by Martin Bailey | Mar 11, 2011 | Podcast, Workshops
From February 13 to 24, 2011, I held my fourth Winter Wonderland Workshop, and took thirteen avid photographers to shoot the Snow Monkeys in Nagano for three days, then joined by one more participant in Hokkaido, we had fourteen participants with us for a further nine days, photographing the amazing wildlife around Eastern Hokkaido.
As I’m going to record and release these episodes as I complete a transcript of a reasonable length for each, I’m not sure how many parts it will be, but I imagine it will turn into three episodes or so. Here’s a look at what we got up to on the first three days in Nagano, photographing the adorable Snow Monkeys.
As I now live further from the start point, I actually spent the night at the Shinagawa Prince Hotel on February 12, along with most of the participants, all of whom had flown in from overseas to take part. A number of us had dinner together that evening, and it was great to start to get acquainted with them all, and also to welcome Graham Morgan, or N.S.W. in the forum and Members’ Galleries, as he arrived during our dinner. This was to be Graham’s third time on the tour, which I always find to be such a huge vote of confidence and proof of the success of these tours, now in our fourth year.
A relatively late start in comparison to many of the days to come, we were up and at breakfast by 6AM and met at 7AM to board our bus out to Nagano. From this year I’d joined forces with a Tour Operator which I’d asked to handle all of the hotel, flight and bus bookings, so that I could concentrate on spending quality time with the group, and to make checking into the hotels and lunch stops smoother. Yukiko from the tour operator would be with us for the entire 12 days of the tour and the group was introduced to her at this point. Yukiko led the group to the bus to get started.
It’s a steady four hour drive out to the Snow Monkeys, but with the early start we were able to start our 30 minute walk out to the Monkey Park shortly after lunch, which we stopped for after leaving the highway. It was a Sunday afternoon, and I had expected a larger crowd, so I was pleased to see that at least some of the group were able to get down beside the hot springs pool in which the Snow Monkeys bath. By the end of the afternoon in fact, there was even a time when I was able to get a photograph of Graham on his own down on the ledge by the pool. You can see the photos that I discuss here embedded into the enhanced Podcast on your iPhone or in iTunes, or go to my blog at martinbaileyphotography.com to see the images and transcript. To jump to this specific episode you should be able to just type mbp.ac/279 into your browsers address bar.
Graham by the Monkey Pool
From a workshop perspective, the main point of this first afternoon is to get used to the location, and the subjects. I find that when most people first come to the Snow Monkeys they are at first taken back by how close you actually are to the monkeys. You generally shoot lots of images, many of which are nice photos, but don’t really show any special activity on the Monkey’s part. This is why my first images, and so many other peoples images from the snow monkeys, are just shots of the monkeys sitting in the hot springs. These are certainly worth shooting, and you’d be silly not to tell that story if you are going to the trouble to come out here, but once you have that out of your system, you’ll start to look for something a little more, like a cute expression or action.
Because I personally already have loads of images of the monkeys in the pool, and of course because I wanted as many of my group as possible to get their space down by the pool, and the shots that it allows them. I generally stayed around the top, answering questions when anyone had them, and shooting the odd image myself when I wasn’t working with someone answering their questions.
One image that I posted from this first afternoon was the shot we see here (below) where an adult snow monkey was shaking the snow from its hair, with a youngster looking on. The shot is actually seriously flawed in that I wasn’t quite square on to the monkeys, so although I was lucky to get the face of the monkey shaking its head as it stopped at the end of the movement, so the eyes are almost totally sharp, the young monkey is slightly behind the depth-of-field. This means that although his hand is nice and sharp, his face and eyes are actually slightly soft. If this was a shot of just the youngster, I’d have had to throw it out, but because of the action with the adult, and the angle of the youngsters face, with that inquisitive look, I decided it was worth keeping.
Reverence
Without really thinking about it, I’d actually squared up a little after this, and have a few more frames with both monkeys in clear focus, but the movement of the adult is not there. Neither is the inquisitive look on the youngsters face, so this is the shot, however flawed. This is the sort of thing that I mean though. Once you have your cute monkeys in the pool shots, you really need to start to watch for something different, and be quick to catch it when it happens.
