Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Thanks for joining one of our photography field programs! We enjoyed spending quality time with you.
We enjoyed our busiest year ever. All of our workshops and photo tours were terrific because we always attract such a great group of people including you.
Of course the big news this year was both our DVD on How to Photograph Yellowstone and our much awaited book became a reality this year. Both are selling very well and enjoying rave reviews. Focal Press is our publisher and was so excited by the early sales and warm reception our book received that they have already ask me to write another book which should appear in early 2009 on Digital Landscape Photography. I am enormously excited to write about this topic since I will have plenty of space to get into the details. In case you are wondering, I do have several other book titles planned and these will happen as long as I remain healthy and our book sales continue to impress the publisher so do recommend our book to others.
You can buy both the DVD and the book on our web site. Go to
www.gerlachnaturephoto.com and click on Book and DVD.
Our methods for teaching workshops continues to improve. Beginning with our fall color workshops in Michigan, we began Sunday night by going over digital cameras and covering important details like white balance, color space, JPEG vs RAW, ISO choices, the use of self-timers and cable releases, and much more. We especially stressed use the RGB histogram (if your camera has it), shooting on manual, and using back-button focusing to get terrific sharpness. Everyone followed our advice (more or less) and both autumn color groups were shooting like a pack of pros in no time at all. We were really impressed by what they came up with even though wind and rain tormented us most of the time.
New Metering Method!
After a lot of thought and new experiences in the field, I no longer recommend autoexposure. There are just too many problems with it which is the topic of a future article in Nature Photographer magazine. Instead, we find it is best to use manual metering and evaluative (Canons term) or matrix (Nikon term), rather than spot metering. It seems to work well. Use the RGB histogram if you have a choice because it is more precise. If your camera only offers the luminance histogram, then use that. I haven’t been using spot metering for awhile because it just slows down the process. If I use my spot meter to meter a bright yellow and add +1 1/3 stops of light to compensate for subject reflectance, I still have to check my RGB histogram to make sure it is perfect and there are no burned out highlights (in most cases). Of course, after metering the bright yellow, I have to recompose to take the image. Since I have to check the histogram anyway, why not use matrix or evaluative metering and compose the shot. Now manually balance the exposure display in the viewfinder to the zero position and take the shot. Check the histogram to see if any light needs to be added or subtracted. The RGB histogram shows the histogram for each of the three color channels which include red, green, and blue. The best exposure for a RAW file is to have whatever color channel extends furthest to the right to snuggle up to the right side of the histogram without climbing the right side or clipping. Don’t worry about the other two colors. By exposing in this way, you have avoided clipping the highlight which could mean detail is lost. You also let as many photons hit the sensor as possible which helps the sensor measure the light more accurately and you reduce the problem of digital noise which happens when pixels don’t receive much light in the dark portions of your image. I should warn you that shooting a RAW file in this way does require being processed by a RAW converter to make it looks its best. Also, the image that appears on the back of your camera on the LCD monitor probably won’t look to great as well. It might looked washed out, but when the image is adjusted with a RAW converter, it looks terrific. Every photo in our book (all 158 images) was shot this way!
Our 2008 snowmobile tours of Yellowstone National Park begin in early January. We are offering four tours which include the dates of January 6-12, 20-26, January 27-February 2, and February 3-9. We just added the Jan 6-12 dates so we may still have spots if you call immediately. Please call Tracie at 1-800- 221-1151 or Email
Tracie@yellowstone-travel.com for details.
In mid-February, we are planning a private trip to photograph the amazing wildlife of Japan in winter. We are traveling with Alaskan nature photographer Tom Walker. Tom has a friend who lives in Japan who is guiding us. We also went to Brooks River to photograph Brown Bears in late June. It was awesome photographing the bears chasing and catching salmon in the river.
This was the best year ever for our hummingbird workshops in British Columbia. We had plenty of friendly birds and we developed some new tricks and learn a lot more about using different kinds of flashes. We found the Nikon SB-800 and Canon 580 II flashes worked really well for hummingbird photography. We are now using three different sets of flashes to photograph the hummers which include Sunpak 544, Canon 580 II, and Nikon SB-800. Being able to fire the Nikon and Canon flashes wireless made the setups simple and nearly foolproof. We do offer three hummingbird workshops at the very best time for photographing them at Bull River so call Michele if you would like to join us. All of our courses are filling rapidly so everything may be sold out by the time you get this, but you can always reserve your spot for 2009.
Both of our Kenya photo safaris were superb in 2007-as they always are so do plan to join us someday. We are only offering one photo tour in 2008 so call right away if you would like to join us as it is nearly sold out. We have stopped doing Rwanda (for gorillas), but highly recommend it as a private extension and probably won’t do two Kenya tours in a row. We simply need time to film more DVDs and write more books so we had to cut back somewhere. Please call International Expeditions, at 1-800-633-4734 immediately for complete details or to enroll.
If you like Yellowstone, horses, camping, and photography; be sure to check out our backcountry horse photo tours. This program is enormously popular, but we are offering two departures in 2008 so be sure to call us right away if you would like to join us. I know we are close to being sold out, but there could be a spot open or we may get a cancellation.
Of course, we feel the Michigan summer and fall color workshops are the best workshops we’re running for teaching you how to shoot like a pro. We have conducted these workshops since 1987 so we know the location perfectly so you are at the right spot when the weather is most favorable for getting great images.
We hope to have our web site totally up-to-date by the end of the year. Actually we wanted it done sooner, but being on the road teaching for 14 consecutive weeks made that hard to do, especially when we spend so much time in places that don’t have Internet. Please go to
www.gerlachnaturephoto.com for all the particulars. Just remember that many of our programs fill to capacity quickly so enroll right away.
We’ll be home in Idaho from now till early February so if you have questions, please contact us through Michele's email address, michele@gerlachnaturephoto.com this is the fastest way to get a reply from us.
Michele Smith is our part-time office manager. She does a terrific job for us and was our mule packer and chief chef on our back country horseback trips into Yellowstone. Here is everything you need to contact our office.
