©2000-2016 BTLeventhal.com / Bruce & Tamy Leventhal. All rights reserved. No image on this site may be used without permission.
Channeling Jim Brandenburg
In 1998 Jim Brandenburg published “Chased by the Light,” a photographic essay spanning the autumnal equinox and winter solstice. Burdened by his prior success and fearing a creative rut the artist/photographer was searching for a way to reignite his passion. Like a disciplined Zen master seeking to live in the moment, Brandenburg challenged himself to document a north woods fall by making only one photograph a day. Shooting in the pre-digital era, this meant getting it right in camera with each squeeze of the shutter.
Five years later Brandenburg released “Looking for Summer.” Much like “the 90-day project,” this was an exercise in vision and patience. While having survived his self imposed “one-a-day” rule, in this exploration of summer Brandenburg modified the prior model by shooting every day and selecting one “best” from the set. In the shadow of “Chased by the Light,” this project was also about revealing the changes in light and life as a season progresses.
In April 2016 National Geographic published the latest in Brandenburg’s quest to document the phenological changes of his Minnesota home. Titled “93-Days of Spring,” the article includes the largest number of images by a single photographer published in one issue. As with the prior seasonal projects, this is a modification of the original meme. Shooting every day and selecting bests from the set, this time Jim included photos from each ecological region in the state. Still shooting like the kid he once was, at age 70 the current project reflects the life of a man who has lived behind a camera. Brandenburg’s impeccable timing, willingness to shoot unconventional compositions and capacity to find the right subject continues to amaze this fan.
Channeling the wizened master, this gallery is my modification of the “one-a-day” model. While I’d like nothing more than to shoot each day, teaching is my calling and photography is my pastime. Relegated to weekend warrior and after hours opportunities, this is as close as I can get to shooting every day during a school year. With the exception of a brief excursion to southeast Minnesota, the photographs presented are “selects” from a day’s outing only miles from my St. Croix Valley home. I'm no Brandenburg, but I feel his influence every time I raise the camera to my eye.
©2000-2016 BTLeventhal.com / Bruce & Tamy Leventhal. All rights reserved. No image on this site may be used without permission.
Good 'Ol Days?
Throughout the 1980’s and 90’s my own photography was an exercise in patience. This was the pre-digital era when every squeeze of the shutter was an opportunity taken and an opportunity lost. As the image count climbed towards 36, the potential to make one more photograph also diminished. The cost of film and processing was a deterrent to mashing the shutter, and choosing to take a five frame burst was a carefully measured decision. Shooting at the maximum five frames per second seemed to be like traveling at light speed, a journey that only took seven seconds to reach the destination. I can recall the calculus when the frame counter hit the number thirty; there are only six or seven shots left and if something really unique were to occur, I’d have to get it before the counter hit thirty-six. These were wasteful days, as there were no histograms to check exposure, no LCD’s to check composition and no memory cards to hold a near endless set of images.
Is there discipline in the digital era? As I wade through the 850 photographs made during a five hour period that began at 5:00 p.m., was paused for dinner and sleep, and resumed at 5:00 a.m. the next day, I can’t help but wonder how I might have handled this opportunity in 1995. In that year, I made my first trip to Costa Rica armed with a manual focus Contax RTS and 300mm f4.0 Carl Zeiss lens. Not the typical gear for a travel and wildlife photographer, I was behind the curve foregoing autofocus for optics that I believed to be superior. With camera and tripod in hand, I was limited to 15 rolls of ISO 50 and 100 slide film. The investment in the emulsion coated celluloid set me back about $350 dollars, and I would need to spend about as much to process these precious rolls. With ten days of shooting in front of me, I was like a miser with a penny, disciplined, stingy and patient; these were the essential cognitive tools of the successful nature photographer. I repeated the following mantra in my head… ten good shots in ten days is all I want or need.
Two weeks ago I joined my good friend in a blind that he had constructed near the southeast corner of Minnesota. The Costa Rican birds that I so covet were now migrating north to where I live today. We began our shoot at 5:00 P.M., paused to eat dinner at 9:30, enjoyed the company of friends and family until midnight just to awaken before sunrise and resume the shoot. The birds landed on the sticks and we mashed down on our shutters. Bursts of ten frames per second shattered the records of the past, histograms verified exposure and LCD’s refined our compositions. So as I wade through these 850 images, I reflect nostalgically on that trip to Costa Rica and can’t help but wonder how I actually managed to make ten good pictures in ten days.
©2000-2016 BTLeventhal.com / Bruce & Tamy Leventhal. All rights reserved. No image on this site may be used without permission.
