Almost five years ago now I received an email asking how I would answer the question “as a wildlife photographer how do you ensure that your camera is always ready for action?” Today, five years on, I’m going to provide my thoughts on this.
The email came from Bob Brind-Surch, and he said:
I recently gave a talk to a camera club and at the end, someone asked “What do you do to ensure that, as a wildlife photographer, your camera is always ready for action?” At the time I gave a rather garbled reply but I have thought a lot about it since and recently wrote an article for my latest newsletter and to include on my website here.
Bob went on to say that he would welcome my thoughts on this, so here goes.
First of all, I’d like to start off by saying that Bob’s post on this is great, although as you’d expect, there are some areas where our opinions differ. This isn’t about who is right or wrong though. I imagine that you’ll find something useful in both posts, which is why I’m linking to Bob’s as well, and I do encourage you to read it.
I’ve referenced Bob’s post to see what areas he has included, and tried to provide my own advice on all of the areas that I also feel are important, and added a number of additional sections that I thought of as I wrote, so I hope you find this useful.
Us as Much as the Camera
I’d actually like to start off by saying that with all due respect the question itself needs a bit of a tweak, at least as far as my own response goes. Asking how to ensure that the “camera” is ready for action to my mind belittles the part that the photographer plays in the making a photograph. I know that this is not the intention of the person who asked the question, but I would have much preferred the question to be: “What do you do to ensure that you are always ready to shoot?”
Bob starts his article off with a mention of the importance of practicing our craft and gaining the experience required to help us make the right decision as any given situation unfolds. The challenge with wildlife photography, of course, is that we have no control over our subject, and so when an opportunity arises, it’s really important to think and work quickly, because the subject may only be there for a few seconds.
Oh My Goshawk!
In fact, I’d go so far as to say that on occasion, there won’t even be time to think. During my Complete Namibia Tour & Workshop in 2017, we were driving along a dirt road in the Etosha National Park, when we saw a Southern Pale Chanting Goshawk dart down to catch a skink, and literally while the safari vehicle crunched to a halt in the dirt, I raised my camera and released the shutter, without even thinking about it.
I was on complete autopilot, to the point that when I got to the lodge that evening, it took me a few minutes to figure out why the below image was staring back at me from my computer screen. I honestly could not at first even recall shooting the image. This was partly because of the excitement as the Goshawk took his catch and stood on a small mound to eat it, and that became the main memory, but as I dug deeper, I did recall myself almost by reflex raising the camera and releasing the shutter as the vehicle screeched to a halt. I literally had one frame, and this was it.
Southern Pale Chanting Goshawk Catching Skink
Another probable reason for my selective memory is almost undoubtedly because I ruled out the possibility of having actually successfully captured the photograph. The vehicle was still moving after all. But, sure enough, there it was, on my computer screen, so I gave myself a pat on the back for working so well on autopilot. It’s not the best photo I’ve shot, but I’m relatively proud of my achievement. Although there was an element of pure luck, I was able to nail that photograph for a number of reasons that we’ll explore here.
Make Your Camera Ready
First and foremost, is to have your camera out of the bag, ready to shoot. If you are traveling in a vehicle where you can have your camera bag sitting on the seat next to you, assuming that it’s not jumping around so much that you have to zip it up while you travel, it would be fine to have the camera in the bag, but unzipped. Personally, I prefer to have my camera on my lap as we drive around, with the lens cap off and the hood fitted.
The camera is turned on, although it will go to sleep to save battery power. If you are in a dusty environment, carry a cloth large enough to drape over the camera to keep the majority of the dust off, but try not to mollycoddle your gear too much. If your camera and lens are not OK with getting a bit of dust on them, you may need to rethink your choice of gear. Of course, even the best L lenses from Canon can get a bit crunchy in dusty places, and may require more maintenance, but this is the price we pay for getting our shots.
Select an Appropriate Lens
It’s really important to try and anticipate the appropriate lens to have on your camera at any one time, and that you can quickly access your other lenses in case you do need to change them. I shot the Goshawk image above with my Canon EF 100-400mm Mark II lens, set to a focal length of 248mm. I sometimes also fit an Extender or Teleconverter to the lens for a little extra reach. When shooting domestically, here in Japan, I also use my 200-400mm lens with the 1.4x Extender built-in, and that’s great because I can engage the extender with the flick of a switch, but I’m finding that this is too big a lens to cart around the planet, so I rarely take it overseas, especially as the 100-400mm is so good and much more portable.
Also, if at all possible, having a second body nearby with the next lens that you are likely to need already attached can really help you capitalize on any opportunities that might come your way. In dusty environments this can also save you from having to change lenses so much in the field, but don’t be afraid to do so when necessary. Just be sure to sheild your camera from the dust etc. as much as possible and change the lenses out quickly.
Guesstimate Your Settings Ahead of Time
In his article Bob recommends using Aperture Priority, and although I sometimes do, I’m not comfortable in automated shooting modes, personally preferring to work in Manual in most situations. I recommend that you go with the mode that you are most comfortable with, and if you aren’t yet at the stage where you feel comfortable with either mode, then just keep shooting. There will come a time when you find the mode that best suits your shooting in any given situation.
To ensure that I’m not fumbling with my exposure as the action unfolds though, I do set and check my exposure relatively often even as we just drive around. Although I did tweak the Highlights and Shadows sliders in Capture One Pro for my Goshawk shot, the exposure was spot on despite it being a reflex shot, simply because I had occasionally raised the camera to my eye, and tweaked my exposure based on where the caret sat on the camera’s exposure meter. I might also do a test shot and check the histogram from time to time.
The reason I don’t like to use an automated mode, is because as long as I keep on top of setting my exposure like this, I know that I will get a good exposure regardless of the relationship between the subject and the background. However, there are times, such as when shooting in the streets of Morocco, when the lighting can change dramatically between the shadows and sunlit parts of the winding streets, that using Aperture Priority or one of the other automated modes does make more sense. It’s really a question of selecting the best mode for the situation, although as I mentioned, I don’t work well in an automated mode, so I find that I struggle with exposure more when I leave Manual mode.
