Emerald Bay Photography News and Updates

There are not too many places anymore you can see a wolf up close and personal.

A hike in Yellowstone National Park may provide you with a glimpse - if you're lucky. If you're a farmer in Western Idahoe, you might have had an encounter. Plus, a variety of cheesy game farms in Montana have them, so photographers can get closeup shots of the creatures without actually having to go track them down (boooo!).

And finally there are the rescue operations, many located in the Pacific Northwest, that take in injured or sick animals - providing them with a safe place to heal up, and ultimately releasing them back into the wild. For the few unfortunate souls who are not deemed fit to fend for themselves in the great wild anymore, these rehab centers essentially become comfy retirement homes. These animals sometimes also serve double-duty in breeding programs, but mostly, they are the attractions that supply the rehab centers with the necessary tourist dollars to continue their good work.

Ultimately, centers like Wolf Haven in Tenino, Washington, and Wildlife Images in Grants Pass, Oregon, serve as the last places for the general public to experience wolves and other wild creatures up close.

A couple of weeks ago I was in Southern Oregon, and a friend suggested we'd go to Wildlife Images. Seeing wolves, bears, cougars, bobcat, eagles and an assortment of other wild animals in their small caged areas, I was reminded more than anything else of all this wild splendor lost - of how we humans, in our infinitely deluded faith in being a supreme race, wipe everything that even remotely threathens us from the face of the planet. What we don't hunt to complete extinction, we shove into remote corners of the wilderness, giving it a half-ass chance to survive, but never a full chance to thrive.

Luckily, the wolf is making a comeback, and studies have been published, highlighting the negative impact the disapperance of the wolf from the eco-system has had.

So maybe instead of wasting your money this holiday season on some meaningless toy or other useless piece of material crap, consider instead giving the gift of true joy and life and adopt a wild animal from one of the rehab centers (Wildlife Images, Wolf Haven).

Or - you can buy a print of the one of the below wolf photographs (all taken at Wildlife Images), and Emerald Bay Photography will donate 100% of the sales price to the wildlife rescue organziation of your choice.








8 x 10 Prints are $45
11 x 14 Prints are $55
11 x 17 Prints are $65

All prints are unmatted and unmounted, prices do not include shipping.

Labels: oregon stock photography, photography

I have a love-hate relationship with snow.

Growing up in frosty, urban Switzerland, I was taught to fear the havoc snow (and its companions, slush and ice) can wreak upon the roads, the public transportation system, and the busy city life in general.

And while all those components are still very much a consideration, life in La Pine on the other hand is teaching me now that snow can also bring unexpected pleasures.

Such as the first moment in the morning after a nocturnal snow storm, when the sun rises and brings the cold white expanse alive with her golden light. When the thick virgin snow blanket glitters as if millions of lazy diamonds were strewn across its velvet coat. When the weight of the snow transforms the trees in your yard, the bushes in your driveway, the long grasses along my riverbank, into new and astonishing shapes and forms. When you step out of your house and you find a new world, so completely different from the one you left yesterday, and its beauty is overwhelming.







Yes, those are things I try to remember as I trudge through the slush ...

Labels: oregon stock photography, photography

... because some of my pictures are featured in there. :-)

I photographed this splendid house in Bend for the magazine's "Home and Garden" section, and was blown away by what the owners had done to the circa 1950's house. It had gone from a mediocre house on a nice Aubrey Butte lot to a simply terrific craftsman-style home that was able to take total advantage of the awesome location.

But don't take my word for it - go read the article and see the pictures for yourselves.

Labels: architectural photographer Bend Oregon, commercial photographer Bend Oregon, photography

UPDATE: I figured out the feed problem. The new feed url is: http://emeraldbayphoto.com/blog/feed/atom.xml

Since changing my site hosting from a Canadian server to a local one (thanks, Jake!), the feed for this blog just hasn't been the same. As a matter of fact, it has ceased functioning.

I'm still getting to the bottom of this, so all you alert readers out there - come and visit the site instead of just sucking the content down to your feed readers.

To boot, most of my images are currently hosted on yet another remote server, and for some reason, that one's been down for over a day now, and I haven't gotten an explanation back from the host. Hence - 99% of all the images on this site are dead links right now. I'm working on rectifying that quickly however.

On the bright side - it seems I have finally gotten the blog archive back on track. Too bad Blogger support is so totally useless - they really haven't been able to give me any more information than what I was already able to distill out of their help site....

Any nerdy advice can be directed to me.

Labels: photography, photography gear

Should I just rename this blog "I love Epson"?

Because it's true. I do love Epson. And the reason why I love them, is that they continously make my work easier, better, and - dare I say it? - more profitable.

First, I bought their Stylus Photo 2200 printer. At first glance, the $700 price tag seemed a bit steep - but in those short 19 months I've had it, I have been able to supply my clients with high-quality portfolio and fine art prints I would have had to pay a fortune for at the photo lab. Instead, my only costs incurred were ink and paper. And the best part - for the first time ever, the printer gave me 100% control over my images. Now I was able to produce prints that exactly reflected my vision and sense of color.

The second Epson feat was the Perfection 4870 Flatbed scanner. I wrote a bit about it in a post last month, and while I maintain that the Digital ICE function could be better, I'm still very happy with the overall performance of the scanner.

Now however, Epson has come up with a gadget that is truly making my heart beat faster: the P-2000 Digital Wallet. For a while now I've been looking for a digital storage device I can take out into the field with me. The two 1-GB CF cards I have for my 10D are nice, but on an extended trip or vacation (like the one last September to Europe), even the 2 GB don't cut it. On a commercial shoot, especially if I shoot RAW, I tend to max them out as well.

So far however, all the storage devices I've encountered were either simple external hard drives with CF slots, or the kind that burns your data directly to CD. None of them offered any kind of visual assurance that what you had just downloaded was *really* on the drive or CD. That kind of uncertainty just doesn't cut it when a client has just paid you a good fee to do a shoot for them, and you end up losing the images due to a read-error on the CD or similar. Sure - a laptop would remedy that. But the thought of schlepping around an additional 7-8 pounds of gear (especially out in the field) just isn't exactly my idea of an ideal temporary storage device.

As pointed out in the very thorough review by Luminous Landscape, the P-2000 solves all of those problems: it's small enough to click into a belt, has a large 4-inch screen that lets you not only verify your download, but also look at your images in greater detail, and best of all - a really long battery life. A 40GB harddrive and a fast download time give plenty of storage and speed in the field. And at 500 bucks, it seems a small investment for that all-important peace of mind.

So it's perfect. Just what I need. It's going on my X-mas wishlist.

Labels: photography, photography gear