Wildlife of Botswana Video

I did manage to shoot some video from my safari in Botswana and pulled it into a short movie. Please check it out!

For anyone that is curious, I captured video with the same camera (Canon EOS R5) as I used for my still photos. I have it set up to record in 4K, although I tend to edit down to 1080p in processing. I process each individual clip in Photoshop, which allows me to make similar color and contrast adjustments that I would make in a photograph. I then brought the clips into Corel VideoStudio to assemble, add titles and add music.

2021 Favorites

2021 was once again a year of limited travel. I expected to write more posts during the year as I had extra time near home, but I really struggled with wanting to sit at the computer and write after working all day in that same spot. I have been blessed, though, to live near some really beautiful places in California and Montana and all but one of my favorite images from this year were captured in either Glacier or Yosemite National Parks. I did capture a lot of images that I really like this year, but in the end, these are my 10 favorites and are presented in the order captured.

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Changing Seasons in Glacier National Park

Glacier National Park, Montana — Avalanche Creek

With 2020 being a “work from home” kind of year, I had a chance to work from a different home in Northwest Montana for much of the summer and fall. Being close to Glacier National Park, I was able to photograph several areas of the park through the change of the seasons. Here a a few images from the western side of the park.

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Night Sky Planning

Hidden Lake – Glacier National Park, Montana

While presenting a recent night sky image to our photography club at work this week, I was asked a lot of questions about how to plan those kinds of shots. I hadn’t thought about it for a while, but there can be a lot that goes into it if you have a particular image in mind. My goal is often to try to line up something in the sky (usually the Milky Way) with a landscape scene. To make it work I need to figure out when those things will line up, when the sky will be dark enough to see the stars, and how much light will I want on the landscape, all while also keeping track of the weather and sometimes tides. In this post I will list some of the tools that I use and show how I used them to plan some recent images.

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One Day – Waving at Horseshoes

This is the second of my series of posts covering images taken within a single 24-hour period. In addition to the photos, I will include some of the travel, planning, and technical aspects of these trips. The first entry in the series covered a day around Banff, Canada on a winter day.

Today’s entry covers the morning of February 2, 2019 through sunrise the next morning. Trust me though, I am strictly adhering to my 24 hour rule for these posts. I made plans to visit the area along the Utah/Arizona border in early February with a friend. Our primary goals were to visit “The Wave” in the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument as well as Horseshoe Bend near Page, Arizona.

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Jordan and Egypt

Once Sandee and I committed to join a tour group in Israel, we knew we’d have to take advantage of having made the long flight and see some of the other amazing locations in the area. Petra was high on our list, both because it is relatively easy to get to from Israel and because it is such a unique and famous place. If you’ve seen “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” then you have seen Petra. As I started researching tours, I found a reputable company that offered a four day tour of Jordan and Egypt that included Petra, Wadi Rum, and Cairo. How could we resist?

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New Zealand South Island

Wanaka Sunset, New Zealand (Kyle Jones)

I recently took a vacation with my wife to New Zealand and Australia, including 6 days based in Wanaka (rhymes with “Monica”) on New Zealand’s South Island. I figured I’d share my experience here, where it can hopefully be useful for anyone else planning to travel to that beautiful country. This wasn’t a “photo trip”, so while I did make sure to place myself in a couple of good locations at sunrise/sunset, it wasn’t the focus of my trip. With that in mind, this isn’t really a photo guide and some of the shots included are more for documentary purposes than artistic. I have included some thoughts about conditions that might be good for some of these locations and am including the equipment and settings I used for reference. I’m splitting this guide into three parts, the first covering some general thoughts, gear, and the area around Wanaka. Next is the Haast Highway and Lake Matheson and then the area South of Wanaka including Queenstown and Milford Sound.Continue reading→

Favorites from 2017

As with everything at year end, it is time for yet another top 10 list. In addition to your 10 favorite movies, albums, TV shows, sweaters, selfie apps, etc., here is the official list of my 10 favorite photographs I created in 2017. Trust nobody else, this is the definitive list! These may not necessarily be my best photographs, since best is always debatable and I want the list to include a sampling from throughout the year. Selecting images was especially challenging this year as I had a chance to visit some really special locations including Banff in the winter, Iceland, Yosemite, Grand Teton, Zion, Yellowstone and even beautiful Corvallis, Oregon for the total solar eclipse. I could have selected 10 shots that I really liked from a 12-hour period in Stokksnes and Jökulsárlón, Iceland and called that a good year. In the end I cheated and created a runner-up list you can check out here. Without further ado, and in the order taken, here are my favorites from 2017:Continue reading→

The Great American Eclipse

Total Eclipse Sequence – Corvallis, Oregon (Kyle Jones)

Like many thousands of others, I decided to make the trek to a spot where I could see the total eclipse on Monday. My brave and patient wife Sandee agreed to join me on this adventure and I arranged to spend the weekend with my Aunt Kris in Eugene, Oregon – just 30 miles from the zone of totality. I kept a close eye on the traffic, weather (clear) and smoke from the nearby forest fires (variable) and decided that Corvallis was the place to go Monday morning. This allowed us to stay off of the interstate in case it became clogged with cars and would give us plenty of clear areas to view the sky.Continue reading→

Oregon Day 3 – Multnomah, Wahclella, and Abiqua

Wahclella Falls – Columbia Gorge National Scenic Area, Oregon (Kyle Jones)

Sunday was the last day of our waterfall hunting trip and we had three falls on the agenda. Our plan was to get up early, stop by Multnomah Falls before the crowds arrived, and then hike out to Wahclella Falls. After that we would take Matt to the airport and Alejandro and I would drive to Abiqua Falls for one last adventure before we went home.Continue reading→