I am giving away a FREE Jeff Cable photo print up to 24"x36"!

I am really thankful for all of you who follow the blog. So thankful that I have decided to give away one large print up to 24"x36" in size, printed on Canon lustre paper (one of my favorites).

All you have to do is go to my fine art website and enter your email address. If you have already entered your email on the site, I will automatically include you in the give-away. After Dec 15th, I will be selecting a winner, and will ship you ANY image that you select from the site. Yes, you can pick your favorite photo from any of the galleries and I will do the rest.

These prints normally sell for more than $400, but this is a chance for you to get one on me. I am excited for you to have one of my photos as a great addition to the wall of your home or office space.

Just click HERE and enter your email address. No need to do anything else.

I hope that all of you have a happy, healthy and peaceful holiday season.

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• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• You can now purchase Jeff Cable Photography images from my new fine art site at: https://fineart.jeffcable.com/

• If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.

• Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Africa Costa Rica and more. And Canon will loan you any gear you want for FREE for any of my tours.

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Photographing the Beauty of Yosemite in Fall Colors

It has been quite a while since I have visited Yosemite National Park and this was my first time photographing the park with fall colors. Many months ago, I made reservations to stay at the Yosemite Valley Lodge on the valley floor and last week was the first available opening. It turned out to be great timing!

We left the San Francisco Bay Area very early in the morning to give us as much time as possible in the park. The first stop for me has to be Tunnel View - my favorite view of Yosemite. It is the most photographed location in the park, but a must capture. For this trip, I brought my Canon R5 body with the Canon RF 24-105mm lens and Tiffen Circular Polarizing filter. I also brought the Canon RF 100-500mm lens, but rarely used that. 

Once we got down to the valley floor, we were blown away with the fall colors. 

We walked around to get different views of Half Dome framed with the colorful trees.

Most of the water falls were at a fraction of their full volume, but Bridal Veil Falls still looked great. I framed this shot to get as much fall colors in the foreground of the falls.

You might be looking at this photo and thinking "Jeff - what were you thinking taking this shot?" Well...let me tell you. I took this shot from a bridge and when exposing for the trees and river, the sky was totally blown out (so bright that there would be no data to work with). I figured that the best way to capture this scene was to darken the scene to expose for the sky and then work the image in Photoshop later.

Believe it or not, this image is the exact same shot as what you saw above. I hit the "Auto" button in Adobe Camera RAW and it basically did all the work for me. Pretty amazing how much data was in the dark area. Right?

Yosemite Falls was little more than a trickle since we have not had much rain so far this year.

I love the variety of color in the trees.

We were walking through a parking lot and I saw this straight-on view of Yosemite Falls perfectly framed with the different colored trees. 

The next morning we made the strenuous hike up to Vernal Falls which was totally worth the view. In the old days, I would have brought a tripod with me to capture the falls with a slow shutter. With these newer cameras with in-camera image stabilization, I am able to handhold the camera even at a half second exposure. I prefer the slower shutter speed which blurs the water. I framed this shot to show the people off to the right, to show the scale of the falls.

We climbed along the rocks as well, and took some portraits.

We did not see a lot of wildlife on this trip, but did catch a glimpse of this guy hanging out along the side of the road.

We had blue skies and no clouds on our second afternoon in Yosemite. Luckily, this part of the river was calm and allowed for perfect reflections. I climbed out to a clearing to get the clearest shot I could. The polarizing filter really helped to accentuate the colors and mitigate any glistening off the top of the water.

(Photo credit to Laura L.)

Here I am trying to get the cleanest foreground I could find.

This is the photo I was taking from that spot.

Yeah, I love taking photos!

This reflection photo of Half Dome was taken while walking the grounds of the infamous Ahwahnee Hotel.

When visiting Yosemite, it is quite common to see people on the valley floor using binoculars to catch a glimpse of the rock climbers on the face of El Capitan. This was one of the rare times I switched to my Canon RF 100-500mm lens to get a clear shot of these guys mid climb. 

This is a tight crop of the shot above. These people are crazy! This climb takes 6 days to complete and the climbers sleep in hanging tents each night. At night, we could see the lights from each tent dotting the face of the rock. 

I took this photo about 30 minutes after sunset. To the human eye it was really dark, but when leaving the shutter of the Canon R5 open for 5 seconds, the camera (on my Gitzo tripod) picked up all the details of the valley and a star in the sky.

