The sun hadn’t yet crested the horizon when we came upon a covey of these strikingly marked fluff balls – Daurian Partridges in Khustai National Park, Mongolia. December 30, 2014
I’d been shooting for about four years when I took the above photograph. Still not sure what I wanted to photograph, our Lightroom catalogue was becoming populated with images of wildlife, portraits, landscapes, fishing, food, family events and so forth. But no doubt about it, birds have always held a fascination – and, though I didn’t know it at the time, would become my pathway forward.
It may be that for most of us a general approach is the most logical entry into a new endeavor. But based on my own experiences as well as observations of others, it seems that it is not until we specialize that rapid growth begins. So the angler eventually finds her way into fly-fishing, and not just fly-fishing broadly, but a specific type of fly-fishing. A cook becomes a chef when he undertakes to master a specific culinary repertoire. And so on. The interesting thing is that as one specializes, broader skills and knowledge are acquired and sharpened. So that even catching bluegills or frying an egg is performed with greater proficiency… while simultaneously a leap into a new kind of fishing or cooking, launched for a base of expertise, is also made easier.
A generalized approach feels comfortable, particularly at the start of a journey. The broadness, the lack of pressure to get one thing right, feels safe. But if one truly wishes to master a vocation, it is sound advice to not linger overly long with as a generalist. Specialize. Pick an area and dive deep. Take what is in front of you. Doable. For a couple of years, the best angling available to me was carp fishing. Not my first choice of fish, but I lived within a short bicycle ride of a fine river with a good population of the cyprinids, and so I threw myself into it… and saw my skills in virtually all areas of angling improve. Surely this is the way it is with most things – photography, culinary arts, writing, art… Begin the journey with a broad approach, but with eyes open for a narrowing path.
Red-billed Chough, Mongolia. This was one among about a dozen choughs in an open field, gathered around the remains of one of their own – feathers, blood. It appeared that a raptor had made a kill; and the choughs were holding a funeral service.
I must’ve been around 13 years old, walking up the Route 322 hill to my summertime job at Martin’s Exxon Plant when I came upon a stunningly bright Indigo Bunting hovering and circling madly back on forth from nearby brush to the shoulder of the road. There on the stony berm, lifeless, was a brown bird of similar size and shape. His mate. The victim of an automobile – most of which, in this man’s opinion, are permitted to travel far too fast for anyone’s safety and sanity… this unending modern obsession with “getting somewhere.” I digress.
Male and female Indigo Buntings. Plate by Louis Agassiz Fuertes in Birds of America (1917) edited by Thomas Gilbert Pearson (1873-1943) et al.
It was my first encounter with the deeply rooted connection – emotions – birds can feel for one another. Fearing the frantic male’s behavior would result in him joining his mate as a victim of the traffic whizzing by, I picked her up and placed her in an open area in the brush away from the highway. So that he could mourn more safely.
As years went by I witnessed other examples of similar behavior among various species of birds: crows, magpies, a pair of Narcissus Flycatchers – the one fallen and the one who would not leave his or her mate’s or offspring’s side. A group of Magpies that would not leave an injured member of the flock. A family of Ravens appearing to search for a child that had gone missing.
But the behavior of these Red-billed Choughs was a first for me: not merely a pair of birds bonded through nesting and breeding, but a small flock, gathered on the ground, unwilling to leave a fallen brother or sister. I wish I had thought to make a video record of the event.
On the other side of the rock the chough in the above photograph is perched upon was a jumble of feathers, bony, disembodied feet, blood. The remains of a friend, a loose circle of other choughs pacing solemnly around those remains. I have since wondered what, if anything, the bird in the photo’s perch on the rock, slightly above the others, may have indicated about its status.
Red-billed Choughs at Dusk Gobi Desert, Mongolia, October 20, 2014
I decided to render this as a subtle duotone – a two-colored photograph – by enhancing the red on the one (and only) bill that showed the characteristic coloration of this corvid species. There was very little light when I captured this hand-held image; thus the remaining bills on these otherwise mostly black birds appear in colorless silhouette. Duotones can feel a bit gimmicky, but I like the effect here. What do you think?
I have begun working on a color portrait of one of these fascinating birds and will publish it tomorrow if all goes well.
Bactrian Camels in early morning light, Gobi Desert, Mongolia. October 19, 2014 See the original RAW file below.
There is not a clear date as to when we began to routinely create our images in RAW format. Most (all?) of the instructional material we had studied paid too little attention to this matter, or waffled on it, and so we didn’t appreciate the differences in the two formats.
Now we shoot everything – every image we might ever use other than strictly for ourselves – in RAW. Which is to say that while we sometimes use our phone to make a quick JPEG photo of our very fine kitty-cats Georgie and Kita for Facebook, or to take a field shot of a mushroom or flower we wish to identify, we’ve pretty much given up the idea that a JPEG file will suffice when we want to capture anything more than a quick record. We say that even though we have published photographs from original JPEG files in national magazines. And we say that knowing that at least one friend scored a national magazine cover with a JPEG phone shot.
