Birders: The Central Park Effect - Review /  by Todd Henson

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Birders: The Central Park Effect is a beautiful documentary from 2012 by Jeffrey Kimball. It follows a group of people through the seasons as they go out birding in Manhattan's Central Park. The film is split into sections by season, beginning with spring, moving on to summer, autumn, winter, and back again to spring. The people birding are as varied as the birds and their numbers throughout the year also vary as do those of the birds. Some people only bird during the spring migration, when the song birds are moving north. Others bird the entire year, enjoying the variety of different species inhabiting the park during different seasons.

There are a number of birds who inhabit the park the entire year, making it their home during every season. These are the common birds, such as Northern Cardinals. When asked if he ever gets tired of looking at a cardinal, Lloyd Spitalnik replied: “If you get tired of looking at the common birds you might as well just pack it in. I mean, these birds are gorgeous.”

The birds who don’t stay in Central Park year round are called migrants. They migrate north in the spring, moving from tropical locales to the Canadian provinces where they can find an abundant food supply. They go there to breed and raise young. Dr. John Fitzpatrick, the Director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology describes how millions of migrants move north during the night. At dawn thousands of them will stop over in Central Park, a perfect wooded location with plenty of food, allowing them to eat and rest during the day.

Central Park is not just a perfect location to stop, in many ways it’s one of the few available to them given the sprawling cities. The birds need a location with trees and greenery. They fly over the cities and notice Central Park, so they land and spend the day. Scientists call this the Central Park Effect.

Interestingly, Central Park is an entirely artificially created park. It is made to look natural, with small wooded areas and streams flowing through the park. But the streams can be turned on and off as needed. The park was created not just as a refuge for birds and other wildlife, but also as a location for people to congregate, to enjoy the benefits of these types of parks. There is a balance between nature and people.

During the summer the number of species seen in Central Park drops as the migrants have moved further north leaving the species that live in the park year round. As the number of bird species drop so, too, does the number of birders. But there are those who come to Central Park all year. There is still plenty to see, plenty of birds to watch and study.

“It’s a joy to watch the light go on in somebody’s eyes when they see a bird and know what they’re looking at. And they kinda get it.”
— Starr Saphir, who led bird walks in Central Park until her death from cancer in 2013

But when autumn arrives so, too, do migrants, this time heading south to their wintering grounds. And, as always, there are birders to watch and study them. During winter some species from colder northern climates travel to Central Park to spend the winter in the slightly warmer environment.

Winter is also a time when birders demonstrate themselves to be citizen scientists. Each December large numbers of birders get together for the annual Christmas Bird Count, where they attempt to count all the birds in a given area during a specific time period. They gather all their counts together and collate their findings. Over time they begin to see patterns emerge, how some species continue to do well, but many others do not. Over time they are seeing the overall number of birds dropping, a potentially troubling sign for the future.

I really enjoyed this film. I didn’t consider myself a birder, but I found myself smiling throughout the documentary, and I found the names of birds popping into my head as they appeared on screen.  I thought: I’m not a birder, I don’t keep lists. Then I realized I do actually keep lists right here on this website in my Field Notes sections, where I have lists of some of the species I’ve photographed along with the photos and notes about the species. I guess I am a birder after all.

This documentary will likely appeal to you if you are a birder or just a bird lover. I enjoyed it not just for the talk and videos of birds in the park, but also the little snippets from the lives of several of the birders who frequent the park. Birders come from all walks of life, and vary as much as the birds do. But they all share the passion, the addiction, of getting out and watching for these remarkable little creatures.

See below for a preview of Birders: The Central Park Effect:

Birders: The Central Park Effect reveals the extraordinary array of wild birds who grace Manhattan's celebrated patch of green, and the equally colorful New Yorkers who schedule their lives around the rhythms of migration.

If you enjoy Birders: The Central Park Effect you may also enjoy the movie, A Birder’s Guide to Everything, staring Ben Kingsley and several young actors. It was a touching coming-of-age film about a young birder who thinks he’s made an amazing discovery and sets out with some good friends to find proof, while also dealing with a changing family situation as his father remarries.

