Building My Nature Photography Archive

My new landing page at tomarbour.smugmug.com features every bird photography, nearly 500 images.

At the beginning of the year, I came to this realization that the body of my work was sitting on my hard drive, very difficult to access.  Yes, this blog is a record of my natural history activities since the mid-2000's, but it's sequential- not well organized by taxa, or natural history subject, for example.

And after nature blogging began its big decline starting around 2010, most of us turned to Facebook to share our natural history images.  While some photographers curate their own wonderfully organized galleries, most imagery on Facebook is ephemeral.  Social media good way to give a dose of "nature porn" to our friends, but it's quite horrible to serve us, each of us as nature photographers, as a place to catalog and archive our body of work. Which, in order to become better photographers, more complete photographers, we need this.  At least, I came to the revelation a few months ago that I need it.

I need a place that is my own.  That I can display my work.  A place to help me better focus my field efforts, so that I'm bringing home photos of things that I haven't photographed particularly well before.  A place that I can catalog the wide range of nature subjects I choose to photograph.  A place where photos won't get buried over the years. A place where the photograph itself takes precedence. A place that I own, that I can design, and call my own.

While I never would have guessed just how much time it would take to complete such a site, I also underestimated the end value that this effort would have.  Take my bird photography gallery, which is now complete.  Who knew that I have never photographed a hairy woodpecker?  Or have any decent imagery of other common birds, including the northern flicker, indigo bunting, and red-tailed hawk?

I have a long way to go, but I know that my photography will improve for it.  I encourage you to visit tomarbour.smugmug.com and take a look.

-Tom

Southwest Florida Bird Highlights - The First Four Days

With the crazy El Nino weather, my time in Florida, five days including travel days, all three of my full days had rain, clouds, and seasonably cool temperatures.  But I can't complain.  Yes, I wasn't prepared for ankle to knee high water on several of the trails I visited, but that didn't stop me from exploring.

The focus of this trip was to expand my knowledge of the birds of this part of the country. Last year, I photographed many of the tame, common birds around the lagoons and drainage ditches.  This year, I set out to see and photograph a wider array of species, and here are some of my highlights.  I'm saving the last day of the trip, day five, a very beautiful day on Sanibel Island, for tomorrow.

Roseate Spoonbills - I saw more than ever.  This one was flying across a tidal flat at Lovers Key State Park

The Reddish Egret is the athlete of the wading bird world.  It actively chases its prey, running through the water, with the ability to change direction in the blink of an eye.

The Black Skimmers on the beach at Lovers Key were quite tame. At my favorite place to see them in South Carolina, I can't get within 30 feet of them before they become agitated and I back off.  In Florida, the birds, in general, are amazingly tame.

This American Flamingo has been hanging out on the tidal flats at Bunche Beach, on the mainland near Sanibel, for nearly a month. I'm a skeptic with this bird, since they are so common in captivity.  Who knows- it could have flown here from the Caribbean. The bird does not contain any bands, which would denote it was an escaped captive. 

If you want to photograph Ospreys, Lovers Key State Park is an excellent spot.  This bird was either carrying nesting material, or, it captured this stuff in its talons when diving for a fish and hasn't been able to remove it. 

I captured my best-ever but still not great photos of a Glossy Ibis.  I find this species much more wary than its white-feathered cousin. 

I watched this rather strange encounter with a young Red-shoulder Hawk and a pair of Mottled Ducks.  The hawk had come to bathe, and I'm not sure what the ducks thought of that.  The hawk eventually left, frightening the you know what out of the ducks.

This Red-shouldered Hawk at Bird Rookery Swamp exhibits the very light facial coloration that typifies these birds in Florida. 

I hit the jackpot with my rainy day visit to Bird Rookery Swamp as I watched two Short-tailed Hawks glide above during breaks in the rain.  According to the Sibley Guide, there are less than 300 pairs of this species in the U.S.

