Cascadian Farm Organic Goodness

Hi. I’m Craig Weakley, Director of Organic Agriculture for Cascadian Farm. When I’m not at work, I enjoy spending time outdoors engaged in one of my favorite hobbies: nature photography. Nature has been an inspiration to me since I was a kid. My camera allows me to capture images of nature’s beauty that I can share with family & friends. I’m happy to share some of my favorite photos with you and hope they will help to connect you with nature’s beauty and inspire you to take action to protect wildlife and wild places.

The Skagit Valley is the temporary winter home to thousands of migratory snow geese. The mellow evening light allows the camera to capture the beauty of these birds.

Mount Baker is the icon of the North Cascades. I took this photo from the Sauk Mountain Trail - one of my favorite summer hikes (the trailhead is within a few miles of the Cascadian Home Farm).

Old Faithful at Yellowstone National Park. Bet you haven't seen it from this perspective... late evening backlighting produced this stunning image.

I love the beauty of the National Parks of America's southwest! Here's a sunset shot of Park Avenue in Arches National Park.

Oregon's Historic Columbia River Highway provides access to several beautiful waterfalls. The short hike (2 miles) to Triple Falls gets you away from the crowds & provides many opportunities for great photographs.

In the spring, the Skagit Valley explodes with the incredible colors of the tulip fields. Early morning provides the soft light and still air needed for great flower photography!

Experiencing the fall elk rut in Rocky Mountain National Park is a real treat! I captured this photo at sunrise in the West Horseshoe Park area.

Here's a male California Quail - the photo was taken close to home in the Anacortes Community Forest Lands. Quail are difficult to photograph because of their constant, quick motion - the top notch is always moving!

My favorite wildlife photography subjects are the Orcas of the Salish Sea (Puget Sound). This shot captures the beauty & grace of Lulu's (L53) breach in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

Katmai National Park (Alaska) is an amazing place to photograph wild grizzly bears! It was fun watching these two cubs wrestling with a salmon (caught for them by their mom) on top of the waterfall in the Brooks River.

How does nature inspire you?

Using photography to help children appreciate our earth

Behind the lens, the world becomes a canvas – and all we have to do is find ways to capture the scenes. As photographers, we become more observant, more curious, more contemplative.

Teaching our children to look at the world with the eye of an artist helps them to look deeper and become more appreciate of the beauty – and damage – before them.

Are your children asking to borrow your camera? Are they grabbing your iPhone to click a picture?

Capitalizing on your child’s budding interest in taking photos can be a wonderful opportunity to help them learn more about nature – and of course introduce them to the incredible world of photography!

Where to start?

It may seem daunting – how does one teach a child the skill of photography, especially if you aren’t already a photographer?

Fortunately we live in a digital age – and photography has never been more accessible!

Here are 3 tips to get your child started taking photos:

1. Provide your child with a user-friendly digital camera that has an auto setting, and is equipped with a zoom lens.

You can choose a point and shoot camera or even an entry-level DSLR for a child who is responsible and old enough to take care of it. DSLRs also have auto settings, so a basic, light weight DSLR is can actually be a reasonable option for an older child if your budget allows. 

I recommend providing a camera with a zoom lens. This will give your child the added creative freedom and excitement of changing their focal length and working on composition. (Of course, using a fixed lens is another creative challenge that they will want to tackle one day too!)

I remember the first camera my dad gave me when I was a teenager. It was a high quality point and shoot with a zoom lens. I fell in love with photography with that camera on a trip to Prince Edward Island. The beautiful landscape was perfect for me to practice composing shots. When my dad saw my photos and praised me for my good eye, it meant the world to me.

Several years later, when he died, I inherited his Canon EOS SLR and lenses. It was before the Digital SLRs were available and so I “cut my teeth” on that film SLR, shooting my son’s first three years of life with my dad’s camera.

2. Teach your child the basics – and no worries, the internet can help!

The art and skill of photography takes a lifetime to learn. But everyone needs to start somewhere! It is amazing how a few basic concepts can radically improve anybody’s photos – even a child’s!

