squiver

Of all the National Parks that I have ever visited in the US, ArchesNP is without a doubt the most iconic one. Millions of photographshave been shot here, and to come up with something different is noteasy. That does not mean one shouldn't try though, and I personallygreatly enjoy thinking of new possibilities to photograph iconic subjects.

Double Arch is one of them. When you're standing below this imposingmarvel of nature, it's hard to not be impressed by the size and thebeauty of this amazing structure. From my research for my visit toArches, I learned that 99.9% of all the images of this arch are moreor less taken from the same viewpoint. I'm sure one of the reasons forthis is that you need some distance to get the whole thing to fitinside your frame - standing inside the arch is not going to work.Unless of course you have a 14mm on a full frame camera. :-) But eventhen it was tough to find a position where I could get all theopenings and the lines at the right places - it only worked with avertical composition. I was fine with that, because the vast majorityof images taken of this arch are all horizontals.

I also decided to photograph the arch at night and to bring out thedetails and colors by using a flashlight. The advantage of doing thisalso meant that there would be stars, and stars are nice. I wanted toinclude part of the Milky Way, which meant that I had only a veryshort window of time to take the shot. These decisions were all veryimportant in order to create something original, but the mostimportant one for me was to include a human figure. It brings the shotto life and it acts as a vital scale element. The fact that mostlandscape photographers don't like humans in their pictures is alwaysa nice bonus when you're trying to create something original. :-)

This was shot three years ago as a double exposure - one for the skywith my lovely assistant, one for the light painting. We tried toshoot it again with our group on this year's Arches Under The Starsworkshop, but the weather gods did not want to cooperate. They gaveuse snow the next day though, so that made up for that. :-)

If you would like to join me on our next Arches Under The Starsworkshop, please check out my website for more information, picturesand tour impression video clips: squiver (dot) com

Hope to see you there!

Marsel

Last month I traveled extensively in Iceland to set up a new photo tour there.

My first impulse is always to skip the iconic places, but I always end up going there anyway - they've become icons for a reason.

The magnificent waterfall Skógafoss is one those icons. It drops 60 meters over a mossy cliff and is fed by melting water from the glacier above it. Photographing it up close with a wide angle lens is virtually impossible, because the it produces a massive amount of water spray that has nowhere else to go but in your direction. I tried numerous times, but it was just too much. I therefore decided to position myself a bit further away from the falls with my 24-70.

I've not seen much direct sunlight in Iceland, but on my second visit to this location it was sunny one moment and heavy clouds the next, and vice versa. Usually I'm not a big fan of front light, but in this case it really helped to bring out the rainbow.

I waited for a dark patch of clouds to move into the background and asked my lovely assistant to walk to the falls to add some scale to the shot. :-)

If you're interested in joining me on this spectacular trip, please check out my website for more information, pictures and tour impression video clips.

Hope to see you there!

Marsel

One of the highlights of each year's Japan workshop, is to photograph white-tailed and Steller sea eagles on the pack ice that comes floating down from Siberia.To see these amazing creatures in action is a real joy, even without a camera.

We use a small boat for our group to sail between the pack ice, and watch the birds flying around us or sitting on the pack ice.

Usually, there are so many eagles flying around, it's hard to keep track of them and we warn each other when we see one coming. It's great fun.

This shot shows a white-tailed eagle that is about to steal a fish from another eagle. It was snowing heavily, but I think the snow flakes add to the atmosphere. It may just look like a snowy landscape, but this is a large piece of ice on the ocean.

Manual exposure, spot metered off the snow, shutter speed around 1/1250s.

If you would like to join me on our next White & Wild Japan workshop, please have a look on my website for more information, pictures and tour impression video clips.

Hope to see you there!

Marsel

In my favorite photographs, the habitat is just as important as the animal that lives in it - and often it's even more important.

This image of a vulture up a tree was shot at sunset in Kenya, on last year's Masai Mara Migration workshop. It's hard to say what is the main subject here - the vulture or the landscape. And that's exactly how I like it. The vulture is only a tiny element in the shot, but it's very important because it brings the landscape to life and it adds scale to the shot.

If you're interested in joining me on our next Masai Mara Migration workshop in Kenya, please have a look on my website for more information, pictures and tour impression video clips.

