One Flash Photography part I

I feel like I’m lost inside of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. This place is exotic. Hot as hell. And there is a grocery list of things that can go wrong. Adding to this, the topography has a split personality. Poccosin, savanna, repeat – ad infimum it would seem. The air in here is thick, the light low. The shade would come as relief if not for the heavy tax paid in blood to the relentless mosquitoes jockeying for position to thrust proboscises into my skin for a meal. While the males of this race feast upon the sweet nectar of nearby flowers, ladies prefer the red wine. Here be vampires.

Watch out for the boot sucking mud. The tangle of vines, thorns, the litany of evergreen shrubs species that interlock forming a veritable fortress a mile thick, and the occasional cypress knee to test your balance. In 1539, the chroniclers of the De Soto expedition wrote of a trackless wilderness near this place, one that took days to travel just a few miles. Men were bogged down in mud, drowned by the weight of armor, and they all nearly starved to death. Survival was as bleak, and the danger as extreme, as any ambush by local tribes. A classic poccosin experience if you ask me.

Stepping out of the swamp and into the savanna is as abrupt and shocking as stepping out of the Great Smoky Mountains into the not so great tourist trap of Gatlinburg, Tennessee. From dark humid jungle, to open and dry grasslands interspersed with longleaf pines in a park like setting - all within the span of a mere heartbeat.

This is the realm of fire, and species here begin to stretch the limits of imagination in their adaptations to this brutal fact. Consider the plants. The harshness of life in the longleaf pine savannas has tweaked and molded many into insect eating monsters. Several species of pitcher plants, for instance, can be seen with a cursory glance across the landscape – each with their own unique way in which to lure in unsuspecting insects to their sweet smelling, yet toxic brew, of digestive enzymes. In all, there are 17 different species of carnivorous plants here, including the Venus flytrap - an evolutionary rock star in this savage garden.

Trying not to roll an already bum ankle in the thick tussocks of wiregrass that so characterizes this habitat, I take note of the shocking array of life here. For a land that routinely undergoes a scorched earth policy, the botanical diversity is extraordinary. Several different species of orchids can be found blooming across this grassland right now. Spreading pogonia, grass pink, and a variety of different Spiranthes give the impression of some sort of grandiose Jackson Pollock painting with random explosions of vibrant colors splattered and tossed and sprinkled with abstract expression over the otherwise monochromatic green hue of the savanna in the spring.

This place drips with biological diversity. But it does so on a scale far smaller than what most tend to notice. We only see the large and the charismatic these days, as if the sheer size of a thing is the only way to compete for our ever-shrinking attention spans. But it’s the smaller majority that is, well, the majority.

Some 12,000 years ago, a comet exploded over top of the Laurentide Ice Sheet round about where the Great Lakes are today. The ice sheet was nearly 2 miles high and when the comet exploded, shrapnel from the ice was sent hurling for thousands of miles. The North American landscape bears countless scars from this event. But nowhere is this more evident than here along the coastal plain of North Carolina.

This was the event that drove species such as sabretooth cats and wooly mammoths extinct in North America. It wiped out the American cheetah, the American lion, short faced bears, and dire wolves. Before this event, America was filled to the brim with what we call super predators today. The place would have made the plains of Africa seem pretty tame. And then it didn’t.

Today, we call this this the Pleistocene Extinctions. And I am inside of one such impact crater.

It’s not hard to find something unique to photograph in a place like this. We won’t even get into the fact that a nesting colony of endangered red cockaded woodpeckers is just off stage right from where I’m standing – something like 37 different species of vertebrates depend upon this bird’s presence here to even live in this environment.

I’m after the predatory botanicals myself. The insectivorous, the carnivorous. I’ve suffered from a lifetime of fascination with these things. 

And so, I find myself hugging the edges of two worlds that could not be more antithetical. On one side of me is a world dictated by fire. It’s dry. It’s hot. More Africa than North Carolina. Life here is sparse. The pine savannah is a wide-open grassland interspersed with towering longleaf pines every 50 feet or so. Biting flies swarm about you. On the other side of me, is a dense bog that ebbs and flows into denser swamp and then back to bog again. Mosquitoes. Mud. Joseph Conrad. And all that.

But it’s the strip of landscape that lies between these two habitats that interests me most. It’s the convergence of these two worlds, the overlap of fire and water, where suddenly the biodiversity explodes into a bewildering display of evolutionary marvels.

It’s called an ecotone – though the name is not exclusive to this particular situation. Anywhere you have two different habitat types that butt up against each other, you have an ecotone – a strip of landscape where the habitats converge and overlap ever so slightly. It is here, within this overlap, that species diversity is at its highest. And it is here where you will find some of the odder sorts that live in an ecosystem.

Though I may have threaded my way into this place by means of a Land Rover along a winding two track jeep trail composed of nothing more than deep white sand scraped out along the rim of these impact craters, the ecotones are no place for such heavy-footed travel. And so, I left the truck behind in the savannah and carry a large backpack full of gear as I explore.

