There’s a couple things going on here, well more than a couple, and Mickey Smith has nailed it. The internet evolution continues as image quality comes up, compression rates go down, and the web platforms get easier to use… All of these wonderful advancements in technology mixed with the creative freedom of the internet are merging to produce wonderful images and unique stories. This video is both wonderful and unique.
^ The wildflowers were just starting to go OFF!!! Indian Paintbrush
^ Fishing the green drake hatch this summer yielded some outrageously epic days. For me, the pinnacle moment in fly fishing is casting big dry-flies to even bigger trout and thats exactly what the green drake hatch can provide.
^ This mayfly avoided the gaping mouths of the trout on the middle provo river to dry his wings on the grassy banks
^ The day before I left for south america, we made one last float down the green river.
^ I love how this photo turned out. Whats going on with my net?!?! (no photoshop)
^ A colorful Bonneville Cutthroat from the High Uinta mountains
^ Shooting time lapses of the milky way in the uintas. It was a magical evening to say the least.
Paul Morrison put this beautiful slide show together for the 2010 Deep Winter challenge, featuring his son Ian. Pretty cool stuff. All images captured this past week in Whistler.
How Rapid ISOs are Changing Action and Adventure Sports Photography
Source By: Red Bull Illume
Capturing fast moving action sports is a tough challenge. Traditionally popping the subject out from the picture and keeping it sharp, requires one or more strategically placed flashes. But this method usually means much of the background light is lost.
The restricting factor with old film cameras was the ISO speed. ISO measures a film’s sensitivity to light, the higher the ISO, the more light a film captures. Since fast moving subjects, such as mountain bikers require a fast shutter speed and an open aperture, the ISO needs to be high to capture as much light as possible.
In normal conditions, films with even the biggest available ISO range were not able to properly get the shot without flash.
However, as digital camera equipment moves rapidly away from their film-based predecessors, ultra-high ISO capabilities mean that taking high quality sports shots with natural background light is now possible.
The Leica M9, Nikon D3s and Canon Mark IV all boast standard ISOs of between 2500 and 10,800 and expanded ISOs of even beyond 100,000. The colour film with the highest ever ISO value was the Fuji Superia with 1600.
Unfortunately, often the drawback to shooting with a high ISO is increased noise, but due to major efforts in developing better digital hardware, today’s CPUs and sensors are capable of being pushed without losing much quality.
“This changed my way to shoot photos a lot,” says Vancouver, Canada-based sports fashion and mountain bike photographer Yorick Carroux. “I was always a huge friend of available light photography and the new Nikon cameras unchained me from noisy photos and allow me to get good light without the flashes.”
Carroux, a finalist in the Experimental category of the 2007 Image Quest, says that use of flash will not end, but that there are now more possibilities for photographers.
“When you use flash in the right way you can get great photographs, but often you change or even destroy the atmosphere totally,” he says. “Now I can capture the scene the way it is and get more real, intense views of the sport.
“I can capture the light and the atmosphere exactly as it is, especially in the deep woods of British Columbia around Whistler.”
Carroux mainly uses Nikon D3 and D700 bodies with a standard set of lenses. “I’m not a big fan of zoom lenses. I stick pretty much with a basic kit: 16mm fisheye, 20mm, 35mm, 85mm, 180mm and 300mm. Having said that, a Leica M9 would be a pretty hot tool when you need quality and light.”
The main challenge for photographers using this method is keeping noise to a minimum unless they want to create a certain intended film look. As technology moves forward, this will no doubt improve, but for now deciding when and when not to use flash will be the key.
“I wouldn’t say flashes are dead, it’s more that you can choose now and you have more tools in your hand.”
More information and images from Yorick Carroux can be found atwww.carroux.com.
“I was ecstatic to hear that I had won the wildcard spot in Saint Deep Summer Photo Challenge. We had three days to get our team out to Whistler to begin the competition. Mike Hopkins exhausted himself for three days of nonstop shooting, and Kurt Sorge made it to the shoot the last day. Rounding out the our Kootenay-based team was our editor Andre Nutini who also helped slug gear around the mountain. Between working my day job and working the phones in the evening I managed to forget to arrange to borrow a bike for the weekend, so I huffed the Whistler bike Park by foot. It was a great to compete against some of mountain biking’s premier photographers, and although the long days and late nights of the photo challenge eventually caught up with me, I feel privileged to have had this opportunity.”—Bryan Ralph from Bike Mag’s blog
Just stumbled upon this classic slide show by Gibby, “The Ymir Snake Pit”! I was involved with this amazing project a couple years ago and really enjoyed hanging out with such great people in such a great place. Check it out: http://www.gibsonpictures.com/pictureshows_snakepit.php
Sometimes my job takes me to the other side of the globe, where the moon is upside down. A couple months ago I was lucky enough to be working with Blake Jorgenson on assignment to capture stock images for an outerwear catalogue. We learned a lot! Check out Blake’s recent post and his selection of a dozen pictures from over 5000 snapped at http://www.blakejorgenson.com/blog
I ran into a long-time friend, Margus, at the Red Bull Rampage this year. I was surprised yet stoked to see him at such a bro-down gathering in southern Utah. Why was he there? The amazing work he did explains all! Check http://www.nsmb.com/page/s/2689/rampage-in-photos/