Marsel van Oosten

Squiver Photo Tours & Workshops

This image was shot on last year's landscape workshop in Cappadocia, Turkey.

These bizarre rocks are made of sandstone, which is very soft and therefore erodes very easily. The area gets plenty of rain, which speeds the process up considerably.

This particular location is far away from the beaten track - even most of the locals have never been here. That makes it the perfect place for night photography, which is what we did with the group.

I waited until the sun had set before I started the 4-minute exposure, during which I illuminated the rocks with a flash.

The orange glow on the clouds was not visible with the bare eyes, but they showed up after building up color during the 4 minutes of exposing.

[if you're interested in joining me on our next landscape tour in Turkey, please have a look on my website for more information]

This one is from the Masai Mara Migration workshop in Kenya. We had organized a private mobile camp for our group next to a river that attracted a lot of wildlife.

Every now and then we had to cross this river with our Jeeps to get to our camp. One day, on our way back to camp, we saw a hippo in the river close to where we wanted to cross. I decided to stop the vehicle in the middle of the river for the low perspective and just wait to see what would happen. The light was almost gone, so there was not much else we could do anyway.

After ten minutes or so the hippo decided it was time to show us that this was his river, and wildly rose his head out of the water to intimidate us. Hippos are very territorial, so it doesn't take much for this kind of behavior. It was exactly what I was hoping for and we all got some great shots of this impressive animal.

[if you would like to join me on our next Kenya workshop, please have a look on my website for more information]

This one if from last year's Masai Mara Migration workshop in Kenya. This couple gave live shows every day, and we had front row seats.

Nikon D3, AF-S 200-400/4 VR II, 1/1000 @ f/5.6, ISO 800

[if you would like to join me on one of our workshops, please check out my website for more information]

This one is from last year's Turkey workshop. I really like surreal landscapes with strong, graphic geological shapes, and this place is as surreal as it can get. The balloons make it even more bizarre. The next morning we were in one of those ourselves.

Nikon D3s, AF-S 14-24/2.8, 1/250 @ f/11, ISO 400, handheld

[if you would like to join me on one of our workshops, please have a look on my website.]

Deadvlei in Namibia is without a doubt one of the most surreal places on this planet, and arguably one of the most photogenic. No wonder so many landscape photographers want to visit this amazing location. I lead a photo workshop to Namibia every year, and each time it gets more difficult for me to create truly original images of this popular spot. And that is good, because it forces me to think beyond the obvious and search for angles and lighting conditions that I haven't seen before - I believe me, I've seen them all. :-)

As almost all Deadvlei images you see are taken with sunlight, I decided to take a different approach and use the moon. I planned my visit carefully so that I could use the light of the rising moon, about two hours or so after the sun had set. The fact that the ground here is very light really helped to brighten the foreground, often a problem with night photography. Timing is very important because with very little moonlight the landscape gets too dark, shutter speeds too long and the stars become rice-shaped. Too much moon and the sky gets too bright and you won't see any stars - the scene will look like shot in daylight.

To create a better visual hierarchy and a clear focal point, I used a small flashlight to light paint the middle tree - in my opinion the prettiest and the most important one of the three. I really like the way the trees are leaning and how the little silhouetted trees in the background are neatly spread out.

If you would like to join me on our next Namibia Untamed photo workshop and do some spectacular night photography with a small group of like minded enthusiasts, please have a look on my website for more information, images and tour impression video clips.

One of the great things about Katmai National Park is that only a handful of people live there, and that the brown bears never experience all the usual negative human behavior - after all, in the end it's always the humans that create the problems.

Every year we run a bear photography workshop in Katmai NP and the guides we use are extremely knowledgable and know everything about bear behavior. As a result the bears are very relaxed with our presence and most of the time don't even seem to notice us - they're simply totally not interested in us. The bears just go about their daily routine and sometimes get incredibly close.

Everyone will tell you that when you see a sow with two cubs, you're pretty much screwed. And they might be right, but not here. Here the bears don't see humans as a threat, just as objects in the landscape. On many occasions bears came as close as 10 feet from where we were watching them.

In this particular case we were photographing a sow with two cubs and decided to all lay flat on the grass, both for the low perspective and to be less intimidating for the bears. That proved to be a good decision, because the sow walked closer and closer to us, up to the point that even my 200-400 was too much focal length for the scene.