This is macro territory and so my kit is made up of the following: Nikon Z9, Z6II, 15mm macro, 60mm macro, 105mm macro, 150mm macro, 200mm macro, 24-70mm wide angle zoom, an array of extension tubes that allow me to focus closer with the wide angle zoom, specialized sliders, flash bracket, 2 Nikon sb700 flash units, a telescoping flash extender, micro softbox, cords, batteries, and a bunch of other randomness. There is even a light stand strapped to my pack.

Of the lenses I am carrying, I could take just one of these and make do. But of the flash equipment, well this is really the indispensable part of the equation that I am unwilling to ever compromise on.

You see, flash is a critical part of my photography. And this isn’t just about macro photography either. This is mammals, birds, and even landscapes at times. If the essence of photography is light, being able to wield flash means that you have the means of taking control of the most important part of photography.

Despite how important flash is in so many different situations, let me start talking about this stuff with other photographers and chances are that most everyone’s eyes will begin to glaze over. It would be about like trying to explain tax laws to me. Of all the many aspects of photography, flash is by far the one theme that causes the most confusion, the most frustration, and even anxiety for many.

It should never be this way.

Flash is not difficult to master. The problem is just understanding the basic fundamentals of using flash. Sticking it on the hot shoe of your camera and simply firing away at your subject is, more often than not, going to produce disastrous results. It would be about like turning on your camera and shooting away in manual exposure without ever so much as looking at what your settings are, what your light meter says, or the histogram. And yet, this is most people’s experience with flash.

Before me lies one of the most incredible displays of carnivorous plants in the world. Don’t take this statement lightly. It’s not hyperbolic. This little strip of the North Carolina coastal plain plays home to more species of carnivorous plants than any place on the planet.

Unfortunately, this fact isn’t lost to plant poachers. Species such as the Venus flytrap are endangered. This wee monster is only found within an 80-mile radius of the city of Wilmington, North Carolina – and nowhere else. Though you can buy flytraps everywhere from grocery stores to Walmart, wild poaching is a major issue. These little plants may only fetch a couple dollars from wholesale buyers, but in an economically depressed region those couple of dollars add up fast when you dig up and sell off a thousand of them in a week’s time.

My prime objective today, however, is far more ubiquitous. The pitcher plant is a tall and slender species with a specialized leaf that is rolled into a large vertical funnel. Above the funnel is something of a lid that is meant to keep too much rain from collecting inside – which would cause it to fall over from the weight. Though some rainwater does collect inside of these plants, this species actually secretes its own liquid into the bottom of the pitcher which is filled with digestive enzymes. Lured in by the promise of water and / or the aroma, anything that falls into this digestive brew is then slowly broken down and the plant absorbs the nutrients. It’s a fabulous adaptation to this environment where nutrients are scarce, and life has been forced to adapt laterally in order to survive here.

As singularly beautiful and fascinating as these pitcher plants are, my interest in them today has more to do with the symbiotic relationship that they develop with other denizens of this savage garden. These little bug and water collectors haven’t gone unnoticed by other species. And in times of drought, such as the situation the coastal plain is in at the moment, the pitcher plant offers up its very own microclimate and chance for survival to anyone who has figured out how to exploit it – such as frogs.

I like frogs. Really, I like all amphibians, but frogs especially. And as the extinction rates of these creatures continues to far outpace that of any other species on Earth right now (it’s estimated that 40% of all species of amphibians are currently threatened with extinction), I find myself turning my lens towards these little guys more and more.

Certain species of frogs that live throughout the poccosin and pine savannah complex are a few of those species who have learned to take advantage of the pitcher plants in their neighborhood. Finding a pitcher plant is about like stumbling upon a porch light that is left on all night. For a frog, if you sit there long enough, the bugs will simply come to you. And so, species such as the pine barrens and pine woods treefrog will back itself down into the tube of the pitcher plant and wait for dinner to be served.

Thanks to the digestive liquid below, these pitcher plants also create a humid environment inside of their tube as the water steadily evaporates into the air. Let the rains fail, and this tiny little bit of moisture inside of the pitcher plant can quite literally save the lives of the frogs here as they take shelter from the drought inside.

At first glance, it might seem as though the frog is the only one benefiting here. Technically speaking, the frogs are what we might call parasites in this regard. They plug up the tube, and lap up every bug that comes their way while robbing the pitcher plant of any and all food. But frogs and pitcher plants have been doing this dance together for a very long time.

The biggest problem with digesting an insect for a pitcher plant, is getting through its tough exoskeleton. This takes work. It takes time. Bugs can languish away in the bottom of these plants for weeks as the enzymatic process slowly breaks everything down. And this is where the frog comes into play.

