” camera — one that is easy to pack, fun to use and able to serve as a backup to the commercial workhorses.
These “pro-companion” and “power zoom” cameras provide much of the capabilities of pro DSLRs, but are compact and lightweight and will fit in a small shoulder bag or fanny pack. They also come at a fraction of the cost, with most of them retailing for less than $500. At that kind of affordability, it’s hard to resist owning one or several. (more…)
By Randy Woods
Few images better evoke the idea of summer than sun, water and happy kids. Ric Peterson’s image of children in mid-leap toward a seemingly limitless lakeside horizon is the perfect way to close our summer issue.
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Copyright © Ric Peterson |
The image came about after Peterson had photographed an ad campaign for Guidance Medical, depicting two boys running along a sun-soaked beach using towels as capes. “I thought, ‘This has potential,’” Peterson says, so he decided to shoot some more images involving children, water and movement for his stock collection. (more…)
Seattle photographer Phil Borges held “Picture This!,” the first fund-raising event for his nonprofit group Bridges to Understanding, on May 27. The evening featured the presentation of the first Bridges to Understanding Humanitarian Award to Getty Images CEO Jonathan Klein.
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Brad Carlile’s “Veg” captures the passage of time over the course of two days.
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Borges is also working on multimedia documentaries for his Women Empowerment project. In July, Borges will return to Tibet to film a documentary for the NGO Global Network, focusing on the high death rate of women during childbirth in that region.
Portland, Ore.-based photographer Brad Carlile was one of eight recipients of the Hearst 8×10 Photography Biennial Award this year. The competition, which announced its winners in April, recognizes upcoming photographers in the media industry.
Carlile’s winning series, “Tempus Incognitus,” explores the nature of light and color within the realm of rented rooms and will be on display at the Hearst Museum Gallery in New York City through September. Carlile was also featured at the Flanders Gallery in Raleigh, N.C., earlier this year. (more…)
GETTY, TIME UNVEIL LIFE.COM
Life magazine’s 160 years of photo archives became available — for free — on March 31 after a two-year project to digitize the publication’s expansive photo collection.
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“Little Girls” by Mario Tama, from the Life.com archive. |
Life.com, the online photo archive created by Getty Images and Time Inc., launched with more than 7 million images and plans to add 3,000 new images every day. The database features images from both the Life and Getty photo databases. The expansive collection includes unseen galleries, such as photos from the night of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination; only 3 percent of the images have been previously viewed by the public. (more…)
DIGITAL CAMERAS
Panasonic Premieres DMC-GH1
with HD Mode and Zoom Lens
Panasonic has unveiled the Lumix DMC-GH1, the latest in its entry-level, interchangeable lens DSLR series. The DMC-GH1 is equipped with HD video, professional-level still photography capabilities and a 12.1-megapixel resolution.
In HD mode, the GH1 records at full HD 1080p/24 frames per second (fps) video resolution or at smooth HD 720p/60fps movie resolution. Both settings record in AVCHD (MPEG-4) format with a silent motor and continuous autofocusing (AF) settings. Creative Movie Mode allows users to manually set shutter speed and aperture settings.
Sound is recorded in high-quality stereo settings with the Wind Cut feature and the Dolby Digital Stereo Creator. Sound quality can be further enhanced with an optional stereo microphone.
The 3-inch Live View Finder—which is visible from any angle—allows users to view camera effects, such as the exposure, aperture and shutter speed, before taking the photo. A built-in eye sensor automatically switches the viewfinder on and off when the user looks at or away from the screen. (more…)
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David Sanger’s image of a shepherd and his sheep on the Silk Road in western China was shot quickly and low to the ground, with a 300mm lens, as the herd walked briskly past. To see more of Sanger’s travel work, click here.
To view all of our Spring 2009 issue, click here.
Cover photo: Copyright © David Sanger
By noticing small details that others may miss, the Bay Area’s David Sanger specializes in finding sublime images in even the most mundane locations.
By Eric Rudolph
Veteran travel photographer David Sanger often wonders why anyone would visit some of the places he goes, especially when he struggles to find the photographs hiding there.
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Dust in the air and a vivid yellow sunset highlight this juxtaposition of old and new on the banks of the |
He knows some magic will probably happen, and eventually he’ll find the shots to make the trip worthwhile. But first, there’s often some real and powerful discouragement he must overcome.
“You can get really down and wonder what the attraction is for some places, when the light is not great or you don’t see what it is that draws people there,” says the veteran San Francisco Bay Area pro.
However, this discouraged state usually passes and leads to what he considers a small epiphany. “Some of my best pictures have come out of the most discouraging circumstances,” he explains. (more…)