Good Work
During one of those all too frequent moments where I was waxing poetic about some prior exploit, a student asked me if I regretted my decision to become a teacher. As these queries often appear in a flurry, I was not surprised when the topic turned to my decision to live in Minnesota rather than my childhood haunts of New York City and Southern California. I suppose that if I grew up in a midwest suburb and my teacher was from a heavily publicized city and appeared surprisingly competent, I might wonder why he chose to stick around rather than pursue what seemed to be a more exciting life. Were I was asked to reflect on these choices twenty years ago you might here a hint regret, but today I am rather sanguine when it comes to my plight. Teaching has been good to me. While it is very hard work, emotionally demanding and can be painfully redundant, the rewards far outweigh the costs. There is a real purpose to my life, as I have the opportunity to share my deep passion for how scientists do science. While I love to lecture about all things ecology, evolution and molecular biology, my real creativity is borne from those rare moments when I can frame an exploration that fosters naive discovery.
As "Teacher's Week" came and went, I couldn't help but reflect on the good fortune that led me into this field. Working as a field ecologist for a university team on St. George Island, Alaska, I was also charged with helping a middle-school teacher on sabbatical to fit in with our group. Not being much of a people person, this was quite a daunting task; yet there was something about the man that seemed remarkable to me. Dwight was not only a middle-school science teacher, but he was an amateur photographer who chose to spend his free minutes documenting life with a camera. After nearly two weeks of collaboration and training Dwight and I parted company, but he left a little something behind. I think it was the midnight dinners and frosty beers that loosened our tongues, and resulted in philosophical chats about living a quality life. This teacher loved his work, believed he was doing good, and enjoyed the small things like so few seem to do. It's been nearly 30 years since I last talked to the man, but I sincerely believe that the teacher I am today can be attributed to my own naive discovery about a guy and his career that evoked passion and a love for good work.
©2000-2016 BTLeventhal.com / Bruce & Tamy Leventhal. All rights reserved. No image on this site may be used without permission.
The Reluctant Keystone
The structure of a thriving community is often dependent on one or two species within the food web. Often referred to as “keystones,” the niche they occupy have broad implications for the other species in the environment. The role of a so-called keystone is often overlooked until it is too late. For example, the regional extirpation of wolves, otters and elephants from their respective ranges led to striking reductions in biodiversity. The loss of just one critical species has unpredictable consequences that include broad ecosystem changes due to a collapsed food web and unintended trophic interactions. In each case, once the keystone is returned to its depleted environment, biodiversity and ecosystem complexity is restored (See Reintroduction of the Wolf).
Because of its destructive tendencies, the beaver (Castor canadensis), is an under appreciated keystone. Known best for felling trees, damming rivers and building lodges, this large semi-aquatic rodent plays a critical role in promoting biodiversity throughout deciduous wetland habitats.
By pruning forests of aspen and ash, beavers create open patches that promote the germinationof herbaceous plants throughout the understory. Rays of sunlight, once blocked by the impenetrable canopy, are now free to initiate the growth of dormant and light hungry species. This seemingly benevolent affair is far from altruistic, beavers drop trees to access tender leaves and repurpose the fallen wood as building materials.
Branches and chiseled tree trunks are carefully piled wherever the sound of flowing water can be heard. By keying into these audible cues, beavers can identify breaches in their fortress and optimize the size of their habitat. The blocked water will flood lowland areas and allow beavers to swim to new forage rather than risk predation by walking clumsily on land.
The dam-building activity not only floods forests, but creates habitat for wood ducks, geese, diving fowl, kingfishers and pileated woodpeckers. The broad habitat modification disrupts climax communities and resets the succession of the forest. As a result, the actions of this one rodent species have a profound impact on the biodiversity structure of forest ecosystems.
©2000-2016 BTLeventhal.com / Bruce & Tamy Leventhal. All rights reserved. No image on this site may be used without permission.
The Aerial Dance
The birds pictured throughout belong to the family Ardeidae. Common near freshwater and marine coastal environments, there are 64 known species.
The great blue (Ardea herodia) is North America’s largest heron. Breeding in seemingly haphazard tree-top nests, a mated pair will carefully pass each purposefully chosen stick from retriever to nest-builder as a part of a biologically programmed courtship.
Often breeding in multi-species colonies, the great blue tolerates other heron species their colonies. Quite possibly a defensive measure against nest robbers, survival and reproductive success is a numbers game. “You can enjoy my neighbor’s eggs, but stay out of my home.”
Often nesting between branches in and around great blue herons is the smaller, but no less beautful, great egret (Ardea alba). Their all white body is adorned with fine dorsal feathers and a green facial cere during the reproductive season.
All images were photographed from a canoe. The equipment used was a Nikon D3 and Nikon 200-400mm f4.0VR attached to a Gitzo Series 3 tripod wedged between my body and the bow of the canoe.
