Orcas, surveying the scene

It was a perfect day for photography! It rained through the night and the morning air was calm, and cool. The sky was featureless, and the clouds low and very, very grey. Like I said, it was perfect! As I stood on the deck of our whale watching boat, the Naiad Explorer, I could see the dorsal fins of a pod of orcas in the distance. With the hydrophone in the water, I could hear their haunting songs.

I’ve always thought of whales as amazing creatures and during my trip to the west coast of Canada in August of last year I finally got the chance to photograph them.  My interest in whales goes way back in elementary school, when in my sixth grade science class I had to write a report and do a one minute presentation on an endangered species and I chose the Humpback Whale. To this day, I remember how stressed I was when I found out I had to do the presentation in front of the whole class. Well, the stress has long since passed but my interest in whales has remained strong.

The narrow Johnstone Straight located between Vancouver Island and the mainland of British Columbia is one of the best places in North America to see and photograph orcas and that is why my girlfriend Kate and I chose this location for our adventure. While there are several whale watching tour companies on Vancouver Island, I chose the family run Mackay Whale Watching based out of Port McNeill. Captain Bill pilots the MacKay’s boat, the Naiad Explorer. The Naiad Explorer is a 17m aluminum vessel custom built for whale watching. It’s fast, comfortable, and stable all of which make it an ideal platform for photography.  The tour lasted almost 5 hours and in that time we saw dozens of orcas, several humpback whales, countless dolphins.

Coming from landscape photography where I can set up the shot ahead of time and then just wait for the light to be perfect, I found photographing whales to be a bit of a challenge. Of the hundred of shots I took that day there are only a handful that I’m really happy with. The biggest obstacle is that no one can ever be sure exactly where a whale is going to come up. And when it does come up, you’ve only got a few moments to compose and focus and release the shutter before it disappears again.

In the end, it was a fantastic day out on the water and I came away from the experience with an even bigger appreciation of whales than ever before. Having the opportunity to witness and photograph orcas and humpbacks in the wild was truly an awe-inspiring experience. One I can’t wait to do it again.

Orca (Orcinus orca)

Bull orca (Orcinus orca)

Naiad Explorer

The view from the top of the Little Beehive was magnificent! The emerald coloured water of “Canada’s diamond in the wilderness” Lake Louise, more than 500 meters below, was so vibrant that it almost looked like paint on an artist’s palette. Already anticipating the changing seasons, the larches had begun changing their colours, and above, fresh snow had already settled on the mountain peaks.

The hike up to the Little Beehive begins on the west shore of Lake Louise, winds its way up through the forest before opening up, and revealing panoramic views of the surrounding mountains and lakes. We began hiking at noon, which is much later than we originally wanted but because this hike was fairly short – 9km round trip, we knew, we’d have plenty of time for it. After navigating through the crowds of tourists at the shore of the lake – over a million people visit this lake every year, we found our start and stepped onto the trail. From the very beginning, the trail, although not steep, climbs un-relentlessly. It had snowed a little the night before and because the temperature was a few degrees above freezing, the trail was muddy and we were continuously bombarded with drops of ice cold water falling from the trees. Drip, drip, drip…

After hiking for about an hour, we reached Mirror Lake and after a short photography break and a quick snack we once again donned our packs, and continued our climb up the trail. Soon, the thick, impenetrable forest began to open up and offered us some of the first, unobstructed views of the mountains around us and Lake Louise below.

We continued hiking, stopping every few minutes to make photos. There was a new exciting photo around every corner and near the top, a marmot even paused on a rock to pose for us. After a few more photo stops, we reached the top of the Little Beehive. We sat down, drank some hot tea from our thermos, and just let the beauty that was surrounding us soak in.

Being outdoors, enjoying nature, is a kind of meditation for me. I may come home satisfyingly tired, but mentally I feel re-energized and rejuvenated. It’s always great to be outside and this day was no exception.

I will be selling my landscape prints at the Home Business Fair at the Deerfoot Inn and Casino this Sunday, June 13th. The fair runs from 10am – 4pm and will feature over 35 different vendors.  If you are in the Calgary area, I urge you to come on by. It would be great to see/meet you!

Ten years really isn’t that long. I remember the whole Y2K thing like it was yesterday. In fact, I was on the  Y2K preparedness team at my day job.  My task was to test every single PC with a piece of software (in DOS) to make sure it would continue to function when the date changed from 1999 to 2000.

Recently, while browsing the web, I came across some humorous “news” from a decade ago.

The first one that I found amusing is this one from December 20, 1999:

Epson Stylus Photo 870 – 10 year prints

Excerpt: “Just got a message from my good friend Tham Kok Leong over at Digital Darkroom, it’s not often that we mention printers on this site but being the proud owner of an Epson Stylus Photo 750 I feel that I should mention Epson’s latest printer the 870 with the promise of longer lasting prints (claimed 10 years), edge-to-edge printing and “photo rolls” the ability to produce 35mm-like prints at home with a good quality digital camera and printer is already here.”

