Dave Hartley

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

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 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 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 images I still have on my disk). Most images were shot at ISO 800, with the next two ranges being ISO 500 and 640. I only have 135 images with the ISO at it’s base value of 200. The image quality was so good that I was treating ISO 800 as a starting point. You will see that I shot a few images 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 images 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.

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 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.

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 .