From the Archives

Here is a quick shot taken at Karen Blixen's (Out of Africa author) house outside of Nairobi, Kenya in July 2002. I had a beard back then! Leslie and I were finished up a 6-week backpacking trip throughout Tanzania and Kenya, and this was our last day in Africa that summer.

A photo shoot with the Maasai

In between my two safaris, I had exactly 24 hours off to relax, review some photographs, sleep late and get ready for my next safari. Did I do this? Uh, no. I somehow chose to burn the oil and head out to the bush to meet up with a wonderful group of Maasai, take some photographs, and learn about how they are actively participating in managing their resources for future generations.
A friend came and picked me up, we grabbed some picnic food at a local market (and some Kilimanjaro beers, of course), and headed out. I had my friend Al Vinjamur with me, as well. The goal for me was twofold: to enjoy a relaxing day of mixing in with some of the Maasai, and to capture some nice portraits on a borrowed Hasselblad H2 / CFH39 medium format camera setup. The CFH39 digital back captures near full-frame 6x4.5cm digital images, and has a native file dimension of roughly 5400x7200 pixels. That is 39 megapixels, which is stunning if used correctly.

We arrived in the late morning, and were greeted by the head of the village. He had already arranged for 12 young Maasai women to pose for us, and they were sitting underneath a very large baobab tree waiting for us. We also asked for some morani warriors to be available once we were finished photographing the ladies.

I chose not to introduce artifical light into this session, as I was not familiar with the flash system on the Hasselblad platform. On my next return to the area in June, I will likely be bringing a single Profoto strobe system with me. Their new Acute 600B system is very very enticing, as the battery pack weighs less than 11 pounds. My other alternative will be to bring a Quantum Qflash setup with me, which is much smaller and lighter, but only packs about 320watts. Not quite enough for what I want to accomplish in the midday sun.

For my shoot, I setup three different scenarios. For the first scenario, I brought the Maasai women out into the harsh light, but had an assistant hold a 42" Photoflex diffuser over each of their heads and shoulders. This allowed me to capture them without them having to squint, and it also accomplished the goal of softening the light. I also had a 42" Photoflex 5-in-1 reflector with me, but we could never arrive at a fill light that didn't overpower their eyes, causing squinting. So we bagged the 5-in-1 and went about the shoot.

For the second scenario, I just positioned my subjects underneath a large baobab tree. The dappled light seemed to work well, so I just went with that.

I had a wonderful day, and have a better idea of what I will do differently upon my next return in a few months. Sometimes diffusers and reflectors aren't enough, as this limited what I was able to do out in the field. Photographing dark skin in harsh daylight is about as tricky as tricky can get. I have been avoiding studio strobes for a while now, but I cannot avoid them any longer. Perhaps I will look into more powerful strobes, so I can add the possibility of shooting 4x5 sheet film. Why so much light? Because one needs enough depth of field to have a subject's eyes, nose and ears all in focus. With a 150mm lens, which is considered a normal lens on a 4x5 large format camera, the depth of field needed at 6 to 8 feet away will dictate stopping down to about f/16, which will require very bright strobes in the midday sun.

 

Click here to see some of the Maasai photographs

Digital Output Magazine

Be sure to check out the February 2007 edition of Digital Output Magazine, as one of my images has graced the cover for the month. There is a nice two-page spread on my most recent black and white images from both Namibia and Tanzania. Here is the text of the article:

 

February Digital Output exerpt

Back home from Tanzania

Well, after 21 days of being away, I am finally back home from Tanzania. I had two absolutely fantastic safari groups, and we had some incredible opportunities to watch and photograph the wildlife, landscapes and people of northern Tanzania. I was amazed at the quality of light on this trip, as the afternoon thunderstorms added a very nice landscape element to photograph.

I have roughly 50GB of images to process, spanning 4 different camera bodies. My primary shooting kit was as follows:

• 1DMkII


• 1DsMkII


• 20D


• 16-35mm


• 24-105mm


• 100-400mm


• 500mm (400mm f/4 DO when my 500mm was rented)

I also had access to a Hasselblad H2 camera body with a Hasselblad CFH39 digital back attached. The lenses used were the 80mm prime, 50-110mm and 300mm with a 1.7 teleconverter. I will be posting my experiences with medium format willdife photography in the coming days.

I will be processing my images when Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.0 ships next week. Until then, I will use CS2 Bridge to view and cull some of my images that don't make the cut.

I am glad to be back home, but I look forward to returning to Africa in June.

....Safari thoughts....

I just got back to Arusha, Tanzania after a wonderful 10 day safari in the bush. The rains that are occurring at the moment are creating some challenges, but with these challenges come perfect photographic opportunities. The grass is extremely green at the moment, and the storm clouds on the horizon is breathtaking. We had 87 lion sightings, 11 cheetah, 9 rhino and 1 leopard. And all of the other wonderful species in between. I look forward to another wonderful safari that starts tomorrow. My next group of safari travelers arrive this evening, and I will spend the day out to some Maasai communities to take portraits of the local Maasai there. It should be a nice, relaxing day.

