With the above average temps that we have been having here in Michigan, the stream ice is about five weeks late, but better late then never. I always look forward to shooting the ice as it is my time to shoot abstracts. I’ve mentioned in the past that the abstract don’t sell, but I like them and it’s just fun being out in the woods.

Here is a nice shot of the stream and how I set up at the edge to shoot. I use my long telephoto macro lens in the 180 range, as it will reach out farther into the stream if I need to.

My camera is the Nikon D7000.

Who is taking the pictures of me? It’s a Panasonic GH2 on a tripod with self timer set at 10 secs.

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This first image was shot in the area you see me in above.

If I’m shooting out into the ice a ways, I will be at an angle that sometimes needs a little extra depth of field, so I will set the f-stop at f/16. With all this cool details, you want to get it all in focus.

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I was shooting ice abstracts on Stony Creek Lake, and found this outline of a ducks head in the ice.

I saw this face, two eyes and a nose in a flowing river. Some say the nose could be a trunk of an elephant.

At first, I felt like I was carrying around too much equipment. Tripod and camera in one hand, plamp and filters in the other - useful or not, I had to find a way to carry everything more easily. So, I clamped the Plamp onto my tripod, and hung the reflector panels from it. Now, I could carry everything with one hand. Problem solved. I chose a small thistle, and got to work. Lucky for me, I had my trusty side-kick along to document the process - thanks for helping out, Jay!

First, I set up my tripod then put the Plamp to work positioning the chosen thistle just where I wanted it. I'll go into more detail about that fabulous little tool later - for now, indulge me while I go into some detail about controlling the light.

Like shooting most small macro critters, you have to move in slowly, and the frogs will usually blend in well with their surroundings, so you have to really study the ground so you can spot them as far in advance as you can. Here is a Wood Frog on the side of a mossy tree trunk.

Here is how you do it. For a green background find a grassy field or even the grass in your backyard. This is how the subject looked on my first background shot.

Now just turn the focus on your lens till it becomes out of focus and a solid color like this. Now I have a nice solid green background.

Nature photography is one of the toughest fields of photography to make a living in. I’ve found that for me being diversified is the key to making it. Having multiple streams of income keeps the money flowing. Those streams all take a lot of time to keep them flowing.

Marketing is number one, nobody knows you’re alive and in business unless you tell them. Shameless self promotion is something you have to get used to and you need to be the type of person that doesn’t mind this type of marketing as some would consider this bragging about yourself, but it’s just getting the word out that you’re in business and having some success at what you’re doing.

When I started in the art show business five years ago it was my first experience at selling nature photography, I thought that the art shows were a place where people came to find contemporary abstract art, so I loaded up my booth with abstracts and soft focus images.   It didn’t take long to figure out that the people that attended these shows were not interested in the abstract images.  What they were buying was the images that is called realism.  Everything in focus images of subjects that people could identify and relate to. Images of reality.

After about five or six shows, I pulled out most all of the abstracts and replaced them with realism.  My sales shot up dramatically.

So why do people like realism over abstract?  Not everyone likes realism, there are the people that like abstracts, but they are in the minority.  I’m in the minority because I tend to prefer the soft focus abstracts, or images with patterns, shapes, soft blurred colors.

One thing that I have learned from talking with the people who buy my images at the shows is that they usually have a connection to the subjects in the image.

Take this Lily of the Valley flower in the image above.  One lady buying this image told me that her grandmother had a patch of Lily of the Valley flowers in her yard, and every time she sees this flower she thinks of her grandmother.

Depending on what I’m shooting, I may use the sun for some backlit images.  Not a lot of plants up yet, but have enough Skunk Cabbage and May Apple plants to work with. 

Here is the patch of Skunk Cabbage that I’m working.  In another few weeks when these plants are full grown you won’t be able to see the ground.  They grow in swampy and river bottom areas, and you can see a little bit of the swamps water in the background of this image.  You can see the low angle sun touching some of the plants.  

I usually walk towards the sun studying the leaves to find the best looking backlighting.

The sun needs to be at a low angle to get good backlighting on the leaves. Below, processing  was done first with the Solarization filter in Nik Color Efex Pro, and then some fine tuning in Nik Viveza 2.

The more deeply furrowed the leaf is the more highlights and shadows you get.  I shot this at f/32 for full depth of field.

Even though it was windy during my stay, and we couldn’t shoot the flowers, the botanical gardens has tons of cactus plants, agave plants, etc, to shoot that were not effected by the wind.

Here are two images of a Blue Flame Agave, and I really like the lines and how the tips work out.

Nikon D7000, Tamron 90, f/32

I used the Solarization filter in Nik Software Color Efex Pro 3.0 for this look.

To many images made with flowers are shot from the front side, with  little imagination.  A flower has so many different angles that you have to explore all the possibilities.

Here is the typical frontal shot, and rather then place the flowers center in the middle of the frame like you see most photographers do, I’ve offset the center of the flower in the lower left corner. Because every part of this view has interesting designs I want everything in focus, so I set my f/stop as the highest number at f/22.

The next shot is also a frontal shot but I moved in closer and only included a quarter view of the flower center by placing it in the lower right side and making the image as a horizontal. Again I’ve set my f/stop at f/22 to bring the whole flower in focus.