Number One

This is what I call Iceberg Number One.   A couple of weeks ago we landed at Constable Point in Greenland for the start of what one of our participants called “one of the top 5 events in my life”.    This tour was over 2 years in planning and simply amazing!   We will be writing additional blogs and posting additional images as time goes forward, but we wanted to get an image posted here on our blog. 

Be sure to follow Don and Denise on Facebook if you don’t want to miss any of our images from this amazing trip.

Back to Number One.  Our flight from Iceland to Greenland was delayed several hours due to weather in a different area of Greenland and this caused a cascading delay in our departure from Iceland.   Once we finally got on the plane and started to taxi out to the runway, one of the plane’s engines died and we instead taxied to the maintenance hangar.   After returning to the terminal Air Iceland readied another plane and 30 minutes later we were finally in the air. 

Upon arrival in Greenland we had a 20 minute walk from the airport to the zodiacs, we transferred to the schooner Opal and after dinner started our voyage from Constable Point to the main part of Scoresby Sund.  The first thing the crew told us is that distances in Greenland are deceptive.   Number One Iceberg was visible to us on the boat almost 2 hours before we arrived.  It seemed so much closer.  We circled this beautiful hunk of ice between midnight and 1 a.m. before retiring for the night.   

If you would like to be notified when registration is open for our 2020 Greenland Tour drop us an email.

I Love Innovation

I have mentioned many times before that "it is a wonderful time to be a photographer”.  Usually I’m referencing the evolution and innovation of software, but today I’m talking about filters.  Many people probably think that with the advent of digital photography you can apply filters in software.   In some cases this is correct,  but every serious photographer I know believes in getting it right in camera, regardless of how much work they plan to do later in the digital darkroom.



The innovation I’m talking about is so simple, I wonder why it took so long.   Perhaps a decade ago the Variable Neutral Density Filter was invented and then copied by several others and often advertised as offering between 2 and 8 stops of light reduction.   The dirty little secret is none of these gives you 8 stops of light reduction before what I call the butterfly effect happens.  After turning between half and three quarters of the indicated range printed on the side of the filter, you end up with an uneven darkness that roughly resembles the shape of butterfly wings. Obviously, this effect is not photogenic.   I have never taken the time to actually calculate how many useful stops of light reduction I get when using one of these old style variable ND filters, but I stopped carrying one in my bag and instead started carrying a 5 and 10 stop ND filter instead.  After we switched most of our filter use to Breakthrough, I started carrying a 3, 6, and 10 stop filter in addition to a circular polarizer. 



So let’s get back to what impressed me about the Benro Variable ND Filter.   It has physical limits on the start and stop position of the filter. You just can't move it beyond its designed range of use.  The Benro is advertised as a 2 to 7 stop filter, instead of the more commonly listed 2-8 stops by other filter manufacturers.  The physical limits may seem like a small thing, but up until now no other variable filter has this feature.


This past weekend I took the filter with me while hiking White Oak Canyon in Shenandoah National Park.  The filter is fairly thin and caused no visible vignette on the edges of the picture frame.  I set up my base exposure at one second using aperture priority.  This is so any reductions in light intensity will result in longer shutter speeds.  The blog image above was a 30 second exposure.  My camera does not meter for longer than 30 seconds, but at maximum density the meter was showing 30 seconds and underexposed by one to two stops. So I backed off a little from the maximum setting so I could get a 30 second exposure.   I also took a variety of shots at different density settings and could not see any color casts or any other issues that made me question the quality of the filter.




The old Vari-ND filter is sitting in a box at home marked eBay.   The new Benro Filter is occupying a nice space in my camera bag! 



If you would like to try the Benro Vari-ND for yourself or any other Benro filter,  Click here and use the discount code Roadrunner15



Note: A stop is a measure of exposure relating to the doubling or halving of the amount of light.