©2000-2015 BTLeventhal.com / Bruce & Tamy Leventhal. All rights reserved. No image on this site may be used without permission.
End of Winter - 2016
I arrived at my buddy's home just as the dashboard read 4:30. The consummate outdoorsmen, Brian is the one guy you want to be near when the shit hits the fan. Kind as the day is long, the man is as strong as an ox and knows how to survive when the weather turns nasty. A fellow biology teacher and former co-worker at the Bell Museum of Natural History, Brian shares my passion for wildlife and nature photography. Bound by similar experiences in academia, work and avocation, it is a love of the St. Croix River Valley and its secretive wildlife that brings out the "weekend warrior" in us both.
The call the previous night went something like this... "I think I saw coyote tracks near the otter hole... want to check it out?" "When," I asked... "give me the start time."
"Be here at 4:30 a.m.," he said.
I frowned at the time, but Brian knew that I could not resist the temptation to photograph a predator.
I was out of bed at 3:15am and in the car by 3:30. It was a dark and snowy drive as I made my way north along the river valley. The mix of adrenaline and caffeine were my companion for the next 40 minutes. After a bleary-eyed greeting, we did that man-hug thing, jumped in his Rav4 and headed north for another 30 miles.
The snowfall intensified with every mile, but we were awake and determined to scout the area. Pulling off along a quiet county road, I put on a head-sock, some camouflage and began the hike down a wooded hill towards the river. Stepping carefully, we traversed the shallow waters of the St. Croix as we made our way towards the peninsula. While the bay on which we walked was iced over, we could feel our boots push deep into the snow with every step. The sound of breaking ice was unnerving but not unusual. Thirty minutes after leaving the car we dug a snow shelter and waited.
Pulling a predator call from his pocket, Brian blew into the crude wooden whistle to make the sound of a struggling rabbit. Nothing happened and we waited some more. Snow now began to accumulate on my numb legs, the camera bag and on my lens. Just as we were thinking... "time to give up," the coyotes emerged at a distance. There were five running from Minnesota to Wisconsin across the St. Croix. Far, far away we could make out their form outlined by the falling snow... and we waited some more.
I took about 500 photographs on this day and deleted about 485. The ones presented here are among my favorite works in a catalog of images that include predators of Africa, exotics from Costa Rica and landscapes from around the world. Maybe it's the story in my own mind, but this shoot will likely be a treasured memory for me into the future.
Should you with to see some of Brian's photographs from this day visit hits blog "One Thousand Days in Nature."
©2000-2015 BTLeventhal.com / Bruce & Tamy Leventhal. All rights reserved. No image on this site may be used without permission.
Conversation with a Partner
“clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack
“Who’s going to edit all of these pictures?
“Never mind, …don’t sweat it now. When are you going to see a pair of nesting ospreys so close again?”
“Yeah, you’re right… this is really amazing! I can’t believe these two got booted from the first nest by a pair of owls”
“clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack…how do you think she’s doing?”
“Who, Tamy? …time of her life I suppose. You know she’s working the owl nest, right? Why would you distract me with a question like this? We agree’d, I shoot the ospreys and she’d tell me when I should head to the owls.”
“clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack… yeah, but you’ve been working this pair for an hour now, the light’s changing fast… you’ve got the goods… now’s the time to move on!”
Quiet, here comes the male coming with a branch.
“clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack”
You need to come now… the light’s great over here!
“Okay… but I’m not quite done with these two!”
Hurry or you’ll….
“clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack …move on Bruce, you don’t want to miss the owl nest”
“Right, but what about the ospreys, this is so amazing.”
“clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack”
“Maybe I should move on, I can’t see Tamy, that means she’s on something good.”
“Holy sh… did you see that, I’ve never seen a loggerhead shrike and…”
“clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack … clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack… you mis-focused you idiot and now you’re going to blame me like you always do. Slow it down.. clack—clack—clack—clack — clack — clack — clack — clack — clack — clack “
©2000-2016 BTLeventhal.com / Bruce & Tamy Leventhal. All rights reserved. No image on this site may be used without permission.
The $6200 Question…
When it comes to photography, I am all about the image. Whether I choose to create in the moment or have some pre-visualized intent, I strongly believe in the relentless pursuit of a personal vision. Faced with questions about my tools, you’d likely hear some flippant remark like, “it’s me... not the camera!” Having interacted with many serious amateurs and pros, I know that I’m not alone when it comes to professing the importance of “practice” and “being there.” However, this reality does not diminish one key fact, quality equipment is a pleasure to use and it increases the chance of realizing one’s vision. So I now unapologetically admit that this pre-amble is a poorly veiled way of saying... today’s post is about gear.
