San Diego Magazine Cover Photo: Coronado Bay Bridge and Downtown
The February 2012 cover of San Diego Magazine is my aerial photo of the San Diego Coronado Bay Bridge, with the bay and downtown in the background. The boat wake shaped like a heart (”heart” = “reasons to love San Diego”, get it?) was the work of the cover illustrator. This photograph was shot on a fun flight I made with Alaska photographer Ron Niebrugge a few years ago. We had clear air and warm sunlight to make our photographs of San Diego. Thanks for looking!
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Pacific Harbor Seal, La Jolla, California
Cute Harbor Seal Photo, La Jolla, California.
This is the third of three images I had that were Highly Commended in this year’s Windland Smith Rice photography competition.*
This is one of the famous or, depending on your political position, notorious Pacific harbor seals (Phoca vitulina richardsi) the reside at the Children’s Pool in La Jolla, California. Some people really hate these seals and feel their presence on the beach has robbed people of the use of small cove and want to see the seals gone, forcefully or otherwise. Others love the seals and don’t want to see them bothered at all. I don’t really care either way, I just like to shoot photos of them. I’ve been photographing (and diving with) these seals since their colony first began forming in the ’90s. There are certain times of day when the light angles and water movement really work well here for photography. On this day, one of the more charismatic seals was moving about at the water’s edge and paused for a moment with its flippers raised, looking at me. I got off a series of photos and this was the most appealing of the group.
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| Pacific harbor seal, an sand at the edge of the sea. Image ID: 26315 Species: Pacific harbor seal, Phoca vitulina richardsi Location: La Jolla, California, USA |
* I was fortunate to have three of my photographs receive Highly Honored recognition in this years Windland Smith Rice photography competition sponsored by Nature’s Best Photography. The first was a photo of photographer Garry McCarthy working in the Virgin River Narrows in Zion National Park. The second was a composition of the Giants Marbles in Joshua Tree National Park. 21,000 images were entered in the competition, 500 made it to the final round of judging and 131 were winners or highly honored and appeared in the most recent issue of Nature’s Best Photography magazine. I am crossing my fingers that one of mine will also be featured as part of the competition’s six-month exhibition next year at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C.
Giants Marbles at Dusk, Joshua Tree National Park, California
Giant’s Marbles, Joshua Tree National Park, California.
This is the second of three images I had that were Highly Commended in this year’s Windland Smith Rice photography competition.*
I made this photograph in Joshua Tree National Park just as the sun was setting, at a series of granite boulders that is quite popular (being near one of the campgrounds). The sun had already left the first of the Giant’s Marbles in shadow in front of me, but the warm light was still kissing to the topmost Marble perched atop the rocks. These nearly spherical marbles are natural anchors for any landscape photo of this boulder group, and indeed one sees various compositions of these rocks in many landscape photographers’ portfolios. This is my rendition. Thanks for looking!
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| Boulders and sunset in Joshua Tree National Park. The warm sunlight gently lights unusual boulder formations at Jumbo Rocks in Joshua Tree National Park, California. Image ID: 26720 Location: Joshua Tree National Park, California, USA |
* I was fortunate to have three of my photographs receive Highly Honored recognition in this years Windland Smith Rice photography competition sponsored by Nature’s Best Photography. The first was a photo of photographer Garry McCarthy working in the Virgin River Narrows in Zion National Park. . 21,000 images were entered in the competition, 500 made it to the final round of judging and 131 were winners or highly honored and appeared in the most recent issue of Nature’s Best Photography magazine. I am crossing my fingers that one of mine will also be featured as part of the competition’s six-month exhibition next year at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C.
Photographer in the Virgin River Narrows, Zion National Park, Utah
Photographer in the Virgin River Narrows, Zion National Park, Utah
I was fortunate to have three of my photographs receive Highly Honored recognition in this years Windland Smith Rice photography competition sponsored by Nature’s Best Photography. 21,000 images were entered in the competition, 500 made it to the final round of judging and 131 were winners or highly honored and appeared in the most recent issue of Nature’s Best Photography magazine. I am crossing my fingers that one of mine will also be featured as part of the competition’s six-month exhibition next year at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C.. Here is the first of the three, taken in a bend of the Virgin River Narrows in Zion National Park. This is an utterly fantastic hike with spectacular photography possibilities at every turn, and a place to which I am anxious to return in 2012. My buddy Garry McCarthy serves as an “anchor” to lend some perspective to the scene and create a little tension from the corner of the composition across to the beautiful cottonwoods in the Narrows.
