Interest in nature became a career in photography

Published 9:00 pm Friday, March 17, 2006

Professional nature photographer John Gerlach has traveled the world in search of images, shooting in winter weather, on crisp fall mornings, and on warm, sunny days in places as diverse as Kenya and British Columbia.

Gerlach also knows that familiar locations closer to home offer surprisingly good opportunities. This week he and his wife, Barbara Gerlach, were photographing wood ducks in Lithia Park in Ashland, Ore., before giving a workshop today in Portland.

The Gerlachs offer a one-day workshop March 25 in Everett (information: 208-652-4444).

“Professionals and advanced amateurs know that almost every bird and animal are easy to photograph somewhere in this country. This is the best place we have found to photograph wood ducks in the whole country.”

The Lithia Park wood ducks were so close that he and Barbara could get full-frame shots with 200mm lenses.

“You don’t have to travel a great deal, especially in the Northwest. Urban areas are good places to photograph lots of parks and animals used to people.”

Gerlach has been teaching for years, and has been part of the transition from film to digital images.

“With a digital camera, photographers receive feedback right away and they learn quickly and have fun with photography.”

The main difficulty for folks making the transition was the tendency to judge exposure by the brightness of the image in the back of the camera, he said.

“It has to be the histogram that tells you. The image doesn’t tell you anything.”

Nearly every digital camera displays a histogram, a graph showing the brightness levels in a scene. This helps determine the exposure quality of the shot.

“On the other hand, digital photographers learn much quicker than with film and get better results; they shoot more.”

The pros do, too; John and Barbara shot 1,200 duck images Wednesday morning. He’s already tossed out all but 50 of his shots.

“Digital shooters, because they can shoot with almost no cost, do tend to machine gun and don’t learn the fundamentals. You should still want the very best image possible,” John Gerlach said.

Gerlach has been making a living through photography for 30 years, starting a few years after receiving his degree in wildlife biology. He worked for the state of Michigan, but after a year decided he was not suited for being an employee.

“I decided to combine photography with my interest in nature and wildlife.”

He headed West, taking photographs and writing stories about photography on a typewriter at picnic tables.

“I was poor then. I lived under the stars and traveled in an old pickup for six years, but I got better and better and better.”

He met Barbara in one of his photography workshops.

“She’s a very good photographer, very poetic photographer, very artistic,” he said. “I’m pretty technical.”

His technical abilities allow him to analyze new cameras, apply the new technology to field work, write about it in photography magazines, and explain camera gear to students.

The Gerlachs didn’t leap on the digital bandwagon from the beginning.

“I watched carefully. I really enjoy teaching and when I knew my clientele were going digital, I knew I had to go. But I also had to sell to magazines and calendars, and I needed quality images,” John Gerlach said.

Camera improvements at the high-end professional camera level rapidly reached a point where most publishers accepted digital.

“Two years ago I jumped to digital; my wife went digital a year earlier.”

Now some publishers want only digital images. It looks like they’ll have to take some more photography trips. You won’t hear them complaining.

Columnist Sharon Wootton can be reached at 360-468-3964 or www.songandword.com.