Yellowstone National Park Photography Tour: 

Yellowstone photo tours and workshops are customized to best meet your individual goals and objectives. Custom photography tours in Yellowstone are intensive, be prepared to begin before sun-up and end well after sundown.  You will eat, breathe, discuss and shoot Yellowstone.  Each day will be packed with shooting, instruction, implementing new techniques, learning natural history, observing animal behavior and marveling at the wonders that make up Yellowstone.

The Yellowstone ecosystem is the only place in the lower 48 states that today supports every species of wild animal that occupied the area before the arrival of non-native people.   Features unique to Yellowstone, 67 different mammals including wolves and grizzly bears, 322 bird species, wildflowers, mountains, canyons, waterfalls, geysers, hot springs, boiling mud, fumaroles, expansive views and wild rivers, which offer the serious photographer a vast backdrop of possibilities.  

Cindy likes to meet the evening before the Yellowstone tour commences for an equipment check, finalize goals and priorities for the workshop and to present a compositional slide show highlighting the elements of a successful compositions.  Subsequent evenings are often used for critiques and to further your skills in digital processing and workflow.  (Digital workflow is all the steps necessary from formatting your card and composing the picture, to optimizing it, cataloging it, being able to find it again, printing it, backing it up, archiving it and everything in between.)    

Wildlife migrations, seasonal color and vegetation, birth cycles, weather patterns, and a sensitive approach to animals determine the itinerary for custom trips into Yellowstone. Itineraries are planned to concentrate on wildlife, landscapes or abstracts.  While watching for a wildlife opportunity, we can easily be distracted by a beautiful landscape and vice versa. There is always an important element of serendipity in natural history photography because there is little control over the light, setting, or subject.  Nature photographers need an open creative mind to see the infinite array of beauty that is revealed on the land every day.

Yellowstone has been THE destination for serious photographers since 1871, when W.H. Jackson first visited with the Hayden survey party.  This unique, beautiful and wild land was preserved as Yellowstone National Park by congress in 1872. Yellowstone was the first National Park in the world, and certainly is “America’s Best Idea”.

You will learn more in a couple of days than you could ever believe was possible. This year Cindy won three international awards for her images, all of which were taken in Yellowstone: 

FIRST PLACE - National Wildlife Federation, Landscapes and Plants category, Pro division 2009 National Wildlife Photo Contest. The competition included over 70,000 images. http://www.nwf.org/photozone/index.cfm?CFID=10577076&CFTOKEN=127fd3bea852b4f6-5A63A871-5056-A868-A0B8A7CC31FDEDBE 

BEST PHOTO - Mountain Flora & Fauna award in the 2009 Banff Mountain Photography Competition.  The competition included over 4000 images from photographers in 41 countries.
 http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/10/photogalleries/best-photographs-mountain/photo2.html

HIGHLY COMMENDED - Natural World CIEWM Environmental Photographer of the Year Competition 2009

http://www.ciwem.org/awards/epoty/2009/natural_world.asp

Cindy has been mentored and groomed by Tom Murphy and is available for Custom Yellowstone Photography Tours through Tom's Wilderness Photography Expeditions,  a Permitted Photography Tour Company of Yellowstone National Park. Tours are available year round and are arranged to to take advantage of the best light and wildlife opportunities.  Tours are customized to your photographic areas of interest and physical conditioning.  Options include backcountry snowshoeing or skiing in winter, and hiking or backpacking the other seasons of the year.  Cindy likes to work in small groups or one on one with clients to expand their creativity and skills while exploring and learning about the wonders of Yellowstone.  

If you would like more information on planning a Custom Yellowstone Photography Tour with Cindy or perhaps combining a photographic tour with digital workflow training, please use the contact form here .

