Chilly morning at Ulistac

Western Jackrabbit
Originally uploaded by Bill Walker.

I decided to take an early morning visit to nearby Ulistac Natural Area in San Jose, hoping to find some songbirds. Mostly, I was bombarded with the crazy, tireless chatter of lonely bachelor Mockingbirds on every shrub. Still. I found this lovely Jackrabbit, and I managed to get one shot of the local Red-shouldered Hawk before it spooked. I also found what looks like a promising spot for photographing Red-winged Blackbirds on the reeds by the pond. (Five photos posted at flickr)

Snow at Castle Rock, too!

Steller's Jay
Originally uploaded by Bill Walker.

So, just two days after driving up to Grant Ranch, I decided to Castle Rock State Park on President's Day. Although I didn't find a lot of birds up there, I did have fun taking pictures of the sunrise, and I did find this very cooperative Stellar's Jay. Did you know he has eyebrows? [see more pictures from Castle Rock]

Snow at Grant Ranch

Snow at Grant Ranch
Originally uploaded by Bill Walker.

I returned home from Denver eager to get out in the field and make some images. With Mary at Stitches West and me scheduled to take a friend to the airport around 6am, today was the perfect opportunity. I decided to head up to Grant Ranch County Park in search of some overwintering passerines. What I found was quite a bit of snow, a lovely sunrise, and some cooperative Western Bluebirds. Take a look at the photos.

NANPA Wrap up

Mountains
Originally uploaded by Bill Walker.

[Note: I neglected to mention earlier that NANPA is the North American Nature Photographers Association]

I concluded my Denver trip with a day at Rocky Mountain National Park, where forty of us had a chance to photograph snowy mountains, elk, magpies, and each other. The Canon sales rep tagged along and let us test out a variety of Canon lenses. I had fun with the 14mm f/2.8 L for some wide angle landscape shots, but was rather baffled by the 90mm f/2.8 tilt-and-shift. I needed to spend more time with that lens to really unlock its mysteries. If you like you can see my trip gallery.

NANPA Day Three

Denver Nightscape
Originally uploaded by Bill Walker.

Well, I have to be in the hotel lobby less than six hours from now, so I'll keep this short. We had a highly entertaining talk this morning from Tim Gallagher and Bobby Harrison, rediscoverers of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker and long-time NANPA members. I attended a well-attended session about what Photo Editors want. Executive summary: Photo Editors want Photographers to read and follow the submission instructions. C'mon people, this isn't so hard. This afternoon we saw outstanding pictures of Great Gray Owls in Montana. Tonight at the awards banquet we heard a moving presentation from Patricio Robles Gil about conservation in Mexico. Stunning images. It's been a great weekend, I have so many todo items and things to think ahout. And I didn't even blow any money at the exhibition hall (mostly because the new Wimberley heads aren't out yet).

NANPA Day Two

9:00am Keynote, Wendy Shattil and Rob Rozinski

This husband and wife team told us some of their personal history and showed us some really amazing images from Colorado. I'm more excited than ever to be going with them to Rocky Mountain National Park on Sunday.

After the session ended, my friend Beth told me she was increasingly certain I should show my images during portfolio review on my laptop rather than on paper.

10:30am, Breakout Session, Stock Agencies

We heard from three panelists about how photographers and stock agencies can and should work together, including many interesting anecdotes from Jane Kinne, who substituted for panelist Cathy Aron.

I left a bit early and retreated to my hotel room to whip up a laptop presentation. I have to admit, my filing system for JPEG's could use a bit of sprucing up, but I was able to gather a pretty good set of 800x600 images without too much trouble.

2:00pm Portfolio Review I

I spent half an hour with the photo editor of a popular birding magazine. He seemed to like some of my images pretty well, lingering over my Spotted Sandpiper and Willet. He patiently explained that he never needed to see yet another stereotypical Sandhill Crane, American Avocet, Burrowing Owl shot, and I can respect that.

