Scott's Angle of View

Bosque 2012

2012-01-20T18:46:00.000-08:00

Last week we completed our first Wildlife Photo Workshops of 2012. The workshop was The Birds of Bosque and it was run through Santa Fe Photographic Workshops. This is a "hybrid" workshop. We spend the first 3 days photographing the birds in Bosque Del Apache National Wildlife Sanctuary in New Mexico. We than go to Santa Fe where we spend 2 days editing and printing the photos in the school's state-of-the-art digital lab.

Bosque Del Apache National Wildlife is the winter home of thousands of sandhill cranes, tens of thousands of arctic snow geese and a bevy of other species

Watching these thousands of explode into flight or fly-in for the night in the spectacular high desert sunset is really one of nature's more wondrous sights.

We had a great group for the workshop which ran from before sunrise to well into the evening. Everybody was there for every moment. The photographs the printed the last two day in Santa Fe were amazing especially when one considers that most of the participants had very little experience with nature photography or digital printing.

Happy New Year

2012-01-03T13:02:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year to All,

Paula and I would like to wish everybody a very Happy New Year and great photography in 2012. We will be leaving later this week to do a wildlife workshop for Santa Fe Photographic Workshops in Bosque del Apache. Bosque is a national wildlife sanctuary in New Mexico where tens of thousands of sandhill cranes and arctic snow geese winter. After 3 days of shooting at Bosque we drive to Santa Fe to spend 2 days printing in the schools state of the art digital lab.

We are also looking forward to three 2012 trips to Alaska as well as trips to the Tetons and Yellowstone. Hopefully we will also have time this year to finally explore more of Western Washington and the Olympic Peninsula.

The snow owls have been keeping us busy here. There are at least a dozen in one of the wildlife sanctuaries in Ocean Shores. Last week we saw and photographed eight in one area. Here is one of those images.

Snowy Owl - Close to Home

2011-12-10T14:32:00.000-08:00

In November we traveled thousands of miles to a lodge about 70 miles north of Churchill Canada. Our main goal was to photograph polar bears. We were also hopeful to photograph arctic fox, the Northern Lights and Snowy Owls. The polar bears and arctic fox worked out well and you can see a number of these images in the "Galleries/Recent Photos" area of our www.frierworks.com website. We never saw the Northern Lights as the weather didn't cooperate. The only snowy owl we saw was one flying by, very far away. I was disappointed not to get a chance to photograph this beautiful bird.

All that travel to find out that the snowy owls winter in our hometown of Ocean Shores, Washington. There are several state and federal wildlife sanctuaries adjacent to Ocean Shores and we found this one in the Damon Point State Wildlife Sanctuary. It a long walk out to the sanctuary and at high tide the path is underwater. Its worth the effort as the sanctuary is beautiful.

The owls favorite food is small arctic mammals called lemmings .The owls have a more or less regular population cycle depending on the amount of lemmings in the arctic. Every 5 years the population of both lemmings and snowy owls peaks and this is one of those years.

You can travel the world and sometimes the best subjects show up in your own backyard.

Polar Bears

2011-11-15T15:32:00.001-08:00

We just return from a Wildlife Photo Workshop to Seal River Heritage Lodge. The lodge is about 70km north of Churchill Canada and locate on the west coast of Hudson Bay.

Each year the polar bears gather here to wait for Hudson Bay to freeze so they can get out on the bay to hunt.

We saw a number of polar bears wrestling, playing, wandering and just hanging out. We also had a chance to photograph arctic foxes.

The climate appears to begetting warmer there and as a result the snow which should have been covering the ground barely existed. Most of our photos had to be shot with dead tundra plants for a background. Despite this I shot over 3000 frames. I invite you to see a small selection of the photos that I have so far edited on my www.frierworks.com website. Go to the Galleries drop-down menu and select the Recent Photos tab or just use the link below:

http://www.frierworks.com/Newfrierworks/index.php?option=com_imageshow&view=show&Itemid=41

Observation from a Recent Tetons and Yellowstone Trip

2011-10-28T17:49:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago we returned from a two week trip to Grand Tetons and Yellowstone National Parks. I was going to write this blog at that time but was distracted by the death of Steve Jobs and wanted to write a little something about him.