It was really cold shooting at the this hour, but that was easily solved with a nice dinner, a couple glasses of wine and a big hot fire back at the lodge. 

Many of these images are for sale on my new fine art web page. I encourage you to check out the new site!

__________________________________________________________

• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• You can now purchase Jeff Cable Photography images from my new fine art site at: https://fineart.jeffcable.com/

• If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.

• Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Africa Costa Rica and more. And Canon will loan you any gear you want for FREE for any of my tours. _________________________________________________________________   

A BIG surprise that happened in Costa Rica!

One month from now, I will be back in the rain forest of Costa Rica leading another photo tour, but I never had a chance to share an awesome story with you all from the last trip! But before I get to this first time ever event on one of my photo tours, let me share some more favorite images from the trip.

Here is a photo of the great group of people on the tour. Everyone got along so well, the weather was perfect for photography, and we saw so much!

We saw all four species of monkeys in the area, but especially loved the Howler monkeys. Not only are they fun to photograph, but they are amazing to listen to.

Click on the video above to hear them in action. They are SO loud!

It is a challenge to photograph these dark animals in a dark environment, but when done right, you can really see their details and expressions. 

I always teach my guests to wait for the right lighting on the animals faces, and to look for the catch light in their eyes. This male (and yes, we know for sure that it is a male) was staring right at us for this portrait.

Most of the time we are pointing our cameras up into the canopy, but for this White-nosed coati we were at eye level. 

The coati are pretty plentiful down in this region, but not always in the best positions to photograph. This last group had some of the clearest shots so far.

And, of course, we loved photographing the amazing birds. We found this one toucan hanging out in a tree about 30 feet above us. If you missed the blog showing the incredible Macaw, you can click here to see that.

I love this photo of all of us were pointing up and concentrating on the shot. (You will notice that almost everyone has an orange piece of gaffer tape on their loaner lenses. This is because I tape the sliding filter door shut on the lens hoods. It really bugs me that they slide open all the time.)

We came across a group of White-face capuchin monkeys who were swinging from one tree to another. In between their movement, they took a break to clean each other. 

These monkeys move pretty fast, making it a challenge to capture them in a good pose.

On our visit to the local chocolate farm, we were joined by a large group of Squirrel monkeys.

Any time we get a chance to photograph babies of any species, we take full advantage of that!

And then there was the big surprise!!!

We almost always stop at this one beach to have lunch. While we were there, I saw that we had nice diffused light and offered to take portraits of each of my guests. I took this photo of Jason and Stacy and then took photos of all the others. Yeah - we were all hot and sweaty, but we didn't care.

One by one, I recruited them for photos. I thought that my shot of Karen and Mike (seen here) was the last one in the bunch, but then Jason asked me if I could take a couple more of Stacy and himself. 

Of course, I agreed, but as I was looking through the viewfinder I wondered why he was holding something in his hand. I thought it was a remote to his camera, but it wasn't. It was a wedding ring, and without me even knowing it, I was photographing a marriage proposal! (Hey Jason - you could have given me a heads-up on this! 😀)

As soon as I realized what was happening, I started hammering the shutter to grab as many reactions as possible.

It was an awesome moment, and everyone was caught up in it, watching this unfold in front of us.

Of course, she said yes and he put the ring on her finger. We all celebrated with them.

I had them hold the ring out away from them, focused on the ring instead to their faces, and took this photo. 

The rest of the trip was so special for them to have this magical moment in the rain forest.

On our day of macro photography, I had an idea. This one frog sat in the same spot for an eternity, posing for us as we took turns taking it's portrait. I asked Stacy if I could borrow her ring, and gently placed it on the frog's head. It still did not move, so I took this fun shot to share with them. (And no, the frog was not harmed in any way during the taking of this photo.) 

I have done countless photo tours, but never had anything like this happen before. It was a really special moment, taken in a really special place, and we were all glad to be witnesses to it all. Now the big question is...are we all invited to the wedding?

__________________________________________________________

• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• You can now purchase Jeff Cable Photography images from my new fine art site at: https://fineart.jeffcable.com/

• If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.

• Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Africa Costa Rica and more. And Canon will loan you any gear you want for FREE for any of my tours. _________________________________________________________________   

Photographing the Blue Angels Over San Francisco!