On day four of the trip, it stopped raining, but my trek to Shark Valley was met with cold temperatures and gray skies.  This Limpkin didn't seem to mind. 

I believe this is a fairly bad photo of the Orange-crowned Warbler, a species which was new to me.  Warblers are fast moving birds.  It was quite a challenge to make any sharp images of them on this gray day. I'm fairly certain this matches up with orange-crowned.  I'd love to hear your opinion.

This Northern Parula was a treat.  It gleaned for 10 minutes or so along the Shark Valley road.  

There are ALMOST as many Palm Warblers in Southwest Florida as there are people over 70.  Almost.  Seriously, if you see a warbler like bird, anywhere, it's most likely to be a Palm.

As I was leaving Shark Valley, I watched a Double-crested Cormorant nearby.  I've got plenty of close-up images of this species, so I just happily watched it swimming and diving.  And then all of the sudden the bird came up with this.  It's actually an Oscar, a non-native fish introduced to Florida from the aquarium trade.  I had one in high school.  This cormorant had NO PROBLEM downing this massive fish.

And finally, the sublimely beautiful Common Ground Dove, a bird that I found quite hard to photograph.  This was at the end of the day of my venture to the Everglades at Fakahatchee Strand State Park.

 And there are fifteen highlights from the first four days of the trip.  Tomorrow?  Sanibel Island and the J.N. "Ding" Darling National Wildlife Refuge.

-Tom

Maine Glow

While we were visiting Megan's parents in Maine this past holiday season, I did what I always do there- I take plenty of photographs.  Since I've been going there five years now, I have to make a conscious effort to find new images.  It's SO easy to just take the same pictures year after year.

One late afternoon, just as the sun was dropping, I decided to walk through the woods surrounding their home..  The dominant trees of this particular area are balsam fir, white pine, hemlock, red oak and yellow birch.  Even though the light was really great, I couldn't find a subject that was interesting enough to my eye.  I then turned around, and noticed the small but specatular patches of light where the setting sun came through the forest.  I used my telephoto lens to single out these areas of reflected and refracted light, shooting straight into the sun.  Making sure I didn't look through the camera at the sun, I snapped several images that I was really happy with.  I've never quite made this type of photograph before here, but I am really pleased with these.  Yes, there are  plenty of lens flare, normally considered a "problem", but to me, the technical flaws are what makes these images interesting.

No matter what you're doing, be it looking for rare plants, searching for wildlife, or photographing the natural world, take time to look at things a different way- you never know what you might find.

-Tom

Photography Exhibit January 21 - February 18 in Crestline, Ohio

I'm quite excited to announce that I'm going to be doing another photography show.   This time, I've received an invitation from Crawford Park District Director Bill Fisher to exhibit my work at Lowe-Volk park near Crestline, Ohio.  I'll be showing sixteen of my most compelling works (i hope).  I'll be at the nature center on Saturday January 21 for a reception.  I hope my friends in north central Ohio will be able to make it! 

 Here are the details from the Bucyrus Telegraph Forum:  

The Crawford Park District will begin its nature photography exhibit featuring native Ohioan Tom Arbour at 1 p.m. Jan. 21, providing an opportunity for visitors to meet Arbour and view samples of his work. The exhibit will be in Lowe-Volk Park Nature Center, 2401 Ohio 598. The nature photography exhibit will continue through Feb. 18.  Arbour is a wildlife research technician for the Ohio Division of Wildlife's Olentangy Wildlife Research Station. His interests include a wide variety of natural subjects, but he is particularly interested in close-ups of insects and sweeping landscapes. Although his work is primarily Ohio-based, he has a large body of work from his wife's home state of Maine. He has recently photographed nature subjects in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, South Carolina, Florida and Puerto Rico.

Arbour's photography has been exhibited at the Peggy R. McConnell Arts Center of Worthington and the ODNR headquarters in Columbus. His nature photographs have appeared in multiple ODNR publications and web pages. He is perhaps best known to Ohioans for his Ohio Nature Blog (www.ohio natureblog.com).