Select an Appropriate Focus Mode
For Landscape work, I pretty much always use One Shot or Single Shot focusing, which is where the camera will lock on to a specific subject and stay there as long as you are holding down the AF button or shutter button. For wildlife work though, or any other type of photography where the subject is moving, I generally work in AI Servo mode or Continuous Focus.
AI Servo mode works great to track a moving subject, although it can take a bit of trial and error to arrive at some good settings initially. I’ll share the settings that I have arrived at over the years, but by all means use this as a guide to find what works best for you.
There are a number of schools of thought on whether you should use clusters of focus point, single focus points, or the entire range of available focus points. For me, with the settings that I’ll share now, I find that turning on all 61 focus points works best for me, and this gives me the flexibility to recompose with the subject anywhere within the focus area, and that gives me more compositional freedom. I generally find that trying to move a focus point or cluster of focus points around the frame manually is to restrictive, and in my experience unnecessary, because my method works fine with all focus points enabled.
To set my Canon EOS 5Ds R to use all 61 focus points, I hit the AF Point Selection button in the top right corner on the back of the camera, and then press the multifunction or M.Fn button that you’ll find above and to the left of the shutter button to cycle through the AF modes, until I see the letters AF in the viewfinder, as opposed to SEL. If you turn on the LCD you’ll see what I have in the below image.
Canon EOS 5DSR AF Point Selection
If you find this mode greyed out, like the three cluster modes to the left of the selected mode in this photo, go to the Select AF area selection mode option in your AF menu, and turn on the checkbox to enable this mode. I find that a relatively large number of people have this deactivated having read something telling them to do this online, or during a workshop, so it’s worth checking that you have this enabled.
I generally leave my selected focus point in the middle of the frame, although it can be moved, but then once I have focus locked on, with the following settings I find that the camera does a really good job of staying with the subject as they move, or I recompose my image.
To really make all 61 AF points work the way I want them to, I have selected and tweaked the three settings that you see in the following image to the point that I rarely have to change them. Although this is based on Case 2 under the AF settings screen, you can see that to gain quick and easy access to these settings, I add them to My Menu.
Canon EOS 5DSR Focus Settings in My Menu
I adjust the Tracking Sensitivity to minus two, so that it tries to stay locked on to the subject. I have Acceleration/Deceleration Tracking set to one, and AF Point Auto Switching set to zero. These settings work great for me, so give them a try for moving subjects. This goes for animals on the ground, as well as birds in flight.
Back AF Button Focus
I also set my camera up so that my shutter button does not activate the autofocus. It only focuses when I press the AF button on the back of the camera with my thumb. This enables me to quickly change between three focus modes. If I press the AF button then release it, I am effectively using One Shot mode, without actually selecting One Shot mode. If I press and hold the AF button, I’m in AI Servo or continuous focusing mode. If I don’t press the button at all, I’m in manual focus mode. Three modes in one, without changing a single camera setting.
Being able to switch between modes like this is really helpful when photographing wildlife because I can choose to focus as the subject is moving around, but if they are stationary, I can get focus, but then take my thumb off the back AF button as I wait for them to do something interesting. It also enables me to stop focusing if I want to recompose to the point where their head or whatever part of their body that I’m focusing on is outside of the focus area. If the camera tries to focus when I half press the shutter button, it makes it more difficult to do this. It’s possible, but you have to keep the shutter button half pressed as you recompose, and when you are waiting for a specific expression or action that can mean half pressing for a very long time.
The Scowl
When I photographed the lion in this image earlier this year in Namibia, I was able to gain focus on the lion’s eyes before he yawned, and then simply take my finger off the AF button as he kicked his head back, and then lowered it down again after the yawn for this photograph. The whole time his eyes were sharp, thanks to my focusing methods.
Canon EOS 5DSR Custom Controls
By the way, to set my Canon EOS 5Ds R to not focus with the shutter button, I go to the Custom Controls menu that you can see in the above image and it’s the first option in the list. Just select Shutter button half-press Metering Start. Please note though that you will almost certainly forget to focus a few times before you get used to using the back AF button, so I don’t recommend you do this while attending a photography tour or workshop. Do it at home and practice using this method a lot before an important or expensive trip.
Note too that occasionally I will lose focus while actively tracking a subject, but you quickly get into the habit of just lifting your thumb off the AF button and pressing it again, to regain focus.
Stop Down Your Aperture Some
Although it’s common for wildlife photographer’s to shoot with their lenses aperture wide open, I personally don’t think this is a good idea. The depth of field when wide open is too shallow to even get most of the Lion’s face sharp in the image we looked at earlier. Even at f/8 when focusing on his eyes his nose and teeth are slightly soft as we approach the edge of the depth of field.
For sure, if the eyes in your subject are sharp, it’s generally going to work out fine, but I like to see a little bit more detail in my subject, and so I tend to shoot at between f/8 and f/11 most of the time for wildlife. This is especially important if there are two subjects in your frame. You’d think that even stopping down to f/10 or so would be enough, but as you can see from the blown up area showing the heads of these two red-crowned crane’s singing, even at f/14, the back of the two cranes is getting decidly soft as it leaves the depth of field.
Calling Cranes with Blown Up Crane Heads
If we use my iOS app Photographer’s Friend to calculate the depth of field, we get a clearer idea of what’s going on here. I can see from my EXIF data that I I was focusing at around 30 meters for this photo, and at that distance at f/14 and a focal length of 560 mm, based on the traditional calculation method of evaluating an 8 x 10 inch print at arm’s length, my depth of field should be 2.4 meters or almost 8 feet.
Pixel Peeper Mode DoF Comparison
However, if we turn on Pixel Peeper mode and set the megapixels to 50, which is the resolution of my 5Ds R camera, we find that the actual depth of field that I get is 85 cm or 2.8 feet. These birds stand over five feet tall, so it’s likely that the two birds are least 3 feet apart, taking into account the compacting of the subjects because of the long focal length, and so the second bird is in fact just outside of our acceptable area of sharpness.
Timely Chimping
Regardless of the mode that you shoot in, I highly recommend that you become accustomed to chimping, which is the act of looking at your images on the back of the camera, but the timing of your chimping can be critical. If you know that your exposure will be in the ballpark, grab your first few frames, and ensure that any action that you must capture is in the bag, but then as soon as you can, check your LCD to see that your exposure is good. I use a technique called Expose to the Right or ETTR so I’m always looking to see that the data on my histogram is close to if not just touching the right shoulder, as I mentioned in episode 635.
