Tom Bol Photo Blog

Just returned from spending a week with my friend Colby Coombs and teaching a backcountry photo workshop for the Alaska Mountaineering School.  This class was unique in that we hiked into a remote area near Mt. McKinley and camped for a few days. We focused on landscape shooting, adventure sports and how to carry all that photo gear on a backpacking trip.

We had a great group, incredible weather, bears walking by camp and  fall colors on the tundra (yes, it is fall in Alaska right now). A great thing about camping is you just crawl into your sleeping bag and watch the sunset from your tent, no need to go anywhere. Denali and the mighty Alaska Range came out in full force.

We brought flash gear with us on this trip, and used a couple of Elinchrom Skyports to trigger some SB900s in our tents under an amazing sunset.  I use custom Elinchrom Skyport cables by Flash Zebra to trigger my speedlites from far distances where the SU800 wouldn’t work. Colby is a fantastic ice climber and was happy to climb up onto a fin on the glacier for the top image.  This coincided with storm clouds building in the background adding to the drama of the image.

Colby and I used to work together as climbing guides. He continued on to start his own well-known mountaineering school while my interests took me down the photography career path. Great to reconnect!

Just in from teaching a workshop for the Mentor Series in Seattle and Olympic NP.  We had a great group and got lucky with the weather.  It has been raining a lot in Seattle this spring and summer, but our day on the beach was a sunny blue sky day.

I can’t get enough of the old growth forests in the NW.  It is almost a religious experience to wander along a stream below these huge trees.  I wanted to capture that, so I worked on an image with silky slow water.  It is always interesting to see what people prefer, silky water or frozen whitewater.  Silky water matched my idea of a peaceful scene more than freezing the water motion.

We also visited La Push, an area I have wanted to see for a long time.  This area is famous in sea kayaking circles for some great surfing with stormy seas.  Our day was calm on the water, but the obvious break in the bay had a few surfers working the waves.  I plan to return in winter for some exciting paddling shots.

Off to an assignment in Alaska now, the first of three trips there this summer.  Hope I get as lucky with the weather.

I have been on the road a lot lately, Moab, Canyonlands, Arches, and now just in from Miami.  My friend, Cesar Rivera, and the Pines West Camera Club invited me down to speak and teach a class on TTL flash photography. I have to say they rolled out the red carpet for me, a great group of people and a very active club. We worked on some flash images at the hotel I was staying at, and we had 5 incredible models to work with (thanks Elvisay!).  I had a chance to shoot a few frames of Claudia, a fantastic model, sure makes my job easier when you have beautiful people to photograph.  Just used one Elinchrom Quadra shot through a 39″ octabox for this image.

One item that was a real hit was the Lastolite Ezybox.  We used the 24″ size, love the quality of TTL flash coming through these. We also used the grid panels to control and modify the light.  My favorite is the narrow strip, really narrows the light down, great for tight places where you don’t want spill.

And the greek food?  The club took me out to Taverna Opa restaurant for some great food, but what really caught my attention were belly dancers and patrons dancing on the table as I ate, quite the dining experience!

Tech (portrait): Nikon D3s, 24-70mm, 1/250 at F18, ISO 100. Elinchrom Quadra shot through a 39″ Octabox, triggered by Skyport wireless system.

Just back from spending a week in one of my favorite places anywhere, Baja California MX.  I guided sea kayaking trips here for years, and when Photo Quest Adventures asked about running a workshop there, I couldn’t wait.  The Sea of Cortez is loaded with marine life, and our trip confirmed it.  We saw numerous whales including Humpback, Blue, Pilot, Finback and dolphins by the hundreds.  The Humpback whales were breaching, and the game began to see who could get a shot of a breaching whale.  I caught this one in the distance.  This was the first trip I got to try out my D3s, and shooting at really high ISOs was perfect for fast shutter speeds to stop the action.

A highlight of the trip for me was when two of our group renewed their wedding vows.  I wanted to do a portrait of them, and had the idea of having them neck deep in the ocean.  I really like this look, especially with a sunset in the background, just something about putting people in the water that really brings things to a pure, clean level.  John and Suzy were happy to oblige, and waded out in their nice clothes.  The lighting for this was one Lastolite Ezybox and a SB900.  In order to reduce the amount of flash power needed, and reduce recycle times, I took out the internal baffle in the Ezybox.  Tech (portrait) Nikon D3s, 24-70mm, 1/125 at F5.6, ISO 200. SB900 triggered with a SU800 transmitter, shot through a 24″ Lastolite Ezybox.

Just returned from speaking and teaching at a unique symposium, Shoot the West, in Winnemucca, NV.  I didn’t know much about this area when I arrived, but what  I found was a location rich with interesting history, ghost towns, cowboys, basque herders, historic buildings and some of the friendliest people you will meet.  I taught a location lighting class with the help of Dave Erickson and Craig Moore who I met at a Manfrotto event a year ago, and also spoke at the conference about adventure sports shooting.  For the lighting class we shot skateboarders and bikers at the local skate park, and these kids were really talented.  All that was needed was huge power from the Elinchrom Rangers and we were set.  The students got some great images!  I also got to judge a photo contest that was part of the symposium, fantastic work documenting cowboy life and the West in general.

I had a little free time before the conference and drove out to Paradise Valley to a ghost town.  I love exploring these areas, and the tilt shift lens seemed to be the right choice for adding even  more mystery to the image.  Tech: Nikon D3, 45mm tilt-shift, 1/800 at F2.8, ISO 200.

Wow!  That’s about all I could say after returning from Vegas teaching a flash workshop for Photo Quest Adventures.  Las Vegas is full of interesting people to photograph, and we had lots of great models over the weekend.  I would have been happy just walking around the strip with camera in hand to photograph the locals.