Spring Snow in the Smokies

I just returned from our Spring Smokies Tour.   We always hope for certain conditions for our clients, but this year we received a special surprise.  It snowed at the higher elevations!   In anticipation of this adverse weather the Park Service closed the road that crosses the park and leads to the higher elevations.   However,  the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail remained open and got us up to the elevation necessary to experience and photograph the snow.


Prior to the start of our tour it rained and as such we had several days of strong running streams.  These streams are always a joy to photograph and I never tire of hearing the beautiful sound of running water in a mountain stream.   We usually venture out into the water, but this year I stayed close to shore because the higher water levels also bring swift moving water and I don’t want my camera gear to go for a swim. 


We finished off the week with a nice hike to Spruce Flat Falls in the Treemont area.   Just about the time everyone was wrapping up their shooting, the sun starting peaking over the top of the mountain and illuminating the waterfall with less desirable light.  One of the many benefits of traveling with an experienced guide who gets you to the right place at the right time.   

If you would like to see some additional images from this trip head over to the Road Runner Blog!

The Palouse in Color

In my last Blog I focused on the use of an Infrared Converted Camera and how the Palouse is perfect for Infrared photography.   In this blog I want to share a few of my color images from this trip.  As I mentioned in the last blog we love the Palouse!  The diversity of the landscape and almost every day has beautiful clouds.  This trip we were treated to some incredible storm clouds as well.

P.S.   If would like to see a few more color images from the Palouse, head on over to the Road Runner Blog.

The Ever Changing, The Ever Constant Palouse

We just finished up what has become our bi-annual tour of the Palouse.  For those who don’t know the Palouse it is the largest wheat growing region in the country.  But we love the Palouse for its large rolling hills that resemble the shape of sand dunes. The farmers in the Palouse also grow a variety of legumes and canola but wheat is the primary crop.  The fields are often partially planted which presents a ribbon of color and textures.  Throw in some iconic barns and we think you end up with a photographers paradise.

The ever constant part of the Palouse is its iconic small towns, dirt roads and farms.  With each visit so much remains the same.  The people are very friendly and welcoming, very little seems to change.
The ever changing part of the Palouse can partially be attributed to its current popularity.   During the pre-tour scouting tour we happened upon a favorite old farm site to find the smoldering remains of a beautiful red barn.  We asked a nearby farmer if he knew what happened, but he did not.  In talking with some of our friends who also lead workshops we heard of a second barn that burned to the ground and we heard rumors of another photographer who was doing woolies in the area.  We have no way to know for sure that this beautiful old barn succumbed to a such a fate,  but it would not be the first time in recent memory that an iconic location was damaged from this technique.   (Full disclosure, we occasionally shoot woolies, but we always do it in a safe and responsible manner.)

We rolled up on another favorite location during our pre-workshop scouting that had signs posted “No Photos”.  This owner has a restored Texaco station on his property with a nice collection of old trucks.   We have visited this location several times over the last few years.  But it seems a large workshop group invaded the property at 6:00 AM recently, not considering this this is also this gentleman’s home.    As I mentioned above, the people of the Palouse are very friendly and will welcome strangers onto their land, but the key is to seek permission.   This past trip I had several people thank me for asking.  I assume that is because there are others who don’t ask for permission.

I think most landscape photographers subscribe to the “Leave No Trace” Philosophy that is asked of us when we visit a national park.   We need to remember to keep that same philosophy in mind whenever we shoot.   If you sign up for a trip with us, please know in advance that we do not trespass on private property and we treat and expect our clients to treat the landscape like the treasure that it is!

In spite of the bad behavior of just a few,  the Palouse is still a wonderful place to visit.   The area is so vast and the photographic opportunities so numerous we look forward to returning in 2019.

P.S.  The image above was shot with my Nikon D200 converted to standard Infrared by Lifepixel.  We highly recommend Lifepixel for IR Conversions!   Click here for info;

Iceland Bound

The blog has been a little quieter than we would like,  so an update is overdue.   We finished another fantastic year making images and leading photography tours with a week in Iceland being our last tour of the year.  The image above was shot at Oxararfoss in Thingvellir National Park in Iceland.  

