2017 Winter Wildlife Tour of Japan | Whooper Swans of Lake Kussharo

Mar 18 | Evan | No Comments |

The 2017 Winter Wildlife Tour of Japan was going great even with every day being well below freezing! After spending a few days photographing Japanese Snow Monkeys and then the Japanese Red-Crowned Crane, the group travelled to Lake Kussharo to photograph the Whooper Swans.

The few swans I’ve encountered in my past haven’t always come across as friendly, though I guess like the red-crowned cranes bowing, the whooper swans in Japan were quite tame and didn’t seem to care about humans at all. Compared to the snow monkeys, red-crowned cranes and stella eagles (coming soon), we spent less time with the swans but as it happened to be the coldest days of our tour in Japan, these days with the swans seemed like the longest! Everyone said that they still got better photos of the swans than they were expected, so well below freezing cold and all, a great stop for our group photo tour of Japan!

In collaboration with Magic Is Photo Safaris, I escorted a small group of wildlife photographers for a Winter Wildlife Tour of Japan in search of Japanese Snow Monkeys, Red Crowned Crane, Swan, Steller’s Sea Eagles and whatever else we could find! To see more photos from our photo safari in Japan, view the 2017 Winter Wildlife Tour of Japan Trip Report.

2017 Winter Wildlife Tour of Japan | Artistic Red-Crowned Cranes

Mar 17 | Evan | No Comments |

The 2017 Winter Wildlife Tour of Japan stayed in Kushiro for a few days to photograph the Japanese red-crowned crane. Kushiro is located on Japan’s northern most island, Hokkaido and as it was peak Winter season, after 2 days of photographing these beautiful cranes in the cold, windy weather, I needed to change something up. My training in photography was as a photojournalist so I don’t always consider myself artistic, I tried to get out of my documentary photography style for this tour of Japan.

My first thought was to photograph the surroundings, so I got a few overall shots and nature shots. Then I thought I wanted to show the movement, so I slowed the shutter down. Once again, the 5.5 stop image stabilization of the Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II plus the extra stop when using the M.Zuiko ED 300mm f4.0 IS PRO, was fun to explore these slow shutter speeds with.

After that I thought why not get really close and try some portraits of the cranes. Of course I had to wait for the cranes to come to me as the photographers are (thankfully) fenced in! Luckily a few cranes would venture close enough to me, though not as close as the snow monkeys did during our tour in Nagano, to get some nice head shots of the red-crowned cranes. It felt like this crane below was looking into my soul when he looked at me!

Finally, as you can see in the first photo and below this paragraph, I tried something with the editing the photos after inspiration and examples from professional wildlife photographer Chris Weston. Please go to his site to see how he came up with the idea and his beautiful art! Chris is working an entire series of this sumi-e inspired portraits of the red-crowned cranes, can’t wait to see more of his photos from our photo safari of Japan!

2017 Winter Wildlife Tour of Japan | Dancing Red-Crowned Cranes

Mar 16 | Evan | No Comments |

Photographing the the Japanese red-crowned crane in flight was interesting but after a short time with the cranes in Kushiro, I really was enjoying their dance moves more than their flight patterns! There are a few different locations to photograph the red-crowned Japanese crane that having feeding times and it seemed the cranes were most active after getting a nice meal. Sometimes the cranes seemed to be practicing by themselves or would pick up a leaf and throw it in the air as perhaps a game.

Like the monkeys in Jigokudani, the red-crowned cranes were quite interesting to observe. In this series, it looks like the cranes are performing some kind of martial arts choreographed scene from a movie! No matter what the moves are, the red-crowned cranes were very playful and graceful.

According to the International Crane Foundation, their are only around 1700 – 2000 red-crowned cranes remaining and despite a few feeding grounds, their population is decreasing with the main threat because of their habitat shrinking. The red-crowned cranes that do live in Hokkaido do not migrate and seemed to have picked up some Japanese characteristics. Whether the cranes are dancing or play fighting, they are Japanese after all as they bow quite a bit!

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2017 Winter Wildlife Tour of Japan | Red-Crowned Cranes

Mar 15 | Evan | No Comments |

After a great few days with the snow monkeys in Jigokudani, Nagano Prefecture, our 2017 Winter Wildlife Tour of Japan would continue on to Japan’s northern most island, Hokkaido. Our first stop was in Kushiro to photograph the red-crowned crane, also known as Japanese crane or Manchurian crane. While I had a good idea how I wanted to photograph the Japanese snow monkeys, this would really be my first serious attempt at any kind of bird photography and wasn’t sure what to expect or what I hoped to accomplish with these amazing birds. My first thought was the obvious, birds are unique because they fly, so I need to photograph them flying.

Luckily, our tour in Japan gave me 4 days to photograph the red crowned cranes to try and get a better feel for bird photography and specifically how it relates to the the red-crowned cranes. While these flying photos are fine, though they aren’t my favorite photographs of what I created with the Japanese cranes, but rather the obligatory “I was there shots”. After a short time in Kurshiro, I quickly learned was how playful the cranes were. Sometimes the cranes played by themselves picking up a leaf from the ground and throwing it up in the air and sometimes as a pair, dancing the day away…. Those playing and dancing red-crowned crane photos are coming soon!