The weekend before last was Fleet Week in San Francisco and the main attraction is always the Navy Blue Angels. I have photographed them before, but it has been 5 years since I have made it to the show. This year I made it a priority to get back there to capture new images of these amazing pilots in action. 

A lot has changed in the last 5 years, and I wanted to try my newer camera gear. Last time I photographed the Blue Angels, I was using the Canon 1DX MKII DSLR camera and I really wanted to try photographing the same subjects with the Canon R5 mirrorless camera. I chose this camera for the fast frame rate and the high resolution images. Normally I always shoot to both card slots, but since the CFExpress cards are so much faster than SD cards (and I knew I was going to be shooting a lot of burst images), I chose to remove the SD card and only shoot to the faster card. This meant that my buffer would clear fast and I could shoot endlessly without having to wait for the camera to catch up.

In 2018 I used the Canon 100-400mm lens and this time I used the Canon RF100-500mm lens to have a little more reach.

It was a VERY rare day in San Francisco with temperatures in the 90s. That never happens in my home town! I placed myself in a position hoping to get good photos of the planes in front of the Golden Gate Bridge and also over Alcatraz. As photographers, our job is to tell a story, and the story here was that the Blue Angels were flying over San Francisco. There is no better of telling that story, than showing them over these iconic spots. This is one of my first photos, with one of the planes flying in front of the bridge, and clearly showing the heat coming off the back of the engines. 

This is one of my favorite photos, with four of the planes in front of the bridge with the trailing smoke streams.

I found that the subject tracking of the Canon R5 was awesome for grabbing these planes in focus. I set the ISO to 400 which gave me a shutter speed of more than 1/4000 sec for most of the photos. I figured that I would need a very fast shutter speed due to the speed of the planes going by.

I tried my best to get tight shots of the Blue Angels, but also wide shots like this one (which I cropped to look like a panoramic image).

I also did my best to capture them from all angles.

I saw this plane coming in just above the north tower of the bridge (from my perspective) and zoomed in tight to get a photo. 

With the 45 megapixels of the Canon R5, I can zoom in and see so much detail!

This is the same image cropped even tighter. You can read the name of the pilot on the side of the jet.

The reason I like shooting with a zoom lens like the Canon RF100-500mm lens is that I have the range to shoot in tight, but also pull back and shoot wide like this. 

Even though I have the larger Canon 200-400mm lens with a built-in teleconverter, that lens is too large to handhold in a high position like this. I find the Canon RF100-500mm lens easy to handhold for long periods of time. 

I love capturing the Blue Angels when they present cool repetitive patterns in flight.

It took me a while to get a photo of one of the planes over Alcatraz, but I wanted something better.

I spent a lot of time turning the camera from horizontal to portrait position.

I love the trail of smoke behind this plane, showing the angle of attack he took as he banked over the Golden Gate Bridge. 

Once again, I got the planes flying over Alcatraz, but there was a lot of smoke in the air, so the shot was not as clean as I was hoping for. The quest continued...

Thy flew almost directly above us, giving a great view of the bellies of the Navy jets.  

As I watched them split off, I quickly zoomed the lens back from 500mm to 200mm to capture the patterns in the air.

I never really got a super clear shot of the Blue Angels over Alcatraz, but really liked this shot of them forming a great pattern over the old prison. 

As the show ended, all six of the Blue Angels made one last pass along the San Francisco Bay and in front of the Golden Gate Bridge. A chance for a nice shot of these magnificent pilots and machines in front of an iconic location. 

They made one last low pass in front of the crowds before heading off into the distance. 

I was really glad that I used the Canon R5 to capture these images. Even though my Canon R3 has a faster frame rate, the increased resolution of the Canon R5 lets me zoom in and see so much detail. Here is a tighter crop of the same images. You can clearly see each pilot and how they are carefully judging their distance from the planes at their sides.  

I hope you enjoyed seeing these images as much as I did capturing them. 

Two days after this show, I lead my first photo tour of San Francisco and we had an awesome trip. I will blog those images soon. It went so well that I have just added another SF photo tour for 2024. If you would like to join me next year, you can get more information on my photo tour page.

__________________________________________________________

• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• You can now purchase Jeff Cable Photography images from my new fine art site at: https://fineart.jeffcable.com/

• If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.

• Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Africa Costa Rica and more. And Canon will loan you any gear you want for FREE for any of my tours. _________________________________________________________________