About Me

My preference is nature photography. This includes landscapes, seascapes, animals, flowers, trees and plants. My photos are usually taken in their pristine environments, i.e. no animal photos from a zoo, bird photos from an aviary or flowers from a botanical garden. I like to roam North America hiking trails with a camera in my backpack and let myself get surprised. There is always something new around the corner, even when visiting the same place many times. Cheers!

If you like any of these photos, they can be downloaded from:

www.istockphoto.com/portfolio/artiste9999

À Propos De Moi

Ma préférence est la photographie de nature.  Ceci inclut des paysages, animaux, fleurs, arbres et plantes.  Mes photos sont habituellement prises dans leur environement naturel, c.a.d. aucune photos d'animaux dans un zoo, d'oiseaux dans un aviaire ou fleurs dans un jardin botanique.  J'aime me promener en Amérique du Nord avec une caméra dans mon sac à dos et me faire surprendre à tous les tournants.  Il y a toujours de nouvelles surprises, même en visitant le même endroit à répétition.

 Si vous aimez certaines photos, elles peuvent être trouvées au site suivant:

www.istockphoto.com/portfolio/artiste9999

“The Art of Photography, as a powerful medium of expression and communications, offers an infinite variety of perception, interpretation and execution.” – Ansel Adams 

Nature Photography Tips

While it is useful to note our personal best practices for taking good photographs, one should remember the following famous quote from Ansel Adams: “There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.”

1. Respect The Environment

When hiking in nature, as the saying goes: Pack It In, Pack It Out.  Whether taking a photo of a landscape, plants, animals or birds, it is preferable not to disturb the animals or the setting.  In fact, you might say it is a better photograph if you take it in it's pristine, natural setting.  Avoid advertising your favorite spots for fear of adding to the problem of human encroachment.

2. Choose Time Of Day Wisely

Sometimes, you have no control over the time a photograph is taken.  But if you do have a choice, early morning or evening provide optimal lighting conditions and it is when birds and animals are usually more active.  Midday provides the toughest lighting conditions with peak heat and dust particles in the air. For landscapes this is evident with whitish, washed out colors.

3. Bring The Right Gear

Cameras, lenses and accessories all impact the photo taken.  A landscape can look astonishing with a full-frame camera.  But a crop sensor camera might be a better choice to obtain maximal magnification when zooming in for a small bird.  A polarizing filter goes a long way towards taking photographs in the mid-day sun.  It removes reflections and reduces overall whiteness effect of the blaring sun in the sky.

4. Minimize Camera Shake

A tripod or mini-tripod is best to hold the camera steady.  If you are in a remote location, without a tripod, then holding the camera body firmly against a tree or other stable object does the trick.  Setting a delay timer of a few seconds also works to avoid camera shake introduced by pressing the shutter button.  There is something to be said about photos that are so sharp, you feel like you are right there in the scenery.

5. Vary The Shots

The same landscape can look amazing when seen at different times of the day or in different seasons.  A bird or animal photograph can be awesome when taken at different angles or a different view of the setting.

6. Composition

Decide first what is being photographed, whether a landscape or an animal.  Then,  frame the subject appropriately for added emphasis.  For beginners, start by the rule of thirds.  As you become more experienced, multiple variations provide different effects.  Other tricks like Leading Lines can direct the eye of the viewer towards the subject.

7. Take Many Shots

 If you are unsure of the best image, set the camera in rapid fire mode and later, when at home, take the time to choose the optimal shot out of the sequence.  This is how many professional photographers come up with gems.

8. Focusing Techniques

 Many photographers are disappointed in the AF of their cameras, even very expensive ones.  Without going in detail, let's just say it is a complex feature (my camera has 15 AF options) and cameras are far from perfect at AF.  For a nature photographer wanting to shoot a bird in the darkness of a shrub, this is very hard.  You need to use spot-focus, otherwise branches and other surrounding objects end up being the focus.  But even that is not good when lighting is low.  Second option: use manual focus, but even the human eye has trouble with low light conditions.  Final fallback: when you get home, use a Sharpening post-process on the photo. 

9. Wear Proper Clothes

If you are the photographer getting close to a bird, then maybe "fire red" clothes are not the right choice of clothing.  On the other hand, if you are incorporating a subject to illustrate the scale of the scene, then red is a good choice for the person to stand out.

Things To Avoid

1. Crooked Horizon

It is a bit annoying looking at a wonderful sunset and wondering if the ocean is flowing down a slope.  Many modern cameras have grid lines for the rule of thirds.  Use these to ensure the horizon is level.

2. Avoid Tunnel Vision

After you have selected the subject of the photograph, don't forget to consider how it will look within its surroundings and compose the shot with that in mind. Sometimes we forget to take the extra seconds of time to visualize the shot before taking it.

3. Shooting Only In Landscape Format

While most of the time a landscape is best in landscape format, there are some situations when composing the shot vertically provides the better effect.  We sometimes forget to do this.

4. Sticking To The Beaten Path

Some of the best photos are taken far from other groups of photographers, in a more remote and quiet place.  In some cases, landscapes taken on rarely traveled trails yield the most fascinating scenery that fewer people have ever seen.

Miscellany

“I am sure the next step will be the electronic image, and I hope I shall live to see it. I trust that the creative eye will continue to function, whatever technological innovations may develop.” – Ansel Adams 

The above quote from Ansel Adams was foreboding.  Below is a photo of an image sensor that I used to build one of the first digital cameras in the world, while I was working at Bell Northern Research in the early 1980's.  The sensor is several centimeters wide, yet it only contains 2048 linear pixels and only black and white ones.  It was the beginning of a revolution in photography that would upend the industry players at that time and ultimately put a camera in the hands of everyone with the convenience of taking, saving, editing and sharing photos.

Global Warming

“It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment.” – Ansel Adams 

Every Nature photographer must make some statement about Global Warming and its impact on the environment.  The way I chose to do this is by observing glaciers, which can be thought of as the canary in the coal mine for Global Warming.  I took the photo below in 2012 when it is estimated that the snout of the Athabasca glacier had receded about 200m since 1992.  My first trip to the glacier was in 1975 and it is estimated that the glacier has receded about half a kilometer since then. It is predicted to become an alpine meadow with no more permanent ice within about one hundred years.  If you really want to understand the scope of the melt, look at the cars at the bottom of the photo for sheer scale.  These cars were closer to the nose of the glacier in 1975.  These are scientific facts.  No denial here!

Another way to observe the effects of Global Warming is to notice the upward trend in the number and size of forest fires.  When the earth warms up, even a little, then more water is evaporated into the air.  This leads to potentially more devastating rainfalls and floods or to bigger forest fires due to brittle and dry vegetation more prone to burn.  Each year, it seems a different part of the globe is breaking records in number and size of forest fires.  First it was Europe, then Australia, and in 2023, it is Canada's turn to have huge forest fires as the boreal forest goes up in flame.  The photo below was taken in Montreal on June 25, 2023.  The sun disappeared behind the smoke at 19:30, high up in the sky, rather than the normal sunset time of 20:47 for that day.  The sky is grey rather than blue and the sun is an abnormal pinkish hue rather than pure orange.