Dave Hartley Photography

On our recent trip to Belize, we spent two and a half days at Half Moon Caye. This is owned by the Belize Audubon Society and is a sanctuary for Red-Footed Boobies and Frigate Birds. Each morning, the Audubon residents would check the sanctuary to see if any chicks had fallen out of their nests. The adult birds will not tend to these chicks and so the birds are rescued, raised and eventually released into the wild. When we visited, there were two chicks that had been rescued and these hung out by the resident accommodation. We went to photograph the two chicks but the photographic environment was not optimal to say the least. One chick was hanging out by the building with the other standing on the building steps. To make matters worse, the background was a mixture of wooden building and bright background caused by the fact that the building was raised. The picture below gives you an idea of what we saw when we first turned up.

At first I thought there was no decent shot in the current setting but decided to take a few shots anyway. Looking through the view finder, I originally tried to put the dark part of the background behind the chicks head but had trouble getting the right composition. Then I noticed the pleasing blue background which was the out of focus sea. I then changed my angle to put the blue background behind the chicks head and played around with various compositions. The picture at the top of the post shows the result of changing my angle and working the subject.

On our recent January trip to the Falkland Islands, South Georgia Island and the Antarctic Peninsula, I was able to give the Nikon D3 a good shakeout, with my trusty D2x as a backup. I was looking forward to seeing how the quality was at higher ISO’s. This is important when traveling to places such as the Falkland Islands and South Georgia as the weather is typically overcast, resulting in plummeting shutter speeds; not so good for shooting wildlife. The camera did not disappoint; in fact it was stunning. Take a look at the table which shows the ISO speed and the number of photos that were taken (actually the number of s I still have on my disk). Most s were shot at ISO 800, with the next two ranges being ISO 500 and 640. I only have 135 s with the ISO at it’s base value of 200. The quality was so good that I was treating ISO 800 as a starting point. You will see that I shot a few s at ISO 100 (LO 1); I was trying to get the slowest shutter to blur a glacial stream which had a King penguin standing on a rock.

Compare this to an identical trip that we took in February 2006. In this case, the Nikon D2x was my main camera. The following table shows the ISO speed and associated number of pictures that are sitting on a backup portion of one of my drives. Notice that most of the s where shot at ISO 200. Only a small number of pictures where taken at ISO 800. Was the weather better? Good light? Not really, pretty much the same. What the D3 allowed me to do was to utilize faster shutter speeds and/or add more depth of field. This is a huge benefit to wildlife photographers! Animals are always moving around and the light is not always optimal, so being able to utilize higher ISO is a huge gain!

Considering these statistics, if my D3 was my main camera and my D2x was my backup, how many pictures did you think I took on the trip with my D2x? Less than twenty and I only kept three! I’ll discuss that more in another post.

We have a booth at the Fillmore Jazz Festival this weekend (July 5-6). A variety of photographs will be on display and available to purchase. We’re at booth # 2406, Fillmore Street, between Washington and Jackson. Stop by to say hello, and a chat (photography, nature, travel, anything).

Yesterday morning, my friend Enrique and myself went down to Palo Alto Baylands with the intention of shooting shorebirds at sunrise. We left San Francisco at 5:10am as sunrise was at 5:48am. Leaving SF, it was already 71F as the Bay area was experiencing a heat wave. On arrival, both of us noticed the moon in the sky as we were getting our gear out of the car. It was too nice to pass by so we started shooting. After a few minutes, the crimson light was gone and the sun started to peak over the East Bay hills so we picked up our gear and headed off to photograph the birds. Compared to previous years, the bird photography at the Baylands this year has not been so good. The Palm trees where the Great and Snowy Egrets nest are not in good condition and the whole place seems more subdued. This is probably due to the low rainfall we’ve experienced this winter.

I received my Nikon D3 in early December after I returned from my November/December 2007 Antarctica trip. Wish I’d had it for the Emperor penguins and the following Falkland Islands trips but it didn’t ship till late November 2007 and of course I wasn’t in the country to pick it up! The good news was that I had it for my January trip to the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula. To say the camera is sensational is an understatement. The ISO handling, autofocus, rear LCD etc have really pushed the envelope. Typically when you travel to the Falklands and South Georgia you are constantly fighting poor light due to overcast skies. Obviously, this impacts shutter speed which is always worrying when shooting wildlife. The D3 allows me to shoot at ISO ranges that I wouldn’t have dreamed about before. The photo was taken with a storm brewing, overcast skies, rain, windy; in fact shortly afterwards we were all hurried back to the ship in case it got too rough for the zodiacs. The was taken at ISO 3200 which gave me 1/250 @ f8. Although the Elephant seals look like they are just lying there, in fact they are constantly moving around due to the hierarchy and they are also always blowing their noses, hence the need for Kleenex.