Really though, getting good at quickly checking your exposure, then looking back at your subject to ensure that you can capture anything else that they might do is key to getting good wildlife shots. It’s a very fine balance, and I’d be lying if I said that I’d never missed a shot because I was looking at the back of my camera, but the times that I have missed shots have taught me how important it is to chimp really quickly, and as seldom as necessary to get good exposure.
Use the Lock Button
Another thing I do is to turn on the Lock button on my camera, especially when I’m using a strap that allows the camera to dangle around and bump into my leg, as this can change the aperture or shutter speed without me noticing, and then I miss the shot until I realize what’s happening. Under the Multi-function lock menu, I turn on the checkbox for the Main Dial, the Quick Control DIal and the Multi-controller, and then turn on the Lock switch below the Quick Control Dial on the back of the camera.
If you should forget that you have this turned on while you are shooting, when you try to change any of these dials, an L for Lock will appear on the camera’s display and in the viewfinder.
Turn On Image Stabilization
Also, ensure that you turn on Image Stabilization on your lens, and check the mode. For static subjects, use Mode 1 but to stabilize shots where you are panning around, use Mode 2. Mode 2 will only try to stabilize the vertical movements in a horizontal pan and horizontal movement in a vertical pan, so this helps to stabilize images of birds in flight for example. There is also a Mode 3 on modern Canon lenses, but I don’t really like it, and so I haven’t used it very much.
Use Good Quality Large Memory Cards
There is also nothing worse than having to find and change a memory card as the action unfolds. I’ve heard people talking about using small cards because they don’t want to keep all of their eggs in one basket, but seriously, if you buy good brand memory cards, you will rarely have problems with them. In eighteen years of digital photography I have had two issues that have resulted in me losing a few images. The first was literally way back in around 2001, and a few images disappeared from a Lexar CF card that I was using.
I talked with Canon about this, and they recommended that I always delete all images from the card in the camera before I formatted it, again, in the camera. They also warned against deleting images from the card on the camera and then continuing to shoot with that card, as this can lead to corrupt cards. Since I started to bear these things in mind, I’ve had no problems for approximately 16 years.
Then, last year, I did actually have a Sandisk CF card fail on me in the field. I was photographing a Northern Red Fox in Hokkaido during my Japan Winter Wildlife Tour and Workshop. Because I check my images on the LCD pretty regularly, as I was shooting I saw a question mark come up on the screen after the image preview flashed up very briefly. I looked and it saw immediately that the last five to ten images were not on the card.
Foxy Faceoff
I quickly changed cards to continue shooting, and later found that the card had developed a fault. All of the images to that point were fine, but I lost those five to ten images, and they weren’t anything that I really missed. Sandisk replaced the card and it has continued to work fine to this day. I use one 256 GB CF card, which was the one that developed the fault last year, and my second card for my second body is a 128 GB CF card. I always carry two backup 64 GB cards, all Sandisk.
With this size card, I can shoot fast-paced wildlife for one or two days, even with 50-megapixel cameras, and never have to worry about changing cards in the field, and having that benefit to me far outweighs the risk of having something happen to my card. If you do use small memory cards though, at the very least, ensure that you have your spares in a place that you can get to easily, so that you don’t fumble for them in the heat of the moment. Also, keep an eye on how many images you have the space for on your cards as you shoot, and change them early if necessary, when you are coming up to an important shoot.
A Place for Everything
In fact, that reminds me of something that I do, which is to decide where everything goes in my bag and my photography vest pockets, and I always keep accessories in the same place. I forget what it was right now, but during a workshop earlier this year one of my guests asked to borrow something, and I opened a specific outside pocket on my camera bag, reached in, and pulled out what they wanted without even looking inside the bag. They were impressed with how I was able to do this, but it really is important that you get to this point.
Use a Photographer’s Vest
That actually leads on to another point, about using a Photographer’s vest. They aren’t the most fashionable item of clothing, but a good vest with lots of pockets to keep the various things that we use as we photograph is a great way to speed up and optimize your shooting workflow. I find that the more obstacles that slow us down that we can remove, the more efficiently we work, and that leads to us getting more shots.
If you have to fumble around just to put your hands on your air blower to clean the dust off your lens, you really need to think about how you carry your photography gear. If I have to put things like my air blower and lens cloth into my camera bag or suitcase as I travel to a location, I move them to my vest pockets as soon as I arrive and they stay there until I’m about to jump back on an airplane to go home.
Custom Shooting Modes
Finally, I wanted to mention that I also make use of Custom Shooting Modes, which are the C1, C2 and C3 modes on my Canon cameras. You can store all of your settings including autofocus modes, and you can set these to revert back to the settings you store, or to keep any changes you make, so this is a great way to quickly access different settings for different shooting situations. I went into detail on how to use these settings in Episode 588, so do check that our if you are interested.
You Can’t Win Them All
Of course, even when bearing all of this in mind, and with years of experience behind us, we can’t win them all. There will be times when something is just too fleeting, and all we’re left with is a ghost of a memory to haunt us. In my experience though, it’s those ghosts that drive us to be better next time, and the more we do this, the easier it gets. Creating more and more opportunities for ourselves will always help to increase our chances of nailing our shots, and hopefully a lot more often than they get away from us.
In closing, I’d like to thank Bob for his email and interest in my thoughts on this subject. Also, if you have anything that you’d like to add to the conversation, please leave a comment below. It’s always nice to hear from you.
I’m often asked how I package fine art prints for shipping to customers, so I’ve prepared a short video showing the process, and we’re going to expand on that a little today in today’s Podcast. I’m also going to be giving away the print that you’ll see in the video, so look out for details on that at the end of the episode!
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Whether you sell your own prints, or simply want to send something to a friend or relative, every so often, we have to put one of our prized photographs into the postal system. Having shipped hundreds of prints to all corners of the globe, I’ve come up with a pretty good system for rolling and packaging my fine art prints, which I’m going to share with you today.
