Utilizing your Local Botanical Garden or Arboretum

April 13, 2011 by pumapix

Botanical Gardens and Arboretums are amazing places to not only visit but also to photograph. It is always fascinating to me to see plants from all around the world in such a small area. How amazing is it to wander from South Africa to Australia in just a few yards. From Proteas to Pincushions. It doesn’t even matter at what time of year you go, something will be in bloom.

Living in Santa Cruz provides the amazing opportunity of visiting the UCSC Arboretum, a deeply under-appreciated place. It contains the largest concentration of southern hemisphere plants in the northern hemisphere. When I photograph in these floral collections I tend to shoot in a macro-style, concentrating on single plants, often on single flowers. This is mainly to eliminate distracting backgrounds and since the plants are not in their native habitat showing the landscape in the background is not beneficial most times.

Here are a few examples of the types of pictures I am talking about:

Pincushion (Leucospermum sp), UCSC Arboretum, Santa Cruz, California

Still unknown plant to me...., UCSC Arboretum, Santa Cruz, California

Buttonbush (Berzelia lanuginosa), UCSC Arboretum, Santa Cruz, California

Spiral Aloe (Aloe polyphylla), UCSC Arboretum, Santa Cruz, California

Then you always have the option of getting more abstract pictures. This is the advantage of plants over animals, they don’t move too far. The picture below was taken at the UC Berkeley Botanical Garden. I loved how the light was coming through the fern fronds. I first took images that were in focus but I really liked the shape of the leaves so I decided to manually put them out of focus, having nothing in the image be sharp. It’s different, but I like it.

Fern fronds out of focus, Berkeley Botanical Garden, Berkeley, California

Finally, all the plants attract wildlife as well, so keep an eye out for movement. Hummingbirds are frequent visitors to gardens so they are attracted to these ‘super gardens’ in even higher numbers. This male Allen’s Hummingbird was photographed in Santa Cruz. He would continuously land on this perch and then chase off any other males intruding into his space. Every time he was off chasing a rival I crept closer, stopping when he would arrive back at his perch. I wanted to still include some of the amazingly colorful background created by all the plants so I stopped when I was about 10 feet away. It is one of my earliest photographs, but I still love it.

Allen’s Hummingbird calling, UCSC Arboretum, Santa Cruz, California

So go out and find your local botanical paradise, you will be amazed by what you find!

*If you are interested in purchasing any of the pictures displayed in this post, please check out my fine prints page for pricing.*

Photographing at Bosque del Apache

February 22, 2011 by pumapix

I always wanted to photograph the Sandhill Cranes and light geese (Snow Geese and Ross’s Geese) at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico. This desire arose from the passionate stories fellow nature photographers told me about the birds and the refuge. This included the “blast off”, an occurrence around sunrise when all of a sudden all the birds take off at once creating a colorful sky filled with birds.

When Kailani told me we had an open invitation from her friend in Albuquerque I knew it was time to visit. I arrived at the refuge on Saturday at 6:15am, with sunrise being at 7:15am. I was shocked to stand in line to get into the refuge. There was a line of wildlife photographers that stretched for a mile. This was wildlife photography I was not used to. It soon became obvious why this place is so popular. It provides easy access, birds that are not afraid of humans and spectacular action.

I was not let down by the blast off, wow was it just spectacular. The sound is truly like thunder, just amazing.

Snow Goose Blast Off at Sunrise

Snow Goose Blast Off

By Sunday I had figured out the routine, arrive early — this meant getting up at 2:30am in Albuquerque to arrive at the refuge at 4:30am to get the best flight deck spot. Then as soon as the flight deck take off is over head to either the feeding fields or the “crane ponds”. All of these places provide for amazing photographic opportunities. Due to the number of photographers it forced me to create images that were different from the “standard” Bosque images, which I was quite thankful for in the end. I went for more abstract pictures including motion blurs and panning shots.

Sandhill Cranes behind Reeds

Sandhill Crane Taking Flight

Sandhill Crane Flying

Snow Goose Flying

Of course I also could not resist doing a few silhouettes.

Silhouetted Sandhill Cranes Flying

*If you are interested in purchasing any of the pictures displayed in this post, please check out my fine prints page for pricing.*

SLR Camera Trap Photography

February 4, 2011 by pumapix

Photographing wildlife with a SLR camera trap seems easy in concept. Place a camera trap in the wilderness, let it sit there, and have it take amazing pictures while you rest at home. This isn’t quite the case. One of the hardest parts about camera trap photography is getting your set-up to work like you want it to. The camera and flashes have to be ready to take a picture at moments notice, but need to also conserve batteries enough to last for an extended period of time. And then everything has to be safe in a serious down drench. Finally the biggest challenge of all is that you can’t buy professional camera traps at a store, ready to use out of the box. Even national geographic cameras use customized set-ups.