So, yes, it’s possible to get a very nice capture in JPEG. In fact, oftentimes sports photographers shoot in JPEG – particularly when getting a photo out to a publisher in a timely manner is paramount. In a well-lighted stadium filled with agreeably contrasting colors, there may not be a need to retouch a photograph. Similarly, on a blue-sky mid-day at the beach, there may not be much – or any – advantage to capturing the scene in RAW format over JPEG.
But setting such circumstances aside, one’s odds of making a satisfying image increase if one begins with a RAW file. That same beach in soft morning or evening light or under a sky filled with storm clouds will photograph with more richness and subtlety when captured as a RAW file.
However, shooting in RAW is predicated on having the ability to retouch (process) the original image file in Lightroom or some similar program – and then committing oneself to doing so. Because the drawback to shooting in RAW is that images tend to look flat until they’ve been retouched.
This is the original RAW file of the above photograph. The sky is lighter, shadows are so dark details are lost – which also makes it more difficult to distinguish the outlines of individual camels-, the eye of the center camel is flat, there is less texture in the hair and the sunlit faces lack subtle variances.It’s all there… all of this information… in the RAW file. But it must be brought out in the retouching process.
So…
Generally speaking, if one’s objective is to take good – and perhaps sometimes even beautiful – pictures for an audience of family and friends, or simply to make a field record for one’s own use, and to do so with as few complications as possible, set the camera to JPEG, shoot away, and have fun.
If one’s objective is to more consistently create beautiful and even artistic images, set the camera to RAW, and then commit to evaluating and retouching images with editing software. Such software is the digital analog to processing film in a darkroom. Because a RAW image contains much more information than does a JPEG image, the software will provide more control when it comes to adjusting white balance, bringing out detail in shadowed areas, fine tuning color, sharpening details and controlling the amount of noise in an image.
One place the difference between RAW and JPEG most obviously manifests itself is in skies. Generally speaking, there’s not a lot that can be done to a sky in JPEG before noise – graininess, weird colors, strange lines – begins to emerge. RAW provides considerably more latitude before noise emerges… and once you begin to notice noise in images, you can’t stop noticing it.
Which brings me to this concluding observation. Whether one wishes to grow as a writer, musician, fly-fisherman, photographer, chef or in any creative activity, next to studying the accomplishments of others and applying the lessons therein, there is no substitute for mindful, purposeful self-editing. If you shoot in RAW, you will be compelled to edit your work.
Camel Skull, Gobi Desert, Mongolia, October 18, 2014
A dzud (zud, зуд) is a weather-related phenomenon in arid parts of central Asia. It could be heavy snow or ice; or a lack of snow or rain; severe cold; drought. Any widespread weather pattern that prevents livestock from obtaining sufficient food or water. Mass deaths… and economic disaster for the semi-nomadic families who follow their animals – goats, sheep, yaks, camels, horses – from place to place across steppelands, grasslands and desert. Roughly a third of Mongolia’s 3.3 million people live this life – among the world’s last nomadic herdsman.
We came across this herdsman tending goats in Khustai National Park, Mongolia. August 7, 2013
I rendered this as both a monochrome and a color image – a coin flip as to which I prefer.
I’d been interested… very interested… in photography ever since my early teens, but I didn’t pick up a camera and use it in any meaningful way until we traveled to Arctic Alaska, four years prior to the above photograph. I could have benefitted – perhaps a great deal – from a formal course of study in the subject. I guess. I’m not sure. Generally speaking, there are both benefits and drawbacks imbedded in the process of learning from others; just as there are benefits and drawbacks to learning on one’s own. Despite four years of somewhat purposeful shooting in Alaska, when we arrived in Mongolia I still didn’t really understand how a camera works. Nor did I have a vision of what kind of images I hoped to make. But once in a while I saw something I liked and I did what I could to make a capture… camera settings often somewhat randomly chosen, insufficient thought and visualization as to what the final, retouched image might look like (or what I hoped it would look like)… and any time a human subject was involved, struggling to overcome what is at times almost crippling shyness and apprehension on my part in order to get the picture. Often failing to overcome that apprehension and letting the moment pass.
So the question remains: Would I have benefitted from, for example, attending formal classes in photography at a respected institution under the guidance of expert instructors? Well, yes, for certain in regards to speeding up my learning curve with respect to technical and scientific aspects as to how a camera works and how film or an image sensor interprets light, and to gain a better understanding of the interplay between camera bodies and lenses. I read, on my own, and viewed a number of instructional videos addressing these subjects… and can report that while they were somewhat helpful, there is a lot of misinformation, and incomplete information, and misleading information on these matters – much of it dispensed by experts and by people who present themselves as experts. People who perhaps know what they are talking about or writing about, but who are not teachers and who don’t know how to teach and who have a difficult time imagining or understanding what a student needs to know… or how a student will receive and apply a given piece of information. Setting that aside, I suppose the answer is probably “Yes,” I – or anyone new to photograph – would benefit from interactive instruction where the primary purpose is to acquire knowledge of how a camera works and how light works and how a camera interprets light.
