Adam Hill Studios: December 2010

A few weeks ago in October, Shannon and I were headed to Lady Evelyn falls in Kakisa, NT. I wanted to be there for the sunrise. I was planning on having some sunshine on the falls. Unfortunately I came a little too late in the year for the shot that I had wanted. It wasn’t a wasted trip though. I had climbed down to the river’s edge to compose my images. I realized that the trees to the northwest of the falls would be illuminated first so I tried to incorporate these element into my composition.

1DS Mark III, 16-35mm F2.8

Looking back I realize with chiaroscuro of the trees I now had two subjects, both were competing for the viewers attention. I plan on going back next June and camping there (since sunrise will be a little after 4) to get the shot I want of the falls.

1DS Mark III, 16-35mm F2.8

Since the light wasn’t exactly where I wanted it to be I was determined to work around it. I had a lot of moving water and I wanted to use it. One great visual feature of Lady Evelyn falls is that the water flows smooth over the top of the falls. The water is not choppy and not white. This would lend itself to great blurred motion effects within the water. The trees to the northwest would also provide some great reflected warm tones to the water. This is something we usually find a bit odd, since we associate water with cool colours. I was unlucky during this shoot. I had not properly cleaned my sensor prior and I spent a LOT of time removing dust from the photos. Having such a large sensor makes dust extremely visible. Ah well, you live, you learn right?

1DS Mark III, 24-105mm L f4

I moved up river to a few smaller falls with some great lines straight across the river. I was dealing with high contrasting light and I had to make composite images of these images to capture all of the shadows and highlights.

1DS Mark III, 16-35mm F2.8

I haven’t had a great amount of opportunities to photograph the aurora yet this fall/winter. I’m really hoping for a spectacular winter season and the auroral activity is supposed to increase over the next two years so I’m really hoping for some great ideas and inspirations. I had one night with the aurora this fall that I was able to work with. The aurora were out early that night, 9pm or so and I made my way to a spot I had scouted out a while before. I really wanted to incorporate a reflection of the aurora in my composition with a great tree line as my horizon. I was lucky that night. The water was smooth, the aurora were showing and the clouds were holding off.

1DS Mark III, 16-35mm F2.8

The aurora weren’t having an active night but it was enough light to capture with the camera. The ring wasn’t moving too far so I decided to try a long exposure with star trails, reflections and aurora. I only took one photo and I was quite happy with the 4 minute exposure.

1DS Mark III, 16-35mm F2.8

Next I wanted to try something I had never seen before, an auroral panorama. These may have been done before (I’m betting on it), but I have never seen one to date. These panoramas are incredibly difficult to achieve on a high quality level. I didn’t want to see any gaps in my stitching and I didn’t want to see any incompatibilities within the aurora. As I said earlier, the aurora were quite present but not too active. This was the perfect night for this type of photograph. Using the 1DS Mark III I am able to record a photograph to disk while exposing another one. This allowed me to take 3 consecutive photos (1 minute long) with no gaps within the aurora. While I expose one image I’m immediately recording the previous image. I used the 16-35mm to take 3 photographs with about a 30% overlap. I reccommend more of an overlap, but I had to work with what I had.

1DS Mark III, 16-35mm F2.8 - Composite image of 3 images together

I had to say goodbye to many of our wildlife friends in Hay River. Winter has arrived and many of our animals have hunkered down for the season or they have moved on south. I had a really great day photographing with a couple buddies up here. We had come across a small flock of snow buntings. I have always (for the past year) wanted to photograph the buntings when they burst off flying together. They have a great flash of white in the underwings and I would like to play with blurring their movement or trying to freeze their motion. I was lucky to come up upon them on a hill and they took off in front of the beginning of West Channel. I had my ISO around 600 to allow myself to freeze their movements I was surprised by the details and definitions I had achieved, especially using my slow 400mm.

1DS Mark III, 100-400mm L f4.5-5.6

I was walking along our nature trail and wasn’t getting much luck in terms of wildlife and was getting quite discouraged when I stumbled upon this ruffed grouse. He wasn’t too shy of me. I was able to approach slowly but never on a direct line to him. I used a zig zag approach to slowly close the distance between him and I. I photographed him for a while and continued to press a bit closer and closer until he flew away. I could’ve followed him, but I didn’t want to increase any stress on him that I may have caused.