 

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Facing the Storm - The Story Behind the Image /  by Todd Henson

Facing the Storm, Rocky Mountain National Park (black and white)

Story

Facing the Storm is an image I created while on vacation in Rocky Mountain National Park. The location is the end of the Tundra Communities Trail, which starts at Rock Cut just off Trail Ridge Road. The entire trail is paved and is a one-way in and back trail. The rock formations seen in the image are the end of the trail.

Tundra Communities Trail is a reasonably short trail, only 1 mile round trip to the rock formations and back. And the elevation change is only 200 feet. But I have to admit this trail completely wore me out. I spend most of my time on the east coast at sea level. This trail is at an elevation of over 12000 feet. That’s more than 2 and a quarter miles above sea level. I knew the air was thinner at those elevations, but not having been at them very often I’d forgotten just how much of a difference it makes. I was constantly stopping and catching my breath on the half mile hike up the tundra. This was a reminder I could use a little more exercise in my routine.

It was a beautiful trail surrounded by tundra, with flowers of various kinds blooming here and there. I could have spent far more time here than I did, but I only had one day, so I had to keep moving. I was fortunate the sky was full of interesting cloud formations, and storms could be seen in the distance. Rain was expected in this area, but it held off for the time I was there.

When I had almost reached the end of the trail, I stopped to take in the fantastic view and create a few photographs. I was most drawn to the sky and the storms in the distance. I loved the look of those storms against the rock formations. There were several people on top of the rock formations, and I was ok with that. Sometimes having a person in an image can help create a sense of scale.

Facing the Storm, unprocessed raw color photo, straight out of camera

The unprocessed raw color image gives a good indication of how the scene looked to my eyes. Unprocessed raw images straight out of the camera are often a little flat and this image shows that. It hasn’t yet had the processing applied to it that cameras automatically apply to JPEG images. That’s why we import raw images into software, to allow us to control how the image is processed instead of allowing the camera to do it for us.

I knew I would try converting many of the images I made to black and white, so I was most focused on the light, the texture of the rocks, and the tonal values of the scene and how they would translate to different values of grey. I smiled when the person with the white shirt climbed to the top of the rocks. I knew the white shirt would stand out nicely in a black and white conversion, and I loved how he was facing the direction of the storms. I imagined this lone individual, standing alone on the rocks, facing the storm and contemplating his life. Of course, there were other people on the rocks, but their clothing was darker and wouldn’t stand out quite as much. I’d have to wait and see how the photo looked after converting it to black and white.

After creating a few images I continued my hike to the rock formations, climbed to the top to see the view from there, and then slowly wandered back down to the car. The focus of this story is on this specific scene, but the location has much more to offer. As I mentioned earlier, the tundra can be covered in little flowers depending on the time of year. And I was fortunate on the hike back down to watch and photograph a group of elk walking along the ridge line very near by, close enough to get good images with my 70-200mm lens. Back at the trailhead, just across the road, is a sharp rocky drop off that is home to American pika and yellow-bellied marmots.

This is a location and a hike I highly recommend to anyone visiting Rocky Mountain National Park. The entire park is just stunningly beautiful. It’s difficult to find words to convey just how remarkable this park is. And I was only there for one day. I could have spent weeks wandering through the park. Go visit if you have the opportunity.

Post-Processing

When I finally returned home it was time to open and process the raw images. I was looking for something bold, something that really showed off the texture of the rocks and the foreboding storm in the distance. I had captured the person with the white shirt facing towards the storm, so Facing the Storm seemed an obvious title for the image. I liked having the person standing atop the rocks, giving a little scale, with the winding curve of the trail leading right to the formation he’s standing on.

I usually do all my processing in Lightroom (or Aperture back in the day), but occasionally I will use a plugin package. For this particular image I used Silver Efex Pro from the Google Nik Collection. The collection contains a large number of plugins for a variety of situations, and Google has made the entire collection free, so check it out if you use Lightroom, Photoshop, or Aperture (though Apple has discontinued Aperture). Silver Efex Pro, used for black and white conversions, is my favorite tool from this collection. It contains a number of filters that affect the image in various ways. You can apply multiple filters, and each filter is fully adjustable, giving you endless control over how it affects the image.