I am one of the lucky ones, as my wife and partner shares my obsession for nature, travel and photography. We spend the majority of our disposable income on adventures abroad and the gear we use to meet our photographic goals. Yet, we are not wealthy people, we are just a pair of worker bees. Often considered among the lowest ranking professionals, I am a biology teacher and Tamy is a nurse. While the work is personally fulfilling, we do it so we can afford to travel and make images of lesser-visited places.
So, how do two middle income professionals allocate their resources so they can make compelling photographs of wildlife? Anyone who is a serious nature shooter knows that wildlife photography is among the most financially taxing disciplines in the photographic arts. Much like the serious sports shooter, the wildlife photographer is dependent on fast cameras, the best autofocus systems and ultra-expensive super-telephoto lenses. To some, it is the latter that is a key impediment to joining “the club.”
Because there are two of us, the price to play is quite prohibitive. Until recently, we both compromised by shooting lesser glass or shorter focal length lenses. This all changed when Nikon introduced their AF-S 200-500mm f/5.6E ED VR lens. For the first time, there is a professional grade super-telephoto optic that can be had for less than $1500 US. Not only does this lens shoot at an impressive 500mm, but it is a zoom lens with a non-variable aperture. At f5.6, the lens is relatively fast and can be used under most shooting conditions. Tamy pairs her brand new 200-500mm f5.6 with a Nikon D7100. The D7100 is a 24mp DX camera (1.5 times crop) that creates a viewing perspective of 300-750mm with her lens. With 51AF points and a shooting speed of 6 frames per second, the lens and body can be had for about $2200 US.
While $2200 US might seem to be quite expensive, let’s compare Tamy’s wildlife kit to the gear I use. At the time of this post, I shoot with a Nikon D4. The D4 is a 16mp full-frame (FX) camera capable of capturing 10fps. Introduced in 2012, I purchased mine in used condition for $3000 US. I pair the D4 with Nikon’s premium AF-S 200-400mm f/4G VR super-zoom. While the newest VR II lens can be had for about $7000, I found a relatively clean and older model for $3000. In order to approach the magnification of the less expensive zoom, I pair my lens with a Nikon AF-S TC-1.4E II tele-converter. With the additional optical elements, I can produce a 16 MP image at 560mm for the “low-low price” of $6250.
As I began writing this post two days ago, I intended to claim that one combination of body and lens was superior to the other. However, after processing the many images displayed throughout, I will leave that decision to you. As you examine each photograph, I would like to encourage you to read the the subtext added, as this should offer a bit context. While there is a definite benefit that accompanies the additional allocation of resources, it would be hard to justify busting a budget to buy a $6200 wildlife kit when $2200 can produce images like those illustrated here.
©2000-2016 BTLeventhal.com / Bruce & Tamy Leventhal. All rights reserved. No image on this site may be used without permission.
A Sign of the Times or Just More Random Fluctuation?
Chaos (noun) : 1 complete disorder and confusion. 2behavior so unpredictable as to appear random, owing to great sensitivity to small changes and conditions.
So describes the world we now live.
The political uncertainty of the upcoming presidential election seems to be a fitting metaphor for the climatic fluctuations of my once predictable temperate home. Political leadership, chosen by the masses, typically represents a best effort to compromise between the extremes. Nearly as assured as sunrise and sunset, our leadership is rarely too hot or too cold, but somewhere in between. Yet today, the predictions of who is in and who is out seems to be as accurate as the daily climatic highs listed in a “Farmer’s Almanac.” Like the chaotic choking cloud that emerges from mix of bleach and ammonia, the rise of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump suggest a potentially dangerous unpredictability that may otherwise be benign and of no consequence (see chaos definition #2).
And what do we make of the weather in Minnesota? On March 12, the city of Minneapolis typically averages a low of 22℉ and high 39℉. Yesterday, March 12, 2016, the temperature peaked at 70℉, just 6 degrees below the average temperature in Tampa, Florida from which we had left on that very day.
During a three mile walk with the dogs, I could hear migrating sandhill cranes, prenuptial Eastern bluebirds and a cacophony of migrating songbirds overhead. The Vernal Equinox is still 7 days from today, yet trees are beginning to flower and buds are swelling and preparing to burst. As a global citizen, committed environmentalist and humanist, I am challenged by the patterns I am seeing. I am bothered by the political rancor that makes citizens of the United States appear to be xenophobic self-absorbed children, and I am fearful that our political ignorance mirrors an environmental indifference that will only serve to diminish predictability and reinforce the chaos we now experience. Are the politics and climate of today benign and of no consequence, or do they foretell something a bit more ominous? …We have no choice but to play things out and rely on hindsight to make sense of our future’s patterns.
©2000-2016 BTLeventhal.com / Bruce & Tamy Leventhal. All rights reserved. No image on this site may be used without permission.