Read The Dan Bailey Photo Newsletter - June 2015
Published: Fri, 06/05/15
Hi ,
There’s something about June that always sparks my energy in a big way. Although summer doesn’t officially begin for over two weeks, to me, June is the beginning of a three month binge of summer actives and a powerful drive to go adventuring. Summer is when most of us do our most ambitious traveling, go backpacking, play outside late, and do long cycle tours and climbing road trips. It’s when we rack up the most stamps in our passports, and it’s probably when most of us shoot the largest number of photos in our entire year. I hope that you’ve got some amazing summer trips planned this season!
If you do, I’d love to hear about them. Find me on Instagram and follow me, or like/comment on one of my photos so that I can find and follow you as well. It inspires me to see what other people are doing in the world.
Reviews for my new Book!
Reader comments are starting to come in for my new book. If you look on Amazon, you’ll see two five-start reviews for my new book, Outdoor Action and Adventure Photography. I’m so excited to hear this kind of feedback, because I spent an enormous amount of time compiling just about everything I know about outdoor photography and I’m excited that the information is resonating with readers.
If you haven’t checked out the book yet, you can grab it on Amazon, Amazon UK and most other Amazon international stores. If you’ve already purchased or read the book, I’d like to kindly ask if you would consider leaving a review as well. This really helps increase the visibility of the book so that other photographers can find it as well. Thanks so much, I really appreciate it!
Denali Workshop with Me and Jeff Schultz August 15-23
As I mentioned in my last newsletter, I’m co-leading a very special Denali Photo Workshop this August with renowned Alaska outdoor photographer Jeff Schultz, and I’d like to invite you along. Jeff has been the official Iditarod photographer for over 35 years and a he’s a longstanding icon in the world of Alaska photography. Together, we’ll take you deep into one of Alaska's greatest wilderness areas, Denali National Park, with access to areas that few ever see.
This is not just a “tour” but a true photo workshop, and it’s being run through Alaska Photo Treks. This trip is planned specifically for photographers, by Jeff, who knows the areas extremely well. Jeff and I will teach you methods we’ve learned in our combined 50+ years as a professional photographers to help you take your landscape and wildlife photography to the next level.
On the way to and from Denali, you’ll experience and photograph several other unique areas Jeff has found over his 35 years living in Alaska, and once in The Park, our 4 nights of accommodations at Camp Denali offer THE very best location for seeing Mt. McKinley within the park. In addition, the areas we visit, the activities available and the type of accommodations make this a perfect trip to bring your non-workshop participating spouse.
During each of the workshop classroom sessions, you’ll learn methods for shooting stellar landscape and wildlife images. In the field, Jeff and I will both will guide you through methods for making the best image at the current location with the subject at hand. Our focus is entirely on your image-making, not our own, and both Jeff and I are there to help YOU take your photography to the next level.
The entire 7 Day/8 night trip runs from August 15-23, although we also offer a 4 night Denali only option for this trip. For this less expensive option that doesn’t include Anchorage lodging and transportation, you would meet the rest of the group at the Denali National Park entrance on August 17 and join us for the entire Denali portion of the workshop.
At this time, we only have 2 spots left on this trip, so if you’re interested, please click here to see more info and make your reservation. Or feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
Use discount code dandenali5 and we’ll even give you a special 5% discount.
Click here to see photos from last year’s Denali workshop that Jeff led.
Use discount code dandenali5 and we’ll even give you a special 5% discount.
Click here to see photos from last year’s Denali workshop that Jeff led.
Alaska Photo Treks - Sunset Photo Safaris
Check out the new Alaska Photo Treks Van. This is such a cool vehicle, and it’s all our own. It’s been fully customized for our photo workshop tours, with 11-passenger seating, a huge gear rack on top and huge sliding windows. In some ways, it kind of looks like a safari van, which makes sense, because we use it to run our evening Sunset Photo Safaris, where we go hunting for good light, wildlife and great scenery around Anchorage, the Turnagain Arm and the Chugach Mountains.
If you’re in Anchorage this summer, even if you’re in town for a convention or if you’re in between trips and you have an evening to spare, come ride with us! Let us show you come some cool spots, and I promise, you'll walk away with some great photos! These are some of the images that Jody, Jeff and I have shot during our recent Sunset Photo Safaris.
Photography, Cameras and the Legacy of Image Making
I had my the new Fuji X-T10, which is an amazing little camera (read my full review here) he had his Olympus OM-D EM-1. (Olympus just released their brand new OM-D EM-5 Mark II) In some ways, these are such similar cameras, and so it was cool to check out each other’s gear, see what features each one has and share creative and technical ideas. Although Ryan does photography simply for fun and not money, he doesn’t love it any less than I do. I feel that’s the case with just about every enthusiastic photographer out there. We all do it because we love the craft. Check out these BMX photos we shot of the local kids!