Facing the Storm, initial black and white conversion using Silver Efex Pro

I was very pleased with my initial black and white conversion. I was able to capture the texture I’d wanted, and I brought out the drama in the sky. The person on the rock was easy to see with his white shirt (though it is much easier to see him on a larger screen). There were 3 other people on another portion of the rock, but they didn’t stand out quite as much and were secondary to the individual standing alone.

After Silver Efex Pro I took the image back into Lightroom to perform some final processing. I thought the dark cloudless region of sky at the top of the frame was distracting, so I decided to crop the image into a panorama format. After this I dodged and burned (lightened and darkened) portions of the image to bring out more texture in the landscape and to help direct the eye up the trail towards the rock formations. This is something that was often done in the darkroom with film, with one of the masters being Ansel Adams. I’ve been heavily influenced by his work.

One of the final steps was the removal of distracting elements. This has become much easier in the digital darkroom than it would have been in the film darkroom. And there is sometimes controversy surrounding this sort of digital manipulation. If I had created this image as a photojournalist, or to appear in a guidebook, I would have skipped this step. But because my focus here is creating an artistic image I have no problem removing distractions, though I am still very hesitant to add anything to an image. In this case I removed the sign post towards the bottom of the trail.

Facing the Storm, after further processing, dodging and burning, and removing distractions

While writing this post I began to look more closely at the image, and wondered if I might be able to make the message stronger. The title is Facing the Storm, and for me it’s about that single individual in the white shirt standing alone and facing the storm. So I thought removing the other 3 people on the rocks might bring this more into focus, might add that element of being alone in this wide open landscape facing the oncoming storm. And this resulted in the following image. I feel this image best captures my vision of the scene.

Facing the Storm, final version

Below is a slide show of each step. Click on the image to step through each version.

Let me know your thoughts. Would you have processed it differently? I ask myself this question all the time and will occasionally return to an image and refine or reprocess it. Do you ever reprocess your own images?


Photography Prints by Todd Henson

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Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth - Book Review /  by Todd Henson

Front and back cover of Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth

Front and back cover of Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth

This post contains affiliate links and I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links. This is at no extra cost to you.

I watched Pan’s Labyrinth in the theaters the year it came out (2006), and it proved to be my favorite movie that year. I love Guillermo del Toro’s work, and thus far Pan’s Labyrinth has remained my favorite of his movies. The book, Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth: Inside the Creation of a Modern Fairy Tale, by Mark Cotta Vaz and Nick Nunziata, was published in 2016 to mark the 10th anniversary of the movie. I won a copy of this book through a giveaway at the old tor.com (now Reactor), and I’m very pleased I did. This is a beautiful hardcopy book full of all sorts of details about the making of the film, from behind the scene photos, to concept art, set design, pages from notebooks, storyboards, and lots of interesting text to go along with it all. I love the design of this book. It’s full of inserts glued to the pages. It really gives it the feel of a scrap book created during the making of the movie. As with the movie there are so many fascinating and creative visuals to keep the reader’s/viewer’s interest.

Shows a translucent colored Faun overtop the initial sketch.

Shows a translucent colored Faun overtop the initial sketch.

Lifting the translucent insert you can see the initial sketch.

Lifting the translucent insert you can see the initial sketch.

Guillermo del Toro considers Pan’s Labyrinth the second movie in an imagined trilogy. The first movie was The Devil’s Backbone, another great film. It was set in 1939, the final year of the Spanish Civil War, and centered on an orphanage run by a couple who were loyal to the Republican forces. Pan’s Labyrinth is set in 1944 after the Fascists took control of Spain, but continue to battle Republican holdouts. It centers on an old mill with some people secretly aiding the Republicans. And as noted in the book, “in both stories, an innocent child is driven to a foreboding new home (the orphanage in The Devil’s Backbone; the mill in Pan’s Labyrinth), the supernatural manifests itself the first day in daylight and nighttime, and reality and fantasy intertwine.”