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| Photographer in the Virgin River Narrows, with flowing water, autumn cottonwood trees and towering red sandstone cliffs. Image ID: 26106 Location: Virgin River Narrows, Zion National Park, Utah, USA |
Whytake.Net
I received an invitation from Alister Benn recently to take a look at, and contribute to, Whytake.net. This new website and social networking tool founded by Benn and Rafael Rojas is designed to bring nature photographers together and help them share their work with the world. The design of Whytake.net is simple, clean and very appealing to me, and the quality of work appearing on Whytake.net from contributing photographers is impressive. Take a look today! Click the image below to see my portfolio on Whytake.net but be certain to check out the INSPIRE and EXPLORE links at the top of the page to see the work of other great photographers.
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International Conservation Photography Awards 2010
The 2010 occasion of the International Conservation Photography Awards was held recently in Seattle, with winners being announced June 19 and an exhibit of many of images running until September 6 at The Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture at the University of Washington. You can view online photos of the evening reception (which to my regret I was unable to attend) as well as winning and honorably-mentioned images from the 2010 ICP Awards competition. Be sure to check out Stuart Westmorland’s stunning sailfish photograph among the small group of distinguished awards! I was fortunate enough to have one of the earliest “keepers” I ever shot underwater be given an honorable mention in the competition, a study of kelp fronds photographed about 20 years ago in the kelp forest at San Clemente Island:
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| Kelp frond showing pneumatocysts. Image ID: 00627 Species: Giant kelp, Macrocystis pyrifera Location: San Clemente Island, California, USA |
About the International Conservation Photography Awards: Known for his passionate advocacy of the environment, nature photographer Art Wolfe created a conservation-themed photo contest in 1997 as “an event for the advancement of photography as a unique medium capable of bringing awareness and preservation to our environment through art.” The 2010 International Conservation Photography Awards is a continuation of Art Wolfe’s vision and has become a biennial (every two years) international event. Each year the ICP Awards strives to increase its reach and influence to photographers from around the world as well as to diverse audiences who will be inspired by the work. More than just a competition, 75+ of the juried photographs will be exhibited in 2010 via a new partnership with The Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, a development that continues to raise the bar for this program. ICP Awards organizers are also exploring ways to travel the exhibit in the interim year before the next program in 2012 – please let us know if you have ideas about venues that would be interested in hosting the exhibit during the 2011 year. The ICP Awards are open to all photographers worldwide.
Nature’s Best Photography Cover Shot
The cover image of the current issue of Nature’s Best Photography is my photograph of an Adelie penguin taken earlier this year in Antarctica:
Adelie Penguin, Antarctica, Nature's Best Photography Spring/Summer 2010. Click to see more images from Antarctica
The photo also appears in the interior of the issue, since it was fortunate to be given an honorable mention in this years Ocean Views photography contest.
Adelie Penguins, Antarctica, Nature's Best Photography Ocean Views 2010
This image was taken at Paulet Island on the Antarctic Peninsula, made with a Canon 5D Mark II camera and 24-105mm f/4 lens (at 24mm), from a zodiac as we were idle alongside an iceberg. If you want to see what the situation was like when I took this shot — and you should, since it will make you want to visit Antarctica yourself! — see my blog post about this encounter from earlier this year. Several Adelie penguins (Pygoscelis adeliae) walked to the edge of an berg to get a good look at us as we cruised around Paulet Island at sunset, and allowed me to rattle off a series of “close/wide” images of them. Honestly, while the encounter was one of the most special moments of the trip for me, Adelie penguins are so numerous and inquisitive that I think situations like this — and photos like the above — are probably rather common in Antarctica. It is one of the reasons I intend to return as soon as I can.
Next: Paulet Island, Antarctic Peninsula, Antarctica
Previous: Pack Ice at the Edge of the Weddell Sea
Trip Index: Cheesemans Antarctica, Falklands and South Georgia
All “Southern Ocean” entries
Hammerhead Shark Cover Photo, Physiological and Biochemical Zoology
The latest issue of Physiological and Biochemical Zoology uses a hammerhead shark photo of mine on the cover to accompany the article Temporal Resolution and Spectral Sensitivity of the Visual System of Three Coastal Shark Species from Different Light Environments (McComb, Frank, Hueter and Kajiura). This is at least the fourth hammerhead shark photo of mine that has been used for the cover of a peer-reviewed scientific journal, previous examples being the cover of Zoology, the cover of the Journal of Morphology and the cover of Ecology Letters. I’ve had a couple of other marine photos on academic journal covers as well, including the cover of Nature. The folks at such brainiac journals have much better minds than I, so if they like my photos I must be doing ok!
