Spring maybe coming soon? The peepers are popping so it must be true.

Set your calendar to the third week in February and each year you can count on the spring peepers greeting you with the melodious calls that fill the evening and night (and even overcast days) air.  That beautiful sound, a series of single high pitched whistles ("peep" "peep" "peep").  Whats really cool is that the singing by the males usually occurs in trios when they reach breeding age (three years old) and the louder you peep, the better your ability to attract true love (or at least the opportunity to breed) and the bigger you are the better your ability to mate and survive (Girls like bigger males in this case).  When the singing commences it tells you that they have emerged from hibertation and winter is almost gone and spring will be arriving soon.Each female lays between 800 to 1,000 eggs that will hatch in about 6 to 12 days and the larvae (tadpoles) transform into adults during the month of July. The spring peeper (Psuedacris crucifer) gets its name from the distinctive cross or X on its back.  This is a small frog, ranging up to about an inch in length and coloration can vary from olive to even slightly yellowish.  Look for the x on the back and the dark bands on the legs for better identification.  This is a frog of wet woodlands and small ephemeral, shallow ponds or pools without fish.  Like most frogs, these little guys are primarily active at night and this means if you are going to photograph them in their natural habitat, flash photography will be used.  The keys to using it successfully are to diffuse the light so you do not get such strong highlights and dark shadows and to make sure the eye is sharp and in focus.

Looking for patterns in nature photography

Patterns are nothing more than repeating forms, shapes, objects, or colors that are either arranged in order or randomly throughout an image.  Patterns add interest to nature photographs because they are quite pleasing to the eye because they bring visual rhythm and harmony and seek to move you through an image like the repeating notes or phrases in a musical score. One of the keys to using patterns is to emphasize the pattern, not the surroundings and this requires us to slow down, stop, look, listen and smell the roses as they say.  I will never forget when I was leading a group of nature photographers on an outing to photograph painted trillium and the were so excited at seeing hundreds of them that they stopped looking, listening, slowing down and delved right into those big beautiful showy flowers.  But every single one of them passed up the shot I liked best from the outing which was a single southern "confederate" violet growing in a patch of tassel rue (just the leaves).  There was this great pattern that had been "interrupted" by that single flower.  I still like that image today. So the first method of using patterns effectively is to emphasize the pattern as show in the close -up of the lesser purple fringed orchid above. This is also an example of a regular pattern. The other effective method of using patterns is to "break" the pattern with something that is different as in the case of the purple fringed orchid "breaking" the pattern of the ferns in the image below.

Now this is where other aspects of composition might come into play and you can consider the rule of thirds when composing the image in the viewfinder.  In this case the organization of the image placed the whole flower raceme in the upper right quadrant of the photo.

The last type of pattern is called an irregular pattern where the objects are randomly placed, not particularly ordered, but close enough to give the sense of a pattern. When using this type of pattern it is best to fill the frame with the subject. Since spring is rapidly approaching now is the time to begin planning those outings in the field and I suggest you think about looking for more patterns with the flowers to create more visually enticing images, but don't forget to do the close-ups and portraits too.