Although I’m a sponsored Fuji X Photographer, and was a longtime Nikon shooter, I’ve always thought very highly of Olympus, and I’ve been impressed by their mirrorless cameras. In my mind, Both Fuji and Olympus are running with the same idea- they both have a long legacy of photography and classic film cameras, and they’ve both transitioned this wonderful legacy very well into the digital age with capable, high performing cameras that go far towards inspiring creativity.
You can see that both companies have worked hard to retain a traditional look and feel. This is not just a retro-marketing thing- camera design has evolved over many decades, and some of these designs and features have been retained for a reason- they work and they make sense, both ergonomically and mechanically.
Although mirrorless cameras are largely software based inside, the design of these cameras is fundamental mechanical principles that were established decades ago by companies like Zeiss, Contax, Asahiflex, Praktica, and of course, Leica, Nikon and even Kodak. The same can be said for DSLRs.
It’s a very exciting time to be a photographer these days, and no matter what camera you’re using, whether it’s a Fuji, Olympus, Sony, Pentax, Nikon, Canon, Panasonic, etc… you’re holding a great deal of history in your hands and you’re part of a wonderful legacy.
Gear Corner
There are some great rebates deals going on right now.
Fujifilm Rebates - Save up to $400 on Fuji X camera bodies, lenses and body/lens combos. Most lenses are on sale, and the X-T1 w./ 18-135 weather sealed lens is the big one- that’s $400 off right now. Or save $150 on the X-T1 body only, or $200 on the X100T. Sale runs through June 27.
Nikon Buy Together and Save - Save up to $900 on Nikon DSLR bundles. If you’re looking to upgrade, these deals can save you a lot of money that you can put towards your summer road tip.
Zeiss Lens Rebates - The Zeiss 125th Anniversary Promotion features savings up to $300 on Zeiss lenses for Nikon, Canon and Fuji mounts. I know quite a few people who use Zeiss lenses and they have nothing but awesome things to say about this excellent quality glass.
Olympus - Save $400 on the Olumpus OM-D EM-M5 camera with 14-24mm lens, and get rebates on select Olumpus lenses.
My Preferred Photo Editing Software
When I first went digital back in 2006, I used Photo Mechanic for all my editing work. (Lightroom was still a year away from production.) Photo Mechanic was blazingly fast and it let you rip through an enormous batch of images in no time. Even today, Lightroom is kind of slow to render full size previews for RAW files, so I’ve now gone back to Photo Mechanic for my initial culling and editing.
Photo Mechanic recognizes just about very file type and it’s still the fastest program out there for viewing, sorting, captioning, tagging, rating and keywording huge batches of image. It even plays nice with Lightroom and other editors, so you can do you initial cuts in Photo Mechanic, then easily import your selects into your Lightroom Catalog, or send them directly to another outside editor like Iridient Developer, which is what I use for fine tuning my Fuji RAW files.
Check out this tutorial to see how to use Photo Mechanic with Lightroom. If you're a high volume shooter, or if you just want a simple, fast image browser/editor, I'd recommend checking out the program.
Around the Web
How to Improve The Battery Life of Your Mirrorless Camera. Battery life is not a strong suit for mirrorless cameras- they’re still behind DLSRs in terms of performance, but at least they’re light so you can carry more backups. This great post on Mirrorlessons.com gives some great tips or how to prolong the life of each battery charge for mirrorless cameras. Also, I highly recommend getting the Wasabi Power battery charger- they make them for most camera batteries. It’s small and plugs right into the wall, so you don’t have to carry that long AC cord when you travel with it. You can also get the Wasabi with 2 extra batteries for a great price compared to original OEM batteries, and they work fine.
G-Tech recently introduced their new Evolution Series ATC Rugged Hard Drive. It’s shockproof, and waterproof enough to be submerged for up to 30 seconds. Comes in Thunderbolt and USB versions. Looks like an awesome storage/backup drive for outdoor photographers. Read this review of the drive on the FlixelPixel blog.
16 Reminders of How Small Humans Really Are. I love to make “little people in the big world images.” To me, they totally communicate the feeling of adventure and exploring our amazing natural world. Here are 16 great examples of this kind of photography that are sure to inspire you to get out there and immerse yourself in the incredible landscape that earth has to offer.
Fifteen Remarks on Composition. This great, concise, easy-to-read post by Alain Briot on Luminous Landscape offers some amazing insight on how to look, see and compose landscape imagery. Luminous Landscape offers a huge repository of awesome insight, it’s worth spending a few hours poking through the archive.
How to Shoot in Low Light - 9 Commonly Asked Questions. Low light photography can present unique problems and this article addresses a wide range of issues that can help you maximize your photography in dim conditions.
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As always, please keep in touch and let me know if you find these newsletters helpful. Be sure and share them with your own readers and other photographer friends.
Enjoy my recent blog posts and enjoy the start to your summer!
Best,
Dan
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