December was a bit on the warm side for Iceland and as a result there had been no snow.  The only disappointment was the Ice Caves were flooded due to warm temperatures and rain.  But as a result of the warmer temperatures the glacier lagoon was not frozen and we had lots of ice chunks on the black sand beach.   So Mother Nature took one thing from us but gave us another.

We leave again in a couple of days for another week in Iceland.  What a great way to end one year and start another!

Solitude

When I started thinking about this blog, I was going to title it “How’s Your Friday Night?”.  The only reason for that question is that I see others post pictures on social media asking such questions when they perceive their location is better at that moment in time than yours.

I’m not convinced that everyone would want to be standing in 3 feet of cold mountain water on a Friday Night.  But this is how I spent last Friday evening and I can’t think of any place that I would rather have been.  Even considering the mild case of poison ivy that was a result of this evening.

This little spot is hidden away on the upper part of the Rapidan River just inside of Shenandoah National Park.   The road getting there is a bit of a rough ride and not something I would want to travel without a 4x4 truck.  The entire evening I had this little portion of the park all to myself.   I love doing tours, workshops and meetups but last Friday evening I really enjoyed the solitude of having this little spot all to myself.

The Return of Mother Nature

This past weekend while my partner Denise was busy leading a Meetup in Assateague,  I decided to drive out to Shenandoah National Park.  My first plan was to spend the cloudy afternoon shooting waterfalls, but I lost a couple of hours due to a nail in one of my tires and the subsequent trip back to the city to get the tire repaired.   I still made it to the park in plenty of time for sunset.  The clouds were looking quite promising leading up to sunset, but the magical light never happened.  

That’s okay, I still had plenty of time to shoot landscapes, abstracts and even do a little light painting after dark.   Just a few weeks ago the park suffered a forest fire that affected over 10,000 acres.  In the shot above you can see the fire damaged trees but at the same time other trees are leafing out.  I have no idea what the long term damage might be to some of the trees, but to this untrained observer it looks like Mother Nature is quickly repairing the damage.

On The Move!

It just occurred to me the last time I blogged was almost a month ago after wrapping up our Charleston Tour.  Since then I have been super busy with our Meetup Group, and traveling the camera club lecture circuit.  No complaints, it's always a blast getting out and meeting new people who share this passion we call photography!

The image above is the latest in my Motion Abstracts Series.  I prefer a cloudy day for this type of work and of course try to keep the sky out of the image.  Even though the tree does a nice job breaking up the boring gray sky, I decided a couple Flypaper Textures were just what I needed to take the problem with the gray sky "out of the picture", so to speak.

If you want to learn more about Textures, my partner Denise regularly lectures on textures to camera clubs in the Mid-Atlantic area. Her next lecture on Textures will be at NIH Photo Club on June 14th.  If you want to check out Flypaper Textures, be sure to use our discount code to save a few bucks.

Charleston

We just concluded our first tour of Charleston, South Carolina!  I was last in Charleston about 8 years and revisiting this fantastic city was even more fun than I remembered.  Charleston has so much to offer photographers.  The beautiful architecture of the old city,  beaches for sunrise, plantations and gardens to just name a few of the great shooting locations.


We are looking forward to returning to this great city!   Drop us an email at info@roadrunnerphotographytours.com if you would like to be notified when we offer our next tour in Charleston.


If you would like to see additional images from this recent trip head over to the Road Runner Blog!  

Too Much of a Good Thing

As I write this blog people in the mid-Atlantic states are digging out of a historic snowstorm.  This time the predictions were amazingly accurate with almost a week's warning prior to this historic storm.  At the start of the storm I was hopeful that we would get a nice snow, but not so much that I could not get out and make some images.  By the time the weekend was over we had well over 2 feet of snow. Getting out to make images in the fresh snow was not an option this time.