I suspect such a course of study would be helpful in the same way that prior to writing a novel or a magazine article, it’s necessary to have acquired an understanding of punctuation, syntax, paragraph structure and plot. Understanding basic structures – in any endeavor – can spare one from a lot of fumbling around.
But I wonder if, after 10,000 hours of mindful practice (a concept toward mastery I fundamentally accept), the person who began the journey initially studying under a master doesn’t end up more or less at the same place as the person who embarked alone, and vice versa. After all, whether the matter at hand is photography, writing or fly-fishing, once basic skills are acquired it is left to each individual to determine their own path as to how they hope to develop those skills. Realistic or conceptual; poetry or prose; salmon rivers or saltwater flats.
A problem with instruction beyond basic concepts is that it can end up creating a box around the student.
So… I think that, if it’s an option, by all means find someone from whom to learn the fundamentals – in any endeavor. But don’t linger there. Get the basics. And then go out and put them to use… learning more basics along the way, but more importantly, freeing oneself to pursue one’s own passions and to thereby develop one’s own vision.
I suppose the main thing, in any endeavor, is simply to get started.
On a Frozen Sea, the two of us, April 14, 2013, near Point Hope, Alaska. This is about two miles from the village of Point Hope on a trail broken through huge chunks of ice, as seen, and marked here with a hook.Sea ice here is several feet thick – safe enough, but several of our local friends had stories about getting temporarily stranded when the ice they were on ice broke free from the main sheet. The gun is a precaution against Polar Bears.
I’ve enjoyed going back through photographs from our four years in Arctic Alaska. Although there are a number of additional pictures I’m reasonably happy with, the truth is that most of the images we made in those years constitute memories rather than art. As self-taught photographers, we still had a lot to learn about light, and how cameras interpret light, and composition, and optimal camera settings, lens choices and technique. Moreover, the images we made in those early days have a somewhat random feel about them as we hadn’t yet developed a vision for how we wanted to shoot and what we wanted to make images of… what stories we wanted to tell. We’d love to go back and revisit those scenes, and from time to time we discuss the possibility… but as Frost warned, way leads to way.
When we left Point Hope in the spring of 2014, we traveled to Mongolia where we lived for the following two years. We’re looking forward now to revisiting that collection. So, we hope to see you “in Mongolia!” JD
Looking out across the Chukchi Sea from the very tip of Tikigaq Peninsula. Near Point Hope, Alaska, August 12, 2012.
It was a two-and-a-half mile walk from our home in Point Hope to the terminal point of Tikigaq Peninsula where it hooked into the Chukchi Sea. Cape Lisburne lay to the north; other rocky sea cliffs lay to the southeast. Dense colonies of seabirds – murres, puffins, various ducks, gulls and other birds – nested in these natural sanctuaries, and if you stood at the tip of the peninsula you could watch the adult birds fly back and forth all day long in the summer, in one direct bills and bellies empty, on the return their bellies crammed full of food and what they couldn’t fit in their bellies hanging from their bills. Sand Lances and other fish to be presented to nesting mates and offspring. It was a difficult hike out, a good bit of it along a pebbled beach. At that time in our lives we hadn’t yet made a study of wildflowers, but they were abundant and brightened the path. And you never new when you might come across an Arctic Fox, a Snowy Owl or something else of interest.
Hiking for any distance along a sand beach becomes work, and If you’ve ever walked far along a pebbled beach you know that pebbles make for an even more arduous hike. The ocean breeze was almost always cold at that latitude above the Arctic Circle.
Wishing at times to travel light, we did not always take camera gear.
Which was, of course, a mistake.
One morning in early fall, we arrived at the point and – not knowing what we were in for – found ourselves looking out at more birds than we had ever in our lives seen. Quite probably, more than we will ever see again. Wave upon wave of puffins, murres, kittiwakes, shearwaters and I don’t know what else were streaming out from the cliffs and capes, chicks fledged, the season over. Most of these seabirds would not return to land again until the following spring when they would begin a new nesting season. We had seen films depicting African migrations of wildebeests and other ungulates, and in Alaska of great herds of caribou, and those films were called to mind. I once, in Kentucky, found myself amidst a late spring migration of Box Turtles; I pulled my car to the shoulder and assisted over a dozen of them safely across the country road I was traveling. If I had that to do over, I’d have stayed for as long as it took and helped more…
Surely that morning on the tip of Tikigaq, Barbra and I were witness to one of the world’s greatest migration events. We felt, suddenly, a deep connection with… something… overwhelming. Thoreau’s contact, or a final couplet from Wordsworth:
To me the meanest flower that blooms can give Thoughts that lie too deep for tears.
CutterLight 