Teaching your child photography tips like “The Rule of Thirds,” getting in close, and checking their backgrounds, can empower them and help them to surprise you with their shots!

Digital Photography School.com has a great post about lessons to teach your child about digital photography. It also links to more of their posts that explain the concepts in greater detail which is perfect for an older child or teenager or for you to read and teach them. http://www.digital-photography-school.com/13-lessons-to-teach-your-child-about-digital-photography   

3. Let them shoot – and then review the shots with them later

The best way for all of us to improve as photographers is through trial and error. We need to shoot hundreds of shots to get a few that turn out the way we want them to. And the more we experiment, the more we learn.

So encourage your child to get shooting. Remind them that everything from a flower, to an old bridge, to a dirty shoe can be their subject. They are the storytellers and they can tell whatever stories they want to.

Take your child out into nature, on hikes or to parks – wherever you can find for your child to explore with their camera.

When it is time to download the photos and choose what to print, if your child wants you to, sit down with them and talk about the photos together. Listen to your child about what they were trying to achieve and offer encouragement and feedback.

Then celebrate their shots by allowing them to print their favorite photos and make albums for themselves and family members, or even print photo books online.

I am so grateful that my father provided me with cameras and passed on his love of photography to me.

When I have my camera with me I am never bored. Looking at the world through the lens allows me to slow down and look for beauty – and I always can find it somewhere. My camera helps me appreciate, even more, the world around me.

YOUR TURN: Do your children like to take photos? Has it been hard for you to “hand over the camera?” If you are a photographer, how old were you when you first picked up a camera?

Photos by Janice Croze

I have a friend who laments the popularity of digital photography. He even has handed his DSLR over to his wife and returned to his film SLR. He loves to tease me and go on “digital-is-evil” rants with me, just to get me going.

And while I understand his point that film holds value that digital cannot replace, I cannot imagine going back to my film SLR. (Although I do hold onto it for sentimental value as it belonged to my late father.) In fact, going to a digital SLR camera was perhaps one of the greenest (and easiest) choices I have ever made.

You see, when I had my first child, my father had recently passed away and I had inherited one of his Canon SLR film cameras. I loved photography, but new very little and I had not used an SLR before. I remember staring at my new son and thinking, “Well, I guess I better learn how to take beautiful photos of you.”

So I picked up that SLR and started learning.

In the first year of my son’s life I spent approximately $2,000 on developing film. And that wasn’t even on enlargements, etc. That was just to develop them, check out how I had done, learn from my mistakes and then toss out the tons of garbage shots.

As everyone who has ever photographed children knows, you can’t take one or two shots and hope you got the perfect picture. No, each photography session included hundreds of photos to get the ones you want.

And, I actually often developed with duplicates or triplicates, (I know – shudder!) But it cost a dollar to add in the extra set and a heck of a lot more than that to get copies of any that happened to be good enough to share with the grandparents. So I was throwing hundreds of copies in the garbage AND I still have boxes and boxes of unsorted photos in my basement!

When my son Jackson was about two years old Canon introduced the first digital Rebel. I was desperate to get it, but I waited, hesitant to buy the first one out of the gate.

But not much later, my twin sister’s first baby was due and her husband bought the brand new Nikon D70. He had barely ever taken a photo in his life, so the arrangement was pretty much that I got to use the camera and take all the photos I could of their daughter. Worked for me!

And so my digital photography life began.

I now shoot with a Canon 50D (I had to return to Canon – it feels like home) and my DSLR is my most precious possession. (When my Canon 40D was stolen on the way to Disney World I was completely lost without it. I still have nightmares about losing my cameras.)

As I download thousands of photos on to hard drives, I am so grateful that not only am I saving thousands of dollars not developing film, but I am not tossing thousands of printed photos in the garbage.

Yes, my DSLR might just be my “greenest” (and my favorite) part of my day. If only all “green” choices were as easy to make!