We had a lot of fun with these monkeys in the snow. Here’s another shot of a few of the group photographing the monkeys on the side of the hill, where I’d just made the last image.
Monkey Business
The hotel that we stay at in Nagano is a really nice traditional Japanese hotel or Ryokan. Although there’s often a little too much food to eat everything, the food here is great too, and I had our guide take the following photo of us as we sat down for dinner on the first night.
Dinner on Day 1
On the 14th of February, the second day at the snow monkeys, we were due to have a full day, and now the group had gotten their first day becoming accustomed to the location and subjects out of their system. It also gives you a chance to look at the images from the first day, and see how you might improve on the second. Here’s an image (below) of Richard, one of our participants, as we made our way down to the hot springs pool where the monkeys would bath. As you can see, we had a nice snow covering, which was much better than last year. We were also there before the crowds, so we were able to start shooting in various places around the park from the start of the day.
Richard Photographing a Snow Monkey
Unfortunately on this second day, as with the first, it was not snowing. Also, there was another couple of large groups that made their way into the park during the day, making things pretty crowded. We had a great full day in the park though, and many of the group came away with some great shots again. Although I got a number of nice shots, I didn’t feel as though I’d gotten anything that improved on what I’ve already shot here, so I didn’t select any of my own shots from the second day for upload.
One shot I do want to share with you though is of Richard in the far left, Graham in the middle and Bill to the right, in position on the ledge next to the pool, waiting for something interesting to happen. Here you can see, once again, just how close we are to the snow monkeys at this location. They are totally unfazed by our presence, and as long as you don’t stare them in the eyes, or try to eat near them, they simply ignore the human presence around them.
At the Snow Monkeys
When we got up on the third day, it was snowing heavily. The thirty minute walk down the mountain track to the park was idyllic, though every so often the snow that had settled in the branches of the pine trees on the side of the track fell like a mini avalanche, stopping the procession of photographers hiking down the track, so it took just a little longer than usual to get to the park.
With the fresh and still falling snow, there were lots of opportunities to capture the various mannerisms of the monkeys in the snow, like this shot of an adult, piggy-backing a youngster, both covered in snow. On the composition, note the use of negative space in the entire left side of this image. It would have been easy, and even natural for me to put this pair of monkeys in the center of the frame, but by leaving this space I’ve given you a feel of the surroundings of the monkeys, with the volume of snow, and I’ve also given room for the adults gaze, that inquisitive look to see if the youngster is OK. I also added a touch of drama by having the youngster look straight out of the frame to the right, making us wonder if there was maybe a third monkey just outside the frame or something.
Mindful
This is probably a good time to briefly talk about the technical thought process behind my snow monkey shots. This might not be for everyone, but I was purposely blowing out the whites in the snow for pretty much all of my shots. The reason for this is because it was overcast most of the time while were where there. This makes for beautiful soft light from the huge soft-box sky, but it also means that the monkeys are pretty dark in relation to the bright snow. To counter this, and to ensure that I have lots of light in the faces of the monkeys, I was overexposing the snow by around two thirds of a stop.
As usual, I was shooting in manual mode, but this is one time when I don’t expose to the right, as they say. Usually, I expose to the right, which means that I ensure that my whites, which are displayed on the right side of the histogram on the camera’s LCD, are close to, but not quite touching the right shoulder of the histogram. This helps me to create bright and vivid images, for my usual shooting.
Laputa
Here though, I was well and truly hitting the right shoulder for many of my shots, with the white of the snow blowing out, but really nicely exposed monkeys. It doesn’t matter that I was blowing out the snow, because I shoot with a shallow depth-of-field, meaning that the snow in the foreground and background would be out of focus anyway, and so there’s no need for me to try to properly expose the snow, because I’m not going to be maintaining any texture in there anyway, apart from the snow either side of the monkeys, which I was prepared to sacrifice for better exposed subjects. If you blow out the snow too far, it starts to bloom into the fur around the edges of the monkey, but just a little overexposure seems to be protected by the fur, immediately around the subject.