The first week we were in the Tetons for the Photography at the Summit Workshop. This is one of the Rich Clarkson series of Workshops. Rich brings in a number of top photo pros and its a busy week of wildlife shooting, classes and critiques. We spend most of our time working with Nikon (who is a sponsor) and taking groups of students out to shoot. The second week we spent with friends shooting in Yellowstone.

Now to the point...We've made at least 2 visits a year, for the last 10 or more years, to this area and I'm amazed how in the last few years, the amount of wildlife seems to have decreased dramatically. We are seeing far fewer bears, moose, elk and other animals than we did just four or five years ago. This is particularly noticeable in the Fall. I'm not sure of the reason for this but there seems to be several theories.

First and most reasonable is that in the last couple of years there has been a dramatic increase in visitors to these parks. This sharp increase in visitors has sort of "freaked-out the animals" and they have retreated to more remote areas of the parks.

Another theory proposes that these parks have become "over-managed" by the park service. The park service's desire to keep visitors and wildlife separated is working too well. This was the first year I actually saw an area of the Tetons park closed because there were bears in the area.

Weather could be a third factor. In years past there would be a foot or more of snow on the ground by the second week of October but in the last couple of years the daytime temperature, this time of the year, has been as high as the 70's. The animals, who have grown in their winter coats, are too hot and therefore inactive. Anybody who thinks global warming is a myth is just engaging in "magical thinking" pretending that if they say it doesn't exist it won't. Global warming here and its obvious.

Whatever the reason for this dearth of wildlife I hope it temporary. In the meantime we're off to Alaska.

Steve Jobs

2011-10-14T15:00:00.000-07:00

Rest in Peace Steve Jobs - A Life Very Well Lived

I never meet Steve Jobs. I only saw him briefly, once, at a MacWorld Expo yet with his death I feel that I have lost someone important in my life. Its truly sad that someone with so much talent had to die at such an early age. It is a loss for all of us when one thinks about what other innovations the genius of Steve Jobs may have come up with had he lived at least the average American lifespan of 79 years. What other industries and businesses he might have revolutionized. How much more our lives and technologies might have been improved.

Thank You from a Lifetime Apple Fan. -

NOBODY DID IT BETTER!

New J1 and V1 Cameras From Nikon

2011-09-22T15:57:00.000-07:00

I've had several phone calls today asking about the new Nikon J1 & V1 cameras that Nikon introduced yesterday. The first reaction I got was disappointment that the announcement was not about new professional D-SLRs. Nikon has most certainly not abandoned or lost interest in the pro market. The reality is that this is not cause for disappointment but cause for excitement. While these are not pro cameras the technology in them is stunning and when extrapolated to the future it is obvious that when-not if- but when those new D-SLR's do come we can expect great things.

We have come to the point where professional level D-SLR cameras have become so good that neither the technology nor the current economy warrants the rapid 20-30 month life-cycle that we saw in the beginning of the digital camera revolution. After 26 years with Nikon I have learned to be patient and fasten your seat belt.

Mt Rainier National Park is Awesome

2011-09-12T12:37:00.000-07:00

The weather in Western Washington has been fantastic this Summer. Paula, our good friend Rick Hunter (www.rickhunterimages.com) and I took the opportunity to visit Mt Rainier National Park. It's a fantastic place! We got to the the Sunrise area of the park mid-afternoon and were disappointed to find the mountain totally socked in by clouds. However, despite the September date the wildflowers were in full and massive bloom. The area was riot of color with tons of great photographic opportunities.

The next morning we were at the Sunrise summit for sunrise and were not disappointed. The clouds had cleared and Mt Rainier was out in full glory lite by a golden sunrise. It was breathtaking. The rest of the day remained clear and we drove the park spending extra time to explore the giant trees of the Hall of Monarchs area (interesting but not highly photographic) and the Paradise area (great for photography).

If you go here's a few tips. Give yourself at least a day, more is better, its a long way around. Get gas and food before you enter the park. There is very little food and even less gas in the park. Check with the park for when the wildflowers are in bloom, its usually toward the end August.

