Lower Madera Canyon – Big Bend Ranch State Park, Texas
Copyright © 2011 Jeff Lynch Photography
Shot taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II set on aperture (Av) priority using an EF 17-40mm f/4L USM lens tripod mounted. The exposure was taken at 22mm, f/14 for 1/15th of a second at ISO 100 using a Singh-Ray warming polarizer filter and 2-stop graduated neutral density filter. Post capture processing was done in Adobe’s Lightroom 3.
Click on the image above for a larger version.

Intense Concentration – North Zulch, Texas
Copyright © 2012 Jeff Lynch Photography
Shot taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II set on aperture (Av) priority using an EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens hand held. The exposure was taken at 85mm, f/7.1 for 1/160th of a second at ISO 400. Post capture processing was done in Adobe’s Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS5.
Click on the image above for a larger version.

High Desert – Big Bend National Park, Texas
Copyright © 2011 Jeff Lynch Photography
Shot taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II set on aperture (Av) priority using an EF 17-40mm f/4L USM lens tripod mounted. The exposure was taken at 22mm, f/14 for 1/15th of a second at ISO 100 using a Singh-Ray warming polarizer filter and 2-stop graduated neutral density filter. Post capture processing was done in Adobe’s Lightroom 3.
Click on the image above for a larger version.

Jack and I went there one sunny morning in search of some hoodoos to photograph but what we found was so much more interesting and potentially dangerous.

We drove North from Panther Junction about nine miles when we spied an interesting looking set of hoodoos about a mile west of the road. We donned our backpacks and started for the nearest rock outcrop about 300 yards from the road when we began to notice very small animal tracks in the crusty soil.

The tracks were very small and faint but ran all over the area we were exploring. We thought the tracks looked like they were made by a bobcat but were too small to be a mountain lion, or so we thought.

Lion’s Den – Big Bend National Park, Texas
Copyright © 2011 Jeff Lynch Photography
Shot taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II set on aperture (Av) priority using an EF 17-40mm f/4L USM lens tripod mounted. The exposure was taken at 20mm, f/16 for 1/25th of a second at ISO 100 using a Singh-Ray warming polarizer filter and 2-stop graduated neutral density filter. Post capture processing was done in Adobe’s Lightroom 3.
Click on the image above for a larger version.

I stopped to take a few shots of the interesting outcropping in the image below when I noticed several more sets of tracks leading to and from the rocks. It was then that Jack spotted the tracks of a full-grown mountain lion and we knew we had stumbled upon the daytime lair of a female and her very young kittens.

Copyright © 2011 Big Bend National Park
Click on the image above for more information.

Mountain lions prefer to take their prey by ambush rather than by a long pursuit. They usually stalk their prey using available cover, then attack with a rush, often from behind. Jack seemed to take this all in stride but I made sure he was between myself and the rock outcropping as we continued exploring. He laughed and told me the mountain lion would never attack a skinny old man like him when there was a much larger and slower photographer to munch upon.

Lair – Big Bend National Park, Texas
Copyright © 2011 Jeff Lynch Photography
Shot taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II set on aperture (Av) priority using an EF 17-40mm f/4L USM lens tripod mounted. The exposure was taken at 20mm, f/16 for 1/25th of a second at ISO 100 using a Singh-Ray warming polarizer filter and 2-stop graduated neutral density filter. Post capture processing was done in Adobe’s Lightroom 3.
Click on the image above for a larger version.

This past Sunday I participated in my first Cowboy Action Shooting (SASS) match with the Thunder River Renegades in Magnolia, Texas. I’d thought to bring along my complete camera bag but after loading my rifle, shotgun, pistols, ammunition, costume and gun cart, I thought better of it and grabbed my trusty G10 instead.

Sometimes all you really need is the convenience of a point & shoot combined with the control of a DSLR (without the weight of course). This is the niche that Canon’s Powershot “G” series were made for. And with the addition of a few inexpensive accessories as shown above, the G10/G11/G12 can perform perfectly on those occasions when less is more. In fact, I find myself taking my G10 with me everywhere I go these days, just in case I stumble upon a scene like this!

Original Image Before Post-Capture Processing

Depth of Field and Image Clutter
One of the drawbacks to using a point & shoot style camera like the G10 for this type of action shot is the very wide depth of field. Yes, the same feature that makes a point & shoot cameras so great for landscape works makes them fairly poor for portrait work. The problem is image clutter. When almost everything in the frame is in perfect focus your main subject tends to become lost in the clutter. That’s why most portrait photographers shoot with very large apertures to attain that perfect blurred background or bokeh.

Luckily, there is a great little Photoshop plug-in from Alien Skin called “Bokeh 2” that helps eliminate this background “clutter” during post-capture processing. It works nearly as well on images from my G10 as it does on those from my 5D2.