In this next image (right), I’d noticed a monkey sitting on the top of what was left of a fallen tree in the snow. Here, to enhance the feeling of the height of the monkey, I have composed the shot with the monkey close to the top of the frame. Also though here, another reason for this composition was because there was a dark patch of rock just above the monkey, which I didn’t want to include in the shot. This can also be a reason to look for alternative compositions, which can sometimes help us to create images that might not always be obvious at first glance.
In the next shot (below), a youngster stood up straight for a moment or two, and I was lucky enough to have had my camera trained on him at the time. I’d actually been working this subject for a while, but having just answered a few questions from the group, I had just gone back to photographing, and was happy to grab this shot.
Yey!
We were to leave the park by 11:30AM, for our drive back to Tokyo, and then on to the Haneda Airport for our early morning flight to Hokkaido the next day, but some of the group had started to filter back out of the park back to the bus by around 11AM, so I decided to spend just a few minutes down by the pool myself, before heading out to the bus. There was just me and one of member of our group down there for about 15 minutes, and I was able to get a few shots that I quite liked to end the third day.
This first one (below) is of a youngster sitting in the pool with melted snow in his hair, looking at a piece of pine tree needle or similar foliage. As I mentioned earlier, I’m always looking for that little bit of activity other than just a straight look, so I was pleased to snap a frame with this youngsters tongue out while looking at his meal, almost as though he was licking his lips in anticipation.
Looks Good!
The next frame though was even better. Not only had he just licked his lips, he now closed his eyes and seemed to be enjoying the aroma of his meal, like a sommelier taking in the aroma of a fine wine. I was really happy to get this group of images, giving context to each other.
Smells Good!
Note here too that the exposure is exactly the same as when shooting the monkeys in the snow, but now we simply have a well-exposed image, shooting to the right of the histogram without any blinkies. Exposure is a subjective thing, but one of the key points of my workshops is to get my group creating well-exposed images in the field. Even those that don’t take my advice on quickly generally find themselves converting to my way of setting exposure over the course of the tour, as we’ll see in the next episode when we talk more about the necessity to go manual when shooting the red-crowned cranes in Hokkaido.
A Mother’s Love
As 11:30 approached, there was a mother snow monkey sitting on the edge of the pool, to the right of the youngster we just looked at. A closer look showed me that she was cradling a youngster, so I trained my camera in with a tight crop, hoping for a nice touching mother and child shot. I looked at my watch and I literally only had another minute or so to get the shot before it would have been me who held up the group which would not do.
I remember saying a few times, “Please move your hand. Just move it a little! I have to leave in 30 seconds!” And, as 11:30 came and went, I couldn’t resist waiting just a few more seconds while wishing the mother would move her hand, and she did, allowing me to get just two or three more frames, as we see here (right).
At first it’s not obvious what we’re looking at, but as you focus in on the image, you realize that the mother is looking down at the upturned face of her baby, with his eyes closed, as though content and safe in his mothers arms. I might be personifying my subjects a little too much here, as I often do, but these guys are so human, and when seeing this kind of tenderness, it’s impossible to think that there is anything but total love for her baby in this gesture.
Thanks for listening today, and I hope you enjoyed me taking you through the first three days of my 2011 Snow Monkey and Hokkaido Photography Tour and Workshop. This concludes the Snow Monkey leg, and we went on to Hokkaido the following morning. Note that unlike last year, these were not separate tours, and apart from one person that was already in Hokkaido and so had arranged to just meet us up there, the entire group traveled from the Snow Monkeys to Hokkaido together, making the whole thing much less stressful for the group.
If you would like to join next years tour, remember that we are now selling this trip out pretty early, and I will be releasing details and dates for next year’s trips at the end of April. If you’d like to be emailed when I release the details, to secure your spot, please subscribe to our workshops mailing list. You can also check for details as I update my workshops Web page.
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Future Workshop Info: https://martinbaileyphotography.com/workshops/
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by Martin Bailey | Apr 20, 2009 | Art Talk, Fundamentals, Podcast
I’m adding an excursion to photography Snow Monkeys as an option to my 2010 Winter Wonderland Workshop. It will be a two day trip to Nagano, at the end of the week before we will leave for Hokkaido, with a Saturday night and Sunday to enjoy Tokyo between. I’ve been wanting to add this as an option for the last few years, and many people have requested it, but I had not yet visited myself, and so felt uncomfortable adding this option. Well, to remedy that, this year I went on a reconnaissance trip, and today we’re going to look at a selection of the images that I came back with.