Hammerhead shark cover photo, Physiological and Biochemical Zoology, March/April 2010
See lots more scalloped hammerhead photos (Sphyrna lewini). The above photograph was taken underwater at Wolf Island in the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador, one of the finest places in the world to see scalloped hammerhead sharks.
National Wildlife Photo Contest Winner
The National Wildlife photo contest is the only one of the “big three”** in which I have not had any luck — until now. After taking a hiatus from contests for about 8 years, something possessed me to enter this year. Lo-and-behold the image below caught the judges’ notice and won first place in the professional division of “Connecting People and Nature”, and is featured along with 17 other super images in the December/January 2010 issue of National Wildlife magazine.
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| Mesa Arch, Utah. An exuberant hiker greets the dawning sun from atop Mesa Arch. Image ID: 18036 Location: Island in the Sky, Canyonlands National Park, Utah, USA  View this Image in Google Earth! |
This is a self portrait. I was alone this morning at Mesa Arch in Canyonlands National Park. It was a cold but clear January morning with some snow on the ground. I used a Canon 1Ds Mark II camera and 15mm fisheye lens. I put the camera on timer, quickly walked up on the arch, raised my hands the way I do when my daughter scores a goal, and click. The view from atop the arch, looking down the wall to the canyon below, was exhilirating.
**The “big three” photo contests, at least for wildlife, outdoor and nature photographers, are the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, the Nature’s Best photography contest and the National Wildlife photo contest. For ocean-oriented photographers, Nature’s Best also sponsors the Ocean Views contest.
Note: Performed by a trained professional stunt photographer. Do not try this at home. Photography is an inherently dangerous and frustrating pursuit. You can and will die photographing landscapes.
Photoshelter’s Featured Photographers for September 2009
Cool: I was selected as one of Photoshelter’s Featured Photographers for September 2009. For those of you that aren’t photographers or don’t yet know about Photoshelter: Photoshelter is the leading photo-hosting service for pro and serious amateur photographers. I’ve had a personal website for many years, and it does well as far as visibility and search engine ranking goes. But I finally decided Photoshelter has some features I’ll just never figure out how to add to my own site. Plus Photoshelter has some very good search engine presence, in fact it is one of the features they stress most highly. So a few months ago I started an account with them and have slowly been adding my natural history stock photography to my Photoshelter site.
I just learned that I am one of Photoshelter’s 20 Featured Photographers for September 2009. Photoshelter choose one of my wave photos to add to the Featured Photographer slideshow. Check out all of the images, there is some real talent represented in this group and I am glad to be included. I like Brian Cleary’s in-your-face photo of a dog biting a toy the best:
Hammerhead Shark Photo on the cover of Zoology
One of my hammerhead shark photos was chosen for the cover of Zoology to accompany the article “Response of juvenile scalloped hammerhead sharks to electric stimuli” by Stephen Kajiura and Timothy Fitzgerald.
Hammerhead shark photo copyright Phillip Colla / Oceanlight.com
See lots more scalloped hammerhead photos (Sphyrna lewini).
Great White Shark Photo on National Geographic’s NG Channel
The National Geographic Channel recently produced the television documentary “Great White Odyssey”, and choose one of my great white shark photos (Carcharodon carcharias) to use as the main background to the web page publicizing the program. Here is a link to NG Channel’s page for the Great White Odyssey. The original image was made in September 2008 at Guadalupe Island, Mexico aboard my favorite dive and adventure boat, the Horizon out of San Diego.
I was fortunate to have another credit for the National Geographic Society (in the magazine) recently.
Background image by Phillip Colla, great white shark at Guadalupe Island, Mexico
Blue Whale Photo in National Geographic Magazine
I am very fortunate to have one of my blue whale photos (Balaenoptera musculus) appear in the March 2009 issue of National Geographic Magazine. It is an image of a whale’s dorsal ridge and fluke, taken underwater, in the “Inside Geographic” section near the end of the magazine which describes an upcoming NG television special about blue whales and the researchers who study them. It is related to the excellent article on blue whales appearing earlier in the same issue, written by Kenneth Brower and beautifully photographed by the world’s foremost whale photographer, Flip Nicklin.
Blue whale, National Geographic Magazine, March 2009, copyright Phillip Colla
Marine Mammal Commission 2007 Annual Report to Congress
Each year, the Marine Mammal Commission prepares its annual report to the United States Congress. For the 2007 edition of the report, which is the most recent, all of the photos on the front and back cover are mine.