I'M BACK

2011-08-10T19:47:00.000-07:00

It's been a very long time since I wrote to this blog. Last December we moved from our long time home in Los Angeles to Ocean Shores, Washington. It was the move from Hell. Between our Wildlife Photo Workshops programs and the move there was virtually no time to spend working on our website and this blog. We have finally gotten pretty settled in and now I can begin to turn some of my attention to other things. I still have at least 30Gigs of photos from recently completed workshops to edit. I will, as soon as possible, post some of the best to the galleries in this site. I will also try to now keep this blog as regular as possible.

I have just sent our first Wildlife Photo Workshops newsletter. If you would like to be on the list for future newsletters please send your email address to frierworks@gmail.com. We have lots of great workshops coming in 2012 and its all in the newsletter. I will also soon be updating all the workshop information on the Wildlife Photo Workshops part of this website.

Digital Photography's Best Kept Secret

2010-08-16T19:40:00.000-07:00

It continues to amaze me how few digital photographers, especially those using Nikon cameras, know about Nikon's image editing program Capture NX2. Capture is built by the people at Nik software who have developed some of the most useful, popular and innovative PhotoShop add-on programs on the market. Capture, however, is a stand alone program primarily design to work with Nikon RAW images. One of its main advantages is that is works with the pure RAW information keeping it accurate. Other programs often have to interpolate this information.

Not all components of a digital photograph, such as focus, can be manipulated as a RAW part of the image but many can. Capture has menu items that correspond to those settings on the camera that control RAW parts of the image. These parts later be be changed in Capture without any destruction or negative impact on the photo. For example, if your picture is a stop over or under exposed, Capture has a tool that lets you correct exposure just as you do with the EV control on the camera. If your white balance is off Capture has a menu system similar to the one in the camera to correct the white balance quickly and easily.

With Capture NX2 you can create a specific shooting profile. Simply shot a photo under the conditions you expect to be working under, edit it in Capture to the way you want it to look under the those conditions. Save these setting as a profile and load them into the camera. Every time you shoot in those conditions you can load this profile using the camera's Manage Picture Control menu and all the photos will be corrected, in camera, to your profile.

My favorite part of Capture NX2 is the U-point technology that lets you create a Color Control Point. The point allows you to very easily make color and exposure change to a specific area of a photo. You simply place the Control Point over the area of the photo you want to correct and use the small drag tool to determine the size of circle that defines the area you want to work with. All you have to now do is slide one of the slide controls that allows you to control exposure, saturation, contrast, red, blue, green etc. The program is smart enough to use the circle you drew to figure, out what pixels around the circle look life the ones in the circle, and change them. The changes are fast, non destructive to the photo, and easily reversed. It sounds a bit confusing as I write this but in reality it is quick to learn and easy to do.

Capture has a lot of other great features including a very easy to use batch processing tool. I use Capture as a regular part of my work-flow. All my RAW editing is done in Capture. If the image needs further works I use the menu item "Open With" and the image is converted to a TIFF and opens in PhotoShop.

If you shoot a Nikon you really should try CaptureNX2. You can download a free 60 day trial versions from the Nikon website: www.nikonusa.com There are several books on the market will speed you through learning Capture and Nikon has a tutorials on its website as well under the Learn & Explore area. There is also a 64-bit version well on the way.

A Visit to Paradise

2010-08-01T14:09:00.000-07:00

We just returned from completing a week long Wildlife Photo Workshop at the wonderful Silver Salmon Lodge in Lake Clark National Park Alaska. This area is known for its beauty and the opportunity to get up close and personal with the many coastal brown bears that inhabit this area. This trip was no exception. We photographed several sows with their cubs often from as little as 10 feet. We watched as the moms nursed, play with and disciplined their cubs. We photographed the cubs playing with each other or just playing with a stick or shell they found. In the mornings, when the tide was out, we photographed the bears on the beach as they hunted clams, dug them up and than with a couple of swipes of their giant paws opened the clams to eat the meat in side. The long Alaska summer days allowed us to photograph to well after 9pm.