I’ve mentioned before the importance of editing down images from a shoot to a very special few. After a few hours on the afternoon of day one, and a full second day’s shooting, I came back from Jigokudani in the Nagano prefecture, where the monkey’s live, with so many amazing images, that I simply could not edit down to just a handful. As I realized that I was not going to be able to get down to say 10 representative images, I set my sights on 30, and even that was just not possible. I toiled over my final cut for three days, after getting down to under a hundred, and finally whittled my selection down to 45 images that I uploaded to my Web site and my Photostream on Flickr. Luckily people also really seemed to like the images, and commented that they were glad that I didn’t leave any out, which made me feel better about my decision to not cut any further.
I think part of the problem in cutting images out of this set was because the snow monkeys, or Japanese Macaque, are so close to us humans that we feel a much closer connection than we might to other wildlife. There’s a sentience in those eyes, which although can be found in many animals, I just found it so human that I was moved by these monkeys. I didn’t want to make this a multi-episode series, so I tried hard to find just ten, but because there are three slight, but significant variations of the same subject that we’ll look at later, I ended up with 11 images to look at. We’ll try to skirt over some of the usual details on some of these though, so that we don’t spend too long.
Macaque #1
Let’s jump in and look at the first image that I want to talk about though, which is image number 2245. If you are new to this Podcast, you can view the images in iTunes or on your iPhone, and if you subscribe to the Enhanced Podcast version, the images will automatically change for you as we progress. If you want to follow along on my Web site, go to martinbaileyphotography.com and click on the Podcasts link in the top menu, and locate this week’s episode in the list. You can also just type the episode number into a new field that I added in the Podcasts menu, and when you hit enter or click the button, you will be transported to that Episode, and will be able to see the show-notes and all the thumbnails to images that we are discussing. You can also just enter the number I call out to the field in the Podcasts menu, and jump directly to the image as well.
I took two camera bodies with me, so that I could switch quickly to use a different lens as opportunities arose, and I used four lenses for the shoot. One of the lenses I used a lot, and for this image, is the 135mm F2 lens. This is a wonderful portrait lens, so you can hopefully appreciate that from my initial planning of the shoot, I’d been conscious of the fact that I was going to be shooting portraits. I also knew that we would be able to get very close. I wasn’t sure just how close, but it turned out that much of the time we were so close that if we’d reached out our hands, we’d literally touch the monkeys. Here I used the 135mm F2 lens wide open, at F2, which gave me a beautiful dreamy feel, and the strands of hair from the monkey actually look like they’re radiating out into the white background. The depth-of-field is incredibly shallow here, so only the monkey’s right eye is in really sharp focus. With us having to stand on a wet step elevated a couple of meters up from the lower grounds around the hot spring pool in which the monkeys are bathing, there not really much room to maneuver back and forth. You’re actually also often reaching to your right or left a little more than you’d like to get a nice background, and so it’s easy to introduce a little camera shake if you don’t try to maintain relatively fast shutter speeds. When shooting at F2, I had a shutter speed of 1/500th of a second, at ISO 100 for this shot, but at some points, and when stopping down the aperture a little, the shutter speeds dropped significantly.
Macaque #5
For the next image, number 2241, I was still using the 135mm F2 wide open, this time for 1/320th of a second. After you’ve been shooting for a while, and start to get used to the fact that you are standing next to a hot spring bath full of macaques, you start to try to capture little actions and expressions that make these wonderful monkeys seem a little more human or at least separate them from less dexterous animals. I caught this guy scratching his chin, and he also looked almost straight at me as I did so, which was nice. Notice how I included his reflection here, in the water of the bath, and gave a little room for the ripples, circling out from around him. As I was a little bit further away, we have slightly more depth-of-field as well, though still very shallow, how I like it.