The video (below) is pretty much self explanatory, but I’m going to walk you through in more detail as well, to ensure that everything is clear. Here to start with is a photograph of the tubes that I use. I buy these from a shop in Tokyo called Sekaido, but this won’t of course be of much use to the majority of you that don’t live in Japan. The thing to note when you try to source a shipping tube, is to ensure that they are sturdy enough to not be crushed in transit. I had a few issues when I first started shipping prints, but since finding these particular tubes, I’ve not had an issue.
Shipping Tubes
The tubes I use are 70mm in diameter, and they need to be pretty wide, so that you don’t have to roll the print too tightly. This is highly recommended if you are using heavy fine art paper, that can kink when you roll it if you try to get it too narrow. The smallest you’ll want to go it probably a 2 inch diameter tube like the one’s I see on Amazon, but ideally, a little wider is better. 70mm is two and three quarters of an inch.
The short tube here is the one you’ll see in the video. This is 505 mm, the medium one is 655 mm and the tall tube is 1,020 mm. That makes them 19.88, 25.78 and 40.15 inches respectively. The plastic caps on each end of the tube actually extend into the tube by about 10mm each end, which is about just over 3/4 of an inch in total, so the short tube is perfect for 13 x 19 inch prints, the medium tube is good for 24 inch wide prints, and the longest tubes is good for longer prints up to 39 inches. I can’t print wider than 24 inches with my printer, but sometimes I like to roll the print lengthways, as this is better for really wide prints because you don’t want to be rolling them too tight.
I always wear cotton gloves when handing prints, to stop any oil in my hands from getting on them and generally help to prevent me from marking them. It’s important to note too that if you brush the face of a matte print you can easily mark it, even with gloves on, so you basically treat that as a no-touch area.
Before I roll the print, I place a piece of facing paper over the printed area, to protect it. For this I actually use Canon Coated Paper that is available in 24 inch rolls for my printer so it is large enough to use for any print size that I can create at home. For 13 x 19″ prints I actually use sheet A3 paper which is large enough to cover the printed area.
I roll the print with the printed area facing upwards. This not only protects the printed area better, it also rolls the paper the opposite way to it’s natural roll, so it essentially de-curls the paper after being given time to lay flat when opened at the customer end. If the print needs to be de-curled again, I generally suggest people roll it around the tube using the facing paper to protect the face of the print again. These instructions are included in the Certificate of Authenticity that I also include with the print. I also include an Archival Quality Certificate from Breathing Color when I’m shipping an archival certified print such as Pura Smooth, which you’ll see in the video.
Once I have the print rolled, I wrap a piece of paper around with the words “Tear this paper away to unroll your print” printed on it. I actually print this along the entire page on A4, so that the customer doesn’t have to turn the rolled print around to see what they need to do. I also print the MBP Logo alternatively with the line of text, which is partly just marketing, but also to ensure that the paper catches the customers eye.
I actually apply two pieces of tape to this sheet of paper before I roll the print, so that I can just feed it in as you see in the video. Trying to roll this around and tape it without doing this can cause you to lose your grip on the rolled print, and it starts to open up and sometimes needs to be rolled again, and I like to avoid that.
You have to roll the print smaller than the tube of course, and if you are wondering why I even bother to apply the last piece of paper to the outside of the rolled print, it’s to stop it from opening up inside the tube. If you simply roll and insert the print into the tube then let it unroll to fill the tube it becomes very difficult to get out. You essentially force the customer to pinch at the end of the print in the tube, possibly creasing the edges, and then they have to tug it out of the tube. With the paper stopping it from unrolling, the print can be easily slid out once a tube end cap is removed.
Some prints fit perfectly into the tubes, and some have a little play. If there is much play between the ends of the print and the tube caps I make a little padded bung by rolling strips of bubble wrap and then taping them to hold it all together, and place one of these at one or both ends of the tube. A few millimeters of play is fine, but if the print can travel far inside the tube it will bang against the plastic cap potentially damaging it, so I like to prevent this.
Bubble Wrap Bung
I tape the ends caps on to the tube, applying a good amount of tape around one end, and slightly less on the other. I use really heavy duty packing tape now, so it’s really strong, meaning I can get away with less, and this makes it easier for the customer to cut the tape away to remove the cap and get to their print.
I find that little details like folding the tape back a little to form a tab so that the customer can get to their print more easily all help to improve the overall user experience. It’s like applying the sheet of paper to stop the print from unrolling in the tube. It’s all very well just rolling and feeding the print into the tube, but you have to consider how easy it will be for the customer to then get the print out. I like to try and think my processes through to the very end as much as I can, so that I create as best possible an experience for my customers.
Anyway, here’s the video. It’s only about 6 minutes long, but probably worth a watch to really understand what I’m trying to relay here.
Seljalandsfoss (Falls)
Enter our Giveaway!
Let’s have some fun with the print that I made to shoot this video. I have set up a newsletter subscription list, that you can subscribe to with the button below. On June 23, 2014 I will randomly pick one person from the list, and mail the list to let everyone know that we have a winner. By subscribing, you agree that I can use your name in the announcement, but of course your email will never be disclosed, and that goes for anyone that signs up of course. I’ll also then email the winner for a shipping address, and get the print out to you as soon after the 23rd as possible.
Note that once we have a winner, your email address will then be merged into the MBP General Information Newsletter list, so you will continue to receive the occasional newsletter from us after that date. We hope that you’ll find any information we sending interesting and useful, but if you decide to, you can unsubscribe at any time with the links that you’ll find in every newsletter.
Good luck!
NOTE: The subscription link has been removed, because this particular giveaway has now finished. If you’d like to enter our current giveaway, please check the Fine Art Print Giveaway page.
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On May 4, before I left for Namibia, I released a quick video Podcast (episode 371) to walk you through my preparation for the trip. In that video I said that I’d let you know if anything didn’t go according to plan, and in general everything went really well, but some recent follow-up questions from listener Ken Goldman on Facebook started me thinking that it might be worth doing a quick round-up to close the loop on this.
Ken asked what I left behind, but wish I had brought, and what I had packed and discovered you never used, and on thinking about this, there were a few things, so here we go…
Stuff I Should Have Taken
There were really only two things that I should have taken but didn’t, and I found out about this very quickly. I should have taken some medication for an upset stomach and some packets of electrolyte sports drink powder. On the second morning of the trip I woke up with a bit of an upset stomach that knocked me out of whack for the first 36 hours or so, and I hadn’t brought anything for it.
