Risk & Reward....Or Not! ICF 2010 Pro Tour Scoring

I've just been able to see my actual scoring results from the Images for Conservation Pro Tour of Nature Photography Contest that I competed in this past April. You may know from my earlier blog entry that I placed 2nd.

Deciding what image to place in my final 75 image portfolio from the nearly 17000 photos I took during the month is a daunting task. I had quite a bit of help in deciding but in the end it was my choice. I tried to capture some images that were a different than what other contestants may enter. I decided to take a big risk on a few of my entries and hoped for the best. You really never know how the judges will react to these type of images., With several photos I was burned,but on a few others I was rewarded.

This image was entered in the Plants and Landscapes Catagory. Faced with the ever present winds of South Texas I decided to use the wind rather than fight it. I took a number of exposures at different shutter speeds to find a result I thought pleasing. Some were quite abstract other didn't really show the wind motion enough. This image I thought had a nice balance. Nearly everyone I showed this to really liked it and a few said they would love a print of this on their wall. The 3 judges for the ICF Contest thought different scoring this image very low. In fact it was the lowest scoring photo of my entire portfolio.


This is another image from the plants and landscape catagory. I thought including a little wildlife in the scenic may add some visual interest. Here I was looking for a strong graphic image. Again I was not rewarded for this entry.


I had only one chance to photograph a bobcat during the month. The bobcat made a kill in front of my blind that I had setup on a water drip to photograph birds. The bobcat never came out from the high grass so I never was able to get a real clear look at him. The bobcat has it's prey (barely visible) in it's mouth. I debated long and hard on this one and finally decided to include the image in my final portfolio not expecting much. Much to my suprise the judges liked the photo and it was scored as one the the top 20 in the wildlife catagory earning me an extra $500.

I had about a 2 minute window of opportunity to photograph Javelina during the contest. The animals were on the move and I was able to get ahead of them, find a clearing, and fire away as the herd came through. I was just a bit to close with my 300mm and would have liked more room in front the mother. I wasn't going to enter the image in but everyone I showed it to loved the baby jumping. They really didn't seem to care about the poor placement of the mother in the frame. I went ahead and submitted the photo and again was rewarded with this image being amongst the top 20 images in the Wildlife Catagory.

Bears of Alaska Photo Tour

I just returned from my "Coastal Bears of Alaska" photo tour in Lake Clark N.P. Alaska. We had a wonderful week of photography with lots of bears some great spring cubs and typical Alaska weather with some rain. We were able to photography every day during the week and came away with some really nice images. The highlight of the tour was the very last morning when for the first time we had early morning sunlight coinciding with a low tide. The bears were out on the tidal flats clamming. It was a great way to finish up the tour....

Results from the 2010 ICF Pro Tour

These are a few images from my 75 image portolio I submitted in the 2010 Images For Conservation Pro Tour of Nature Photography Contest in which I competed this past April. See my earlier blog post about the contest for more information about it. After finishing up my Coastal Brown Bears of Alaska Photo Tour on Friday I flew overnight from Anchorage to Laredo Texas for the Awards Ceremony on Saturday afternoon. I was awarded 2nd place and won $31,000. This is the 3rd time in a row I've finished 2nd in this event. I had the first ever ICF contest image with a perfect score of 30 points.

Coastal Brown Bears of Alaska Photo Tour

Coastal brown bear running along beach in Lake Clark National Park
Canon 50D, EF100-400mm, 1/320 @ F6.3

I'll once again be leading an exciting photo tour to Lake Clark National Park this summer to photograph the magnificent Alaskan Brown Bear. Tour dates are July 3-9th. Our base of operations will be the wonderful Silver Salmon Creek Lodge on the shore of Cook inlet about a hundred miles southwest of Anchorage. The rugged Aleutian Range rises up from sea level to over 10,000' making for some spectacular scenery. The volcanoes Mt Redoubt, Mt Illiamna and Mt. St. Augustine can be seen from the lodge. A large number of brown bears gather at the mouth of Silver Salmon Creek during the summer to breed, and feed on the lush grass, clams, and abundant salmon.

Brown bear sow and cub

The lodge has great accommodations and wonderful food. Our hosts Joanne and David go out of their way to make sure everything is just perfect during our stay. Our bear guides Drew and Jenny are very knowledgeable and provide us with outstanding photo opportunities. We fly into the Lodge from Anchorage in a small plane landing on the beach. It's an exciting way to start the trip. During last summers tour, for the entire 6 days, we literally had bears in front of us to photograph for all but an hour or two. With few or no other people around it makes for the ultimate wilderness bear viewing/photography experience. To see more information about the tour or to sign up go here

Curious brown bear cub

More Thoughts on the Canon 7D

Canon Eos 7D, EF500F4IS, ISO 500, 1/320 @ F4.5

Having had the 7D for a couple of weeks now and using it extensively on my Winter Yellowstone Photo Tour last week I can now make a few observations. This camera is a major step up from the xxD line. I've had all of them from the 10D to the 50D and the 7D smokes them all. Canon has done a great job upgrading the feature set on the camera. The viewfinder grid lines and the electronic level are very useful. The viewfinder itself is great, nice and bright, much better than any of the xxd line. The new AF system seems to be outstanding. With 19 very good focus points arranged well and covering a large portion of the frame I see very little to complain about. I used single point, expanded point and spot AF during the week. Each worked well. The spot AF is useful for precise focusing on static subject but is not as stable with moving subjects. Initial acquisition is very fast. AIServo seems to be very good. I didn't have any real challenging focus situations during the tour but I did photograph a vehicle coming down the road towards me at 20-30mph. I focused on the license plate and kept shooting until I buffered out. I was able to get off 24 frames which is much better than the Canon specs for buffer capacity. By careful analysis I determined that 13 frames were razor sharp, 8 frames were sharp, 2 were acceptable and only one frame was slightly soft. I also would like to say that it was snowing at the time so there is a chance that the snow could have affected the AF system to some extent.

Canon 7D, EF500mmF4IS, ISO 200, 1/80 @ F4.5 handheld

The images show a lot of detail and the noise performance of the sensor is very good considering the number of pixels cram ed into the APS-C sized sensor. I used ISO's from 200 to 800 during the week and am very happy with what I see. I always try to use the lowest ISO possible to achieve my goals since the majority of my clients wouldn't accept any images taken at these new high ISO's like 6400, 12,800 etc. The slight amount of noise I could see at ISO 800 is very well controlled and looks much like film grain and I'm very comfortable with that. The camera is very customizable, you seemingly can make any button do whatever you want. I never have the camera set to automatically review each image after the exposure preferring to manually bring up the image for review. With the 7d I've dedicated my SET button for this function and find it very handy. All in all this is a lot of camera for the price. Now if I could just get my MK4.....