Menacing Yawn – Macaque #14
In image number 2232, I was lucky enough to have my camera trained on this guy as he yawned. It looks more like a menacing show of aggression, but it really is just a yawn in the hot tub. The people around me didn’t get this. It’s really mostly luck, that I had my camera up to my face. Everyone that saw the yawn start then tried to capture it wasn’t quick enough. Well, I say luck, but I find it incredibly important to have the camera trained on something for as long as your shoulder and arm muscles will allow. Whenever possible, if I do have the camera up to my eye, just waiting, I also try to open my left eye, for two reasons. I find that when I’m shooting constantly with one eye closed, when I eventually open it, it seems to get a bit lazy, and I can’t focus with it properly. The other reason is to enable me to survey the surroundings, because you may not be trained on the animal that is going to perform for you. You will won’t see everything, but it gives you a better chance of seeing something else, and acting on it.
The last three images were shot in the couple of hours that I had at the hot springs in the monkey park on the first day. I’d concentrated on using the 135mm and I’d also used the 85mm F1.2 lens for closer shots. I got some nice shallow depth-of-field portraits, which was my plan, but using prime lenses, even on two cameras does have its drawbacks. I felt that I’d missed a few shots and so decided that on the second day, I’d keep my 70-200mm on one body, to give me some extra reach when needed, but also be able to zoom out as far as 70mm when necessary. Also, it was more overcast, and snowing lightly for most of the day, and so I was going to be happy of the Image Stabilization, which neither the 135mm F2 or the 85mm F1.2 has. I was switching between the 135mm F2 and the 24-70mmm F2.8 lens most of the day on my second body.
Mother & Child – Macaque #16
As I walked down the path towards the bath in the park, I noticed a mother monkey hugging a youngster to keep warm, and shot a series of images from which I selected three to upload, and I want to look at all three here. The first one is image number 2230. I crouched down to almost the same height as the monkeys to shoot these images. In this first one, I have a nice angle on the face of the mother, with her eyes closed, and also we can see quite a lot of the face of the young macaque. I raised the ISO to 400, because there was not a lot of light, and shot this with the 70-200mm at its full extent, 200mms. I closed the aperture down to F4 to give me a little bit of depth-of-field, because I wanted both faces sharp, but I didn’t want any more than this in focus. I wanted this dreamy feel to the edges of the fur too, and I’d have started to lose that had I stopped down to F5.6 or smaller. The aperture of F4 gave me a shutter speed of 1/500th of a second, which was nice to have, because I was a little unsteady and was shooting hand-held. I shoot with a tripod most of the time, but I didn’t want to start messing around just now, or I may have missed this moment. I actually shot the whole two days without a tripod here. It was just necessary to maintain the freedom that hand-holding affords you for this shoot, as fast paced wildlife shooting often does.
Mother & Child – Macaque #17
For image number 2229, I knew that I’d got a few shots from my initial position, so I used the wildlife photography trick of moving in a little at a time. If you try to move in to the optimal position in one go, you can often scare your subject, and I was still not sure how close I could get to these guys when they are not in the bath. I moved in closer, but then zoomed out to 160mm for this shot in which I basically now I’m shooting almost perfectly from the side of the mother’s face. I’ve cropped in just a little tighter on the head here too, and we lose the view of the youngster’s face a little, but this too is a touching shot in my opinion. The way the mother seems to be pulling the youngster, with her chin on its head, and the eyes closed, really seems to show the affection that she has for the child. Now, I’m sure that a part of this is just trying to warm herself up with the child, like a hot water bottle, but I know that there is some affection and an aspect of protection in there too. With the second face not so prominent now, I was not so worried about depth-of-field to get them both sharp, so I opened up the aperture by one click to F3.5. Luckily the second face is still pretty much in focus, but I wouldn’t have worried too much if it wasn’t.