One highlight was photographing a belly dancer on a dry lake bed at sunset.  Not only that, but she offered to twirl flaming torches above her head and ignite flames on the desert floor around her.  Are you kidding?!  The trick with any twilight shot is getting the image at the perfect sunset moment.  To early and the sky is washed out, to late and the sky is black.  We had about 15 minutes of really sweet sunset glow, and everyone rapidly shot through this moment.  I normally don’t shoot much on these workshops, I want the students to get the image.  But I squeezed in about 4 frames, and this was one.

To light this image, we chose a deep octabank which is a little more directional than a standard softbox.  This light illuminated her well, but didn’t spill to much onto the desert floor.  We wanted the flames to add their orange color here.  The light was positioned high to further reduce spill onto the ground.  A Ranger RX powered the light, triggered by a Skyport. Tech: Nikon D3, 24-70mm, 1/160 at F5.6, ISO400.

Just in from photographing bears on the Katmai coast on a tour organized by Photo Quest Adventures.  We had incredible weather, 25 bears at a time right near us, and lots of cubs.  Every year these giant coastal brown bears pack into the streams to eat spawning salmon.  This year there was an incredible return of pink and dog salmon, so the bears packed in to feast. From a technical standpoint, photographing bears is pretty straightforward.  Matrix metering generally nails the exposure, so it is more about anticipating the bears behavior and being ready for the shot.  Because these bears walk by so close, say 7-10 feet away at times, you have to be careful about your choice of aperture.  An image shot at F4 at 400mm on a bears face may result in the nose being sharp and the eyes going soft.  The other technique we used frequently was using continuous focus modes with multipoint autofocus patterns to capture bears running through the creek chasing fish.  We also used this technique to track bald eagles flying over head. We decided to take the boat back to Kodiak (we flew over by floatplane to start) from the Katmai coast in hopes of photographing whales and sea otters.  Once again we had great luck finding both otters and orcas. It’s great to see abundant wildlife in these wild places.  Alaska never disappoints.  Tech: all images shot with a Nikon D3 and 200-400mm F4 lens, some with a 1.4x converter. attached.

Last weekend I had a chance to teach a one day class on flash photography here in Fort Collins at the Center for Fine Art Photography, we had great students, locations and models…thanks to all!  Below the center is a great basement for shooting, so we had to get out the gels and see what crazy ideas came about.  We found an interesting corridor with white walls, perfect for reflecting whatever color we chose.  Since our model, Chris, had lots of body art, we went for a ‘sopranos’ concept.  What really brought the concept together is when Chris found a saw in a box in the corridor, perfect!  This was a 3 light set up using SB900s.  Our background light was a SB900 on a stand extended all the way up to the ceiling.  This light had a red Honl gel with about 50mm zoom to spread the light on the white walls.  Our main light was a SB900 shot through a Holn snoot aimed at Chris’s face.  The snooted hard edged light gave the sinister look to Chris.  The last light we used was a SB900 on the floor shot through a LumiQuest Softbox III.  This light illuminated the saw and added some nice highlights in the bottom of the image.  All the SB900s were triggered and controlled by a SU800.  Tech: Nikon D3, ISO 200, 24-70mm lens, 1/250 at F6.3, 3 SB900s triggered with an SU 800.

The southern part of Mongolia contains the Gobi Desert, a vast high plateau characterized by camels, gers (circular dwellings) and sand dunes.  This area is very remote and sparsely populated, and the endless skies are amazing.  We visited many nomadic families in this area, including one near some sand dunes. Nikon D3, 24-70mm lens, 1/250 at F8, ISO400.

Gers are the traditional houses for nomadic families, and much of our time was spent living in our own gers.  These circular houses are cool during the day, warm at night and surprisingly spacious.  Nikon D3, 24-70mm, 1/20 at F14, ISO 400.

In addition to camels on the Gobi, there are lots of other livestock the Mongolians raise including cows, sheep and goats.  This skull was near our camp in the Gobi and a great foreground for sunrise.  Nikon D3, 14-24mm, !/60 at F16, ISO 400.  One SB900 with full CTO gell used to light the skull from above using a SU800 to trigger the flash.

Mongonlia was fantastic!  Endless rolling grassy hills, huge sand dunes, pristine lakes and friendly people make this a varied and interesting photography destination.  Our guide, Anand, was one of the best and deserves huge credit for arranging a lot of our photo ops.  And this trip wouldn’t have happened without the hard work of Mirjam Evers and Photo Quest Adventures.  I was lucky enough to have one of the first Elinchrom Quadra flash units to take along on this trip and really give it a tough trial run.  This pack endured hours of kidney-jarring four wheel drive roads, rain, sand, inconsistent power and even yak dung!  The Quadra performed flawlessly.  I really enjoyed the benefits of this pack when photographing portraits and needed to shoot a lot of frames fast.  The instant recycle times of the Quadra allowed me to shoot blazingly fast, and controlling flash output via the Skyport system was a huge advantage.  This image is of “Zoloo”, a throat singer, on the shore of Lake Hovsgol.  Nikon D3, 24-70mm lens, 1/250 at F10, ISO 100. Shot with the Quadra using a 39″ Elinchrom Octabank, triggered using Skyports.

Dancing and throat singing are a big part of Mongolian culture, and I was thrilled to photograph one of our dancers, “Tsegii”.  Her mesmerizing dancing along with Zoloo’s throat singing was a powerful experience.  Nikon D3, 24-70mm, 1/250 at F16, ISO 100.  Quadra and 39″ octabank used, triggered wirelessly by a Skyport.  

The Quadra is going to be a mainstay for our lighting needs in the future.  It packs a punch, can take a lot of abuse, and recycles like a flash pack in the studio, except you are in the middle of the Mongolia in a sand storm!