My first step in creating this image was to process it as I would normally do in Lightroom. I generally work on the Basic settings like Exposure, Recovery (very important), Blacks (also very important), Brightness and overall Contrast. I almost always crank up the Clarity (adding mid-tone contrast) and Vibrance (adding mid-tone saturation) and may play with these two settings for 20 or 30 minutes until I find a combination I like.

At this point, my work in Lightroom 3 is complete and my next step is to export the image into Photoshop CS5 and use the Quick Selection tool to select the shooter and timer as shown here. Although the selection doesn’t have to be pixel perfect, it always pays in realism to spend a little extra time making a thorough selection of all parts of the subject.

Quick Selections in for Photoshop CS5

Once you’ve got a basic selection done it’s time to use the Refine Edge tool to Smooth, Feather and Expand the selection you’ve just made. For the most realistic look I want to make sure all the subjects that should be in perfect focus are included in the selection and that the selection “feathers” into the background naturally. Once that’s done your new selection should look something like this.

Refine Selections in for Photoshop CS5

You’ll understand why this step is vital when you begin to play around with the settings in the Alien Skin Bokeh plug-in filter. Bokeh provides creative controls to enhance images by focusing the viewer’s attention anywhere you want. In the image above, the Bokeh plug-in was used to enhance the background blur. Blurring the background in an image like this one makes the subject “pop” and seem that much sharper.

Alien Skin Bokeh 2 Plug-in for Photoshop CS5

The final step in Photoshop CS5 is to blend the two layers you’ve just created using Lightroom (background layer) and Alien Skin Bokeh (bokeh layer). Now you could do this simply by flattening the layers but I suggest you take a little time and experiment with the Opacity of each layer until you achieve the desired results. I tend to blend the Bokeh layer at 65% – 75% to achieve the most realistic look to my image. Once you’ve completed this process, you just save the image in Photoshop and it should automatically show up in Lightroom, ready to be exported or printed, just like these three images below.

That’s Some Rifle Ma’am – Magnolia, Texas
Copyright © 2011 Jeff Lynch Photography
Shot taken with a Canon Powershot G10 set on aperture priority (Av) using a circular polarizer. The exposure was taken at 32mm, f/4.5 for 1/60th of a second at ISO 80. All post capture processing was done in Adobe’s Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS5 using Alien Skin’s Bokeh plug-in.

Old Time Shooting – Magnolia, Texas
Copyright © 2011 Jeff Lynch Photography
Shot taken with a Canon Powershot G10 set on aperture priority (Av) using a circular polarizer. The exposure was taken at 32mm, f/4.5 for 1/60th of a second at ISO 80. All post capture processing was done in Adobe’s Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS5 using Alien Skin’s Bokeh plug-in.

Girls & Guns – Magnolia, Texas
Copyright © 2011 Jeff Lynch Photography
Shot taken with a Canon Powershot G10 set on aperture priority (Av) using a circular polarizer. The exposure was taken at 32mm, f/4.5 for 1/60th of a second at ISO 80. All post capture processing was done in Adobe’s Lightroom 3.

Checkout my new Cowboy Action Shooting blog for more images just like these!

Burro Mesa Trail – Big Bend National Park, Texas
Copyright © 2011 Jeff Lynch Photography
Shot taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II set on aperture (Av) priority using an EF 17-40mm f/4L USM lens tripod mounted. The exposure was taken at 20mm, f/16 for 1/25th of a second at ISO 100 using a Singh-Ray warming polarizer filter and 2-stop graduated neutral density filter. Post capture processing was done in Adobe’s Lightroom 3.
Click on the image above for a larger version.

Take this image of Santa Elena Canyon in Big Bend National Park for example. It’s over 1500 feet from the river to the top of the wall but no shot I took could really capture the sense of scale I felt the first time I visited. Even my trusty 17-40mm ultra-wide zoom lens just wasn’t up to the task of conveying just how big this place really is.

Santa Elena Canyon – Big Bend National Park, Texas
Copyright © 2011 Jeff Lynch Photography
Shot taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II set on aperture (Av) priority using an EF 17-40mm f/4L USM lens tripod mounted. The exposure was taken at 19mm, f/16 for 1/15th of a second at ISO 100 using a Singh-Ray warming polarizer filter and 2-stop graduated neutral density filter. Post capture processing was done in Adobe’s Lightroom 3.
Click on the image above for a larger version.

Now look at this image of the Burro Mesa Pour-off, a geological feature less than 300 feet high. With Jack (my trusted guide) in the frame, the image somehow looks much larger than it did in person. It’s up to you as the photographer to create this sense of scale, which is why many professionals prefer to shoot landscape and travel images that include people.