"I spent two days with Cindy Goeddel in the Lamar Valley of Yellowstone.  She loves to share her experiences and knowledge of photography.  In addition, not only was she a friendly and easy-going individual but her intimate knowledge of the locations around the Lamar Valley was truly staggering.   Her love of the valley, animals and photography shows through with her one on one instruction.  I learned so much in the short two days that I spent with her.   The landscape, animal and Lightroom photo techniques have really helped expand my photography to a new level. I would suggest this trip to anyone interested in a great photographic learning experience."

"My first tour with Cindy was the opportunity of a lifetime!  Now it's tradition.  She has an incredible talent for capturing the beauty and wildness of Yellowstone.  She continues to help improve my photography skills while enhancing my love of wildlife and respect for nature."

 Digital Workflow for Nature Photographers:

·     Are you shooting on Manual mode?  

·     Are you shooting in RAW?

·     Is your monitor calibrated?  

·     Can you find a specific image with a click of the mouse?  

·     Can you confidently and quickly process your images and prints so they look the way you want them to?  

·     Are you working in 16bit and ProPhoto?

·     Is your computer running slow?  

·     Do you have a back-up strategy?  

·     Do you have a consistent workflow?  

·     Are you keywording and using metadata?  

·     Would you like to learn more about Digital Workflow for Photographers?

       Cindy is available to teach you techniques from input to output, that will speed your workflow, increase your creativity and maximize your time and resources.One of the greatest challenges of digital photography is being able to quickly process and keep track of all the images you are creating and being able to locate a specific image when you need it so as to get that image into the hands of someone who wants it. Utilizing Lightroom, Adobe’s new image management application with a bit of Adobe Bridge and Photoshop, this intensive, hands-on training, will teach you how to organize, sort, process, search, automate, present, deliver and archive the thousands of images in your collection.  Learn how to migrate both your film and digital images into a sound digital asset management system designed for efficiency and longevity. Learn how having a consistent workflow beginning with capture and ending with archiving will allow you to quickly and confidently work with your images in an efficient and secure manner.  Understand the value of metadata and keywording and how the market value of your collection of photographs increases dependent upon your ability to quickly find, process and export specific images according to many different searchable criteria.   

         If you would like help with any of the above, consider scheduling a custom class (one-on-one with Cindy or with a group of like minded friends) to learn digital photography, digital asset management, Lightroom or Photoshop.  Cindy is also available for help with setting up a computer workstation optimized for digital photography. (MAC)  

If you would like more information on digital workflow and management training or planning a Custom Yellowstone Photography Tour with Cindy, please use the contact form here .

 DIGITAL LECTURE HANDOUT

EQUIPMENT

TRIPOD:         Always use a tripod!  A tripod not only makes your images sharper, it also slows you down, allowing you to study your composition.  A tripod allows you to create rather than take an image.  A tripod with sturdy legs and a quick release system and ball head works best in the field.  If your knees can stand it  - do not extend legs any higher than necessary and never use the center post.

LENSES:         Buy the best and fastest, constant aperture, glass you can afford.

-            wide angle

-                normal

-                telephoto

-                extreme telephoto

-                macro

PLASTIC BAGS:  To keep out dust in summer and condensation in winter.

COMPOSITION:

Aperture controls Depth of Field.  Aperture is a compositional decision, rarely is it an exposure decision

Shutter Speed controls movement.

Meter for the brightest highlight you want to keep detail, color & texture in.  Is the snow or the bison more important to your image?  Caution if you are in A/V mode.

Two Dimensions – left to right and top to bottom, adding and subtracting elements from your composition…Simplify, if an element is not adding to the image, loose it.

Motion – how does your eye move through your compositio

Tension: – off center, space in front.

Wildlife: Extra things to watch for:

-gesture

-posture

-catch lights

eyes should be sharp

generally try to shoot at eye level

if walking, need a minimum shutter speed of 1/60, 1/125 is better.  If running 1/500.

3^rd Dimension of Depth:

Relative Size: Scale

Relative Focus:  Adjust f-stop and or focus point.

