Noppadol Paothong's Blog

I’ve been pursing this book project for more than 8 years.  My main goal is to make this book reality, so this species can receive attention and support that they deserve and desperately need.

I strongly believe this book is going to be unique and will be the first in-depth photo book on these birds.

Currently the book is in the working progress, and I’m looking for sponsors who can help with the cost of publishing it.

Here is a mock-up book to get my ideas across.
(Please be patient. Sometimes it takes some time to load.)

After waiting a number of days for dense fogs to clear up, I decided to go check my favorite wetland area not too far from my house.  I was cruising around the area searching for waterfowls without much expectation, when I spotted a River Otter sitting on the ice.  However, before I could even pull my gear out of bag, it went underwater.

I’ve always dreamed of photographing River Otters in winter.  So, missing an opportunity to photograph a River Otter on the ice was very frustrating.  After kicking myself for not being prepared, I sat quietly inside my vehicle hoping to get a glimpse of it again.

Hours passed, and I finally spot not just one, but five River Otters.

I covered my car window in camouflage and sat quietly inside the vehicle.  The otters approached with caution but later presumed their daily activities.  After years of photographing wildlife, my gut told me that this was going to be once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

My choice of lens was Canon 800mm f/5.6 IS and 1.4X teleconverter, which allowed me to get a lot closer than 600mm or 500mm.  Besides, 800mm lens is very sharp even when used with 1.4X teleconverter.  River Otters have high contrast with darker coat, so overcast light didn’t hurt.  I over-exposed by +1 ½ stop over a camera normal recommendation.

Several times the Otters came so close as it caught a fish underwater and brought to the ice to feed on.   The light wasn’t great, but it was a unique opportunity to capture a close-up of River Otters hunting, socializing, and playing in front of me all morning.

Actually it was a dream come true in the most unexpected bad weather.

Snow and cold weather bring some of the most unique wildlife photography opportunities, since most of wildlife have to concentrate their efforts on searching for food and enduring the severe weather.  As eager as I am to photograph them, I am very careful in approaching them during these harsh times.  I believe no image is worth putting wellbeing of my subjects in danger.

During the heavy snowstorm in early January, I located a spot in the field nearby my house where many birds feed on leftover gains.  I sat my photo blind across the area.  I didn’t have to wait long before more than 20 Northern Cardinals and a few dozens of various birds showed up.

The temperature was in minus with wind chill as low as -30F.  All birds puffed up their feathers to keep the heat inside, which made them to appear bigger than they actually are.  That’s why I always prefer photographing birds in early spring and winter.

When photographing something less than 18% gray especially snow, I overexpose by +1/2 to +1 depend on the subject.  For a Northern Cardinal, I normally give +3/4 exposure, so it won’t blow too much highlight of the bird’s bright red feathers.

I’ve wanted to photograph Mink ever since it had snuck up on me about 2 years ago.  It literally ran between my feet while I was sitting in my hiding spot.  Not only it was rare to spot a wild Mink, but also it was highly unlikely that this shy animal ran right towards me.

A funny thing is that it always seems to have a mischievous grin on its face.

So, one day when a biologist informed me a spot where a Mink had been regularly spotted, I was quite excited about the chance to photograph them.

Many times (or most of times) successful capturing of wildlife images depend on how much you know about the species.  So I did my research trying to learn about their eating habits, living environments, etc. as much as possible.

The American Mink (Neovison vison) is a North American member of the Mustelidae family found in Canada and most of the United States.  It is related to Weasels, and Otters.  Just like their cousin, Otters, Minks are particularly fond of crayfish and spend most of time in the water searching for food.

As with any other wildlife, it wasn’t easy to photograph a Mink.  It moved quite fast and constantly between water and land.  In addition, its small body was well blended with the environment, which made it difficult to keep track while looking through my camera viewfinder.

After spending some time watching how Mink moved around, I found a temporary burrow or a tunnel, where it would carry the food in and out.  So, I sat and waited.  As I predicted, the Mink immerged from its burrow with surprise expression of its face.   I only had few seconds to capture this before it retreated back inside.

With such a shy species like Mink, my choice of lens is a Canon 600mm with a 1..4X teleconverter.  I prefer ISO setting at 800, which gives me a shutter speed at 1/250 sec for the early morning light to stop any movement of the Mink.   If the light improves, I may change it to 400 ISO.  Most new digital cameras now have a good capability of high ISO.

Leveling tripod and camera

For months I’ve been focusing on panorama photography.  I have discovered several problems and solutions to solve them.