The guidance I received before the trip said that they would have some medical supplies, and as I didn’t know what kind of problems I was likely to run into I only took things that I knew I might need. Luckily our guides had some packets of electrolyte rehydration powder, so I dropped one into my water canister and drank it through that second day, and that really helped to sort me out, but I was lucky that the stomach upset fixed itself in the first day. This could have put me out for a week without medication.
Stuff I Could Have Left Behind
There weren’t many things that I could have left behind, but on this particular trip, although we were able to shoot plenty of wildlife, it wasn’t a wildlife safari, so I could have gotten away without taking the bean bag I showed you in the video. Again, this is something that we were told we’d need, but didn’t really. The bean bag I bought turned out to be a bit of a waste of money really, because although it’s one of the top brands, my friends at Gura Gear released their Sabi Sacks, a new type of beanbag that I’ve since had a chance to try, and they are great! Check out the Sabi Sacks at Gurugear here.
Laundry
I also found that most of the places we stayed at did washing, and although I’d heard that many places won’t wash underwear, it was not a problem. Having said that, I only had one lot of washing done, and did about three lots of my own washing in the sink in a few of the lodges that we stayed at. This means the washing line that I took got used, as well as the washing powder, but you have to be careful with washing powder. One lodge that we stayed at had a water recycling system that was so finely balanced biologically, that we were not allowed to use our own soap or shampoo to wash with, or any kind of detergents.
The good news is the soap that they provided for us to use got my clothes pretty clean and left them smelling nice too, so this was not a problem. Also note that washing dries incredibly quickly. I could get back to the lodge at 5pm, do a batch of washing and get that hung up by say 5:30pm, and it would be dry before I went to bed later that evening.
The result was of course, that I probably could have taken even less clothes than I did. I took about 12 sets of underwear, which was about right. Having a number of long days and some evening shoots towards the end of the trip, I didn’t have the time or energy to wash any clothes, so it was nice to not have to because I had enough underwear. Trousers though, I wore two pairs of lightweight quick drying outdoor pants for the majority of the time, and I even went back to the jeans I’d travelled in a few times, when the temperature dropped a little, but those three pairs of trousers were enough. I didn’t use the fourth pair.
I could have gotten away with four quick drying shirts, and note that two of my shirts were long sleeves. This helped me to keep the mosquitos away and to keep the sun off during the day. The 13% deet mosquito repellent worked fine too, except for one evening when I went to dinner with a short sleeved shirt on, and was bitten in about five places. Other than this, I was fine.
Malaria Medication
That leads me to another medical factor, in that I mentioned I would take some malaria pills that I would take after I contracted malaria, if that was to happen. I probably should give you some background on that though, as it turns out this was probably not the best way to do this. Firstly, if you recall my scare with that brain tumor two years ago now, you might also remember that just a few days after I left the hospital after my surgery, I was readmitted to hospital with quite sever liver failure due to a reaction to some of the medication I’d been put on.
Because of this, the doctor that I went to see to get my vaccinations for Namibia decided that it would be better not to risk having me take some preventative malaria medication, to reduce the risk of me having problems with my liver. That sounded like a good plan at the time, but then I learned that once you get Malaria it can take up to 10 years for it to work out of your system, and some say you never really get rid of it. If I’d have known this, I might have taken a risk with the preventative medication instead, and that is probably what I’ll do for my next trip.
What went Well?
Things that went particularly well are the lightweight down jacket and fleece that I took. The down jacket was great, as I expected, for dawn shoots, before the temperature started to jump up. There were quite a few times when I wore it out of the lodge before sunrise, and kept it on for a few hours, as the sun started to do its thing. Then I would either pack it away into one of its pockets, as it’s designed to be packed, and put it into a free space in my Bataflae bag, or I could just strap it to the side of my bag, as you can see in this photo of me at Deadvlei, kindly shot by Christine Roberts, a great photographer from Melbourne, Australia, who I’ve had the pleasure of traveling with a few times now. Thanks again for these Chris if you’re listening.
Martin in Deadvlei by Christine Roberts
The fleece was perhaps a little less necessary, as I could have used the down jacket in its place most of the time, but I did prefer to wear the fleece when there was more of a chance that I’ve been roughing it a little. Fleeces are harder to rip than a lightweight down jacket, and I also found myself using my fleece to cover gear on the seat of the vehicle quite often, both for security reasons, and to stop it from getting too hot in the midday sun.
The lightweight nylon sacks that I used to keep my shirts, trousers and underwear all separate worked really well. As I had to use a soft bag, if I hadn’t used these sacks my stuff would have been all over the place inside the bag, and it would have driven me crazy! I got used to what was in which colored sack over the first few days, and really liked being able to just reach for the yellow sack for socks, blue sack for shirts etc.
On security, we did hear of one problem where someone in the same hotel got back to his car to find a young man stealing his camera gear. They apparently struggled a little, and the guy hurt his hand hitting the robber, but he was able to apprehend him, but apparently he escaped through the back door of the police station that they took him too. That kind of makes you wonder if the police are really too concerned about this sort of crime, which is disappointing, but the guy didn’t lose anything, except a day of shooting while they got his hand seen to.
The thing to bear in mind it would seem is that if you are traveling in a car, try to make sure that gear can’t be seen from outside, although we got the feeling that the robber was probably targeting car parks that he knew photographers used. The good thing about us being in a group like we were is that we could ask the guides to stay with the vehicles if we thought necessary, but most of the time we were in places so remote that it just wasn’t a concern.
Also note that many of the lodges that we stayed at didn’t even had locks on the doors, and some of the ones that did have locks, had the same key for all of the locks. A couple of times I found myself walking into the wrong lodge, wondering why things looked different from when I left. Jeremy Woodhouse, the tour leader actually walked into someone else’s lodge at one place and found two people in bed, after he’d turned the light on! Luckily they didn’t wake up, and he made a hasty escape, thanking his lucky stars that he hadn’t found them in the middle of something a little more awkward to just walk away from.