3:00pm Portfolio Review II

I actually got an early start with my second review, a promiment photographer and workshop leader, thanks to a no-show at 2:30pm. He offered some great composition suggestions, proposing vertical crops of images I did as horizontal crops for my most recent calendar. I realized that after I crop an image one way it can be difficult to see it afresh and crop it a different way.

6:30pm, Conservation Photography event

We heard from three excellent photographers about various conservation projects they are involved in.

Robert Glenn Ketchum talked about the threatened salmon fishery of southwestern Alaksa and a boneheaded copper mine proposed by Ted Stevens. His landscape shots featuring carpets of brightly colored tundra plants and meandering mountain streams were breathtaking, hard to take in. He also talked about the successful effort to prevent development on the Hearst San Simeon ranch and the startling biodiversity he found there.

Michael Forsberg talked about his book On Ancient Wings, his book about Sandhill Cranes. He photographed them from nothern Alaksa to Cuba, from California to Florida, and everywhere in between. His reminiscences about his travels were eloquent, moving, and thoughtful.

C. C. Lockwood talked about marshmission.com, an interdisciplinary effort to promote awareness of the vanishing marshlands of the Mississippi River delta in Lousiana. Although he had everyone laughing with his swamp humor, his sorrow was palpable -- sorrow he must have felt after watching hurricanes do so much damage he says could have been prevented by better attention to marshes anytime during the last thirty years. Deeply moving.

NANPA Day One

8:30am Summit Opening

Master of Ceremonies John Nuhn started the festivities today with an amusing collection of songs about photography, pictures of NANPA luminaries in their salad days, his own first hummingbird shot, and a lovely tribute to his parents, who encouraged his photographic endeavors. Quite charming.

9:00am Keynote Address, Jack Dykinga

Mr. Dykinga is a view camera landscape photographer, in so many ways the complete opposite of what we bird photographers do. He shoots one to ten images per day with a shutter time of 10 to 100 seconds, whereas we shoot 500 images per day at a shutter time of 1/1000 of a second. Still, I really appreciated the way he talked about developing a relationship with his subject, in much the same way one hears human portrait photographers talk. His sequences of images of the same subjects in varying light reminded me of the Monet haystack paintings we travelled up to Chicago to see back in the 90's. Beautiful images from an entertaining presenter.

Said "hi" to Arthur Morris and Ellen Anon, my instructors from the November 2005 Bosque trip.

10:30am Critique panel

A photographer, a Photo editor, and a Stock agency representative review some thirty or forty images submitted to NANPA, of highly varying quality. Although they were at times rather brusque, it was very helpful to see things from their perspective.

Had lunch with my friend and fellow Bosque participant Beth Maynor Young.

12:30 Exhibits

The new Wimberely gimbal head is here, but they're backordered until March and don't have a show special. There is a deal on the LowePro RoadRunner AW, but not that great of a deal. I talked to Jim Cozad of Cozad Ranch, where they can charge photographers to sit in blinds all day on their working ranch, which I think is a brilliant way to get more use out of their land. I talked to a really cool high-end color printing lab conveniently located in nearby Santa Cruz. I learned that the cool kids are using a printer that actually fires colored lasers at conventional photographic paper which is subsequently processed with traditional paper printing chemistry. Who knew? Also, I learned that Giclee is a fancy french name for "ink jet". It's nice to demystify this stuff.

NANPA, Day Zero

Greetings from Denver!

It's really late here, I just wanted to record the fact that I arrived at this extremely new, extremely fancy hotel without incident. Not only does the room have a bigger TV than my house, the wall of the _elevator_ has bigger TV than my house embedded in it. Showing stock footage of buffalo. Good times.

A friend gave me her unused prepaid t-mobile card, which I think I just activated, so let's hope I get to stay connected all week without the extra $10 a day.

OK, better figure out what I'm doing tomorrow and get some sleep.