Lots of bugs on the Big Wood these days. Rained hard last night with a strong wind event and it is now about 20. Think ice. Otherwise it's warming and fishing really well. The three images above are of small winter stoneflies we get on the Wood starting around the end of February. They are called neumoras. The last image is to give you an idea of scale. They are small. Smaller than many of the super abundant midges crawling around on the snowy banks.
Here's a 5 frame pano I took and put together this evenning. I used NIK's new Silver Efex Pro 2 for the black and white conversion. It's leaps and bounds more versatile than Silver Efex Pro and worth every penny ($99) for the upgrade. If you have never heard of NIK check out thier site. They have many great free videos on editing which are extremely helpful. I have found NIK's plug-ins to be my go-to source for editing beyond what Lightroom or Aperture can accomplish.
Believe it or not, long before my passion for photography was born I was an aspiring writer. After my freshman year at the University of Washington where I was on the crew team I decided I wanted something a little different. I had heard about this writing program at the University Of Montana in Missoula and off I went where I eventually graduated. During and immediately after school, I had a keen interest in fiction and fly fishing with one caveat:
It was at Missoula's Grizzly Hackle, where my fly fishing work started. I am no longer in Missoula and have stopped writing. Completely stopped. I don't even lie to myself that some sort of long-term brain freeze or perennial writer's block will cease and out will pour, with ease and grace, onto paper a fabulous story... I used to believe that by virtue of being awake and conscious that something magical in me just might find, if I was aware of it and noticed these full eloquent pages floating around in my head, a written gem. I was foolish. I was not practicing the writing equivalent of what the photographer, Jay Maisel refers to every day shooting as, "visual push-ups." I was trying to "will" something to happen that simply was not going to happen.
My father-in-law just spent a quick weekend with my family recently and left two books with me, both of which by the same author, Robert Olen Butler. One of them, From Where You Dream, is on the process of writing fiction. Now, what does this have to do with anything?
These are impromptu thoughts:
"Butler's writing 'zone' is instead a place of meditation on the sense experience of the characters, requiring both patience and a depth of concentration that must be surrendered to and cannot be willed."
To close, that's my long-winded, out-of-the-blue stab at what I unconsciously think about with regards to photography, which may mean I have not been thinking at all...
Well, the Store/Purchase section on this website has been a long time in the making and tedious as well. I just added the Store page to this site moments ago! You can now purchase prints from me via a secure connection with Paypal. Many people have contacted me wanting to have the ability to buy prints with a credit card on this site and that is now possible. While I only have a fraction of my images in the purchase galleries at the moment, I will be adding to them daily. I also have the ability to email a secure invoice using Paypal should you want a print that has yet to make it to the purchase galleries.
Yesterday's clouds on Silver Creek East. Steel grey and warmish. Highs were in the low forties and midges were plastered to the melting snow banks. Fishing is now closed on Silver Creek except for a small portion downstream of Highway 93. This is a 43 megapixel, 8 image pano taken with the Nikon 35 f2 lens.
Unknown fly fisherman on the Big Wood River. I took these two images today. It was a brooding, warmish, snowy day. Moody. Midge weather and this guy had it figured out. One more month left on the Big Wood prior to the annual two month closure. March is arguably one of the best months of the year on the Wood. It's staying light noticeably longer and the window of very good dry fly activity is getting longer as well.
A winter view from Gannett Road. Two wheel lines and rolling hills. This is a 3 image pano taken on a tripod. Each image was composed with the Nikon 14-24 2.8 at 24mm.
I took a walk along the Big Wood today and found MANY midges along the banks. There were quite a few heads up and an abundance of bugs despite the 22 degrees... I was hoping to find a few small stone flies but did not see one.
Images taken with the Nikon Micro 105 2.8 & Extension Tubes
Above are two images of opposite ends of the Lamar Valley. I am often reviewing and tinkering with past images of mine that at the time of uploading didn't catch my eye. These two fit that bill.
This is a 4 frame pano taken of an oxbow on the Nature Conservancy a few days ago. It's a 27 megapixel file (approx. 120 megabytes) and needs to be viewed large. We have had a few more inches of snow since then but this might give you an idea of what it looks like down there at the moment. Keep in mind fishing stays open on Silver Creek BELOW the Highway 20 bridge through the rest of February and sees little to no pressure. Streamers and midges. I am heading over to Mackay tomorrow to guide the Big Lost River...
This pano was taken at 24mm with the Nikon 14-24 2.8 and put together using Adobe's CS5 Photomerge tool.