Hasselblad H2, CFH39 megapixel digital back, 300mm lens with 1.7x teleconverter

New Safaris announced

I have posted my late January / February 2008 safaris online, and I fully expect to have yet another fantastic year of photographing the wildebeest calving season out on the Serengeti short grass plains. The most recent census of the wildebeest puts the population at around 3 million strong, and nearly 5,000 wildebeest are born each day during late January and February each year. The wildebeest like to give birth on the Serengeti short grass plains, as the grasses in the area are extremely rich with nutrients, which enable the wildebeest to enjoy healthy milk production for their young.

Come join me on either one of these exciting safaris, as I will be leading 2 safaris back-to-back. We will be visiting 2 locations in the Serengeti, along with the famed Ngorongoro Crater, Lake Manyara National Park and Tarangire National Park.

I will be away from email from January 22 until February 12, so if you would like to book on any of my safaris, you can contact Thomson Safaris directly to book on a trip. Their number is (800) 235-0289. If you are interested in any non-African photography workshops, please hold off on your emails until I return from Africa.

January 14 - January 25, 2008 Tanzania Photo Safari

January 24 - February 4, 2008 Tanzania Photo Safari

Spot open for Galapagos trip

I have had one cancellation on my upcoming Galapagos trip. If you are interested in grabbing the last spot, please contact me before the trip fills back up again. The person must be a male with sharing accommodations.

Epson 3800 initial thoughts

My Epson 3800 arrived last week, and I have a few dozen prints off of the printer that look fantastic. The Epson 3800 arrived in a very small box, delivered by UPS. The box isn't much larger than most 13" wide printers, which will be great for sales for Epson. Being able to deliver via UPS/FedEx/USPS over a freight company is a major benefit for Epson, as they will definitely sell more units this way.

I set up the printer in about 15 minutes, and it took a number of minutes to charge the lines with the ink. The ink carts are 80ml, which is respectable, and after a few dozen prints I have not seen any significant decrease in ink volumes. You can hook up the 3800 via USB or ethernet, and I chose USB as to get that first print out much quicker. I will switch over to ethernet at some point in the future.

You have three choices for paper paths on the 3800: The upper paper 'tray', the rear paper path, and the front paper path. This is where my enthusiasm for the 3800 starts to waver. Coming from the Pro 4000, I am used to much better paper handling, as the Pro 4000 uses a front paper cassette that can accommodate not only a ton of sheets, but these sheets can be thick art papers. On the 3800 you are relegated to using the rear paper path, which can only be fed one sheet at a time. What a pain. Additionally, the prints from the top paper tray have had ink blotches on the edges of the print. I need to spend some time looking into the source of the problem, but it has been discussed in online forums. Some attribute these ink blotches to the lack of having a vacuum system to keep the paper flat. I just don't know, but it is frustrating.

Out of the box the 3800 makes absolutely gorgeous color and black and white prints. Yes, out of the box the 3800 makes wonderful black and white prints. The supplied profiles are the best I have ever seen from any printer, and my desire to create custom profiles for Epson papers is non existent. I primarily use Moab Entrada as my paper of choice, and I have already created custom profiles for all of the Moab Paper line. The profiles have been posted here.

The 3800 has both photo black and matte black inks installed the same time, but the print head can only use one of those inks at a time. This means that if you switch from photo black to matte black the print head needs to purge the photo black out of the print head to make room for the matte black. It has been reported that you lose about 1.5ml in the process, and the process takes less than a minute. Why not develop a print head that accommodates 9 inks and not 8? This is why I have not upgraded my Pro 4000 to the Pro 4800, as I am not interested in losing ink when I switch back and forth. The 3800 is much much better in this regard, but it still is not optimal.

Overall I feel that Epson has a printer that they will sell a ton of. I love the output, but am not impressed with the paper handling. I suspect the paper handling components came straight out of their 2400 model. I have been a huge Epson fan in the past, but I am starting to feel that they are getting lazy. Yes, the 3800 is $700 less expensive than the Pro 4800, and you have to remove features to get the cost down. Will I keep the 3800? Perhaps. Perhaps not. What is my perfect printer? I know that my perfect printer is not out there yet, but I would like to have a 24" carriage, pigment inks, excellent paper handling for roll paper and cut sheets, including a front loading cassette (you read that right, a cassette feeder on a 24" printer), gloss optimizer, and no switching of black inks.

For a 17" printer the Canon IPF5000 might be the best solution at the moment. I would expect HP to have a solution before too long. For a 24" printer I would take a hard look at the HP Z3100 series of printers.

Am I needy? You bet. At least I know what I want. I am here at the PPA Imaging USA show in San Antonio right now, so maybe I should go pitch my ideas to HP, Canon and Epson. I am sure they would make a product just for me! ha ha.