Mother & Child – Macaque #18
In the last of this series of three, image number 2228, I zoomed out just a little to 150mm, and here we see the mother’s eyes open, giving us a slightly different atmosphere to the image. I haven’t cropped in quite so tightly on the head, which puts the now open eyes on the top right third intersection, and the youngster’s face is close to the bottom left third intersection, so a nicely composed image too. In all three images we have a relatively clean background, with a slight dark patch in the top left of this one, but overall the colour matches the monkeys, making for a pleasing colour palette for these images. For all of the images that we see in this set, I had reduced the red saturation to +25 in Lightroom. I generally apply +18 for Green and Blue and +50 for the Red channel when I import, but I a second preset that only applies +25 to the red channel, when there is something that is already quite red in the shots.
In image number 2227, I was again looking for those little actions that help us to connect with our cousins, and here I caught a youngster comparing his thumbnails. He had literally lined them up and was looking at them as if to say, “Wow! I have two of these, and they’re just the same!”. Many times I saw these macaques doing something that showed just how intelligent they are, and was pleased when I captured the moment like this. As I say, the second day was a little darker, and we can see the light snow falling in this image. I’d raised the ISO to 400, and with F4 on the 70-200mm lens I had the shutter speed set to 1/400th of a second here. Again I’ve given room for the reflection of the monkey in the water, and I also tried to include the larger ripple rings here, as well as that gold coloured stone in the background. Although I didn’t do this for that last three images, pretty much all of the others have a slight vignette added in Lightroom, which I think adds to the image and helps to draw us in to the subjects.
Two Thumbs? – Macaque #19
For image number 2222, I closed the aperture down a click to F4.5 for this much closer shot of a very pensive looking male. This guy was sitting right at the edge of the pool and I was literally at the closest focus distance for the 70-200mm F2.8 lens here. I just love the intelligence in those eyes. I can’t help also thinking though that he’s wishing there weren’t so many damned photographer’s sticking their cameras in his face. At any one time for the most part of the day there must be a good 15 to 20 photographer’s around this pool, and a handful or non-photographer tourists as well. With this in mind, the macaques are incredibly calm, rarely showing any signs of being annoyed with the humans around them, though there is the odd fight between the monkeys themselves.
Macaque #24
Let’s look at image number 2215, to give you a little more context of the surroundings. More of a documentary photograph, here I used the 24-70mm F2.8 lens at 32mm, with an aperture of F8 for 1/60th of a second to show you the surroundings. As you can see there are a lot of monkeys in the hot springs bath, just hanging out and keeping warm. You can also see that there is a fair amount of steam coming off the hot water, which can and does get in the way of some shots. As cool air blows through, you lose some chances, because the scene totally whites-out. You have to time your captures to when the mist is lighter. Of course, it does add to the atmosphere sometimes, so there’s no need to wait for it to totally clear, but when it’s too heavy, you really have a problem to see what’s happening. If you are in the path of the mist too, to the right of the bath, and the right of this shot, it steams up the front element of your lens too, which is obviously another problem that you have to deal with.
Communal Bath – Macaque #31
There was a beautiful old lady monkey that we see to the left of image number 2203. I’d noticed here keeping on licking her chapped lips. They must have been playing up something rotten, because ever 10 seconds she’d lick them like this. I actually shot a number of portraits right up close from the edge of the pool, and stopped, thinking I’d gotten a sharp shot or two, but when I looked on the PC, they were not sharp. I’d gone very wide aperture and didn’t quite make the shot, I think because I was leaning out uncomfortably backwards to get far enough away to get her at my minimum focus distance, and so I was pretty annoyed with myself for this. Still, I did wait for that tongue to flick out and lick her lips here too, and I generally like this scene, with the younger females around the old matriarch, seeming to me at least to be showing respect in the way they are carrying themselves around her.
Dry Lips – Macaque #43
I want to finish with image number 2201, in which we can see a family, with I think daddy monkey grooming mummy monkey, and baby monkey sitting there between them. I love the expression on mummies face, as she is being pampered. It makes me think that we humans think we have it all figured out, and for sure, it is a tough life for these monkeys, living so far north in the cold mountains of Nagano, but when you think that these guys have a warm bath to soak in, a caring hubby to groom you, and a little one close by. They are surrounded by other members of their society all living in relative peace. In some ways these guys seem to have it all figured out much better than we do.