The GoPros
Ken also asked if I’d used the GoPros that I’d packed, and the answer is Oh Yes! I was able to find a cross-bar clamp in the airport at Hong Kong on my way over, so a number of times I clamped a GoPro to the top of the car while we were on a game drive, and one afternoon I clamped a camera to the bottom of the front bumper, and got some pretty neat footage of the rocky ground zipping along as we off-roaded tracking wildlife. This sort of thing does take a little bit of extra time though, so I only did it when it wasn’t going to waste anyone else’s time, but I still got some nice footage that I’ll use in a future video slideshow.
Also note that although I’ve been very disappointed with the GoPro HERO3 for the first five months I owned them, they are now working fine. If you listen to TWiP, you might have heard me talking about this, but basically when I bought two GoPros at the end of last year, ready to use on my Japan Winter Wonderland Tours, they would crash every two or three times you start shooting video, and the only way to reset them was to take them out of their waterproof housing and take off the extended battery, and then remove the internal battery.
It drove me crazy, and the first two firmware updates didn’t really help. Then, on the first few nights of our safari, a firmware update was released, and I was able to very painfully download it over the hotel network. After this third firmware update though, the cameras finally started working pretty much normally. They froze a few more times, which I hope will go away completely in the future, but I can now finally say that I’m happy with my GoPros, and I’m looking forward to using some of the footage at some point soon.
Camera Gear
As for the camera gear that I took, that all went as well as I’d expected to. I had the 1D X and 5D Mark III with me, as well as the 14mm, 24-70mm, 70-200mm and 300mm lenses, all at f/2.8. I also had with me two 1.4X Extenders and a 2.0X Extender. I carry two 1.4X Extenders so that I can use one on each camera, and I often actually do this. Some people don’t like the 2X Extenders because it doesn’t give the greatest image quality with some camera/lens combinations, but if you know those combinations, it’s still a very workable alternative to carrying longer glass.
For example, the 2X Extender Mark III works fine with the 70-200mm f/2.8 Mark II and the original 300mm f/2.8 IS lenses on the 1D X, but on the 5D Mark III it gets a little soft. Basically, the 18 megapixel 1D X has larger photodiodes than the 5D Mark III at 22 megapixels, so the lens and extender combination doesn’t have to resolve the light to as small a point to make a sharp image. Because of this, if ever I was going to use the 2.0X Extender, I ensured I used it with the 1D X and not the 5D Mark III. Images from both cameras are as sharp as tacks with the 1.4X Extender on either lens.
All of my lenses got plenty of use, and although they got a bit crunchy with the sand and dust, it pretty much worked its way out over the couple of weeks after I got home. I did start to have trouble with some of the buttons on my 5D Mark III battery grip not working, and I think that might have been from the sand. Note that I wasn’t laying the camera down in sand as such, it is blow around and gets everywhere, however careful you are with your gear. I have sent the battery grip in to Canon for fixing, and having a bit of a saga with them over that at the moment, but otherwise, everything gear-wise worked out very well.
Oh, and the slightly lighter Really Right Stuff BH-40 ball head that I bought for this trip was excellent too. I love my BH-55 and will continue to use it when weight isn’t an issue, but when I have to travel light, or perhaps walk a long way with my tripod, I’ll be happy to use the BH-40 from now on. It was as solid as a rock with everything up to my 300mm.
One last thing I should note on my lens selection though, is that Canon released their phantom lens, the 200-400mm with the 1.4X Extender built in just as I left for Namibia. It was too late to do anything but knowing it was out there, boy did I wish I had one with me. Although working with the 300mm and Extenders was workable, there were times when I wished I’d got the flexibility of that new lens.
Anyway, the long and short of it is that after I got back, my local camera store, Map Camera in Shinjuku had a deal where they promised to pay their top used gear price for some 180 items until September, so I decided it was time to take the plunge. I sold my 24-70mm, the 300mm f/2.8 and the 600mm f/4 as well as my 135mm f/2 lens, which I really wasn’t using enough to warrant keeping, and my 1Ds Mark III. That all came to about $50 more than the price of the 200-400mm, which is now sitting in my lens cabinet.
Canon EF 200-400mm F4 L Extender 1.4X Lens
I did have to pay out some cash, to buy the new version of the 24-70mm f/2.8 lens, which I’d been resisting, but I figured I’d get that upgrading while I was at it, so that’s new now too. Both new lenses are excellent, and I’ll be doing a review of at least the 200-400mm in the coming weeks, once I’ve had a chance to really take it through its paces, but so far it is looking every bit as impressive as I’d hoped, if not better, so stay tuned for that.
Don’t Forget that Photographer’s Vest!
As I came back through Johannesburg Airport, a lady watching people through the check-in queue asked how much my backpack weighed. I told her it was way over as I put it on the scales, and she confirmed with a huge roll of her eyes, and told me it was more than twice the allowed weight, followed by an announcement that I would need to check the bag.
I told her that there is no way I would check my camera bag, and that I was going to move half the stuff in the bag into my vest pockets. The cool thing here is that she knew that I was well within my rights to do this, and walk on the plane with the same amount of weight, so she told me to ask the clerk at the check-in desk if it was OK to carry the bag on. Unfortunately, I forgot to ask this, but it didn’t seem to be a problem.
In working on preparation for my first solo exhibition in December, I found myself doing a few things that I thought you might find useful, so I’m going to share these ideas today, and I’ll tell you a little more about the exhibition venue etc. at the end of this episode, in case you are in Tokyo in December and want to come along. It would be great to shake the hand of any of you listeners that could visit.
The Nature of Japan Exhibition Poster
As this is my first solo exhibition, preceded only by a joint exhibition in Italy years ago, that I didn’t even visit myself, we can pretty much say that this is my first attempt at this exhibition thing. I generally learn by throwing myself in the deep end, and that’s what I’m doing here too. So, as is often the case here, rather than me knowing everything about this, and preaching to you how to do it, I’m going to tell you what I’ve done so far, in the hope that you might take something away from my experiences. I’m sure people that have already done their own shows have better ideas, and I’d love to hear them if so, but here’s what I’ve found so far anyway.
