A highlight of the year, and quite appropriate to discuss in this Holiday year-end wrap up, was a project which I was honored to be a part of.  Portraits of Love, created by the The PhotoImaging Manufacturers and Distributors Association (PMDA) in conjunction with the US Armed Forces, invited photographers across the US to participate in this worthy event.  Our job was to photograph families of deployed soldiers, with PMDA providing a print from the shoot to be sent to the family’s soldier overseas… all those I photographed have their loved one stationed in Iraq or Afghanistan.  This project was important to me as my oldest son, Gavin, is a Chief Warrant Officer in the US Army, and has three tours of Iraq under his belt.  Gavin is stationed at Ft Lewis in Washington State, and that’s where I was assigned to photograph.  Olympus took care of my travel and lodging and their PR agency, Mullen, (thanks, Lauren Dugdale) handled all of the other arrangements.   It was made even better as Matt, our 24 year old was able to go with me.  Getting Gavin and Matt together is always a blast, as they love comparing notes on Dad…

We arrived at Ft Lewis and the military had provided a couple of large rooms in which all the lighting and backgrounds were already set up; several companies had joined in as sponsors.  Families were scheduled to arrive in 20-minute windows of time, and once underway, the day was filled.  One of the first families to arrive consisted of three young kids, around 4, 8 and 10.  I was talking to the oldest son, and I asked him to tell me about his dad, who has been in Iraq for a few months.  He got out the words “He’s my hero…” and whatever else he was going to say was unspoken as tears immediately came to his eyes.  I couldn’t say anything as a huge lump appeared in my throat.  He stood there for a few seconds, tears welled in his eyes…and finally completed his thought with “…I really miss him”.    This may seem to have set the stage for a sad day, but just the opposite.  This youngster’s Mom, and the whole family, were so strong…and as one family followed the other, the same strength accompanied each group.  Families of one, two, three, up to 5 kids; women with no kids, just the couple’s dog; women by themselves; all were so appreciative of the small thing we were doing for them.   What really struck me was when the shutter clicked, and when I knew I had the picture,  that was the moment when I (and the building) kind of disappeared and the camera became the conduit between a soldier overseas and the family member back at home.

I photographed about 38 families for this project, and if you’d like to see some of the press done on this project, click on these:

NBC Nightly News

I hope we all remember these families at this time of year, as well as the other 11 months, and the huge sacrifices they are making.  Thanks to all of them.

And a Happy Holidays to you!!

Day 2 of FirstLight Smith Island, we awoke to a beautiful day-and sky.  Everyone is working on their assignments, and the photographic opportunities that have been created by Dave Harp and Tom Horton are coming to full fruition: Watermen, artists, the women of the Island, the setting, all components of this area.  Also, all photographers are fully involved and invested in their assignments, and we’re looking forward to seeing the final results.

Dwight Marshall pulling crab pots near “the Shanks”

I’ve included on this “Where’s Jay” a series of photos of a polar bear we rudely awakened.   This bear had been sleeping on the ice, spotted a couple of miles distant by a crew member-how they see them at that distance is a story in it’s own right.  After sighting the sleeping bear, the ship moved slowly and directly towards the animal.  As this bear was on an ice shelf that extended for a distance, we pushed very slowly through the frozen surface for about an hour before getting within “shooting distance”.

It’s interesting that the bears are not frightened by the sounds of the ship crunching through ice, but voices or metallic sounds are enough to often send the bear back into the water.  This sleeping animal would awaken a few times, look around and go back to sleep.  After we got within a few hundred yards, I think it realized that the approaching large shape of the ship was not going to go away, and it attempted to rise to check out the challenge.

We do try to anthropomorphize animals, and I couldn’t help doing that here…it appears this animal was so deep in sleep that finally trying to fully awaken was a chore not desired at this moment.

