Dave Hartley

In Lightroom, the default behavior of the white balance tool is to automatically dismiss itself once you have clicked on a neutral target in your image. This is pretty annoying as you typically want to click on several locations in order to determine the optimal neutral target. Instead of repeatedly clicking on the white balance tool, the best option is to change the tools preferences so that it doesn’t dismiss itself after you make a selection. To do this, whilst in the Develop module (D), press the ‘w’ key and this will produce the white balance selector tool options in… Continue reading

This is an account of our worst journey in the world, not the worst which I’ll mention at the end.

On Friday, January 4th of this year, we were scheduled to fly out of San Francisco. Our first flight would be to Dallas, then the same day we would fly Dallas to Buenos Aires, arriving in Argentina early on the 5th. We would then cross the city to the domestic airport and catch a flight to Ushuaia, which is at the bottom of Argentina, and is where the ship was leaving for our trip to the Falkland Islands, South Georgia, and Continue reading

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… Continue reading

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 image 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… Continue reading

The Napa Valley “Festival del Sole” includes a live performance of LIFE - A Journey Through Time. This is a multimedia presentation of Frans Lantings LIFE project with images being displayed on three screens accompanied by an orchestra. We’ve seen some demo footage during a workshop that we did with Frans Lanting last year and it was mesmerizing! The performance will be on Sunday July 13. We’ve already got our tickets and highly recommend seeing it. More information can be found here

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… Continue reading

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… Continue reading

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… Continue reading

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… Continue reading