Firstly, I needed to find a venue. This isn’t a sponsored exhibition, so basically I have to rent a gallery and pay for my own printing and everything. I certainly considered applying for a show at some of the famous galleries, but many of them won’t allow you to sell prints. The beauty of renting gallery spaces is that most of them don’t mind you putting prices on your prints and trying to recuperate some of the exhibition costs. On that, right now, I’m not thinking to put a price tag on all of the prints, as that will look tacky. I am going to create a panel explaining the pricing, and offer a few various formats in which the potential client could buy a print or two should they so desire.
I searched online for a suitable gallery in a good location. Here in Tokyo, the Ginza area has a lot of galleries, and accordingly, it’s pretty expensive, with most galleries between $250 and $350 per day. Now, you will probably get more people visiting that are likely to buy prints in Ginza, so it’s not a no-starter by any means. The reason I passed Ginza over was because most of the galleries there are very small. I wanted to display up to forty or so images, either on 20×30 inch gallery wraps, or 13×19 inch framed pictures. To do this you need some serious wall space. As I continued my search, I found a couple of galleries that looked promising, and went to see the first one. I was disappointed by both the size and the location of the first, but the second one was great. I settled on the H.A.C. Gallery in the Aoyama area of Tokyo, which is quite a trendy and arty area, and the display area was huge compared to everything else I’d look at!
H.A.C. isn’t cheap mind. They charge $300 per day, but I noticed they’d had a summer campaign charging just $250 per day for July and August. I took that information and when I called to book, I asked if they had a similar offer in December. The answer was no, but they gave me a free day, so I’m going to pay for seven days, but the show will run for eight days. I’d have preferred to do two weeks, but there wasn’t a two week slot before the end of the year, and paying for the last few days around New Year here in Japan would be pointless, as everyone spends New Year with their families. I also managed to get some time extensions for free on the first and last days of the show, to give me time to set up and pull things down, because these days are pretty much holidays in Japan, and the owners will just be giving me the keys.
Now that I had the gallery booked, I had to ensure that I had enough paper and canvas to print out my photos etc. I have a plenty of Hahnemühle Museum Etching, Photo Rag and Fine Art Baryta, which I’ll be using for the prints, and I ordered a batch of canvas and stretcher bars from Breathing Color, because that was going to take some time to wing it’s way over here from the States. As I changed the number of images that I will do as a gallery wrap, I have to order a few more stretcher bars, but I’ve got plenty to be getting on with while I wait for that.
Of course, another huge job when doing an exhibition is selecting your images. As I mentioned in a previous episode, I want this exhibition to be kind of a benchmark for my nature and wildlife photography, as I end my part time photography, and move to a full time photography career. Because of this, I based my selection on my Nature of Japan portfolio that you can see from my blog, but I cut it down to 38 images. This was based partly on my really taking a critical eye to my work as I considered showing physical prints to the general public, but also based on the amount of wall space I’ll have, and the flow of the images on the wall.
I spend a number of hours over a number of days deliberating my selection, and running it by my wife. I don’t always heed her advice, but as the need to reduce kicks in, it’s most often the images that she doesn’t like that I painstakingly remove. This (below) is pretty much my selection. Because there are so many winter images, we considered making this a Winter Hokkaido exhibition, but I didn’t want to do that, because it seems too obvious a road to take. I left my autumnal color and a few Flowerscape images in there, because they are so me.
Final Selection in Lightroom
Once we’d got the selection down, I need to figure out the position of the images on the various walls of the gallery. When I think of doing things to scale on a computer I generally turn to Adobe Illustrator, and so that’s what I did. I created six art boards and resized them to a 100th the size of the actual walls in the gallery. Here’s another screenshot to illustrate, but basically you can see that I then exported a smallish version of each image from Lightroom, and just dragged and dropped them into Illustrator, and spread them all out in the workspace.
Thinking About Order and Placement in Illustrator
As I mentioned a while back when I talked about putting a portfolio together, I’m a strong believe in starting with a strong image, so I started by dropping in my mother and baby Macaque shot on the start of the first wall, and then while resizing the images to roughly 100th of actual size that they’ll be when framed, I proceeded to order and place them onto the walls.
Here we can see the scaled and ordered images on the wall, but with this configuration of the room I was going to have to do three gallery wraps with multiple images on them. I don’t like to see multiple rows of images, and really wanted to avoid that if possible, so that was putting a little pressure on me.
Almost There
Finally, I decided to use one of the partitions that’s available, and increase the wall space, and lose the multi-photo gallery wraps, as we can see in this screenshot. I wanted to use the room without the partitions, but one at the end of the room won’t be so bad, and it will give people a little space to hide as well, which isn’t a bad thing either.
Exhibition Final Selection on Wall Plan
Next, I numbered all of the images, and this will become the key for our organization while creating, storing and then finally hanging the prints. The gallery comes with 45 wires by the way, to hang the prints from, so I don’t have to worry about providing my own.
With Number Key
I then needed to start checking a few other things about the images, so I went into the Print Module in lightroom, and selected a 20×24 inch photo size, and created a huge contact sheet. I initially was thinking that I’d just print it out and write directly on the paper as I checked stuff, but I ended up using it Photoshop and writing on it with my Wacom Tablet. The first thing I noticed as I set up the Contact Sheet in Lightroom was that I could specify to display EXIF and IPTC information on the contact sheet. As I wasn’t sure that all of my files had Titles, I included the title field and found a few that didn’t have a Title assigned, and correct that. I’ll probably change some of these titles for the show, but at least they all have titles now.
20×24″ Contact Sheet
The original reason that I created this contact sheet though was so that I could start to check which of these images were cropped to a non-standard aspect ratio, which I need to know in preparing to buy frames for the 28 images that won’t be displayed as a gallery wrap. In the next screenshot you can see the contact sheet without the Titles, but after I output it as a JPEG from Lightroom, then opened it in Photoshop, so that I could scribble on it.
Exhibition Contact Sheet with notes
First I wrote a GW for Gallery Wrap against the 10 images that I’ll create gallery wraps from. I’ll do 8 of the 10 wraps at 20×30″. Although I can create longer wraps, 20″ is the widest I can make with my 24″ wide printer, because you have to deduct 4 inches for the width of the bars. Digital SLR images are an aspect ratio of 1:1.5, so this means the standard gallery wrap for a standard aspect ratio image will be 20×30″. My recent order of goodies from Breathing Color contained enough 20″ bars to do 24 wraps, so I’m good there. I also bought two boxes of eight 30 inch bars, which means I can do my eight 20×30 wraps.