Olympus E30 with a 90-250mm f2.8 lens, EC-20 2x tele converter,  1/500^th at f6.3, 400 ISO

For additional images from this trip, please visit this URL:

http://web.me.com/jbd4450/NG_Expeditions/Svalbard.html

This image of a sea turtle was shot off of  Isabela Island, along the cliffs of Punta Vicente Roca.  Home to a sizeable population of turtles, we were snorkeling the shallow waters, with turtles appearing regularly.  This turtle was swimming, slowly I thought, through a school of fish when I decided to follow and photograph.  My idea of it swimming “slowly” was soon dashed to the rocks, as I was having to swim as hard as I could, fins kicking rapidly, just to keep up with the perceived slow pace of the turtle.  You’ll notice the edges of the frame have movement, as I was going as hard as I could, camera out in front while framing the image with the monitor.   Olympus E 520, 7-14mm lens @ 7mm, 1/160th of a second at f5.6, 400ISO
A marine iguana is the subject of this frame, shot late afternoon in one of my favorite underwater destinations in the Galapagos, Sombrero Chino, or China Hat.  I was able to snorkel in this area twice, on those trips; both times we had fantastic encounters.  The marine iguanas were pretty oblivious to our presence as were the other critters in this place.  We had several Galapagos penguins swim right up to our cameras, pecking the housings and generally hanging out with us.  This iguana had slowly passed me, I followed and shot vertically to capture the curvature of the tail
Olympus E 520, 7-14mm lens @ 7mm, 1/125th of a second at f7.1, 400ISO
This craft often demands patience, the case in this photo of a sea turtle’s head breaking the surface of a small tidal pool.  Shot on Bartolome, we had literally just stepped out of the Zodiac raft, which had carried us from the Endeavour to the shore.  The tide being out, there were a couple of sizeable tidal pools, and I noticed this sea turtle resting at the bottom of the shallow water.   I thought it would make an interesting image, shot from “turtle’s eye-view”, so I sat by the pool, pulled out the monitor on my E30 and waited- about 15 minutes until the turtle lifted it’s head above the surface to breath.  The camera was at surface level, I was able to look straight down from a short distance, using the “Live View” of the E30 to frame the image.  The first time it lifted it’s head was essentially a trial run…the water ripples were not perfect, the second time the head was not perfect, this frame it kind of all came together.
Olympus E30, 12-60mm lens @ 12mm, 1/250th of a second at f5.6, 200ISO

We continued to many more locations, with many more photographic opportunities.  If you’d like to see more images from the Galapagos, please click here to visit a gallery of photos.
These trips are incredible, for the photographer as well as the natural history aficionado.  If you are interested, you can click here to be taken to the National Geographic/Lindblad website.  I’ll be working on several more trips, if interested I’ll be glad to provide those to you.

Sometimes the “photo-gods” have to be with you, as was the case in this series.  It was several days into the first of two National Geographic/Lindblad Expeditions Antarctica trips, having started in Ushaia, Argentina.  We boarded the Explorer, the newest ship in the Lindblad fleet, a beautiful, state-of-the-art 1A ice-class expedition ship.  We had made a landing at Paulet Island, exploring the area where Dr. Otto Nordenskjold and members of the Swedish Antarctic Expedition of 1901 had been forced to winter in a hurriedly built stone hut.

One naturalist had offered to motor me around in a Zodiac to photograph penguins and the incredible ice formations found in the icebergs and smaller ice, click here for an interesting definition of ice-types found in the Antarctic Sound.

I was photographing a beautifully-sculptured “Bergy Bit”, a small iceberg under 16′ tall, when quite suddenly-and unexpectedly-an adelie penguin exploded straight out of the 28 degree water, up on the side of the ice…tried vainly to gain purchase on the ice, almost getting a toe-hold, but slid back into the waters…all captured in this series. Olympus E3, 50-200 lens @ 108mm, 100 ISO, 1/500th @ f7.1

Sometimes the “photo-gods” have to be with you, as was the case in this series.  It was several days into the first of two National Geographic/Lindblad Expeditions Antarctica trips, having started in Ushaia, Argentina.  We boarded the Explorer, the newest vessel in the Lindblad fleet, a beautiful, state-of-the-art 1A ice-class expedition ship.  We had made a landing at Paulet Island, exploring the area where Dr. Otto Nordenskjold and members of the Swedish Antarctic Expedition of 1901 had been forced to winter in a hurriedly built stone hut.

One naturalist had offered to motor me around in a Zodiac to photograph penguins and the incredible ice formations found in the icebergs and smaller ice, click here for an interesting definition of ice-types found in the Antarctic Sound.

I was photographing a beautifully-sculptured “Bergy Bit”, a small iceberg under 16′ tall, when quite suddenly-and unexpectedly-an Adelie Penguin exploded straight out of the 28 degree water, up on the side of the ice…tried vainly to gain purchase on the ice, almost getting a toe-hold, but slid back into the waters…all captured in this series.  Olympus E3, 50-200 lens @ 108mm, 100 ISO, 1/500th @ f7.1