Boars can be potentially dangerous to young cubs, which is why this family was constantly alert. Here they spotted a boar in the distance and they were briefly looking at it, trying to figure out whether it was moving into their direction or if they would be save. In the end they just continued grazing and slowly moved away from us again. A truly wonderful wildlife experience.

If you would like to join us on our next bear workshop, the one for 2012 is already fully booked. There are still spaces for the 2013 trip though. If you're interested, please have a look on my website for more information, images, tour impression video clips and dates.

Arches NP in Utah is probably the most popular place in the world tophotograph natural rock arches, but there are many other locations inthis spectacular state that are just as interesting and that get muchfewer visitors.

On our visit to Utah last year we came across this large hole in arock face, and at first sight it didn't look very interesting.

When it started raining, we walked around the rock, searching for aplace to shelter. When we got to the other side, we saw this huge halfdome with the hole in the distance. It was a spectacular sight, but asoften with scenes like this, it was hard to get a sense of scale inthe photograph.

I asked my wife to climb up to the window and stand in it, and thatmade all the difference. After a couple of shots the setting sunbriefly peeked between the clouds and colored the rocks near thewindow deep red.

I was very happy to hear that this image was awarded a HighlyCommended at this year's Nature's Best International Photography Awards.

[if you would like to join me on our next photo tour to Utah, pleasehave a look at my website for more information]

A few weeks ago I won the title Nature Photographer Of The Year at the2011 International Photography Awards with a series of four snowmonkey images. Two of those I've posted here before, this is the thirdone.

I'm particularly pleased with the results, because all my efforts tocreate a unique look by experimenting with remote controlledoff-camera flash actually paid off. Off-camera flash is commonly usedin studio, portrait, model, advertising and macro photography, buthardly ever on mammals, and never on snow monkeys.I will continue with this technique on other species as well - I haverecently used it with whooper swans for instance. I'm sure that soonothers will start to do this as well, but until then I'm happy to havefound a new way to create a unique look for often photographed species- one of the biggest creative challenges for any wildlife photographer.

For this shot my SB-900 flash was positioned off-camera on the left,set to full manual. I used a radio controlled device to trigger theflash. Camera was a D3x, set to manual at a shutterspeed of 1/250,f/5.6, ISO 400. Lens was a AF-S 70-200/2.8 VR II.

[if you would like to join me on my next Japan workshop, please have alook at my website for more information and video impressions]

This is one of my favorite images from this year's Namibia workshop.Even though I have visited Namibia countless times, it amazes me thatit is still possible to find unique compositions, even at a popularand often photographed place as Deadvlei.

The trees you see here are dead camelthorn trees that are hundreds ofyears old. The extremely arid climate prevents them from rotting andtheir skeletons turn the location in a very surreal and at times eeryplace.

For this particular shot I used the shadow of the dunes behind me as anatural ND grad for the bright foreground. I waited until the shadowline reached the base of the dunes in the background and exposed forthe bright red sand, turning the already dark trees into silhouettes.I'm kind of allergic to touching and overlapping shapes, and I thoughtI had already shot every possible angle with free standing trees, butfor some reason I suddenly found a lot of new compositions this yearthat I had never seen before. Just like athletes that have good daysand not so good ones, I think the same applies to photographers - oneday you're really struggling to get even a decent shot, the next dayyou suddenly see great images everywhere.

Nikon D3, AF-S 70-200/2.8 VR II

[if you would like to join me on our next Namibia workshop, pleasehave a look at my website for more information, images and videoimpressions.]

Namibia is like my second home - I've been there countless times andsimply love the country. When I went there for the first time, hardlyanyone had ever heard of it, let alone seen photographs of the surrealscenery. Now, many years later, it is one of the most popularlandscape photography destinations in Africa, there are Namibiapictures all over the internet, and for a large part I have myself toblame for it, bringing groups there every year. As a result, it'sbecoming increasingly more difficult to create something original atthis incredible place.

This year I got very lucky when the heavens decided to bring mesomething entirely different from the blue skies that I've become soused to. What you see here is very dense fog creeping over the dunes,about to fill the valley. The fog lasted for over an hour even aftersunrise, and it was the most magical hour I have ever spent there.