Since I placed my order with Breathing Color, I decided to do two more prints on gallery wraps, and as one of them is cropped slightly along the top, I need now to order a box of 28 inch bars too, and my last gallery wrap is going to be 20×24 inches, and I have some 24 inch bars, so I’m good there.
This might be a good time to also mention that I recently bought a copy of Genuine Fractals 6.0 Professional Edition from onOne Software, and will be using that to do my resizing etc. for the gallery wraps.
Upsizing in Genuine Fractals
Upsized Image with Gallery Wrap Ears
As you can see here, you can basically just tell it the size that you want to expand the image too, and do your sharpening right there in the plugin. There is also a great little feature that you can see in the bottom right of the screenshot. All you have to do to create the additional 2 inches of photo around your image for the gallery wrap is to specify the width that you want, and it just adds these for you, as you can see in this screenshot of the upsized image. The amount of detail retained in the image, despite it being upsized by 320%, is also pretty incredible, so kudos to the onOne Software team for creating such an easy to use yet powerful plug-in.
Anyway, back to the contact sheet, basically after marking my gallery wraps went on and wrote an “S” for Standard above all of the images that are a standard aspect ratios. To check if the images are a standard size, first I marked all the ones that are 5616×3744 pixel dimensions. This is the native size of images from my 1Ds Mark III and 5D Mark II at 21 megapixels. There are also some 3264×4896 pixel images, which are the native size for my 1D Mark IV, so they are easy to spot too. For the other sizes I divided the larger number by the smaller with a calculator. If it came out a 1.5, I knew the image was a standard aspect ratio.
Note too that some of these images have been cropped slightly, but whenever possible I try to remember to hold down the shift key while cropping, to maintain the aspect ratio. If the crop requires that I move away from the 1:1.5 ratio then so be it, but when possible, I try to maintain it. I did find a few that were not standard crops, but could be re-cropped without ruining the image, so I made those changes too as I went through the images.
The images that I marked with an asterisk next to the S, are close enough to be framed as a standard crop, but there are a tiny bit off. The reason that I was marking these images like this is because I have to make a decision regarding the mattes. I was thinking that it will be cheaper and easier if I can frame the majority of my 28 non-gallery wrap prints with standard 13×19″ frames.
I’ve spent a lot of time in recent weeks trying to find a relatively inexpensive and yet quality looking frame. The craft shop that I visit a lot does very nice frames but they are mainly for paintings, and they have very few that are sized for digital prints. They do have a custom framing service but the choices are either not very nice looking frames for around $50 each, or really nice ones for much more, and they need about two months to fulfill the order.
I eventually found a nice stylish black frame, that won’t break the bank, from a company called Hakuba. There were two problems in that the readymade frames on their site had black mattes in, but I prefer white. Also, the window in the matte isn’t exactly a 1:1.5 ratio. They were slightly longer, meaning that I would to have to trim the top and bottom of all of my prints, which I don’t really want to do. So, I got on the phone and asked if it was possible to do these frames with white mattes and a custom window in all of them. Because some of my prints required a custom window size, I had to do this anyway, so I figured I’d go for getting them all custom made.
They got back to me quickly and said that it was possible, but they wanted me to order them via one of the large camera stores in town. I asked why, and they said it was because I was not company, so I told them I’d call back in about two weeks when I will have Martin Bailey Photography incorporated. This is exactly the sort of problem that I mentioned a few weeks ago. It makes working with manufacturers in Japan so much easier when you have a company name to throw at them. The trust level is totally different.
The other benefit of ordering these frames with custom matte windows is that I can print much more efficiently. To print all 28 of my fine art paper prints out on single sheets of A3 would be a pain, plus, my large format printer doesn’t like borderless printing on 13×19 inch sheet paper, and I’d need to have borderless printing for the image to fit in the standard matte window that the frame has. I started to think about my roll paper options though, and I have rolls of 17″ and 24″ Hahnemühle papers, and to print the most efficiently I can print two images back to back on 24″ paper stock, and they will be 302mm high each. This is just over an inch shorter than the 13×19 inch images would be, but with a nice wide matte they still look great framed. It will give me about 5mm around each edge to attach to the back of the matte board.
Printing Two Images at Once on 24″ Roll Paper
There is one other major detail that I’m planning, but as I mentioned before, I’m going to keep that under wraps until the event. I think it’s going to be a big hit, and I don’t want to spoil the fun.
So, now I have most of the planning done, and need to simply move forward with the execution in the coming two months or so. I’m looking forward to moving on to the next phase and actually proofing and printing the images. I’m also looking forward to trying out the Breathing Color Lyve Canvas and Timeless Laminate, and will be reporting my findings having used that later.
The Nature of Japan Exhibition Poster
I of course needed to produce a poster and post card for the exhibition, and it was partly because I was trying to complete this that made this episode is a few days late. I spend almost two full days working on a design, and could not come up with something that I really liked. I ended up sending my designed to MBP Listener Marcus Bain for advice, but I’d been reluctant to do so, because Marcus’ own exhibition opens tomorrow, and I really didn’t want to burden him at this busy time. Anyway, after I’d been messing around with my design for two days, Marcus sent something totally cool and amazing after just a few hours. I recreated it in Photoshop, using the fonts that I have available to me, but I’m really pleased with the results, so thank so much to Marcus for your help with that. I’ll buy you a drink on Saturday at your exhibition’s opening reception.
I’ve posted details of the exhibition on the Exhibitions page, but in summary the exhibition is going to be from December the 23rd to the 30th, at the H.A.C. Gallery in Minami Aoyama, Tokyo. If you are in town and have time, I’d love to see you there, and don’t forget that the opening reception is on Thursday the 23rd from 5:30 to 7:30PM. I’ll get some drinks in, but if you come along, it might be an idea to bring a bottle of your favorite tipple too. Anything except red wine is fine. That’s banned apparently because it stains the carpet. 🙂