When a frog or another predator captures an insect then eats and digests it, what comes out the other end is exactly what the pitcher plant wants. This is quite literally fertilizer. It’s the nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium (amongst other things) that are the nutrients all plants need to sustain life. Though it may seem like the frog is parasitizing the pitcher plants resources by gobbling up everything that comes its way, it is in fact aiding the pitcher plant in the digestive process.

The frog does not need the pitcher plant to survive. Nor does the pitcher plant need the frog to survive. Both species are perfectly capable of doing all of this on their own. But when they come together, there is a synergy created from their efforts in which both species benefit exponentially.

Man, I love this stuff.

When it comes to photographing the smaller majority of the world, flash is an indispensable tool. Working with subjects on this scale, we are able to do the very things that we just cannot get away with animals such as grizzly bears and owls – and that is control the light. Good luck marching out into the sage brush to set up a large soft box 3 feet away from a grizzly bear. But with a frog, for instance, this is entirely possible.

None of this is to say that we cannot use flash on other animals. It’s just that when it comes to working with larger subjects, our approach is completely different.

You see, in nature photography we can more or less distill everything down to two types of flash photography: fill flash and flash as the primary source of light.

One of the biggest challenges to learning how to use flash in the wild is simply understanding when, why, and how these two different forms of flash photography are used. Out here in the pine savannahs and poccosin swamps, I might find myself using either of these techniques or even both at the same time. But with the larger and more charismatic megafauna of the world, we are limited only to fill flash.

Before we can go any further with this though, we need to actually define a few things about these different types of flash setups.

We use fill flash when we need to add just a touch of light to our subject in order to help balance out the lighting ratio between the background and the subject itself. In essence, this is used to help keep things relatively evenly illuminated in our composition. Often times we will find a subject such as bird that happens to be slightly darker than the background. If you flip this lighting scenario around, that is to say you have a bright subject against a dark background, the results can be fantastic. However, when the subject is in shade and the background illuminated, the results are underwhelming to say the least. Yet, this is nature photography – which means that we are not in control of all the variables. And so, in this type of situation, you may consider adding fill flash to “fill in” the shadows on the subject.

Using flash as the primary source of light is completely different. When we decide to do this, we are making a decision to take full control over the light that our camera is recording. This is not to say that the only light the camera will see comes from flash units. However, it does mean that this will be used as the primary means of lighting our subjects – even though we may use natural light to our benefit as well in these situations.

At first glance it would seem as though using the flash as our primary source of light would always be the go-to strategy. The essence of photography is light – right? Thus, why not take full control of all the light and make everything easier on ourselves?

The problem with using flash as the primary source of light is that you have to figure out some way in which to position the flash off axis from the camera itself. This means that the burst of light from the flash cannot be coming from the same direction as the camera. There are a few creative concepts that can be achieved by breaking this rule of thumb, but as you are starting out with using flash in the wild, it’s best to let this be one of those cardinal rules you never break.

If the flash itself cannot come from the same direction as my camera, that means I need a way to set up my flash unit, or units, someplace else. If you have ever been involved in a professional portrait shoot, you may recall the use of light stands on the sides of you, or the model, with umbrellas or soft boxes attached for instance. This is exactly why the photographer used such setups – so they can control all of the light, so they can use their flash as the primary lighting. With consenting people, this is an easy way to do things. But with wildlife, you may find it a bit more difficult to do.

This is why when it comes to larger subjects, we tend to only use some form of fill flash. But with smaller subjects, such as the frogs I am out searching for, we can get our flash or flashes off axis from our cameras very easily with the use of a few simple accessories that allow us to work like a portrait photographer while still keeping everything physically connected together and functioning as a single rig.

Much like every aspect of photography we can think of, there are many different ways of achieving a similar goal. Other photographers may have different setups that they prefer to use for specific reasons. For me, however, my setup is one that I have been dialing in for years now to meet my specific needs and tastes as an artist.

To start with, we need a flash bracket in order to get our flash off of the camera itself. Many of you reading this may already be familiar with the concept of a flash bracket – especially if you are a bird photographer. Hands down the most widely used version of this is made by Wimberly and the whole things functions to simply lift the flash a few inches higher than the camera itself. This type of flash bracket, however, is ONLY suited to fill flash. Why? Because even though it raises the flash up above the lens, you have no control as to where the flash is placed and you are still “on axis” with the camera. For fill flash, this is OK – for the most part. But the whole thing is far too limiting for my tastes.

I travel a lot for my photography and quite often weight and space are a consideration for me – even though I prefer to check my luggage in the belly of planes inside of Pelican Cases. What this means is that I prefer to use equipment that can play double duty for me. I don’t want to have to carry two different types of flash brackets down to Panama with me so I can use fill flash on birds and have a macro setup as well. Instead, I want one flash bracket to rule them all. And this is why I am in love with Really Right Stuffs flash bracket system. It offers me maximum versatility.