The part of this trip that always leaves the greatest impression on me, however, is the raw natural beauty of this area. The beach is pristine. Tall saw grass in various shades of green cover the fields. The air is so clear the colors are almost surrealistic. Just beyond these fields rise steep mountains whose snow capped peaks are often lost in the clouds. Along the coast high wispy waterfalls sprout from rain forest covered cliffs that border the sea. Puffins, Murres, Oyster Catchers, huge flocks of Kittywakes and a wide variety of other sea birds soar overhead. The occasional bald eagle swoops in low above the streams to check for fish.

This is the Earth as it should be, as it was before we cut the forests to build mega-cities and strip malls. Before we fouled the rivers, the sky and drove away the wildlife . Lake Clark is not just a place for great wildlife photography it is also a place to refresh the soul.

We have already made a reservation to return to Lake Clark and Silver Salmon Lodge the week of August 19th 2012. We have places for seven of which 4 are already spoken for so please let us know as soon as possible if you would like to join us.

As soon as I have a chance to edit and review the many gigabytes of photos I took I will post a few on the site. Please come back and take a look.

How to Clean the Sensor in Your DSLR Camera

2010-07-11T14:59:00.000-07:00

Since the first D-SLR camera hit the market, one of the questions I have been most often asked is about how to clean the dust off the sensor. Early adapters of D-SLR cameras quickly found that the electric charge in the sensor was a dust magnet and this dust showed up in their photos as black spots. As the popularity of the D-SLR grew, a cottage industry of products to solve this problem grew up. I've tried almost all of them and found a few that are both cost effective and really work. Among the best of these are the products made by American Recorder (americanrecorder.com). I recently wrote an article for American Recorder that currently appears in: Shutter Bug Magazine Special Edition: Digital Photography How-To Guide. Below is a copy of that article which I think you'll find very informative. Let me know what you think. Just for the record, I never endorse or even mention products I don't use myself and totally believe in.

CLEANING YOUR D-SLR’S SENSOR

Scott Frier

Digital cameras have revolutionized photography. However, despite their many advantages, digital single lens reflex (DSLR) cameras have an inherent problem with dust on their imaging sensors. Imaging sensors build up an electrical charge which attracts and holds dust particles floating around in the camera. This appears as black spots on your photographs. Recently, manufactures have started using a self-cleaning system that discharges the sensor and then rapidly vibrates it to shake the dust off. While this works fairly well, it is far from one hundred percent effective. This means that you still have to manually clean the sensor, and it has to be done right—otherwise, you risk damaging the sensor, which is a VERY expensive repair.

Most dust particles on the sensor can usually be removed with a blast of air. This sounds simple but there is a lot to watch out for. The traditional canned air that is available in photo stores contains a propellant which can cause a real mess on the sensor: shake one of these cans or hold it at an angle and you can see the propellant. A better choice is to use an air bulb. These are also called “baby syringes” and consist of a rubber hand bulb with a small tube at one end, a sort of mini bellows. There is no propellant, but the air you are shooting at the sensor is the air around you; unless you are in a “clean-room” it still contains dust. You are possibly shooting dust right back on the sensor you are trying to clean. Plus, even the largest of these air bulbs cannot create a powerful enough air burst to clean off stubborn dust. The solution: compressed Nitrogen.

Nitrogen is an inert gas that reacts with virtually nothing, so it contains nothing that can harm the sensor. American Recorder’s Nitro Blast compressed Nitrogen is propellant-free, and the air stream is powerful enough to remove ninety-nine percent of the dust or particle matter you’ll ever encounter on the sensor.

What about that final one percent? To get to that final, most stubborn dirt and dust, you will have to physically clean the sensor using a swab moistened with an effective cleaner. It is critical to use a cleaning fluid that will not damage the sensor and will not leave a residue behind. There are pre-moistened swabs and swabs that come with the cleaner in separate bottle. I prefer the latter of these, as the pre-moistened ones are usually so saturated with fluid that they leave a significant amount of it behind on the sensor. American Recorder’s UltraPure Cleaning Fluid--used with American Recorder’s Digiswabs--will do an effective job cleaning without harming the sensor or leaving residue. Since you apply the liquid cleaner to the swab, you can control the amount.

