Images From Tanzania – 2013

Our November 2013 photo safari to Tanzania was an incredible success. The wildlife was stunning and the landscapes were equally compelling. I can’t wait to go back again next year. Here are a bunch of images from this year’s adventure. More stories to come!

re

 

New Orlando and San Diego Nikonians Academy Workshops

Check out our new Nikonians Academy workshops in Orlando/Kissimmee, Florida, scheduled for January 9th – 12th, 2014. Also, I have upcoming workshops in San Diego, California this December 12 – 15, 2013 that still have seats available. Our workshops are some of the best in the business and I guarantee that you’ll learn more than you expected to. These classes are known for their hands-on learning style and small class size. Check them out. Hope to see you there.

Orlando/Kissimme Schedule:

Jan 9 – Master the D800/D4 In Depth 1
Jan 10 – Master the D600/D7000/D7100 In Depth 1
Jan 11 – Master Adobe Lightroom In Depth 1
Jan 12 – Master Adobe Lightroom In Depth 2

San Diego Schedule:

Dec 12 – Master the Nikon D600, D7000 & D7100 In Depth 1
Dec 13 – Master Nikon iTTL Wireless Flash, CLS
Dec 14 – Master Adobe Lightroom In Depth 1
Dec 15 – Master Adobe Lightroom In Depth 2

Sign Up Now Here:

www.nikoniansacademy.com

Photos from Iceland Photo Adventure

Our group of 10 travelers has just returned from an amazing journey to Iceland. This trip was in conjunction with the Nikonians Academy and Tim Vollmer Photography. Here are a bunch of pics from our adventure.

 

New Mike Hagen Workshops Added

We’ve just posted new Nikonians Academy workshops for Seattle and San Diego this September and December as well as a brand-new trip to Tanzania scheduled for November 4 – 11, 2014. Our classroom topics in Seattle and San Diego will include Mastering the Nikon D600/D7100/D7000, Mastering Lightroom 4, and Masering the Nikon iTTL Wireless Flash, CLS.

For the existing trips in 2013, we have two seats remaining for our July 2013 photo adventure to Iceland, and four seats remaining for our November 2013 photo safari to Tanzania.

Be sure to check back soon as we’ll be adding 2014 excursions to Iceland and Galapagos in the coming weeks.

Follow this link to sign up: www.nikoniansacademy.com.

 

 

Happy Photography Workshop Customer

Every once in a while I have to share some kudos from people who’ve attended our workshops. This last week I was in San Diego running four days of Nikonians Academy classes. Two of the days were on Mastering the Nikon D800 and Nikon D4 cameras. Charlie Silver attended both classes, then went out to a wildlife sanctuary near by to photograph some bids. Here’s a copy of an email he sent with pics from his experience.

———

Hi Mike,

I took the 2 D800 workshops with you last week in San Diego. While the sessions were amazingly informative and it was a challenge to process so much important information, I appreciated your patience with the group and your ability to move us along while dealing with MANY individual concerns. Not an easy task. My camera was fairly new to me and I had not yet established any custom profiles nor explored its many features. It had felt somewhat intimidating to get “off” the automated options and shoot in a more precise manner.

I felt encouraged by my experience in the classroom and had scheduled a day of shooting on Saturday before flying home. Karen (classmate) recommended that I explore the Bolsa Chica Estuary in Huntington Beach as I was driving north to meet friends in Irvine. I got there about 1 pm, an admittedly crappy time to shoot as the light was quite harsh. Nonetheless, as the birds were in the water at a fair distance, I hauled out my 70-200 f2.8 (having stupidly left my 200-400 f4 at home) bundled it with a 1.7 teleconverter and, using the one custom profile we established in class, quickly switched to DX format to gain the 1.5 crop factor. Rear focussing was seamless and the 21 point focussing really worked. Of the several hundred shots I took, only a few were slightly out of focus, either because the bird’s eye was so small in the viewfinder that I missed a little, or when some birds took flight unexpectedly and I, not the camera, couldn’t catch up with them. Basically, the focus tracking worked amazingly well. The exposures were relatively good, but the bright white of the egrets did require some compensation in Aperture. I felt much more comfortable with the camera and could really concentrate on observing and composing. Amazingly, my wife almost seemed to appreciate my slideshow, although she’s gotten pretty good at faking it over the years.

You really have wet my appetite for enthusiastic shooting. Thanks so much. I hope that I get to travel and learn from you in Africa, if not next November, then sometime soon thereafter.

Charlie Silver

 

Four New Nikon D800 Features I Like

Here’s a quick video showing off four new Nikon D800 features that I like. Enjoy!

Four New Nikon D800 Features I Like from Mike Hagen on Vimeo.

Nikon 1 V1 Images from Tanzania

I was fortunate enough to be able to take a Nikon 1 V1 camera with me to Tanzania this November to test out. B&H Photo and Video provided the test camera that included the Nikon 1 V1, 10mm f2.8, 10-30mm zoom and 30-110mm zoom. I’m currently writing an in-depth summary of my experience with the camera that should be published within the next week or so. In the mean time, I thought I’d post a few pics from this ingenious new camera system. Enjoy!

November in Tanzania

Just back from a few weeks in Tanzania with the Nikonians Academy. Our 11 intrepid explorers had an incredible journey through Northern Tanzania. We took lots of great images of the usual suspects (lion, hyena, cheetah, etc.), but I wanted to show a bit of a different side of Tanzania with this post. Tanzania has an amazing diversity of landscapes and animals so it is always my goal to shoot images I’ve never captured before. Here are a few:

Under Tanzanian Skies

I love the sky in Tanzania.  The daily afternoon thunderstorms almost alway guarantee some type of dynamic light that begs to be captured by your camera. It is easy to point your camera towards the heavens, but the challenge is to find a way to juxtapose wildlife or an austere landscape underneath those dramatic skies. This combination of amazing sky and wildlife/landscape is one of my reoccurring photo goals each time I travel to Tanzania.

Here are some attempts from our last photo safari with the Nikonians Academy.

The Nikonian eZine #49

Nikonians just published eZine #49. We included a few of my images to illustrate our Nikoknians Academy trips, adventures and workshops around the world.

http://www.niknians.org/ezine/eZine49.pdf