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Empowering Conservation Through Photography (cont.)

© Jack Dykinga Loading...

© Jack Dykinga

D3X, PC-E Micro NIKKOR 85mm f/2.8D, 1/4 second, f/17, ISO 100, manual exposure, Matrix metering.

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"Landscape photography is the most demanding in terms of acuity," Jack says. "It's the one form of photography where you're really bolted to the ground, on a tripod, and you're concentrating on composition and the resolution within that composition is paramount."

A favorite technique involves setting up his D3X in the vertical orientation and tilting one of the PC lenses along the vertical plane to create foreground-to-background sharpness. "Then I use the shift mechanism to shift the lens, side to side, and take a series of pictures, maybe five or six, almost like I'm panning the area to get a very large capture area." Later, using the photo merge function of Photoshop, he stitches the images together.

Not every image he makes with the PC lenses are stitched panoramas—"I'm sort of drawn to those three for their focal lengths and their incredible sharpness"—and on his list of other "gem NIKKORs" are the 24-70mm f/2.8G ED, the VR 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G IF-ED and the VR 200-400mm f/4G IF-ED.

"With the D3X I'm doing things I've never done before," Jack says. "The first thing you struggle with in large format landscape photography is the focal length; you never have enough glass. I'd look at ridgelines of mountain ranges way out there on the horizon and see all that detail and contrast and I couldn't do anything about it. Now I've got a 200-400mm zoom lens with a 1.4 extender [AF-S Teleconverter TC-14E II] and I can get big files with all kinds of detail. And with my Nikons I can be much more responsive."

Which is vital, considering what it takes to gather the evidence during one of iLCP's RAVEs. "It's tough work," he says, "but there's an aspect of it that's all about giving something back."

There's no underestimating that factor. All of the photographers involved with iLCP have spent their lives photographing the beauty and wonder of the natural world, and they are not willing to turn away when what is so important to them is threatened.


You can learn about the iLCP at the group's website, www.ilcp.com. Jack's website, at www.dykinga.com, features an extensive collection of his images.