Burro Mesa Pouroff – Big Bend National Park, Texas
Copyright © 2011 Jeff Lynch Photography
Shot taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II set on aperture (Av) priority using an EF 17-40mm f/4L USM lens tripod mounted. The exposure was taken at 20mm, f/14 for 1/30th of a second at ISO 100 using a Singh-Ray warming polarizer filter. Post capture processing was done in Adobe’s Lightroom 3 and Adobe Photoshop CS5.
Click on the image above for a larger version.

Have no fear, this blog will continue just as it always has. But for those of you interested in the “Old West”, “Cowboys”, “Texas” or sports shooting in general, stop on over for my primer on Getting Started in Cowboy Action Shooting.

For my more “liberal” readers and friends with a serious distaste for anything “gun” related, I promise not to cross-post very often. I also promise that the only thing injured during the writing of my new blog will be a few paper targets and some steel plates.

I do promise to post all embarrassing photos taken of me dressed in full 1890′s costume for y’all to laugh at. No, that tall cowboy in the image is not the K-Man, although the similarity is striking.

Rugged Landscape – Big Bend National Park, Texas
Copyright © 2011 Jeff Lynch Photography
Shot taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II set on aperture (Av) priority using an EF 17-40mm f/4L USM lens tripod mounted. The exposure was taken at 25mm, f/14 for 1/80th of a second at ISO 100 with a Singh-Ray warming polarizer filter. Post capture processing was done in Adobe’s Lightroom 3.
Click on the image above for a larger version.

As many of you know I love to travel the back-country roads of Texas looking for the best locations and light for landscape, nature and wildlife photography. Some of my favorite spots are several hundred of miles from Houston, scattered through the thousands of miles of Texas’ back-country roads and some, like Brazos Bend State Park are just a few miles from my home in Sugar Land. On a late afternoon hike last December I was approached by a group of wildlife enthusiasts, each carrying several thousand dollars worth of photographic gear, just as I was that afternoon. We stopped and chatted for a few minutes before each of us went our separate ways to capture a few last shots before the sun set in the southwest. Just a normal encounter between fellow photographers in one of the region’s finest state parks for photographing birds (cool) and alligators (yuck).

Threat Assessment
As we all began to walk off I noticed another group of four young men with P&S cameras standing alongside one of the trails and speaking with each other in muted tones. I honestly didn’t give it a second thought until they broke into two pairs and began to follow myself and the other photographers as we headed back to our vehicles. Two of the young men approached me and quietly asked how much a camera & lens like the one I was holding would cost. Since it was now fairly dark, I just kept on walking toward my vehicle and laid the camera & telephoto lens in the front seat while standing there with my rather large mono-pod looking very much like a club. I quietly reached up to the two-way radio attached to my pack and “chirped” the mic button a few times to gauge their reaction. As I had hoped, they heard the “chirp” and assumed I was a Park Ranger, TPWD officer or off-duty cop and quickly turned and walked off without waiting for me to answer.

I started my vehicle, put my lights and fog lamps on high-beam and drove over to the other photographers’ cars in time to see the four men now standing off to the side of the parking lot, light up like four deer in the headlights. They quickly turned and fled to their own car parked at the other end of the lake. I sat there with my lights illuminating the scene while the other photographers put their gear and long lenses away safely. Once the situation seemed secure I explained to them that it was my belief that the four young men were looking to steal my gear and theirs as well. The other photographers seemed a bit skeptical until I explained how the four men had split up and followed us separately back to our vehicles. I also explained that walking around with $20,000 – $30,000 of brand new cameras and shiny white lenses could attract the wrong kind of attention, even in a relatively safe place like a state park.

Concealment and Preparedness
I’ve blogged before about Packing for Landscape Photography but I want to emphasize that this post is about your personal safety and protection and I’ll be quite frank with everyone, the only person that can guaranty your safety is you!

As a husband and father of four daughters I sincerely wish this wasn’t the case, but we live in a world where some folks have decided (for whatever reason) that it’s acceptable behavior to steal someone else’s possessions and even assault them in the process. I’ve hiked, camped, snowshoed and canoed in North America all my adult life and have never run into an animal in the wild that wasn’t more afraid of me than I was of it, including bears, wolves, coyotes, elk, hogs and even a moose. The only animal that consistently preys on its own kind is “man”.

So, I have a few hard & fast “safety” rules when I’m out photographing nature into the evening hours.

• I never (ever) open the back of my SUV and put together my shooting outfit (camera, lens, tripod, etc.) in the field. Nothing attracts the wrong kind of attention more than letting the whole world see all your shiny and expensive photo gear while you rummage through it for 20 minutes before beginning your hike. I generally put together my kit for the day before leaving my home and rarely put it away before returning home at night. Having your gear ready in advance offers you opportunities to shoot that you might miss otherwise and allows you to quickly and quietly exit your vehicle without attracting unwanted attention.