D3s, AF-S 14-24/2.8, 1/13 @ f/8, ISO 200, focus blend

[if you would like to join me on one of our tours and workshops,please have a look on my website.]

Japanese macaques (macaca fuscata), also known as snow monkeys, liketo bathe in the warm water of the natural hot springs. With outsidetemperatures below freezing and a constant water temperature of 42C,who can blame them?

These photogenic animals have become used to humans wanting tophotograph them, so they are not shy and stay very relaxed in humanpresence. This little one however seemed to think 'Oh no, not again!'when one of the participants on our Japan workshop tried to take aphotograph.

What I like about this scene, is the almost human-like expression, andthe fact that the camera lens makes the young macaque look evensmaller than it already is.

Nikon D3s, AF-S 70-200/2.8 VR II, 1/1000 @ f/5.6, ISO 400

[if you would like to join me on one of our photo tours and workshops,please have a look on my website]

I know - the birds are small, you can't see their heads, eyes orbeaks, there's no spectacular feather detail, no action, and nothermonuclear colors in the sky. Yet that is exactly why I like this. :-)

Every year on the Japan trip we have on average one or two days withhoar frost, in my opinion one of the prettiest winter conditions youcan get.

On this particular morning we had left our ryokan long before sunriseto see the whooper swans wake up, and watch their fascinating morningrituals. When we got closer to the lake I noticed the hoar frost anddecided to take the group to one of my favorite and very quiet spots.

We had to walk through a strip of trees and dense vegetation, whichwould normally create a lot of noise that could wake up the swans. Thesnow was about three feet high though, and the perfect natural soundproofing. When I reached the shore, a few swans looked up and thenwent back to sleep again.

I set up my tripod, took this shot, and then just sat there for awhile - amazed.

Nikon D3s, AF-S 14-24/2.8, 1/125 @ f/16

[if you would like to join me on one of our nature photography toursand workshops, please have a look on my website]

Photo.net does nasty things to the image - please click on the image to get rid of the jpeg compression artifacts.

One of the highlights of each year's Japan tour is always shootingSteller's sea eagles on the Sea of Okhotsk.

The Steller's sea eagle [Haliaeetus pelagicus] is the biggest bird inthe genus Haliaeetus and is one of the largest raptors overall. Thetypical size range is 85-105 cm (33-41 in) long and the wingspan is195-230 cm (77-91 in). Females typically weigh from 6.8-9 kg (15-20lb), while males are considerably lighter with a weight range from4.9-6 kg (11-13 lb). An unverified record exists of a huge female thatweighed 12.7 kilograms (28 lb).

This species is classified as Vulnerable by the IUCN. The main threatsto its survival are habitat alteration, industrial pollution andover-fishing. The current population is estimated at 5,000 and decreasing.

Personally, I think they're one of the prettiest raptors on thisplanet, and seeing dozens of them at the same time is a real treat.

This year there was a lot of pack ice along the coast, so much that wealmost weren't able to leave the harbor with our boat. Luckily, a lotof pack ice usually means a lot of Steller's, and every direction youlooked there were Steller's. There were so many of them, that it wasactually hard to keep an eye on them all.

This is one of my favorite shots from the first day. The pack iceworked very nicely as a giant reflector, and adds context to the shot.

[Nikon D3s, AF-S VR II 200-400/4.0, 1/1250 @ f/8, ISO 400, handheld]

[if you would like to join me on one of our photo tours and workshops,please check out my website: squiver.com]

I've just returned from this year's Namibia trip.

This is a shot of our room in Sossusvlei, taken right after wereturned from the dunes. I had switched on all the lights inside,which explains the warm glow (the walls are made from tent material).The ambient light is from lights alongside the wooden walkways and thelodge's main building.

[single exposure, Nikon D3s, AF-S 14-24, tripod.]

If you would like to join me on one of my photo tours andworkshops, please have a look at my website.

In 2010 and 2011 I spent several months in the Sahara of northernAfrica. Why the Sahara? A few reasons: 1) I wanted to search forlandscapes that I hadn't already seen a kazillion times before, 2) Ilike the clean shapes and graphic lines you often find in the desertand I think it fits my photography style, and 3) I was looking for newworkshop destinations that hadn't already been done to death.