I hope to see you on Saturday, January 21!

-Tom

Ruffed Grouse

And we're back!  Over the river and through the woods from Grandmother's house in Maine, where we spent the Christmas holiday.  Thanks to everyone at Little Pond for hosting our family for almost a full week. I think grandma, grandpa, great-grandma, and the aunts and uncles had fun playing with Brody and Weston.  Megan and I appreciated the help just looking after the kids- keeping tabs on them is a full time job!

During this trip, I had the opportunity to photograph this pair of ruffed grouse.  Relatively uncommon in Ohio, the ruffed grouse is a popular game bird species in Maine, where they are often referred to as "partridge".  My in-laws have told me they see grouse occasionally, but they had, up until this week, eluded me at Little Pond.

I had just come in from outside when Megan started whispering for me rather loudly from the other room.  I am well familiar with that loud whisper, so I grabbed my camera to see what she had spotted.  These birds were foraging in the grass just outside the house, apparently eating clover, as evidenced by the little bit hanging from the male's beak.  Megan spotted them out the window as she was coming down the stairs.

I only had about a minute, but I was able to get a fairly decent photograph of the female and a "blog-able" image of the male.  You'll be sure that I'll be on the look out for ruffed grouse the next time we visit Little Pond, Maine.

-Tom

Channeling Monet's Water Lilies

Claude Monet- I'm pretty sure everyone learned about him in sixth grade art class, but in case you didn't- here's what I'm talking about.

-Tom

This week I'm posting images from our late August 2011 trip to Little Pond, Maine.

And Now for an Interruption

It's taken me almost two years to click through twenty four exposures of Kodak T-MAX 400, but a few weeks ago, I finally finished a roll.  I've never developed my own film.  But thanks to the help of friend James, I'm an expert (yeah right).  With his help yesterday, I developed my  first roll of film.  He was kind enough to drop off the negatives this evening after an overnight drying session, and bam, I popped them in the scanner.  Here's Weston's best "I'm cold daddy why are we outside are you crazy!?!" look.  I snapped this sometime last winter, as several of the other frames show a very pregnant Megan. 

I'm not sure how often I'll shoot and develop my own film. But it has taught me this: take the necessary time with every frame, digital or analog, so that I capture the very best image possible.

Tom

P.S.  Ok- How I missed the extra little black bar on the right side of the frame, I do not know.  I'm not fixing it!

Ultra-wide Views of Rocky Mountain National Park

While photographing in the park, I most likely had a telephoto lens for wildlife or the ultrawide Canon 10-22 mm lens that I borrowed from lensrentals.com  Contrasting with yesterday's telephoto views of the park, here are several images shot at 10mm with my Canon Eos 7D.

There's a creature in this photo- can you be the first to spot it?

The first time a rented an ultra-wide lens, I didn't bring back very good photographs.  When you're viewing the world with this wide angle, the most important thing to remember is to GET CLOSE to your subject.  Whatever you are photographing, you really can't be close enough.  Remember those two words, and you'll be successful with ultra-wide lenses.

Cheers,

Tom

Waiting for Magic

Thank you for taking a few minutes out your busy day to stop by and share with me my vision of the natural world.  This space on the internet has changed over time since I started blogging back in 2006, but the overarching theme has been my passion for nature.  I use digital cameras to help illustrate what I see, but I don't often go into details about the photographic process.  This is something I want to start diving into occasionally, and I hope those of you that are interested in photography will find these types of posts engaging.  If not, I hope you enjoy the images!

Early this week I had the rare opportunity to have an evening free to explore a few acres in Williams County, Ohio.  I meandered through area of grasslands and swamps looking for interesting photographic opportunities.  A low cloud deck obscured the sun, resulting in rather washed out, uninteresting evening light.  I tiptoed around the edge of a swamp searching for something of interest to photograph.  This dead stump, covered with living poison ivy vines, became my subject.  An interesting story, but not really a compelling photograph.  On my walk I did note a few white-barked quaking aspen, that if the clouds lifted, would make fantastic subjects bathed in the light of the "magic hour".