I found on my deck this morning a package containg matte from a friend who is originally from Argentina. The package was covered with snow. A gourd, bombilla (straw), and of course yerba (essentially the tea) are the contents. As my stovetop esspresso maker bit the dust a couple of days ago I think the arrival of matte is perfect timing. It is caffenated but milder than a cup of coffee. Here are two freelensing images...
Both images taken with the Nikon Micro 105 2.8 D lens.
OK, one more wild iris... and I had never given much thought to this image either. I used dodge and burn, increased the black point and added a little vibrancy. I edited this one as well in Aperture 3. I am reviewing, editing and resizing hundreds of images I have yet to give much consideration to. I am also going through my entire collection and keywording many images so that it is relatively painless to find them at some later point in time.
I have been revisiting many of my images to resize them for this site. It's a long and tedious process, and much like data entry, is best done or rather more sanely accomplished with a wee bit of red wine. Sometimes, as is the case above, I find an image I paricularly like and re-edit it. The top picture has been in my Flowers gallery for some time but it just received a new "face." After finishing the top image, the next image that popped up was one I had ignored. It's the second image on this post. It never really "popped" to me until I started working on it. Both images were taken at Silver Creek last June. They are relatively long exposures--trying to get the saturated look--1/2 second at f11. It was almost dusk. It was around 9:30 PM when I took these images... Taken on a tripod using a Nikon 105 2.8 lens. I used Aperture 3 for all of my editing on these two shots.
Rainbow Eating PMD On Silver Creek--8 Frames from nick price on Vimeo.
I took the images above last summer on Silver Creek. I am looking forward to some spring time rising fish photography on Silver Creek prior to Memorial weekend when the season opens. By May there will be enough baetis and PMD's to make for some fun shooting...
Finally we have more snow and it is slated to keep snowing through tomorrow! I took a drive down to Silver Creek today and took a few shots and panos and then got a wild hair to shoot over to Carey to see if I could find anything interesting to shoot. Well, there are many interesting things to shoot in Carey and today I found a couple of abandoned homes and one abandoned business on Main Street. I'd like to document many of the small towns in south central Idaho. Shoshone, Paul and Richfield are next on my list...
All of the above images captured with the Nikon 14-24 2.8 lens on the Nikon D200.
Two images from a memorable brown drake afternoon on Silver Creek. June 2010. I don't think these two images made it to my blog. I saw more spinners in the grass that day than I ever have before. That evenning was a pretty amamzing site...
Both images taken with the Nikon 35 f2 lens.
Well, I originally set out to JUST change my gallery section of this site and while making what one would consider rudimentary fixes, all hell broke loose and this site essentially caved in like a sand castle getting eroded by an incoming tide. I now have it in a place I consider to be OK with many patches on the way and hopefully a brand new gallery design in the weeks to come. I have been trying to have all the pages within this site optimized for iPhones, iPads, laptops, desktops, etc... This has certainly been more than an educational experience as I have been muttering epithets at my computer screen for the last 24 hours. While my neighbors may be thinking I have developed tourette's syndrome I am hoping to get out tomorrow and put the brunt of Web design behind me...
I am in the middle of changing features on this Web site and accidentally made major changes for which I am having a hard time rectifying. Very, very frustrating.... Hopefully I will have it better than before soon!
Undoubtedly, midges are the most important aquatic insect for us fisherfolk during the Winter on the Big Wood River. On warmer days the number of midges on or near the water can be quite phenomenal. Today was around 44 degrees in Hailey! Spring like. Incidentally, according to The Mountain Express Newspaper, our largest snowfall since New Years has been 1 inch. 3" to 5" inches are expected on Wednesday... Anyway, as it was so warm today I checked out a couple of spots on the Wood, both of which were in Hailey. Needless to say, there were MANY midges. I sat near a deep eddy and watched tiny rise forms blip away on the foam line. The fish were spooky, but gorging on the little morsels that were readily available. Here are a few images from today.
Images taken with the Nikon 105 2.8 Macro & Extension Tubes.
Midge shucks on the Big Wood River
Some more on freelensing... I have started using my 105 2.8 D more for freelensing as I have noticed I can stand farther away from what I am shooting and still have my subject in focus. I found a sprinkler head and a wheel line near Silver Creek and had some fun shooting ordinary objects. The color on the sprinkler head really stood out.
On the fishing front, the weather here is warm and slated to be warm most of the week with a smallish front moving in on Tuesday. What this means is good dry fly fishing should be had on the Wood. Don't forget about Silver Creek as it stays open below the HWY 20 bridge through February. It fishes quite well despite the lack of clarity. If we stay away from the normal February inversion, as it looks as though will be the case at least through next week, the streamer fishing should be good to really good down there. Black and olive seem to be the colors... Cast across and downstream and enjoy the solitude.