Joe and Mary Ann McDonald's
Wildlife Photography

Note: All of the images in this report is the work
of our participants of the two courses! We can't
take credit for their great shots!

Trip Report:
Arizona Digital - Complete Nature Photo Course
2007

How can a week go so fast? That was the question that most reflected the general consensus of our two Arizona D-CNPC's this year in Madera Canyon, at the Santa Rita Lodge. The courses, which are a mixture of shooting and detailed, intensive photograph instruction, seemed to rush by. Although the first two days are heavy with instruction -- manual exposure, composition, understanding lenses and electronic flash, there is still time for shooting, and our participants made some spectacular shots -- as you can see from the accompanying portfolio.

After the first two 'hard days', things get a bit easier with two field trips to the Arizona-Sonoran Desert Museum near Tucson, and time for shooting wild hummingbirds at our high speed flash setups. That opportunity has much more meaning after the students do a TTL flash exercise, where they work on projects that balance flash with daylight, 'erase' the daylight, create the sense of shade, and other TTL applications. Although the students only shoot hummingbirds for a few hours, the results are spectacular.

In the classroom, besides the photography instruction, the students learn a sound DIGITAL WORKFLOW, making order of the chaos that is so easy to have with digital imagery. Additionally, via a thorough treatment of RAW conversions, students then learn how to maximize the potential of their digital images by using MASKS -- an esoteric subject that is actually quite easy to conceptualize and to use once it is understood.

At the Desert Museum, students made some spectacular images of bobcats, pumas, hummingbirds, coyotes, reptiles, and flowers. We schedule one class trip, but leave time the following morning for another visit, and most students elect to return to capture images they'd missed on their first tour. Next year, we'll be doing two D-CNPCs again, which will give students the opportunity to learn photography and stay on for a full week of hummingbird photography as well. We hope we see you there!