• I never store my camera, lenses, filters, etc. in an easily recognizable camera bag while I’m out in the field. Yes, I love the “Think Tank Rollers” for commercial work but nothing says ROB ME more than a large camera bag or backpack. In fact my current “camera bag” of choice is the Filson Sportsman’s Bag shown here. It is only slightly larger than my old Domke F2 canvas bag but it holds a whole lot more gear in its main compartment and two full-size, front & back pockets as you can see in this image.

• I never hike without a Motorola MR350R two-way radio strapped to my belt or backpack, especially when alone. I have one with me at all times and another on the dashboard of my vehicle on top of a note that says quite simply “If I’m not back by 10:00PM, call me on this channel because I’m hurt and need help”. In most state parks here in Texas, the Park Ranger or Superintendent will drive the park before shutting the gate to all but folks camping in the park for the night. Most parks close at 10:00PM so my note tells the park official two things when he comes across my vehicle during his nightly “sweep”; I’m not camping in the park and I may need assistance. The radio allows the park official to contact me to determine my condition and location should a rescue be needed. A set of two radios costs less than $50 (USD) and is the cheapest insurance you can find when trouble occurs.

• Another piece of technology I never leave home without is my trusty GPS with a fully-charged, high-capacity, lithium battery. In fact, my good friend and trusty guide Jack, has come up with a way to use an overcharged and partially discharged (non-standard) battery in his Garmin GPS to get over 10 hrs of continuous use. Today I use the Garmin GPSMAP 62S model since it has almost 2 GB of memory to hold my custom TOPO maps and previous routes. I’ve used the less-expensive Garmin Dakota and Oregon units in the past but found their range, reliability and battery life to be a potentially life-threatening issue. When you’re hiking in the Texas outback the last thing you need is a GPS that can’t find enough satellites for a proper fix. The high-end Garmin units have served Jack and I without fail during our recent expeditions and in one case, probably saved us from a 750 foot climb in the dark.

• The final piece of gear that I carry is a Kimber 1911 semi-automatic pistol, that I pray, never (ever) has to be used to defend my life. I’m quite sure some of you reading this will stop right here in shock, thinking something like “how on Earth could a good Christian like Jeff carry a gun?” and “could he really take another life to save his own?”.

Like all major choices in life, the decision to train with, carry and potentially use a firearm is a very personal and difficult decision to make. Only a small percentage of our country’s population owns a firearm (the percentage is much higher in states like Texas & Montana) and an even smaller percentage of firearm owners decide to apply for a “concealed handgun license” and carry a firearm when they feel it’s necessary.

I grew up shooting pistols, rifles and shotguns and have owned a handgun on and off for the past 25 years. Although I’m comfortable around handguns my decision to properly train with and carry a firearm in the field was the result of my age and circumstances as well as where I live and photograph. A friend and fellow nature photographer that pens the blog Montana Outdoors, once posted a picture of his S&W .357 magnum pistol next to a huge paw print from a wolf walking on the same trail. While he carries for a different reason, we both understand that in the field, you are “responsible” for your own safety and protection and I doubt he hikes without his firearm.

Texas is a big place and many of the best locations for nature photography are in areas bordering Mexico. Now I’ve traveled along the Mexican border and into Mexican border towns for twenty years without feeling the least bit uncomfortable but the drug violence of the past few years has turned much of the country’s southern border into a “no mans land” reminiscent of the 1870′s. I’m not making any statements here about cause & effect or about border security policy. I’m just saying it’s a fact that there’s just too much land for the “authorities” to cover and any nature photographer venturing into the border area had better be aware of the risks.

We’ve had less trouble here in Texas than our neighbors in New Mexico and Arizona but the days of pitching a tent along a deserted stretch of the Rio Grande and waiting for a beautiful sunrise to photograph are probably over for time being. Today the watchwords for nature photographers are “situational awareness”, “threat assessment” and “evasion” just as much as they are “camera”, “lens” and “tripod”. These days it’s a good idea to plan your hikes to return before dark, be mindful of exactly where you are in relation to the border and be prepared with an emergency egress (route) should the worst occur. If possible, never hike alone and always leave an itinerary with someone at your base camp or hotel.

More than anything else, don’t take your personal safety in the field for granted. We still live in a world where the wolves will eat the unwary rabbit. Be aware, be careful and be safe and bring back some great photographs to share with us all.

Happy New Year!

Heaven’s Foothills – Big Bend National Park, Texas
Copyright © 2011 Jeff Lynch Photography
Shot taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II set on aperture (Av) priority using an EF 24-105 f/4L IS USM lens tripod mounted. The exposure was taken at 28mm, f/14 for 1/30th of a second at ISO 100 using a Singh-Ray warming polarizer filter. Post capture processing was done in Adobe’s Lightroom 3.
Click on the image above for a larger version.