First, leveling tripod and camera was one of the biggest problems. A conventional way is to level the tripod perfectly with a leveler spirit (assume that you have a ball head in your tripod), and then level the camera.  The whole process is painstakingly slow and could take several minutes.  Now, imagine after all those troubles, you just discovered the height of the camera is too low and you need to move to a different angle.  Believe me, I’d been there and done that many times – it is frustrating and time-consuming.

The solution?  I found that Really Right Stuff PCL-1 Panning Clamp makes my panorama photography a lot easier and allows me to concentrate on taking good images.  All I have to do is to find the right angle and set my tripod and level the panning camp with the built-in level spirit).

Camera mounted on Really Right Stuff panning head PL-1

The problem of shooting on a perfectly level platform is that many times angle of view can be very restricted to the lens you use.

For example, let’s say I want to include more sky or some of fog below the mountain horizon.  I can’t do it because I would no longer have a perfect level, and therefore the degree of my view starts to shift upward or downward, which makes it difficult if not impossible to stitch images later.

You might argue that I could use a wide-angle lens and crop the image later after merging images.  The problem with that method is that you will get a lot of distortion and have to do a lot of cropping later, which reduces the resolution of the image.

Whenever I shoot panorama, I prefer between 50mm-200mm range lens to avoid distortion and to shoot it vertically, so I will have more images to merge together, which will produce a higher resolution panorama.

Camera with Cannon TS-E 45mm tilt and shift lens

Both Nikon and Canon have a “Tilt & Shift” lens from 17mm (Canon only) – 90mm – Canon: TS-E lens (Tilt & Shift for EOS),  Nikon: PC-E (Perspective Control Lens).  It is a unique lens that allows a photographer to correct point of view by tilting and swinging the front of the lens, or by rotating and moving it up or down.

I found a Canon 45mm TS-E to be a perfect lens for my panorama photography.  I could shift the lens upward and downward (+ / – 11 degree) without having to move the camera up or down.  Therefore, I could include more sky or foreground below with a correct perspective.

McWay Cove Fall (Big Sur, California) is a good example.  The place where I was standing was way too high to have a perfect horizon in panorama.  If I were to shoot with a conventional lens, I would not be able to include waterfall below.  With the tilt & shift lens, I was able to include the waterfall and the sky as in the image.  One thing to be careful is to take a exposure reading (in manual exposure) before tilting or shifting the lens, or you will get an incorrect exposure due to lens barrel shifting the light to the camera sensor/film.

After three cloudy days, I didn’t expect much from my fourth day in California.  Good landscape photography highly depends on one source-light, sun, and without it, even beautiful Pacific Ocean can be just flat and dull.

On the fourth day after patiently waiting all afternoon, finally my patience and persistence paid off.  As the sun was almost ready to set on the horizon, clouds started getting thin for sun to peek and reflect on the ocean and the sky above.

This was the perfect condition for landscape photography.  I had one camera mounted on Canon 45mm TS-E (tilt & shift lens) for shooting panorama and the other camera with Canon 17-40mm wide-angle lens.

For the one with wide-angle lens, I decided to put a polarizer filter to cut the glare of the ocean and add more contrast to the cloud.  In addition, I also used a Singh-Ray graduated filter (-2 stops) to correct exposure of the sky.  A duct tape comes in handy when shooting wild-angle lens, which already has a polarizer filter attached.

Right before the sun disappeared, I shot a panorama, which consisted of 14 images.  I shifted my lens (tilt & shift lens) downward 10 degree to get more of the ocean and McWay Cove Fall.  It took 4 minutes to shoot all 14 images.  The final result was stunning.  After printing the final image to 68 x 22 inches print and looking at the details of the print, it feels like I am there again.

One thing you have to be really careful with a long exposure like this is moving objects such as waves.  Each wave moves differently, which could create a zagged image later.  But if the exposure is long enough, it could create havoc when merging all images together.

Unfortunately, you can’t really do that with wildlife.  That’s why I’m wishing for a digital panorama camera at a reasonable price.  It will not only allow me to take a panorama with wildlife, but also save me a whole lot of time from stitching images together.

In the past, I’d used Lowe Pro Photo Tracker AW backpack.  It is a good bag, but these days I have a lot more gears to carry.  Nowadays  I often use a smaller Lowe Pro fanny bag for a shorter lens with other accessories.

Lowe Pro Photo Tracker AW (left) & Think Tank Airport Security (right)

I was introduced to Think Tank Company in 2007, which claims to make a bag “by photographers for photographers.”  So far I found most of their bags extremely well-designed and well thought-out.

