July 2009 Newsletter

Shooting on the Spring 2009 tours exceeded my expectations. As usual the tours were conducted in the Lafayette, Louisiana area, with day trips to local bird habitats including the Atchafalaya basin. There were very few rainy days for all the tours and there were excellent opportunities at all the locations we visited. As usual there were different opportunities for each tour due to the stage of the nesting season and the water levels in the Atchafalaya basin. All but one of the tours were full and we were rewarded with many good photo opportunities.

April 5th–8th

Early morning temperatures were quite low for here in Louisiana for the month of April. In fact, the schedule for photographing from the boats was changed due to the extremely cold and windy forecast for Tuesday the 7th. We all headed to Wal-Mart for supplemental cold weather clothing. However we were able to work around the weather and get some very good photography in. Water levels were too low to easily get into Cow Island Lake, so we shot at Henderson Lake. The nesting season this year was behind the normal schedule due to the colder temperatures so there was a lot of territorial disputes and mating behavior that would have normally occurred in March providing excellent photo opportunities.

Osprey landing on nest, silhouette, Henderson Lake, Atchafalaya Basin, Louisiana

Great Egret returning to the nest in the evening, Talons Landing Road, Klondyke, Louisiana

White Ibis in flight, Miller’s Lake, Louisiana

White Faced Ibis, Miller’s Lake, Louisiana

Alligator, Jefferson Island, Louisiana

April 19–22nd

While still cooler than normal, temperatures had moderated for the second tour. Water levels had risen, but they were still too low to get into Cow Island Lake. The Roseate Spoonbills had paired off in their nests and there were opportunities to photograph Great Egrets feeding their chicks.

Early morning in the boat preparing to photograph the Osprey, Henderson Lake, Atchafalaya Basin, Louisiana

Osprey returning to nest, sunrise, Henderson Lake, Atchafalaya Basin, Louisiana

Roseate Spoonbills Overhead, Jefferson Island, Louisiana

Roseate Spoonbill in flight, Jefferson Island, Louisiana

White Ibis, Storm cloud in background, Miller’s Lake, Louisiana

White Faced Ibis bringing stick to nest, Miller’s Lake, Louisiana

Sora, Miller’s Lake, Louisiana

Prothonotary Warbler, Lake Martin, Cypress Island Preserve, Cypress Island, Louisiana

May 10–14th

Back to normal "hot" temperatures. No coats required for the boats on this tour. Water levels had risen to the point where we could finally get into Cow Island Lake. While there weren't any Spoonbill Chicks due to the late nesting season, there were numerous opportunities to photograph the Great Egrets feeding.

“Gatortail” mud boat taking tour participants into Miller’s Lake, Louisiana to photograph birds

The wading bird rookery at Jefferson Island, Louisiana

Osprey chicks on the nest, Cow Island Lake, Atchafalaya Basin, Louisiana

Osprey parent feeding chick on the nest, Cow Island Lake, Atchafalaya Basin, Louisiana

Roseate Spoonbill, Jefferson Island, Louisiana

Red winged blackbird silhouette, Talon’s Landing Road, Klondyke Louisiana

Snowy Egret Courtship Display, Jefferson Island, Louisiana

Snowy Egret, Jefferson Island, Louisiana

Custom Tours

I also conducted two custom tours during the spring, visiting many of the same locations. I often schedule custom shoots between the tours to keep my travel costs down when people ask for dates other than those scheduled or for those people wishing individual attention. Keep this in mind if your plans don't fit with my scheduled tours or if you need individual attention, I can work with you to make it fit.

Henderson Lake

We visited Henderson Lake during the April tours. Henderson Lake is part of the Atchafalaya Basin and is accessible from Interstate 10 about 10 miles east of Lafayette. Henderson Lake is a beautiful Cypress Swamp with abundant wildlife. Both trips resulted in very good Osprey and Bald Eagle shots. During the second April tour we captured wonderful shots of an Osprey landing on its nest atop a large cypress tree at sunrise.

