2017 Winter Wildlife Tour of Japan | Short Video With Olympus OMD EM1 Mark II

Mar 23 | Evan | No Comments |

I’ve been a Nikon guy since my first photography class in 1998. First was film but quickly switched over to digital and never looked back but now it’s time to look forward. Mirrorless cameras have been around for a while but the technology is now reaching a point that I believe is similar to when digital was starting to seriously challenge film. In December Olympus released their flagship mirrorless micro 4/3 camera, the OM-D E1 Mark II and I was eager to get my hands on one. The main attractions to me were the smaller size (less weight makes a huge different for my physical condition while traveling), amazing image stabilization (I can hand hold what is essentially a 840mm lens and get great results with photo or video), and other features like live composition and pro capture. I might do a review OM-D E1 Mark II after my next tour of Japan in cherry blossom season but the short answer is that so far so good! Partly because of the image stabilization I wanted to do a little test video. It’s been a while since I’ve done any kind of video really, but I was quite happy with the results in the limited testing I did with it. Of course I probably only had about 5 minutes of raw footage to make this 2 minute clip out of, which really isn’t anywhere close to having enough for amazing footage, but as a short test, I’m pleased! Though it could have been user error, I do wish that autofocus during video was a little snappier!

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 | Snow Monkey Business

Mar 13 | Evan | No Comments |

Spending three days with the Japanese Snow Monkeys of Jigokudani in Nagano, Japan was a great experience. We arrived just after a significant snow storm so there was plenty of fresh snow. We had mostly overcast weather and though we had a few short snow flurries, kind of wished we had a little more snow while we were photographing. No matter the weather, the monkeys provided ample photographic opportunities and everyone loved even just observing them. I already shared some portraits of the monkeys but just wanted to share a few more photos of the monkeys being, well, monkeys! I have 3 stories which I found to be quite interesting and make me think that perhaps I look more like a monkey than the average person!

To be honest, the photo above isn’t the monkey trying to give me a hint that he doesn’t want his portrait taken, but actually it’s the other monkey’s hand while grooming. In any case, like I said, plenty of photographic opportunities at the snow monkey park! Anyway, the first story happened on the first day we were with the monkeys. There were many snow monkeys enjoying a hot bath when suddenly the alpha male jumped in and scared most of the monkeys away. One monkey was about to run past me when he suddenly stopped and grabbed onto my jacket. Of course I’m not expert but he held onto me for about 30 seconds and really felt like he thought I could protect him. Really was quite interesting!

The second and third story happened the second day we were with the monkeys. Earlier in the day I was leaning over on the rail of a bridge (you can see it in the photograph below and also same place as third story) with one eye looking through the camera and another closed as is the usual photographer’s style. Suddenly, I felt a tap on my shoulder and then a gently push to get me to move away from the railing. I was already saying excuse me in Japanese on my way up and to my surprise it was an adult monkey that I had inconvenienced, not a person! It’s hard to explain, but the way he pushed me certainly felt like a human. I’ve saved the best story for last and I owe a HUGE thank you to Jennette Russell who was able to capture this moment in time for me and generous enough to share her photos with me. All photos below until after the waterfall photo were created by, courtesy of and © Jennette Russell.

Literally minutes before leaving and on the way out, I suddenly felt a little extra weight on me and quickly realized that I had a monkey on my back! Yes, that’s me in the blue jacket! It was feeding time at the park and there was a lot of activity all around but from the railing to my back was an easy jump for this monkey. After pulling my hair for a little he moved to my head and tried to open my backpack before going back to pulling my hair again! It was quite the surreal moment that lasted probably all of 20 seconds but felt much longer! I was so surprised and unsure of what I could do, I wasn’t thinking clearly enough to turn around to Jennette for what would have been a great portrait of myself with the monkey and also should have asked the shocked family next to me if they had some good ones to share, but at least Jennette got these awesome shots!

It wasn’t painful at all and glad he couldn’t figure out how to open my bag but needless to say, the first thing I did when returning back to the ryokan was take a shower and washed my hair a few times! Here is the entire series if you want to see what the monkey was up to!

Finally, I also wanted to share one more photo that I couldn’t have made handheld without my new Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II, another photograph of monkeys with the waterfall in the background, also at 1/20th of a second. The image stabilization is really impressive!

2017 Winter Wildlife Tour of Japan | Snow Monkey Portraits

Mar 11 | Evan | No Comments |

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! You can see all the posts (though you are currently on the first one) from the 2017 Winter Wildlife Tour of Japan Trip Report. First up was perhaps what I was most looking forward to, the Snow Monkeys in Jigokudani in Nagano Prefecture. On the other hand, the walk to get to the snow monkey park was not something I was really looking forward to!

Not only because it takes about 40 minutes to walk the narrow, snowy and icy path, but even on solid, non slippery ground, I tend to be slightly more clumsy than most! There were a few close calls but somehow I managed not to fall down while going to the snow monkey park. This winter wildlife tour in Japan allowed me to visit the snow monkey park for the second time (actually, first time was in 2015 off season so no monkeys, 2016 I visited with snow so I count this as second time) so I had a better idea of what to expect and somewhat of a plan for my photos this time around with the three days we had with the monkeys.

Like previous trips, my main takeaway is that after spending just a few minutes with the Japanese Snow Monkeys, it’s obvious of our connection with them. Like us, monkeys love, have family, play, fight, are curious and like to stay warm when it’s cold! With that in mind, I had 3 goals in mind for my photos this time with the monkeys in Japan.

As I don’t have a lot of wildlife experience and my studio is a portrait studio, I first wanted to take portraits of the monkeys. Perhaps obvious, but really wanted to approach it similar to my process of photographing humans. Next, I was really looking for moments of family and love. Photographing the snow monkeys is a lot of fun, but even just observing the snow monkeys is a sure way to laugh and smile, and that’s what I was looking for my third goal.

Oh and these along with all photos taken during the Winter Wildlife Tour of Japan were taken with my new Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II, a mirrorless micro 4/3 camera which I have a lot of good things to say about but probably won’t fully reflect on until after my 2017 Cherry Blossom Tour of Japan. I do want to note that the above photo with the waterfall in the background was handheld at 1/20 a second, not 100% sharp but quite impressive!