The Sahara is the world's largest hot desert. At over 3,630,000 squaremiles (9,400,000 square kilometers), it covers most of northernAfrica, making it almost as large as the US or Europe. Infrastructureis pretty much non-existent in the Sahara, so traveling is a realchallenge. Driving in the dunes is not only very difficult, it is alsoquite dangerous - you can get lost very easily and when you get stuckin the middle of the desert, you're screwed. For this reason wetraveled with two vehicles - if one would break down, we could gethelp with the second vehicle. Traveling in the Sahara also involvesserious planning in terms of fuel and supplies. There are no gasstations or Wall Marts around, so our cars were packed with fuel andlots of water.

Probably the most interesting part of the whole expedition was thefact that most of the time there was no plan as to where to go andwhat to see. We basically just drove around, exploring each area,looking behind every dune, climbing every plateau, curious what wewould find. This was very time-consuming, but also extremely rewardingwhenever we found something interesting.

From all the countries we visited, Egypt is by far the mosttourist-friendly. Putting a desert expedition together still takes alot of planning, but it's easier to find experienced local people thatknow the area you want to visit in Egypt, then say in Algeria or Chad,and the infrastructure is a lot better too.

In Egypt I wanted to explore the Western Desert, which is part of theLibyan Desert. I have a strange preference for surreal landscapes(which explains my tours to Namibia and Turkey), and the WesternDesert has some serious extraterrestrial landscapes to offer.

This shot features one of the many monoliths in the Western Desert. Ihad spotted it after climbing a high plateau and decided to set upcamp close by. The shot was taken just before sunrise. Nice thingabout many of the monoliths here is that they're made of very light,cream colored rock that changes color dramatically around sunrise andsunset. Erosion goes fast here, so the landscape will look completelydifferent in just a couple of decades.

Nikon D3S, AF-S 14-24/2.8, 1.3s @ f/11, ISO 200

[if you would like to join me on one of my tours and workshops, pleasecheck out my website]

For most of the subjects that I shoot, I already have the perfectimage hanging somewhere on the walls inside my head. This doesn'talways happen right away, but usually after my first attempt, havingexperienced the behavior of the subject and seeing the location, Ihave a pretty good idea of what I want. Unfortunately with wildlifephotography, what you want is not necessarily what you get. :-) Whenthe light is perfect, the subject is not there. When the subject isthere, the light is terrible. Or when the light is perfect and thesubject is there, it is in the wrong position, facing away from thecamera, or not doing what you want it to do. Frustrating as this mightsound, it is also one of the reasons wildlife photography is soaddictive - you keep trying to get the shot you're after.

I visit Japan every year, and one of the highlights of the tour arethe beautiful and highly endangered Japanes crane (Grus japonensis,also known as red-crowned crane), the second rarest crane in theworld. The graceful winter dances of these elegant birds are a joy towatch and photograph. I have planned this trip during winter whenthere's usually lots of snow. As these birds are primarily white, theshot I really wanted to get was one where you'd have a whiteforeground (snow), a light gray sky, and the birds on the horizon -different shades of white and gray. As often, this shot proved to bemuch more easy to produce inside my head than in the field. On lastyear's visit though, all the elements briefly worked together inperfect harmony.

It had been snowing continuously on our last morning, so the snow wasfresh and the sky was fully overcast. The light was soft and allaround us, and the cranes were doing their usual thing - throwingtheir heads up in the air and calling as loud as they could. Oncesmall group was walking up a slope, removing all background vegetationresulting in a clean and graphic scene with low contrast and verysubtle detail - just the way I like it. When they simultaneouslystarted calling with their beaks pointed upwards, I took this shot.It's moments like this that I enjoy most, probably because they don'thappen very often. :-)

Nikon D3, AF-S VR 200-400/4.0, 1/800 @ f/10, ISO 400

[if you would like to join me on one of my photo tours or workshops,please have a look on my website]

Icons are icons for a reason. My initial feeling is always to avoidicons, because they've already been photographed a kazillion timesbefore - what's the point. However, at the same time I'm alwayscurious to see the icon myself, and when I'm there I always end uptrying to do my own version. Same here.