So instead of getting out to make some images, I have been stuck behind the computer working on presentations, website updates, and of course doing some image processing.


The image above was shot 2 years ago in Maine.  During that trip there was only about a foot of snow as I recall and getting around was pretty easy compared to the leftovers from the current storm.

Smokies Wrap-up

A couple of weeks ago we wrapped up our Fall Foliage Tour in the Smokies.  Temperatures were great during the day and cool evenings produced some fantastic fog.  Overall fall color was a little late this year, but we were able to get peak color on the last days of our tour.  This made for happy photographers!


Next year Denise and I will be doing our fall color tour in the Finger Lakes region of New York and we are super excited to share this new destination with our clients.

Speaking of next year, to celebrate Nature Visions Expo were are offering a discount on our 2016 tours until the end of the month.  Come visit us at Nature Visions or sign up on our website.

Cape May and the making of Lemonade

We just finished our annual Cape May Photo Tour weekend and as usual we had a great group of talented and energetic photographers.   Cape May is such a wonderful venue that even though we arrived 2 days early to scout the locations, we still did not cover all of our favorite spots!  

In regard to making Lemonade.  That’s a term of art that I use to illustrate how to deal with the challenges that photography can sometimes present.   The shot above was our first stop with the tour group last Friday evening.  The access to this point is very narrow allowing for only one photographer at a time.  I needed to get my tripod in the water to get the reflection and wanted to show the shot to our clients as an example of one of the possible shots from this location.   Considering that I had 10 people in line behind me, I just took a quick snap and on the back of the camera everything looked fine.   When I started to process this shot I realized that while I had the foreground sharp, my depth of field was not sufficient to render the lighthouse as sharp as I would have preferred.  So I used a couple of Flypaper Textures to give the shot a different feel and I think with the use of textures the importance of sharpness in the image becomes less important.  

I also use and recommend the plugin “Dirty Pictures” from Totally Rad Software for managing and working with Textures in Photoshop.

We are planning to do our annual Cape May Weekend next year a littler earlier so we can photograph the iconic Cape May Boats that line the beach!   Registration is open and it’s not too early to secure your spot on this tour… .   If you want to keep up with all things Road Runner, please join our Meetup and our Mailing List(on the right side of the page).

Icelandic Highlands

We just wrapped up our 2nd epic tour of Iceland.  We had a great group of participants and in spite of some challenging weather, we got to see and photograph a lot of great locations.

The image above was taken in the Icelandic Highlands on a day with light rain and 60 mph winds.

We always rent 4x4 vehicles so we can take our clients into the Highlands.  While Iceland offers much for the photographer without going into the Highlands, our clients agreed unanimously that going to the Highlands was essential and the long rough ride on the Icelandic "F" roads was well worth the extra expense and effort.

Iceland Awaits

After almost a year of planning, Denise and I are soon to head back to one of our favorite places on the planet!   We are leading a group of photographers on a tour of what we think are the best locations in Iceland.   While we have seen much of what Iceland has to offer during our previous trips and tours, we know that much more remains to be discovered.  So we are spending 5 days exploring the north of Iceland before our group arrives.

The photo above was taken in the Westfjords at a waterfall called Dynjandi.  It’s a beautiful and stunningly large waterfall in a very remote location.

A Fleeting Moment

Last Friday Denise and I arrived in Davis, WV just in time to be greeted by significant rain. I was making Denise drive so I could work on my motion abstracts when suddenly the sun pops out before it stopped raining.  Without missing a beat Denise proclaims there must be a rainbow somewhere.  I started looking around and sure enough there was one behind us over the Canaan Valley Wildlife Management area.  We quickly turned in, jumped out, and started shooting.  

From the time the sun popped out to the time the rainbow disappeared was about 5 minutes.  These moments are fleeting and knowing our gear allowed us to jump out and start shooting.  If you have to fumble with your gear you just might miss some opportunities.   