Now that we have the materials, let’s get to work.

How to Clean the Sensor

The sensor is located behind the camera’s shutter. You will have to keep the shutter open while you service it. As the shutter is extremely delicate, this has to be done carefully. Most of the newer cameras have a special sensor-cleaning function that will open the shutter, lock it and discharge the sensor to stop the electrical charge. This function is usually a menu item found under the “Tools Menu”. If your camera has no sensor cleaning option, set the shutter speed to “B” and hold down the shutter button. Be sure to use a fully charged battery when you do this, and be careful not to take your finger off the shutter while you are cleaning the sensor or it will close. This could severely damage the shutter—another very expensive repair.

Once the shutter is open you can use your Nitro Blast to blast off most of the dust. If there is still dust on the sensor, apply a couple of drops of UltraPure Cleaning Fluid on a Digiswab and carefully and lightly run it across the sensor. Be careful not to over-saturate the swab. Use a second dry Digiswab to clean off any excess fluid on the sensor. Finally, finish off by removing any remaining particles with a blast of Nitro Blast.

To close the shutter, turn off the sensor cleaning menu item or just exit it. If you’re using the “B” setting on the shutter speed dial, simply release the shutter and re-set your shutter speed. You can check the cleanliness of your freshly cleaned sensor by taking a picture of a white sheet of paper. If you don’t see any black spots on the photograph then your sensor is pristine. If spots remain, it’s time to take your camera in to a service center for a professional cleaning.

Grand Teton National Park in June

2010-07-01T15:52:00.000-07:00

We just returned from a ten day visit to Grand Teton National Park where I taught a photo class for Arizona Highways and Nikon. The class was great. A good group of people with a great attitude. The only downside that I want to share with you is that late June is not the time to visit this park. The place was packed with people, the weather was too warm and the sun so bright that it twas impossible to shot between 9:00 am and 7:00pm. In the morning, we had to be on-site by 5:15am and in the evening, out until about 9pm to maximize the time we had with the best light. We found much less wildlife than our usual trips in mid-May or late September early October, my favorite time. Nearby Jackson Hole is also tourist packed as well. At times the main street through town was crowded and a slow go. Restaurants were also full and often hard to get into. It was clear that they had all pulled out their tourist season menu prices. Like so many other things in life, timing is everything.

OFF AND RUNNING

2010-06-15T16:46:00.000-07:00

It's been at least 3 weeks since I updated this blog. I left it up that long since we just introduced the new site and blog and I wanted to make sure all the people we sent out notifications to got a chance to take a look. Now, I will try to change it at least once a week.

Paula and I are off this week to Grand Teton National Park where I am teaching a class for Nikon and Arizona Highways. Hopefully, we'll have some time to do some serious shooting as well. Check back as we'll update you on what we see and how's it going.

Our first national advertisement for Wildlife Photo Workshops is out in this months Outdoor Photographer. Its just a little block ad but next month issue should have a write up about Wildlife Photo Workshops and our trips. I also just had a short article on How to Clean a Camera Sensor in the current special Digital Photography How-To issue of Shutterbug magazine.

I future blogs I'll be writing a lot more about technical issue, products and what's the latest going on in the world of nature photography.

Welcome

2010-05-12T15:10:00.000-07:00

Welcome to our new websites and new blog. We have had the Frierworks and Wildlife Photo Workshops sites for a couple of years but never took the time to really kept either up-to-date and to give either a look we could be proud of. Finally, we have decided to get serious about them. We have integrated the two sites while at the same time trying to give each a different identity and a much more professional look. You can now look at the Frierworks or Wildlife Photo Workshops sites easily going back and forth between the two or just view one site without having to look at the other. We will be adding and and removing photographs to the galleries far more frequently than in the past. We will be adding exciting new trips to Wildlife Photo Workshops. We have added this new blog which both Paula and I will attempt to keep current with new tech talk, reviews, new equipment discoveries, articles, opinions, our travels and classes not to mention anything else that comes to mind. So please let us know what you think and check back often to check out this blog and see what else is new.