Everywhere you read about Mesa Arch, people say that it's a sunriselocation and they're very specific even about the exact time that youshould shoot it - only during a few minutes after sunrise when thearch turns bright red. This was very helpful information, so I decidedto go there at night. :-)

The most obvious advantage was that there was no one there - not verytypical for this location. I had the whole place to myself and wasable to use a small flashlight to paint the arch without botheringanyone else.

I had timed my visit with full moon so that I basically had the samelight situation as in the early morning, but much more subtle. I hidthe moon behind the arch and used the moonlight to illuminate thebackground. During the 60 second exposure I painted the arch and theforeground rocks. I added a warm up gel to get a nice color contrastbetween the warm tones of the rock and the blue of the sky. This is asingle exposure.

Nikon D3S, AF-S 14-24/2.8, 60s @ f/8, ISO 800, flashlight

[if you would like to join me on one of my photo tours and workshops,please visit my website]

Great shot, very dramatic. Looking at the out of focus areas in the foreground and the sharp areas surrounding the giraffes, I assume this is a composite?

The Common Eland (Taurotragus oryx), also known as the SouthernEland or Eland antelope, is a savannah and plains antelope found inEast and Southern Africa. It is the largest antelope in the Africancontinent.

The name "Eland" is derived from the Dutch word for moose. When Dutchsettlers came to the Cape Province they named the largest wildherbivore they met with the name of the huge northern herbivore. InDutch the animal is called "Eland antelope" to distinguish it from theMoose, which is found in the northern boreal forests. This is all veryconfusing for us Dutchies, but we only have ourselves to blame for it. :-)

The eland has a mass of about 650 kilograms, which is the double ofthe kudu. Elands are said to be one of the slowest antelopes, but theycan jump over a height of 2.5 meters or above. When walking, thejoints in the eland's foreleg produce a sharp clicking sound, thecause of which has not been widely investigated. The sound carriessome distance and is a good indication of an approaching herd.Scientists take it as a form of communication.

The elands are most active in the morning and late afternoon, lyingsheltered in the heat of the day. They're commonly found in mixedgroups, usually containing 25-70 individuals, though up to 400 havebeen observed.

They're not as common as most of the other African antelopes, and mostof the times I've tried to photograph them, they ran away the momentthey saw me. Buttshots galore. :-)

This shot was taken on my last trip to Kenya. I had spotted this smallherd of eland one late afternoon and decided to stick around and seehow they would react on my presence. I didn't want to spook them, so Istarted shooting with my 600. After a few moments I moved a littlecloser and stopped again to let them get used to me. This proved to bethe right strategy for this herd, because eventually I was able toswitch to my 200-400.

The whole scene wasn't particularly interesting though - the light wasgetting pretty, but nothing was happening that could really excite me.That was until the wind started to pick up and I saw a huge sand stormon the horizon, moving in my direction. My guide noticed this as welland wanted to seek shelter, but I decided to risk getting sand blastedand see how this would influence the scene.

A few minutes later the storm hit us hard - the Jeep shook heavily andthe sand almost peeled my skin. Most animals don't like sort ofweather, because it confuses their senses - it's almost impossible tohear, see or smell your enemies in these extreme circumstances. Theeland therefore huddled together, waiting for the storm to die down.

The tons of sand in the air did just what I was hoping for - itreduced the subjects to shapes, created a warm low contrast mood, andeliminated most unwanted detail. This is my favorite shot as it showsthe large bull separated from the rest of the herd, as a true leader.I also liked the elegant pose of the hind leg.

I cropped it to a pano format because the empty sky didn't work for me.

Nikon D3, AF-S VR 200-400/4.0, 1/200 @ f/11, ISO 800

[if you would like to join me on one of my tours and workshops, pleasecheck out my website]

This was shot on our last Kenya tour around sunrise. We found a prideof lions with three cubs when it was still dark, and decided to stayand wait to see what would happen. Usually, when there are younganimals around, it's worth to be patient because often things will happen.

Here one of the most playful cubs was irritating it's mom - shesuddenly got up and made a move towards the cub. Nothing much, but itwas enough for the cub to quickly take a few small steps backwards. Ilike the 'I won't do it again mom!' look.

Nikon D3, AF-S VR 200-400, 1/400 @ f/5.6, ISO 900, beanbag

[if you would like to join me on one of our tours and workshops,please have a look on my website]