Atmospheric Haze:

Curved  Line:

Color Change:

Miscellaneous:

Sunstar requires a tiny light source, wide angle lens, f/16

if using a long lens,  f/22 and block all but a tiny part of the light source, ie behind a tree.

Silky water = shutter speeds of  ¼ to one second or more, thus waterfalls are best photographed in overcast light.

Diagonal Snow = shutter speeds of 1/15

DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPGHY OVERVIEW

a)    Choose the right size Compact Flash Card or SD format Memory Card.

You would never shoot a film-based job on one really long roll of film in case the lab ran into problems.   While an 8-gig card may seem efficient, you are putting all of your images in one hard drive.  Additionally, a 4-gig card fits nicely on one DVD for removable media back up.  Some professionals prefer a card size that holds only approximately 100 RAW images, thus minimizing their loss should a card fail.

b)   Correct Handling of Compact Flash Cards

The compact flash card is the weakest link in Digital Photography…. Handle with care!

Always format your card in the camera!    Do not just remove or delete the images using the computer or camera software.  This may lead to corrupt data and resulting data loss.  Why?  CF cards typically need to be formatted to an FAT16 file structure, while many computers use a FAT32 file structure.  You do not want a FAT16 device with FAT32 information.  Additionally, if you use multiple cameras, do not remove a card from one camera and place into another, you will need to format the card for the camera being utilized.

Data loss is a very easy problem to avoid by reformatting your card in the camera after you have downloaded the images to your computer or digital wallet.

Do not take the card out of your camera, check the images on a computer and then put the card back in the camera and continue shooting.  You risk data loss.  Reformat the card before you continue shooting.

Try not to fill a card.  If there is not enough space to write the last file, the entire card may become corrupted.  Leave 5 or so shots at the end of each card as this will decrease risk of card failure.

Do not delete files at the end of the card to create space for more images.  It is generally safe to delete files as you shoot, however, the data is very vulnerable when the cards are close to full and a significant probability exists that if you delete files at the end of a full card you will encounter corrupt data and loss.

Do not delete images, turn off the camera or remove the card, until the camera has stopped writing the original files. 

            c)            Have a system

Have a system to indicate whether a card is full or empty.  When I use a card wallet, I place cards that have already been reformatted in the camera and are ready to go with the front outward.  I know its contents have been downloaded, backed up, confirmed and it is ready to use.  If the card is placed backward and upside down, it is full of images and is ready to be downloaded.

                DIGITAL SETTINGS

ISO:     

When shooting RAW, the most important camera buttons are shutter speed, f-stop, ISO,  M (manual)  and AP (aperture priority).

Shoot at the optimum ISO whenever possible because the higher the ISO the higher the noise.  Recently, both Canon and Nikon’s high-end cameras produce stunning results with higher ISO’s.  As the technology continues to advance, ISO may become less of a factor.

WHITE BALANCE:     

White balance is the color of the light in which an image was captured.  In other words, it refers to adjusting the brightness of the red, green and blue channels so that the brightest object in the image appears white.  Our brain performs white balance automatically.  Our eyes adjust to changes in what we see by making the brightest area of the scene white.  Images captured under fluorescent lights appear green on film, while to our eye it never appeared green.  While no camera is capable of the white balancing accomplished by our brain, digital sensors attempt to mimic the way our eyes and mind see color under different lighting circumstances.

Most of the time AWB does a pretty good job in natural light.  Under difficult lighting conditions it is best to take an in-camera custom white balance or place a color checker such as X-Rite in the scene.

-      You can set it by the numbers…technically correct or

-      You can set it according to how you see color, because we all see color differently.

You can adjust the white balance after the fact in Lightroom or ACR.  Color balance is extremely subjective.  Some like the warm look of an 81A filter on the lens, which is technically speaking, not white balanced at all.  Others prefer a cooler look. It is matter of how your brain sees color and ultimately one of person