Tom Bol Photo Blog

Just back from 3800 miles on the road in two weeks, love the freedom to get in the car and go.  I spent half the time working, and half the time on spring break with my  family.

I started by teaching at Shoot the West, a fantastic workshop held in Winnemucca, NV.  Each year this workshop/tradeshow  brings in around 300 people for a long weekend packed with seminars, workshops and keynote speakers.  My friends Stacy Pearsall and Andy Dunaway also were at the event, incredible photographers with sobering images from the war in Iraq and elsewhere.

I taught two lighting classes during the week, including one session high on Winnemucca Mountain above town.  This workshop is great, you go from photographing cowboys one moment to runners the next.

One new piece of software I learned about is Starstax.  This program, which is free, allows you to stack multiple exposures into one image.  It is great for shooting one star trail image that is composed of hundreds exposures.  The shorter images eliminate noise issues of one long exposure.  I’ll show a few other things you can do with this software in a future post.

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The Atacama Desert is one of the driest deserts in the world…except right now.  We are experiencing some of the most rain they have seen in years, which is providing some amazing shooting situations.  I was lucky enough to catch some lightning shooting a passing storm in the Valley of the Moon.

With all the rain, we have found great reflection pools in the desert and on the salt flats.  One point to remember with reflections, the lower you get, the more clouds you have in the reflection.  This image was taken lying on the ground.

We stopped by a flamingo preserve and found lots of flamingos to shoot, and a long lens was not needed.  I like to use a 9 point autofocus pattern to track birds in flight, this gives me the fastest focusing…no need for 51 point when you know which way your subject is going.

I have continued to be impressed with the 24-120mm F4 Nikon lens.  At f22, it creates amazing sunstars as seen here.  This is my favorite travel lens.

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I’m on a photo workshop right now with Photo Quest Adventures exploring Easter Island.  The Moai statues are magical and great subjects for photography.  Topaz Adjust 5 is working well with adding some snap to many of the images.  We are also using Alien Skin Exposure 3 to add some great effects to sunsets…the Velvia action is a favorite.

Speedlights are a travel photographer’s best friend.  Time and again scenes photograph better with a little help from flash.  For the shot above, a SB900 was triggered off-camera using a SU800 transmitter, and a warming gel was on the flash to add some earthy tones to the image.

Another fascinating aspect of this island are the Rapa Nui people.  At one point their numbers dwindled to 111 people on the island,  but today their culture lives on.  We were lucky to photograph a couple Rapa Nui in ceremonial dress at sunset, a very special shoot.  I shot my Nikon 85 1.4, my favorite portrait lens.  I used one SB900 off-camera and darkened the background exposure 1 1/2 stops for this shot.

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In Alaska right now on an assignment.  Had the chance to see friends with my family beforehand.  We used to live in Alaska, and still love many aspects of life up north.  One thing we talk about is the Alaska factor.

The Alaska factor refers to how everything seems bigger and almost surreal up here.  The mountains are big, the wildlife is big, the stories are big.  You just never know what you will encounter here.

This great gray owl is a good example.  We were driving up to Fairbanks and found this owl on the roadside.  Great gray owls are not common, and seeing one in the lower 48 is a big deal.  In Alaska they hang out on the roadside. I always travel in AK with my long lens attached, you never know what animal is around the corner.  I was able to get a few shots of this owl before it flew into the thick boreal forest.

People have asked about the printing element at the Glacier Workshop.  We will have an Epson printer and show you how to get the best prints from your images. Everyone will get a chance to print and take home some poster sized prints.

And speaking of Alaska, there is still room on the Denali Photo Workshop.

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In Patagonia right now with Photo Quest Adventures.  We are in Chalten, a small town right below Mt. Fitzroy, one of the most spectacular mountains I know.  We went out to shoot sunrise on Fitzroy, and our timing was perfect to catch a full moon setting.

As we were setting up waiting on sunrise, we worked on night images with the moon.  Just by chance we had a car drive past adding nice curved headlight streak in the foreground.

Sunrise was also spectacular.  The high winds of Patagonia created saucer lenticular clouds and for a brief moment the sky caught fire.

Patagonia teaches a well known rule in photographing landscapes. You can never predict weather, and you can never create a great landscape shot by staying in bed.  We left our hotel skeptical about getting any light, but in the end we captured both moonset and sunrise images.

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In Acadia NP on a Great American Photography Workshop right now.  We have a great group, nice fall color and some good light.  

As I roamed around the locations helping participants I kept my P7000 Coolpix around my neck to take quick snapshots.  I have been amazed at the quality of this camera, and how seamless it is to use coming from the DSLR Nikons.   These images were shot with the P7000, quick grab shots with no tripod.  This camera is opening up possibilities for me that I wouldn’t have using a larger camera.

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Just returned from teaching a flash workshop in Las Vegas for Photo Quest Adventures.  We worked with some fabulous models, including Priscilla,  a dancer I have worked with before. She can come up with an amazing array of costumes, poses and ideas, no doubt a reason why she is in demand as a show girl. We set up on a dry lake bed right before a storm, which worked perfect for adding drama in the sky and blowing her scarf horizontal.  This image was lit with 2 SB900s, one aimed at her and the other at the end of her scarf. To make the image more dramatic I underexposed the background around 1.5 stops.  Shot with a D300s and 24-70mm.

On another note, I am very excited to be joining the ranks of Kelby Training with online training videos focusing on adventure sports. If you are not familiar with Kelby Training, they offer a huge variety of online training videos on topics from photography to photoshop, check them out when you can.

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I was just in the tetons recently photographing fall color on a Great American Photography Workshop. After we shot the classics we tried some more abstract ways of documenting color. One of my favorite techniques is twisting the camera while pointed upward to get some pinwheel effects. Shutter speeds from 1/30 and slower will get good results, it just depends on how fast you can twist. Also try zooming in and out on a zoom lens during a long exposure for more interesting effect.

Tech: D300s, 24-70mm, ISO 100, F22 at 1/25.

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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!

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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.

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