 

As I waited for that light, I sat on a large glacial erratic boulder, watching a gray colorless sky.  I looked at the rock and felt its ridges and furrows- it had engaging colors and patterns.  I was lamenting that Ohio doesn't have any granite bedrock like that at Yosemite, whose shear cliffs the great Ansel Adams made famous.  Then something clicked! With the right perspective, I could use this giant boulder as my Ansel Adams Cliff.  Since there wasn't much color in the scene, an Adams-esque high contrast black and white would be perfect.  What do you think?  Did I trick your eye into thinking you were looking at a tree-less mountain?

 

Finally, the light that I had visualized earlier did come- the sun dropped below the cloud deck, pouring golden light over everything.  What I hadn't anticipated was how cool the dead stems of last year's prairie grasses would look against the new spring greenery. I was pretty happy with this image- it was the one I was waiting for, and I almost went inside at this point.  The mosquitoes had enough of my blood already.

But I am glad I stayed put.  As the first cloud deck moved across the landscape, another quickly replaced it- but these clouds did not obscure the sun.  Just as the sun was at the horizon, these clouds started to catch "fire", and by this time, I was really excited- I don't often get sunset images like this, but I absolutely love this phenomenon.   Galen Rowell, an incredible photographer and mountaineer, loved photographing these types of moments. 

So there you have it- an hour long peek into my photographic brain.  Although I missed my family dearly, an overnight work trip allowed me to photograph the sunset.  If I have to be away, hopefully I can bring home images like these every time I am gone.

Tom

Plants Rock

Friday evening I was searching for creative inspiration in the back yard.  I found that inspiration in the details of plants.  Many of you know I was a botanist for the State of Ohio for seven years- I often viewed the small details of plants with a hand lens as part of my job.  Looking at the intimate structural details of plants through my camera lens on my own time is a completely different experience.  Plants are an amazing but often overlooked part of the biodiversity of our planet.

Tom

Jay Maisel, Harry Benson to Speak in Worthington at "Camerama"

Did I spell that right?

Pardon the dip away from all things nature and into photography for photography's sake.

Today I learned that our super cool camera store here in Columbus, Midwest Photo Exchange, is holding a a new event called "Camerama." Normally I'd love to attend this type of thing, an event that attracts world class photographers.  But I don't go, because events like these are often held in places like Las Vegas, or Orlando, or Seattle, or NYC...

So imagine my excitement when I found out that both Harry Benson AND Jay Maisel would be speaking in my little town of Worthington, Ohio, at the Holiday Inn, which is, yes, a three minute walk from my house. Wow. Very cool.

Harry Benson was part of the Beatles invasion (not an attack of an invasive insect), assigned to photograph the group's first visit to the U.S. He has since gone on to photograph all the U.S. presidents since Dwight Eisenhower.  He'll be speaking on Good Friday, April 29, from 6-8.

I first became familiar with Jay Maisel's work from his interview on the Candid Frame podcast.  His photographic eye is amazing and he's know for his quirky "home" in lower Manhattan dubbed "maybe the greatest real-estate coup of all time."  Maisel will give his talk Saturday, April 30, from 6-8.

I'll be there- at least for the two talks (20 bucks each night), will you?

Tom

Winter Photography

 Since I'm going to be heading up a free winter photography workshop on February 5th for the Delaware Preservation Parks, I thought I would ask here what winter photography problems, issues, or questions that you might have that might help guide my upcoming workshop.  I've thought a ton of things already, but I can't think of everything.  Please feel free to share any winter photography tips or questions with a comment.  Thanks!

Tom

Images of Shawnee

 

Our trip to Shawnee State Park and Forest, September 4-6th, 2010.

Tom