Jess Lee's Photo Adventures

Incredible images from National Wildlife

Jess — Sat, 19 May 2012 16:27:47 +0000

Yellowstone Wolf stand off

This month National Wildlife Magazine is celebrating 50 years of incredible images. This one of mine was chosen to be one of the ones showcased with a 2 page spread from the over 14,000 photos used in the past 50 Years.
A nice treat on my Birthday.

From todays Page workshop

Jess — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 04:48:52 +0000

An old favorite from Page.

Grand Float Trip

Jess — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 20:15:54 +0000

River runners starting their float down the Colorado River as their trip pass under Navajo Bridge in Arizona on the way to the Grand Canyon.

First Light

Jess — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 18:33:03 +0000

From the the first morning of my recent Zion workshop.

Brown Bears of Alaska Spring

Jess — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 17:20:05 +0000

Nursing Alaska Brown Bear

I have just been setting up one of my 2013 Alaska workshops and came across a photo that typifies the type of opportunities we have during what passes for late spring in Alaska.
In 2013 we will be going from June 30th to July 6th with a small group of no more than 6.

As a side note I just had a couple of cancellations so I do have still have openings on this great trip for this year. If you are interested let me know.

Where have all the flowers gone?

Jess — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 01:58:30 +0000

Where have all the flowers gone was the question last year in the Arizona Spring. Things were moving along nicely the a freeze and snow hit. So much for the flowers!

The good news was we had plenty of great landscape locations to cover since Arizona has so much to offer the nature photographer. This was one of those examples al wee had to do is to pre visualize our compositions and do a little work diffusing the light and there was plenty to shoot that wasn’t just sunrise and sunset in the desert.
Not that sunset in the desert is all that bad

This year there has been almost not rain but surprisingly there are some nice pocket of wild flowers. Go figure!

Nik filters and Fine art images

Jess — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 20:40:51 +0000

Arabian Horse after the competition

I have to admit I don’t spend as much time as I should working on fine art images. Things like finding the next location, sending photos to editors and art directors and trying to make the best workshops for my clients seems to get in the way.
When I do want to make something more along the line of fine art rather than an editorial submission I go straight to my Nik Filter tool box. The image here is one of those rare moments when the horse, the trainer and I all came together to produce a image that screamed fine art.

So which filters did I use? Well to tell the truth I don’t remember all of the steps since I was just playing with the subject and tones to extract what I could. That is one of the wonders of the Nik processing system (really more than just filters). You can play and let your creativity run wild all while doing non destructive enchantments to your original photo.

This is a great time of the year for many folks to be inside editing and working on their images, so give Nik filters a try. They have a free 30 day trial so you can down them and find out how you can make your fine art glow. Don’t forget to check out the free utube tutorials. When you are ready to buy you can get a 15% discount by entering the code JLEE.

Like the old commercial said “try it, you will like it”

Getting up tight for better event photos.

Jess — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 00:35:02 +0000

Getting tight on the action.

It seems like one of the big problems with Equine event photography is that the background is usually busy with many distracting objects such as trucks, spectators and the like. One of the ways to over come this problem is to simplify your image by getting in tight, grabbing the action to get the feel of the event.
I might also add that this type of shot was is much easier with the ad of shooting in high speed burst mode. I hear some photographers say they can time their shot and they don’t need to “hold the trigger down” while that is true for some shots catching this type of action requires burst shooting and a camera that can sustain high speed shooting like my Canon Mk 4 but more on that later.

Cutting Horses

Jess — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 15:51:41 +0000

Cutting horse event

We had a chance to get to a Cutting Horse Event right after our arrival in Arizona and saw some spectacular Equine athletes in action. It was icing on the cake to be able to spend the day in a short sleeve shirt;)

Starlight over Monument Valley

Jess — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 20:31:11 +0000

Stars over Monument Valley from Hunts Mesa

Monument Valley by moonlight from Hunts Mesa. Shot on last Falls Monument Valley workshop. I do still have a couple of openings that can be added to my Page/Slot Canyon workshop at a discount for joining both.