Cherry Mountain and the distant Presidential Range as seen from Pondicherry National Wildlife Refuge in New Hampshire's White Mountains.
I am currently spending a few days in New Hampshire's White Mountains thanks to a couple of speaking engagements. The White Mountains are the place where I became hooked on nature photography 20 years ago. Marcy and I had just moved to Boston and for some reason we decided to give hiking a try even though it wasn't something either one of us grew up with. I still remember our first two hikes like they were yesterday – an easy valley walk into Zealand Falls followed the next day by an above-treeline adventure on Mount Jefferson. To say these hikes changed our lives is a bit of an understatement. At the time, we lived and worked in the city, Marcy in human resources and me in computer programming. Going to live music clubs and Fenway Park were our usual forms of entertainment, but after glimpsing the vast Pemgiwasset Wilderness and the world of glacial cirques and alpine wildflowers so close to home, we quickly converted to weekend backpackers and peak baggers. Within a year, I met Galen Rowell at a book signing and I suddenly knew I had a new calling in life. It took another decade to hone my skills and shake the chains of the programming cubicle, but it was worth the wait.
"The Whites" were easily my biggest inspiration when I became a photographer and most of my favorite images from my first ten years of shooting come from there. At first, my main goal was to make the best "calendar" style images I could, but as I learned of the history of the region I became more interested in conservation. In the second half of the 19th century, the White Mountains became one of the premier tourist destinations in America, as the region became known through the paintings of Hudson River School painters like Thomas Cole and writers like Nathaniel Hawthorne. Ironically, by the early 20th century, the Whites were also the scene of some of the most unsustainable logging practices in the country. Through the efforts of groups led by the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, the Weeks Act was passed in 1911, establishing the national forest system east of the Mississippi and then the White Mountain National Forest. Our book, White Mountain Wilderness, tells the story of the "rewilding" of the region that followed.
My experiences in the White Mountains led to my decision to focus my photography efforts on conservation in New England, and I have since worked on close to 100 land conservation projects in the region since I left that cubicle job. Ironically, that means the bulk of my time is spent in places other then the White Mountains, as these projects primarily involve unprotected private lands outside of the Whites, so it is great to have times like this weekend to get a few moments to shoot familiar landscapes like the opening shot in this post from Pondicherry National Wildlife Refuge. While nature photographers as a group like to explore and shoot in new and exotic landscapes, I find it is equally important to have favorite places you can revisit time and time again. This gives you the opportunity to see a place in different lighting conditions and seasons, and as you get to know a place you inevitably start to see the place in new ways. I also find that going back to the same place over and over results in a more relaxed approach. Last Friday night at Pondicherry (a place I've shot probably a dozen times), I felt no pressure to produce because I already have plenty of Pondicherry images in my files. This freed me from the need to produce a bunch of images that describe every inch of the place and instead I could focus on just looking for one or two nice images if the light worked out. (It also allowed me to not regret missing some photo ops while I sat for an hour hoping the black bear I saw ahead on the trail would return – he didn't.)
Big Cherry Pond, Pondicherry National Wildlife Refugre in New Hampshire's White Mountains.
I find that shooting in familiar places is a necessary diversion from other work and the best place to practice new techniques that you can then use during those trips to new places or when on assignment. Nailing down technique when there's no pressure can make or break a photo shoot in a new location when you have limited time. Soon, I'm heading to the Lake Sunapee region of New Hampshire for a one day assignment on a property I've never been to before. Having tricks in my bag that I know how to execute ahead of time gives me the confidence that I'll do a decent job as long as the weather cooperates.
Until next time…
-Jerry
Find out more about Jerry at his website, and follow him on Twitter at @jerrymonkman
Storm Chasing On a Time Budget
Wednesday, August 25th, 2010Editors note: We are proud to welcome Royce Howland to the OPG blog! Hailing from Calgary, Alberta, Royce is a consultant in the IT industry and is an accomplished wildlife and landscape photographer. Look for more articles from Royce soon in the areas of HDR and the digital darkroom. You can learn more about Royce and view his spectacular images at his website: Vivid Aspect Photography.
A joke about being self-employed goes like this — "Thank God it’s Friday! Only two more working days until Monday." Another one was pointed out to me by a friend — "Being self-employed, you get to work half-days. And you even get to choose which 12 hours you work!" Ha ha, only serious. As somebody with a non-photography day job and doing photography on the side, I don't always get to spend my time the way I would choose. Two serious pursuits to fit into each week, each with challenging and necessary ways to spend a lot of time… well, there are only so many hours. It's easy to get bogged down in the work of it all. But it's also important to preserve some time to focus on creativity.
On a recent weekend, I had a ton of work to accomplish and was busily chipping away at it as one of a series of powerful storm systems blew through Calgary. After taking a break to visit family on Sunday evening, on the drive home my wife and I watched huge cloud formations surrounding the city. I was tired, it was getting late, I still had more work to do, and so I figured I’d lost yet another chance to photograph some incredible stormy weather. But when we got home, I decided to set my work aside and try to do some image making given the opportunity created by the weather.
I grabbed my camera, threw some gear in the car, and drove east towards Shepard as fast as I reasonably could. I was chasing what looked like a super cell, trying to get to a useful location out in the prairie farm areas east of the big city, where I could find some kind of view. Unfortunately, the storm cell was fleeing away from me to the southeast at a pretty fast rate, and into a zone where I could see it was losing the light. Suddenly, as I wove my way through some back roads, I came across a field of canola in full bloom on the north side of the road. It was the only crop I saw this far developed, and due north of it was one of the other thunderheads that was putting on its own show of strength. Yee-haw!
There were no foreground objects of interest, but who cares — a field and big sky is the essential prairie setting. I screeched to a halt, grabbed the tripod and camera, and ran across the road in the growing gloom to set up and make a few exposures. Yes! I knew I was capturing something good. I felt energized again, gaining the strength to swat at the trillions of mosquitoes that descended upon me, out for blood. I even maintained the presence of mind to consider composition possibilities, and framed both vertical and horizontal orientations that would be useful for different layouts. This cloud formation was the only one of all in view to maintain light right up to the end. My gamble had paid off. Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good, but what I have learned is that if I'm persistent I can also make my own luck.
When I could tolerate the vicious mozzie attacks no more, I packed up and headed home. My total time for storm chasing ended up being only about two hours; not a bad diversion! Another couple of hours of work still awaited me that night… and of course now I had the new task of developing my storm images, too. But hey, cowboy up — it’s only sleep.
Visit Royce’s web site at http://www.vividaspectphoto.com/.
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