The Think Tank Airport Security roller bag is big enough to fit my 600mm f/4 or 500mm f/4 (even 800mm f/5.6), two camera bodies, several other lenses and accessories, such as flash, extra batteries, battery pack, etc.  This bag is so deep that I can fit both my EF 70-200mm f/2.8 and EF 180mm f/3.5 macro lenses straight down.  Moreover, my Mac Book Pro 15 inches laptop fits well in the stretchable front pocket.

Think Tank Airport Security with 600mm along with other lenses & accessories

The Think Tank Airport Security also comes with a backpack strap, but I won’t recommend anyone to use that, considering its size and weight.

The bag has combination locks and cables, so I can safely leave this bag locked inside my vehicle (most of time).   The way I do it is to wire the cable around the vehicle frame and lock it with a combination lock (TSA lock).

The quality of the bag is a first class material and guarantee for life unconditional.  I won’t hesitate to recommend this bag to anyone.  In fact, many photographers who I introduced it to now love it too.

When my art director at the Missouri Department of Conservation asked me several years ago if I ever have a chance to photograph black bears in Missouri, please do so.  I told myself, “what a one-in-a million chance that would be”

Black bears had been considered a rare or extirpated species in Missouri in the past.  However, due to the reintroduction in Arkansas years ago, sightings of black bears have become quite regular especially around the Ozark area.

About a month ago I was informed of a family of black bears in the southwest Missouri area.  According to the landowner, a sow weights between 300-350 pounds and her three yearlings have been wondering around in his property in the past year.  I was excited about the news, but I wasn’t that optimistic, considering that I’ve never seen one in Missouri and considering how shy black bears usually are.

I set up my photo blind in a place where the landowner spotted the bears often.  I’ve never photographed bears from a blind before (where there is nothing to block between the bear and me) – so it was quite frightening.

I could only imagine what would happen if the bear decided to “investigate” this plastic structure.

In short, for the following weeks I’ve spent much of my time photographing this bear family.

I have had few incidents that made me feel nervous.  For instance, one morning after feeding on a field of berry, the sow decided to come little too closer to my photo blind.

And of course, being a photographer, I was just focusing on capturing her images until I realized that her face was starting to fill my viewfinder.  You can imagine how frighting that moment must have been.

I grabbed my pepper spray and was getting ready to pick up my tripod to defend myself.  Fortunately, she decided to stop walking towards me and turned back to the woods with her cubs.

I’ve never dreamed of photographing a black bear in Missouri, let alone spending weeks with a family of bear.  The sow definitely weighted 350 pounds or more.  Having photographed big bears in the west and Canada, I know a 300-350 pounds bear is considered quite big and healthy.

So, yes, we have black bears in Missouri.

How many?  No one knows for sure, but black bear sightings are increasing every year.  Missouri Dept. of Conservation is planning to study black bears and hope to have a real estimate number soon.

From left: Cannon EF 400mm f/4 DO IS, Cannon EF 500mm f/4 IS, Cannon EF 600mm f/4 IS, and Canon EF 800mm f/5.6 IS

When Canon announced a new flagship super telephoto, EF 800mm f/5.6 image stabilizer lens, I thought, “who would buy such a lens?”  With a price tag set at over $10,000, it seemed to me that Canon was just shooting themselves on the foot!

Canon has many wonderful telephoto lenses such as EF 500mm f/4 and EF 600mm f/4.  Both are known to work well with a 1.4x teleconverter.  When attached a 1.4x teleconverter, a 600mm f/4 becomes a 840mm f/5.6.  So to me it seemed that Canon 800mm lens was unnecessary.

Well, not so, and here are some of the reasons.

Mid summer I had a chance to evaluate this new super telephoto lens.  My first impression was the weight!  I had expected the lens to weight as much as my 600mm f/4, but it wasn’t.  The lens weights about 10 pounds, which is between my 500mm f/4 and 600mm f/4.  With the lens hood attached, this lens is actually shorter than a 600mm f/4.  It also has more curves and is slimmer than any Canon lenses.

I also love the new focusing ring.  It is wider and easy to operate.  Image stabilizer is also improved by 4 stops compared to 2 stops on other super telephoto lenses.  This comes in handy many times especially when 1.4x or 2x teleconverter is used with this lens.

While both Canon 500mm and 600mm lens are very sharp and produce a good result, this new Canon EF 800mm lens is scarily sharp!  It is by far the sharpest telephoto lens I’ve ever used.

The lens arrived in time for me to test it with a Painted Bunting that I had been photographing in the past few months.  Even with 1.4x teleconverter attached, the images were a lot sharper than 600mm lens.  The lens also did very well with 2x, but the camera viewfinder became so dim that made it harder to focus.