Sailing to Antarctic and Sub-Antarctic destinations involves spending days en route. For trips that involve going to multiple locations, these days of “down time” could be spent catching up on sleep or editing photos. However, even though the oceans are vast open spaces, there are still a lot of opportunities to photograph. The skies can contain numerous birds, many of which follow ships. Many hours can be spent photographing Black-Browed Albatross, Southern Giant Petrels and Wandering Albatross as they effortlessly fly past. The photograph shows a Wandering Albatross. Wandering Albatross are the largest flying birds, with wingspans reaching 2.5 to 3.5m. The photo was taken at the following coordinates which you can paste into Google Earth:

52 26.778S 049 29.911W

It’s not a great picture but what caught my eye was the flash of red. Looking at the on a computer, the bird had a red tag with the number L97. My wife also had photographs showing the tag identification so we talked to Chris Edwards who was the Expedition leader. Chris has spent quite a bit of time in Antarctica and his son, Ewan, is stationed at Bird Island, which has a population of Wandering Albatross. We gave Chris copies of the photograph and the GPS location and he forwarded them to his son. Here is the information on the bird:

“The bird was ringed in 1990 on Bird Island, presumably as a chick. It departed and returned during the 1994-1999 summers as a non-breeder. It bred in 2000 but not since then, possibly because its mate had not returned.”

That’s pretty amazing that we can see a bird in the middle of no-where and then find out quite a bit about its history.

For the month of January this year, we sailed on the M/V Ushuaia traveling to the Falkland Islands, South Georgia, and the Antarctic Peninsula. It was a eventful and wonderful trip with many great photo opportunities. I’ll discuss the trip, and the photography in more detail over the coming months. There are so many things you can photograph on this type of trip but sometimes magical moments can be easily missed.

In this example, we had just spent six days in various locations on South Georgia. The photographic highlights are the King Penguin colonies and the Wondering Albatross on Prion Island. We had just sailed down Drygalski Fjord and were heading to the south east tip of the island on our way to the Antarctic peninsula. The lenticular cloud formations above the rugged mountains were spectacular, as we sailed past an iceberg. I was on the starboard side of the ship taking photographs of the scenery and suddenly realized I was by myself. I wondered where everybody was. Were they in the bar (yes), were they taking a nap (yes), where was everybody?

Well, a bunch of the passengers were on the port side, looking at the rainbow that had formed. Icebergs on the horizon drifted by. Even the people inside the ship’s bar were looking out of the windows, enjoying the view and a drink!

In the distance, to the right of the rainbow, we could see a larger iceberg slowly drifting towards us. It seemed like a long time before it finally came into view and crossed the path of the rainbow.

Numerous photographs were taken. My favorite was the one shown below, with the rainbow coming from the iceberg. There is also a Black-browed Albatross flying past the rainbow where it touches the iceberg (too small to see on this blog photo). This is my Southern Ocean interpretation of the famous Galen Rowell photograph “Rainbow over the Potala Palace”. So, the well known moral of this story is “if it looks good in front of you, look behind!”

We recently returned from a great two week trip to Belize. A last minute booking, with the decision to go being made after an afternoon discussion with our friend Enrique who had already booked to go along with his wife Margaret. The first week of the trip was spent in the jungle where we photographed Black Howler Monkeys, a rescued Jaguar, and the archaeological sites of Altun Ha and Xunantunich. The second week was split between Long Caye/Halfmoon Caye and Caye Caulker. We spent four nights staying on Long Caye, spending our days on the nearby Halfmoon Caye which is owned by the Belize Audubon society. This is a great place to photograph Red footed Boobies and Frigate birds. The last few days were on Caye Caulker where we planned to see the Manatees in Swallow Caye Wildlife Sanctuary. Unfortunately, the first Atlantic storm of the 2008 season (Tropical Storm Arthur) formed, which halted all the boat trips going out to the wildlife sanctuary. So, the last few days were spent eating, drinking and playing cards. The full force of the storm hit the day before we were due to leave. We had made it back to Belize City and stayed in the Great House hotel (a very nice place). We had torrential rain and constant thunder throughout the night. The next day, the roads were flooded, bridges were out and unfortunately some people were drowned in the south of the country. Belize is a great country to visit, with lots of diverse subjects to shoot; we’ll be returning some time in the future. Some of the photos of the trip can be seen here .