Cow Island Lake

Cow Island Lake is a small lake in the Atchafalaya Basin. There are numerous Osprey nests on the Lake, several of which were at eye level making for stellar photo opportunities. Access to the Lake is either from a small bayou from the Atchafalaya River across a weir or via a foot path from the river. Access via the river is only possible when the water level in the river is high enough to allow passage over the weir. Access via the foot path requires boats to be pre-positioned in the Lake making access impractical for tours. The water was only high enough for the May tour.

Jefferson Island

We visited Jefferson Island several times and were rewarded with excellent opportunities to photograph the Roseate Spoonbills. The wading bird rookery is on three man made islands in the middle of water retainment ponds for a commercial rookery. During the nesting season there are thousands of nesting wading birds including hundreds of Roseate Spoonbills. I had one evening when hundreds of Spoonbills returned at once in the evening filling the sky with red spoonbills, of course all I had set up was my 600, but I did get an interesting shot with 4 spoonbills in the frame, the lesson is that I should have had a wide angle ready and I would have had a killer shot.

Talon's Landing Klondyke, Louisiana

I added Talon's landing to the placed visited this year to photograph Great Egrets nesting close to the road. The rookery has about 25 pairs of nesting wading birds including Great Egrets and Roseate Spoonbills. While it's a long trip from Lafayette, it's worth the drive and there's always something to photograph. This year in addition to the Spoonbills and Great Egrets there were Purple Gallinule and several of us heard or saw a painted bunting, but were unable to get any shots.

Millers Lake

This is the third year we've been doing Miller's Lake. With every visit we find new areas to explore. This is truly an astounding place with a huge number of nesting wading birds estimated to be in the tens of thousands. The nesting birds are only accessible by boat. This year we found areas where you can get shots of Roseate Spoonbills in addition to egrets, herons, ibis, and purple gallinule. For the first tour we also had large numbers of Black Bellied Tree Ducks.

Lake Martin

Once the premier place to photograph nesting Roseate Spoonbills, since 2006 the nesting population has been a fraction of what it once was and the birds no longer nest by the road. While the wading birds still aren't nesting directly by the road, there was a definite increase in the number of birds nesting this year and they are moving toward the road. I suspect that over time they will return, but it will require patience. In April there are numerous small birds to photograph as well as a large number of alligators. The good news is that there now is a board walk along the southern edge of the Lake which offered good photography of Barred Owls and it had a prothonotary warbler's nest in April. In addition, there's a visitors center well on its way as well. While not what it was 5 years ago, things are definitely looking up for Lake Martin.

Aperture and Lightroom Consulting Sessions—Storing and locating your images

During June and July I've done two custom workshops, one for Aperture and another for Lightroom. Both Aperture and Lightroom are Asset management programs which enable photographers to have one point of access to all their images and based upon applying descriptive keywords, located images very rapidly. Predefining a key-wording structure and establishing consistent conventions for the directory structure and file naming is crucial to effectively using both applications.

Both customers needed to conveniently store a collection of images in a secure manner and and needed to quickly locate specific images in the file. Asset management software is perfect for this requirement. Both Lightroom and Aperture do a very good job of accomplishing this. We were able to customize Lightroom / Aperture to meet the specific needs and load many of the images into a hard disk drive attached to the machine, set up custom keyword directories and build a process to load remaining images as well as add images as they are being shot.

This is a service I plan to offer on a one on one basis. If you have a collection of images either stored on hard drives or CD’s / DVD’s and are interested in having me help you set up a system to meet your needs, please contact me to schedule.

Upcoming photo workshops

Apple Aperture Workshop
August 7th–9th
DSLR Workshop
September 11th–13th & October 23rd–25th
Digital Printing
November 13th–15th

December photo tour

December 6th–9th
Unfortunately I advertised this for December 11th–13th, please disregard those dates

2010 Spring bird photo tours

April 11th–14th
April 25th–April 28th
May 16th–19th

Consulting

A reminder, I offer consulting in all aspects of digital photography, including, digital cameras, digital asset management, printing, bird photography, lighting, and applications such as Photoshop, Lightroom, and Aperture. Call for a quotation for your needs.

Printing

I also offer custom printing services. Including prints for photographers. I also can either scan or photograph artwork and produce high quality duplicates either on paper or canvas. Call for a quotation.