Family – Macaque #45
This is not only the last shot for today’s Podcast, but also the last one that I uploaded from this set. It was shortly before 3PM, and not long after this the monkeys tend to leave the hot spring bath. I guess they have to dry off before nightfall, when the temperature drops considerably out here in the mountains. So, shortly after I shot this I called it a day, and went back to the hotel I’d booked, and took a steady drive back to Tokyo the following day. Happy with my reconnaissance trip, as I say, I’ve decided to add this as an option to next year’s workshop. I think I should be able to make it so that if this was the only part of the trip that you wanted to join, you probably will be able to, but for anyone coming in from outside of Japan, I’m sure it will make more sense to join both this and at least the first leg of the Hokkaido trip. There will be a short break after the monkey shoot before we head up to Hokkaido. The monkeys are about a four hour drive from Tokyo, but not in the same direction as Hokkaido, so we will have to go back to the city then regroup to fly to Hokkaido. Right now I’m planning to get us back to Tokyo in the Saturday afternoon, and give you Saturday night to party or do whatever you want in Tokyo. You’ll then have Sunday to do a little sightseeing, and we’ll head off to Hokkaido bright and earlier on the Monday morning. I’m doing the monkey trip before Hokkaido so that people that want to concentrate on wildlife shooting don’t have to do the Landscape shooting part, at the end of the Hokkaido tour. Of course, I personally think that the entire trip will be amazing again, so would really like to see people sign up for all three legs, but I didn’t want to force wildlife shooters to go on the landscape portion, and I think the way I’m planning it will give people the most possible flexibility in their options.
I’m just working the last few details before I publish the dates and prices etc. on my Workshops web site at mbpworkshops.com, which I plan to do by the end of April. If you are interested and want me to keep you informed about these and any other workshops I do, please drop me a line at workshops at martinbaileyphotography.com, and I’ll add you to my distribution list. Of course, no one else will see your email address, and I will never pass this on to third parties for any reason.
So, I hope you enjoyed sharing my experience at the Jigokudani Monkey Park in February 2009. If you are interested, I’ll put a link in the show notes to a livecam where you can check out the monkeys in the bath. I’m not sure that they are in the bath all year round, so if you listen to this episode from the archives in other seasons, you may not see anything, but check it out in the winter months, and you’ll definitely see the monkeys all relaxing in the bath, and doing their thing. I took a look at the livecam today, towards the end of April, 2009, as I prepared for this episode and there were very few monkeys in the bath. Note that the web cam doesn’t run through the night, and because Japan is GMT + 9 hours, this means that you will need to check in your evening or early morning if you live in the US or Europe, depending on your time zone. The cool thing is though, that you have links to snapshots taken throughout the day on the left side of the screen, so you can check to see if there were any monkeys there at all, on that day, and the previous day.
One other thing to mention today is that if you use Twitter, please do follow me. I can be found at Twitter.com/MartinBailey, with no space between my names. Last week Scott Bourne was kind enough to include me in his list of the top 10 photography related twitterers to follow, that he posted on photofocus.com, which was great. Thanks so much for that Scott, if you’re listening. I’ll put a link to Scott’s list in the show notes as well, in case you want to check out who else you should be following.
If you’ve just found this podcast because of that, then welcome aboard. If you like what you see and hear here, then do tell your friends and spread the word. We have a great community on our Photography forum at martinbaileyphotography.com as well, so please do check that out when you have a minute too. For now, you have a great week, whatever you’re doing. Bye bye.
Show Notes
Here’s a link to the Livecam at the monkey partk in Jigokudani, Nagano prefecture, Japan. Remember that Japan is GMT : 9 hours: http://www.jigokudani-yaenkoen.co.jp/livecam/monkey/index.htm
Here is Scott Bourne’s “Follow Friday – The Top 10 Photography-related People on Twitter” list: http://photofocus.com/2009/04/17/follow-friday-the-top-10-photography-related-people-on-twitter/
The music in this episode is from the PodShow Podsafe Music Network at http://music.podshow.com/
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Posted on behalf of Martin by Michael Rammell, a Wedding Photographer based in Berkshire, England. Michael also has a long-standing passion for Nature & Landscape photography. To catch up with Michael, visit his Web site, and follow him on the following social networking services.
