I am a documentary photographer living in Newport Beach, California. I was born (1963) and raised in Pasadena, California. I earned a BFA in photography at Arizona State University in 1986. In 1991 I authored my first book, “Santa Anita”, using my photographs to showcase the famous California racetrack. My best-known series is a documentation of the Pasadena Police Department in the 1980’s during the height of the rock cocaine era. To date I have exhibited work in over 50 exhibitions and have prints in several prominent permanent collections including the Center for Creative Photography and the Fogg Museum at Harvard.
Photography Equipment: For this image I used a Nikon D500 with an 18-300mm DX lens. The exposure was f/5.6 at 1/160th of a second with an ISO of 3200.
The primary equipment I use for most of my work today is a Nikon D850 with a 24-120mm lens along with a Sony RX100 VII and I recently added a Nikon Z6 II with a 24-120mm Z mount lens for low light images. I also have film cameras and other digital equipment. The D500 and 18-300 lens has been one of the most versatile combinations that I have ever owned. Even though it is a DX sensor I have captured sharp images with this combination that I have been able to make beautiful large prints from the image files.
Background about this Image. You might not expect it with a Newport Beach, California address but I have two pine trees and a 100’ tall Star Pine on my property. I have lived here for 29 years and a couple of years I started hearing owls in the neighborhood, eventually they started sitting on the top of my Star Pine. They come and go and had been gone for several months before returing this week. It is after midnight as I am typing this, and I just heard an owl across the street. I have used a 400mm lens with a flash on the D850 to photograph the owl in our tree before and have even photographed two owls in the tree at the same time. With most of my owl photographs I am standing within 6 feet of my front door. The reason the submitted image was made with the D500 was I was in a hurry to get the image with the alignment of the rising moon in the background with the owl and that camera was ready to go, giving me the equivalent of a 450mm lens that was sharp and a sensor that is good enough to handle the challenging lighting conditions. If I had time to photograph the same thing today I would use the Z6 II and my 400mm lens. The Z6II has the least amount of noise in low light conditions than any other camera body that I have seen.