Improving your photography by focusing on the subject

I give powerpoint programs all over the state and I give lots and lots of them (or at least I used to).  One of the most common questions that I get asked is what is the one thing I can do to improve my photography?  That is a difficult question to answer because lots of things need to be considered before answering that simply question.  For example, is the image properly exposed and have the appropriate contrast?  Is it in focus (or at least the critical part of the image)?  What are the lighting conditions?  You get the point.  Once the basic questions have been answered, the biggest single thing that can improve your photography is to tnk about what you are trying to say with this image?  What is the point of taking a photo because it can range from simply documenting a situation to trying to create some emotional impact.  Much of the public believes you can fix everything in photoshop or some other post processing software and there is this entire group of tech savy folks, who can do amazing things with software.  For example, the new hottest thing is something called HDR which is a method of expanding the exposure range to get more detail in highlights and shadows.  But most of the HDR stuff I have seen are not accurate representations of what happened in the real world.  In addition, I think many people have gotten so used to over-saturated images on the web (and those aren't real either) that we come to think of it as the norm.  Or even adding or changing something significant about the image (check out the latest Audubon magazine about a fellow who inserted one owl for another and was disqualified from the competition). Which gets us to the simple question, what is the one thing I can do to improve my photography?  Well the answer is subject, subject, subject and more subject.  Think about what the subject is and how you can emphasize the subject and how that relates to the purpose of the image.  This can apply even to those candid family photos and you probably have them with the lamp post or floor lamp splitting someone's head or growing out of their head, or having people stand too close to the wall so that the shadows take away from the people?  So remember what is the purpose of the image and how do can you emphasize your subject and the best advice is to keep it simple.  Keep it elegant and don't have a lot of clutter or distractions that take away from the subject.  Below are two images I took yesterday with friends in Edmonson County Kentucky on Indian Creek (private property).  The first image is more of a portrait of the waterfall where the waterfall is definitely the subject of the photograph.  The second image is a landscape view, putting the waterfall into the perspective of where it occurred and the various pieces of a puzzle.  In the landscape photo, I took great care where I set up the camera and tripod and what lens to use because upstream there was a bunch of dead trees scattered all over the creek.  By selecting this location and the focal length lens I used, I was able to effectively keep out the distracting elements and get a unified image where the waterfall is part of the scene and not the entire subject.

How to set your camera to capture flying birds

Birds are those wonderful creatures that bring color to the sky and provide us with endless photo opportunities.  Over the years of photographing nature, one of the subjects I have always had difficulty with is photographing birds in flight.  Thanks to new auto-focus cameras that are very sensitive, this isn't as big a problem it has been in the past.  The primary reason is that there is now an AF button on the rear of the camera body that helps keep the birds in focus as they are flying.  It used to be you would have to press the shutter release button half-way down to focus and then recompose and shoot.  But there is a better alternative and it relates to the back-button auto-focus technique. The first thing you have to understand when using this technique is the various ways that auto-focus works.  Most DSLR's have three modes, single shot, continuous servo, and automatic. In the single shot mode, you select your focus point (in Nikon it is a little red rectangle) and press the shutter half way down and the auto-focus locks in and as long as you don't move or the subject doesn't move it will remain in focus. But what happens if the subject moves?  That is where continuous auto-focus comes into play.  The auto-focus in this instance will track or follow that moving subject as LONG AS YOUR FINGER CONTINUES TO PRESS THE SHUTTER RELEASE HALF-WAY DOWN. The auto mode generally uses single focus unless the camera determines the subject is moving and then would switch to continuous focusing.  Now, pushing that shutter release and then recomposing is difficult at best and this is where the back button auto-focus comes into play.  All you need to do is to activate this button (it will show you how in your camera manual.  I know you probably never read that thing but trust me, it is there) and then it is almost instinctive.  Your camera auto-focus must be set to continuous auto-focus and then you select your focusing point in the camera and put that point on the eye of your subject (or have it preset) and then as long as you hold down that back auto-focus button it will track and follow your subject as it moves.  It is really that easy.  The other really great thing is that when you release the button it acts like single auto-focus and you can shoot landscapes, scenery, and other static scenes because once you release the button, it stays in focus on where you had the focus selector set.  This also works for other wildlife as well.  In the case of this doe and fawn, taken today (Monday February 3) I noticed the doe and fawn together and they will often come up to each other and touch noses to recognize each other.  I had my camera set up and ready to go and watched as the fawn approached the doe, looking at her and then watched as the doe moved close to the mother.  At this point, I began shooting frames on continuous high frame advance and held my thumb on the back button auto-focus and kept the focus point on the eyes and in the space of 20 seconds had one shot where the noses touched (and many where they almost touched) and that was the winning image.  This would have been very difficult to achieve without the assistance of the back button auto-focus which kept the eyes in focus the entire time the deer were moving their heads.  So go ahead and give it a try and see if your wildlife shots don't dramatically improve.