Henry Gilbey
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Thanks for taking a look at the photos. Writing this from a hotel in Molgolia, just about to head off on a rafting/camping river trip in the middle of nowhere for photos/fishing – will post some stuff when I am back home in the UK. Somewhat of an extreme opposite to the jungles of Bolivia……
Will – email me through my website and I can put you in touch with the people who organise these trips. The best is not cheap, but I have never seen anything like it.
If I do not get back to your email for a while, it is because I am off to Mongolia on a photo job at the end of the week and won’t be back for a bit – will post some stuff up when I get back.
Adam – most kind, hope all is well, keep seeing some awesome stuff by you out there. In a perfect world, I would have loved to shoot the hell out of the fishing like I did, and then been able to pull away and simply go off looking for “other stuff” to photograph. There is a world of it out there. But work is work, and I had limited time to nail what I could on the fishing front………and keep my eyes open for any other opportunities.
Some very cool stuff, bottom two especially “jump” at me off the screen. I love the shallow depth of field, it really works in my mind. Nice one.
That tarpon fishing from a float tube looks insane – guessing it might be in Nicaragua ? I have heard a little bit about some big tarpon that are trapped (and thrive) in some inland jungle lakes. At least I think that is where it was.
The tarpon photographer sure deserves a load of credit for making it look so impressive.
Zach – yes, we went at what is meant to be a really good time, and it was. First river was tough though, most likley due to a bit of cold weather about just before we got there, but then it went bananas. The fishing can get better and better as more and more fish move up, so later on in the year could even be a lot
The locals bow hunting for fish was just so incredible to watch – they make bending that bow look so easy. Sometimes they will draw back, wait for a while, and then not even let the arrow go. I tried bending one of their bows back and could hardly even do it properly, let alone hold perfectly still and wait.
I spoke a lot about the pacu fishing with the guides there, and the feeling is that the ones they are seeing are all the same species – and you can see a lot of them at times. They say they are the Amazon pacu, “pirapitinga”. I will admit to knowing nothing about these fish before I went, other than they existed in these rivers. I had no idea that there were so many pacu around though, and it seems that these jungle rivers in Bolivia are even more special than I had originally thought. Dorado to 40lb taken so far, weighed.
The guides said that there is another species of pacu that is a slightly different shape, grows a lot bigger, and is even more powerful than these ones in Bolivia – they reckon the best shot is in some really wild parts of Brazil. Sounds interesting……..
Part of me also worried about the potential forthcoming sport fishing pressure on these fish, but the heavy rains each year literally flush the rivers out. All fish move way, way downstream and then start reappearing again after the waters clear. Huge shoals of the local fish “sabalo” all over the place which the dorado feed on – sometimes attacking them like shoals of jacks. Never seen so many fish in a river in fact.
Could not agree more – this latest issue is outstanding, going to spend a bit of time really trawling through it properly when I get a moment. There is some proper talent on display in there. Just how good can fishing look ?
My thanks again, I hugely appreciate all kinds of feedback, ideas etc… A trip as special as this does not come along very often at all. Bolivia was as special as the first time I was lucky enough to go and shoot the outer atolls in the Seychelles when we did three of them, and walked on some flats we guessed might never have seen any other anglers…….
It makes me feel really good about the world that there are still a bunch of places out there that really are pristine, unspoilt and full of awesome fish. And I love the fact that fishermen are then so intent on keeping these places as pristine and as wild as possible.
Shooting the fishing in Bolivia was incredible, but I really, really loved getting a few brief chances to photograph some of the fantastic local people, and sometimes in a drop of good light as well.
I would love to see that piece in Fishing Wild – such a good looking magazine, the editor seems like such a nice guy, emailed back and forth a bit a while ago.
And thanks hugely for the kind comments. Words can’t really describe how special that Bolivia trip was. Had to pinch myself sometimes.
That is some propery cool stuff, nice one !! Must have been awesome to be at the top of one of those machines……..camera shake would have been a problem for me with all the adrenaline pumping through, I get that when fishing goes off sometimes.
Are we all mad ?
I was on my way to a job in Cornwall (south west England) the other day, running a bit late, and I “saw” some very cool shots of wind turbines with mist swirling, sun rising etc, but because I was behind time I could not stop and try nailing them. I hate running late !!