Palouse Year 3

In a few days Denise Silva and I will be heading to Washington for our Palouse Photography Tour.   This is our third year doing tours in the Palouse. For those who don't know, the Palouse is the largest wheat growing region in the country.   The landscape is full of rolling hills, barns and my personal favorite, lots of old trucks.  

We are looking forward to working with a great group of participants, several of whom have done other tours with us.  We can't wait to see what they create!

During the last 2 years we have mapped thousands of miles of country roads and, believe it or not, we will be scouting some new areas in the days before our participants arrive.  I already know the week will fly by.  Did I say fly?  Stay tuned to this blog to see what that means.

Spring Finally Arrives

After a colder than normal winter spring has finally arrived here in Virginia.  I shot this image a few days ago during one of our meetups.  We have a busy meetup and tour schedule during the next few weeks but I hope not to miss the tulips.

Win a Trip!

Since the inception of Road Runner Photography Tours we have frequently raffled spots on some of our tours. This May however, we are doing something we have never done and frankly have never seen anyone else do either.  We are planning a weekend photo tour in one of our favorite areas of West Virginia and the only way you can attend is to win a spot on the tour.  That’s right, every spot on the tour will be given away to randomly selected winners.

If you want to enter for a chance to win one of the 6 spots on the tour you need to head over to this page;  www.RoadRunnerPhotographyTours.com

If you want to increase your chances of winning a spot on the tour it’s easy.  You just need to share the custom link that will be made available to you after you enter.  You can share this link with friends directly via email or you can use the buttons to post the link on your favorite social media site.   Each time someone enters using your link, you will get an extra entry into the contest as well.

Let’s just imagine for a moment, that you don’t want to win. I know I’m having trouble imagining that you would not want to win.  But you can still help your friends win by registering and sharing the link with your photo friends.  Imagine how grateful they would be if they won a spot because of your help!

Full details are available on the contest page.

Quality vs. Quantity

I'm going to start with a question.  What is more important, quality of work or quantity of work?  What I mean by this is what if you took a week long trip and only got one portfolio quality image?  Would the trip be a failure or a success?  The answer to this question of course depends of your point of view.

Sitting on this side of the computer I have a front row seat to the internet just like you.  Now you can look at websites like 500px and generally you will see examples of stunning work from a variety of photographers.  Or if you go over to Flickr you might see someone post dozens or even hundreds of pictures from a particular trip or event.  There is no right answer to this question, its like many things in life, a matter of opinion.

As I finish my 2nd decade as a photographer, with a 20 year break between decades,  I find that I value quality.  In my mind this is the only possible choice.  When you go to a gallery or art show you see a few pieces from a particular artist at best.  Artists have always been forced to be selective when it comes to showing their work. But with the advent of the internet and nearly unlimited online storage, it takes us back to the days of sitting in front of a slide projector as your neighbor shows you 200 shots from their vacation.  Did you fall asleep before the show was over?  You have to be older than 40 to appreciate comparison.

It's not my intent to be critical of others in this space but let's think a minute.  If you post 100 pictures from a particular place or event, how many people will loose interest before looking at all of your images?  Or how many will judge your ability as a photographer not by your best image, but by your worst?  The fact is we all take lousy images.  I could show you thousands, but then you would not be inclined to return to my blog.   I think it helps if you can develop the ability to be your toughest critic.  That does not mean that you should not show your images and have pride in your work.  You should!  I think the art of photography is a journey and not a destination.  Personally I hope to be a better photographer as time progresses.  Part of that process is being critical of my work and introperspective on how I can strive to improve.

In regard to the blog image above.  It was the only worthy image from a full a day of shooting motion abstracts.   The rest were just not that good.  But my happiness with the one image far overpowers any possible disappointment with the hundreds I had taken that day that no one else will ever see.