When the report was presented at a special Joint Session of Congress, the entire Senate burst into immediate thundering applause while several top-ranking members of the House were seen high-fivin’ in the aisles and Pelosi fist-bumped Obama!
OK, that last part is a lie.
Seriously though, this is one of the most solemn, and inside the beltway at least, one of the most noteworthy publication credits I have had.
 Cover of Marine Mammal Commission 2007 Annual Report to Congress |
Pictured on the cover are three images of blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus) and a single image of a Northern fur seal (Callorhinus ursinus).
The Coronados Islands, Their History and Environment
Yesterday a copy of the new book, The Coronados Islands, Their History and Environment (Las Islas Coronados, una Historia y un Entorno Natural) arrived in our mailbox. It is very well done, the best treatment of the Coronado Islands (Las Islas Coronados) I have yet seen. Although I was contacted by the editors of the book for images related to the ecology and animal life at the Coronado Islands a couple of years ago, yesterday was the first time I had a chance to actually see the publication, which is printed in both Spanish and English with high quality printing and binding.
The book has some history. In 2003, Chevron proposed installing a $650 million liquified natural gas receiving terminal near the Coronado Islands, which are only about 8.5 miles from the Tijuana coast and just a 1-2 hour boat ride from San Diego. The book is derived from a large body of data that was collected during the permit process and includes interesting material about the history and ecology of the islands along with many photographs. Chevron received approval for the project but ultimately withdrew for economic reasons. Fortunately, the book was still produced and is now a publicly accessible distillation of all that research data. It is being distributed at no cost to many educational institutions in Mexico.
Check out the cover. The top photo showing all three islands was made by Alfonso Caraveo Castro, who contributed most of the images in the book. The middle photo, of fishes swimming in a kelp forest, and bottom photo, of a huge blue whale raising its fluke out of the water before diving, are mine.
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Tidelines Calendar 2008
This year’s edition of the Tidelines calendar is especially nice because one of our photos appears on the cover (duh). Can you guess where it was shot? Hint: it rhymes with “ledge” and lots of bones are broken there. Order your Tidelines calendar now so you too can time all your ocean functions to take maximum advantage of the tide. By the way, a big swell arrives tomorrow, if you have a Tidelines calendar on your wall you’ll know when to go.
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Surfline : West Coast Wonderland
View this blog entry in Google EarthLatitude: 33° 5' 11.82" N, Longitude: 117° 18' 54.34" W, Coord: 33.086617°, -117.3151°
Filed under: Surf, Tear Sheets on 12/18/2006
Surfline picked up my shot of Carson Smith getting barreled at Ponto for their latest slide show about the swell that hit last week.
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| Carson Smith, Ponto, South Carlsbad, morning surf. Ponto, Carlsbad, California, USA. Image: 17828 Location: Ponto, Carlsbad, California, USA View this Image in Google Earth! |
Blue Whale Photo in BBC Wildlife
BBC Wildlife is the finest wildlife magazine in the UK and Europe, and one in which I have enjoyed seeing my images occasionally appear. The November 2006 issue has a nice article about blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus), authored by Anna McKibbin, leading with a two-page spread of a shot I took some years ago while flying over the ocean in a small plane.
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See also:
blue whale photos, Balaenoptera musculus photos, blue whale aerial photos.
Surfline : Rocktober
View this blog entry in Google EarthLatitude: 33° 4' 59.37" N, Longitude: 117° 18' 47.09" W, Coord: 33.083161°, -117.31308°
Filed under: Surf, Tear Sheets on 11/2/2006
Surfline picked up a shot of mine for today’s ROCKTOBER slideshow, check this page out.
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| Breaking wave, Ponto, South Carlsbad. Ponto, Carlsbad, California, USA. Image: 17679 Location: Ponto, Carlsbad, California, USA View this Image in Google Earth! |
Wonders of America Stamps — Redwood Photo
One of our redwood tree photos was used as reference for the redwood tree stamp appearing as part of the United States Postal Service’s new commemorative issue Wonders of America :: Land of Superlatives. Released on May 27th, 2006, this stamp pane features 40 natural and man-made wonders of the United States. These remarkable places, plants, animals, and structures were selected from every region of the country. The stamp art is by Lonnie Busch, who illustrated the 50 GREETINGS FROM AMERICA stamps in 2002. On the front of each stamp, in large letters, are words that describe the superlative nature of a particular place or thing. Smaller type gives the name or location of the featured wonder. Text on the back of each stamp provides relevant statistics and other interesting information.
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Updated: February 8, 2012