Yes, I am running LR 2.4 here – much faster than the first generation LR 1.0 that I played with when it first came out and discarded straight away because it was so slow. I got a free copy from Adobe because I was one of the people who had bought RawShooter Premium before Adobe bought it – if only all RAW processors were as fast as RSP was !!! I upgraded to LR 2.4 the other day after messing around with the 30 day trial for a bit.
Since I am running PCs here, perhaps Windows 7 in 64 bit will give LR a boost in the near future ? My wife has Vista on her laptop and I am not going near it.
I guess we all get used to a particular way of working and then tend to stick with it – but I am always looking at anything that can speed my workflow up. Always interested to hear how other people are doing it………
Yes, point taken, but my workflow is all about trying to get images in and out as fast as possible – I know Lightroom in theory does the lot, but it does not do the lot at much speed, in fact I find it “hanging” a fair amount. Same as with ACR – I really like the RAW processing “engines” within these bits of software, but I don’t like asking these programmes to do my editing, keywording, sharpening etc. I also have various actions in Photoshop that I simply can not replicate in Lightroom. Perhaps in time this programme will evolve to be the only thing I use, but not at the moment.
Granted, Lightroom I am sure works just fine with a lower volume of photos.
Photo Mechanic works so well and fast because it is only trying to be one thing – an editing programme. Many photographers might well not need a specialist programme such as this, but I find myself dealing a lot of the time with large numbers of images/big files, and I can’t find anything more efficient than Photo Mechanic – yet………
Photo Mechanic is purely an editing/viewing programme, and as such, it is lightening fast at doing this (it will not process RAW files) – if it helps, my current workflow in my home office is this :
1. Import RAW files into Photo Mechanic from my Compact Flash cards
2. View, edit, keyword and then rename RAW files to suit my own filing system – very easy and quick in Photo Mechanic (I do the first two steps only when I am away on a trip, using a small laptop, and then back up to portable external hard drives every night)
3. Select the exact RAW files I want to process into JPEGs in Photo Mechanic and move them to a separate folder
4. Import this separate folder into Lightroom – I have started using this over ACR now as I now see that I can simply import the file I want to, work with it, and then get rid of it in Lightroom but of course have it backed up my way on hard drives etc. (I still hate that Lightroom always wants to try and create a database for me, but I have learnt how to live with this !!)
5. Do my RAW processing in Lightroom, usually with simple presets I have created for different lighting situations etc. – the reason I do as much as I can in Photo Mechanic is because I find it much faster than Lightroom for editing work – all I want Lightroom to do is to process my RAW files as well as possible – I find it much faster to ask LR to work with the minimal number of RAW files as possible.
6. Export my RAW files out of Lightroom (into a folder I have created) as unsharpened RGB JPEGs at 100% and 300dpi
7. Run batch commands via Photoshop to presharp and sharpen the JPEGs (plus any other “stuff” to make them dance) – Photoshop is great for dustspotting etc., but I am starting to use Lightroom more for this as well
8. Run batch commands on the finished JPEGs to create small, low res sRGB JPEGs that I use for samples for clients, my website, blog etc.
9. Then save and back everything up – RAW files, JPEGs, small JPEGsOver the years it has become a way of working that is really fast and efficient for me. Hope it might be of some use…..
This probably won’t help you much, but it’s easy to do in Photo Mechanic – a very good, out and out photo editing programme. I select the ones I want to add keywords to etc., and then press CTRL+I, fill out the form and click OK. All added to the files I have selected. Keywording my images takes very little time.
As far as I know, images are not degraded by adding Keywords etc. Anybody else know more ?
John is right – getting something whatever the conditions is vital. Clients sitting in the relative warmth of an office don’t really want to hear about rain/dark skies/lack of fish/rubbish anglers (!!)/duff info etc..
Consistently producing material that works for the publication(s) is a large part of what it’s about.
And yes, something like Midcurrent is done for exposure. Nice to be asked of course, the kind of thing that can’t hurt to do – and especially when the asking is done so nicely.
Could not agree more – the world could collapse around me and I would be just fine if I was catching fish like that……
I use SyncBack to run my automatic backups each day, seems to work great, and like Rich says, there are loads of options to make it work for you………
I would be interested to know where technology is going to go with regards to huge capacity storage – filling up increasing numbers of hard drives with back ups etc. is surely one day going to become a real problem as files get larger and larger. As David says, keeping close track of what is on them and not on them is not always that easy, especially as you store more and more data.
For starters, roll on USB 3 – it drives me mad how long it takes to copy large files of images between computers and hard drives etc, especially when Windows XP is having a slow day.