For inspiration, visit two of my favorite blogs. Chris Wemmer’s blog Camera Trap Codger which is not only filled with witty, educational, and fun writing but also accompanied by great camera trap images; as well as Jake Kirkland and Christian’s Camera Trapping Campus blog, filled with great stories and it hits close to home for me since I also got my degree from UCSC. All of them ‘hack’ much of their equipment to function for the camera trapping needs!

Once you have the equipment figured out the really fun part starts. Its time to hit the field to select your location for your camera trap. Natural game paths are always a perfect option, they provide ample chances for wildlife to walk by. During set-up, take the appropriate time since you can’t make any quick adjustments once the camera is in place. Using yourself always works:

Myself, getting some test shots in – reminder, comb your hair next time…

After you are done setting up you want to leave it be, it will take a while for your smell to be masked by nature’s more natural smells and some time for the animals to get used to the new objects in their environment (don’t think they don’t know its there).

After some time you will get your first shots. In the beginning most likely just your neighbors pet:

Neighbors dog checking out the camera

Maybe even some behavioral images:

Mule deer buck licking front leg

Of course many times you will get another curious human:

This one is having quite a lot of fun!

In the end though, when you get a shot like this, you are quite the happy camper:

Juvenile Mountain Lion at Night

Whenever you go to check the camera and replace batteries its like Christmas. You don’t know what you will get except a bunch of happy surprises. Camera trapping is a great way to get an intimate view into the lives of animals you may hardly see. It is something I very much cherish.

*If you are interested in purchasing any of the pictures displayed in this post, please check out my fine prints page for pricing.*

Extended Bio

October 5, 2010 by pumapix

I figured I would let you know a little bit more about myself, especially since most of this information is probably already scattered around the internet anyway. I was born on June 12, 1985 in Munich, Germany – yes, presents are always welcome :). I have an older brother (a world class sailor) and a younger sister (an amazing artist). My interest in wildlife began before I can remember, and animals hold an extremely special place in my heart. The love of the outdoors and nature probably arose from the local lakes, hiking the in Alps, and our backyard pond. The beauty and diversity of animals became really apparent to me at the Munich Hellabrunn Zoo. I have mixed feelings about zoos now, I really hate seeing the animals caged up, but I do think they can provide the benefit of getting people excited about nature to the point where they want to preserve it.

One of my favorite places to go at the zoo was the Raubtiergehege (Carnivore Cages). It was a concrete building with steel bars, and it stank, really really badly. I loved that smell though, it meant that no one else would be there and that I was surrounded by true predators. It housed the lions, tigers, and leopards. Thinking back, it really was a very bad place for those amazing creatures to be, but it made me fall in love with animals, specifically all the wildcats. The structure has since then been brought down and newer, better exhibits have been built for these carnivores. I do still go back and visit the Munich Zoo, which brins back memories of my early childhood.

I moved to the United States when I was ten years old. The move was extremely hard on us children. We left our best friends back in Germany and moved to a country we knew nothing about, least of all spoke its language. After a few years though we were speaking English fluently and started to really appreciate our new home. For myself, the vast wilderness of the States is just breathtaking and the biodiversity is unbelievable. California has so many different ecosystems and did I mention its on the coast! We lived eight hours away from it by car in Germany, now we could walk there.

After attending a private German-American school for three years, I went to Mission San Jose High School in Fremont. Then I went on to study Behavioral Ecology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The layout of the campus, encompassed by nature was the perfect fit for me. In my second year I really started to get interested in photography again (before then I just dabbled around) and I would spend many hours looking for bobcats. Maybe I should say that I got better at tracking here than photography, I really didn’t take too many pictures since I only saw two bobcats for a few seconds each at my time at UCSC.

Then I bought my first digital SLR, a Pentax ist*Ds. I started taking hundreds, better yet, thousands of images and I really started to learn how to operate the camera and how to achieve the kind of images I was imagining. A couple years later I switched to a Canon system and really started to explore more photographic possibilities. I am most definitely still learning, and feel that I always will be, but that’s part of the fun of it. Photographically I am always excited to try new things!

At this point I am focusing my photography on the endangered wildlife that lives in the area, to try and showcase them and their need for conservation. I am currently in the last stages of photographing for an exhibit at the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History called Endangered Neighbors. It is a project close to my heart, I approached the museum four years ago asking them if they would be interested in an exhibit that covers the threatened and endangered wildlife of the central Coast, highlighting their natural history, why they are endangered, what people are doing to save them, and what the general public can do to protect them. They agreed and we are finally starting the development phase of the exhibit. Look for it in summer 2011!

As time progresses there will be more events and happenings, but for those you will have to read future blog posts…