It’s funny now, but 10 years ago, ink jet prints lasting 10 years was a big deal! Of course today, we can expect our ink jet prints to last a lifetime and in some cases much longer.

And this one, from October 3, 2000 almost had me laughing out loud:

64MB CompactFlash for $99 !

Excerpt: “Sounds too good to be true, but Kingston Technology (one of our sponsors) have a special $25 mail-in rebate on their 64MB CompactFlash cards, buy from one of their participating “e-tailers” (Buy.com, Egghead.com and 4sure.com) from now until December 31st 2000 and you’ll get a $25 rebate off the price of a 64MB Kingston CF card!”

Yup, that definitely sounds too good to be true! Especially since today, you can get a 8GB compact flash card for under $80.

These are just a couple of examples of the unbelievable change in the photographic industry in just the past 10  years. I wonder how things will change in another 10 years.

Over the past week I’ve spent some time reworking my website. I didn’t do any drastic changes and mainly only changed the  navigation headers and background. I enjoy working on the website and over the past 7 years I’ve rebuilt it 4 times.

I’d love to hear what you think so if you haven’t already done so, please check it out.

Tomas Nevesely Photography – www.tnphoto.ca

It seems that everyone’s on Flickr nowadays. I’ve decided to jump on the band wagon open my own Flickr account. My best work will still be posted on my main website – Tomas Nevesely Photography but the rest will be uploaded to my Flickr account.

I bought a Canon 5D Mark II recently and it’s a fabulous camera. The image quality is just excellent and the camera just feels so right in my hands. It’s everything I needed. Actually wanted would be the better term here, I didn’t actually need anything, my old Canon 5D served me just fine.

At $3100 CDN, the Canon 5D Mark II is fairly reasonable but still a fair chunk of change. If you think that all you need to do is save up the $3100 think again. There are the hidden costs of upgrading that nobody ever talks about…

The Canon 5D Mark II has a 21MP sensor. This means that your file size (especially if you shoot raw) is now suddenly that much bigger. What does that mean? Well for me it meant new bigger faster Compact Flash cards. I bought several 8GB Sandisk Extreme III cards. Bigger file sizes also mean bigger hard drives. I still have about 100GB free on my hard drive but that will easily get filled up in the upcoming months forcing me to go out and buy two new hard drives. (A main and a backup.)

Another thing I found out that I didn’t have enough RAM in my computer so I went out the other day and bought some. Now my computer has 4GB and is much happier.

Now that your computer has what it needs to deal with the larger files we can turn our attention to some of the other “hidden” costs. Batteries. The camera came with one battery but it’s wise to have at least as second. There goes another $130. Camera quick release plate. The RRS L Bracket from my 5D didn’t fit on the 5D Mark II so I had to get a new one. I find the L Bracket makes using the camera on a tripod so much easier that I can’t imagine having a camera without one.

So, am I still glad I upgraded cameras? You bet! The 5D Mark II is the best camera I’ve ever had and I love it! Hopefully it will serve me well because I don’t plan on upgrading again for quite some time.

If you’ve been following this blog regularly you’ve probably noticed that the time between my entries has noticeably lengthened. There are several reasons for this. First, I’ve re-started my exercise “program” which just consists of of 30-40 minutes of riding my bike every other day. I hurt my back about a year ago and stopped riding because of it. I’m also trying Yoga and and so far enjoying it. Second, I’ve started learning Spanish. Woohoo, I’m excited about this! I bought the Rosetta Stone software and have been working through that. Not every night but at least every other day and each lesson takes 1 – 1.5 hours.

Although I haven’t photographed anything new since mid January, I’m still trying to dedicate some time to photography. For example, I just signed an agreement with a Stock Agency – All Canada Photos . Another thing I’m very excited about. I’ve only sent them a few of my images so far because I need to prepare the Tiff’s before I upload them. This again takes time.

So yeah, just a quick note to say what I’ve been up to and to say that I haven’t dropped off the face of the earth. And although I’m nowhere near finished processing my photo’s from Mexico I’m posting one as a “Photo of the Day”

Playa del Carmen
Canon G9, 1/160sec at f/5, Circular Polarizer

Tom Nevesely Photography – www.tnphoto.ca

Well I did it! I sold my film SLR today so I’m now 100% digital. I haven’t used my film camera, the Elan 7E since last January when I shot one whole roll because I was waiting for my rebel XTi to arrive and I had no other camera. The last time I used it before that was in September 2006 and even then I used it only because my 24mm TS-E wasn’t wide enough on a 1.6x crop digital body. Now that I have the full frame Canon 5D I no longer have a need for a 35mm film SLR.

I’m holding on to my film scanner because who knows when I will want to re-scan anything. And besides one of my winter projects is to scan a 100+negatives from my trip to New Zealand and Australia (in 2004) and make a photo book.

Tom Nevesely Photography – www.tnphoto.ca