“In this film you walk in the shoes of this little girl who is pure, innocent, and sensitive. As she learns, you learn. Even though she’s in the middle of all this horror, once you’re in the mind of a child that has all this imagination and purity of heart anything can happen.”
— Guillermo Navarro, director of photography

These stories touch on real events, but are set in fictional settings. They are not just retellings of history, but are fantasy or horror tales that reveal some of the terrible evils of people, along with the fragility of innocence. Guillermo says that “fantasy is a language that allows us to explain, interpret, and reappropriate reality. It is not an escape and I’m very vehement about that.”

The inset storyboard on the right is actually a small booklet.

The inset storyboard on the right is actually a small booklet.

See the opened storyboard booklet.

See the opened storyboard booklet.

Guillermo drew together an amazing team to make Pan’s Labyrinth, both behind and in front of the camera. The book introduces many of them, such as director of photography Guillermo Navarro, who worked behind the camera on other films with del Toro, production designer Eugenio Caballero, visual effects supervisor Everett Burrell, actor Serge Lopez who plays the cruel Captain Vidal, actor Doug Jones who is covered in prosthetics as the Faun, actress Ivana Baquero who plays the young Ofelia, CafeFX who produces some of the amazing visuals, and many others.

“On this film I learned a lot from Guillermo Navarro about how to light something and how not to light in terms of purposely keeping things in shadow. And Guillermo del Toro basically taught me how to direct.”
— Everett Burrell, visual effects supervisor

I really enjoyed learning about some of the subtle, or not so subtle, concepts or effects used in the film, things I often did not specifically notice, but knowing about them now and re-watching the film adds an extra layer to the experience. For example, the movie has 3 major journeys and they chose to use 3 color hues to represent these journeys. The first journey is reality, the world of Spain, with Ofelia and her mother trying to make a new life for themselves with Captain Vidal, who is in charge of the Fascist forces stationed at the mill. The real world uses blue hues and feels cold. The second journey is when Ofelia is in the fantasy realms, when she is working to complete the tasks given to her by the Faun. This journey uses warm colors. The third, and final, journey is when Ofelia enters the underworld kingdom, and for this they chose red and gold hues. It works so well. This is reminiscent of the green hue used in the movie, The Matrix. Even if you don’t realize how the hues are being used it does affect how the film looks and feels during the scenes that use them. Very powerful. And these are the kinds of things photographers can pick up from watching these sorts of movies. Paying attention to how color is used, how light is manipulated to create the moods and effects throughout a film. There’s much we still image makers can learn from film makers.

The beginning of chapter 5 from the book.

The beginning of chapter 5 from the book.

Showing photos, production sketches, and models.

Showing photos, production sketches, and models.

Towards the end of the book Guillermo del Toro says he wants to finish this Spanish Civil War trilogy soon. He says the third movie will be called 3993 because the movie will open and close on a perfect circle. He mentions how The Devil’s Backbone, Pan’s Labyrinth, and Crimson Peak, also were circular, how something from the beginning of the movie has new meaning as the movie ends. He is very deliberate in how he structures his movies, adding elements and meaning, weaving together fantasy, horror, and reality, and in doing so he entertains, gives small glimpses of history, and perhaps teaches a little about the good and bad of humanity.

“I always believe things happen for the best. Everyone thinks of the director as a dictator, but it’s not that. You know when you have to do it the way you want it. But I think the big difference in being a first-time director, and one who has directed six or ten movies, is that with experience you learn to identify adversity not as adversity, but as opportunity. That distinction makes you much more flexible.”
— Guillermo del Toro
Front and back of Pan's Labyrinth DVD

Front and back of Pan's Labyrinth DVD

Front and back cover of Guillermo del Toro: Cabinet of Curiosities

Front and back cover of Guillermo del Toro: Cabinet of Curiosities

Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth is a great addition to the library of anyone who fell in love with the film and wants to learn more about both the film and those who created it. And if you’re a fan of Guillermo del Toro’s work you might also enjoy the book, Guillermo del Toro: Cabinet of Curiosities - My Notebooks, Collections, and Other Obsessions, which I also own.

Cabinet of Curiosities has sections about each of del Toro’s creations as of its publication, as well sections about some of his unfinished works, and other topics important to del Toro. The book doesn’t have the three dimensional inserts contained in the Pan’s Labyrinth book, but it is full of the same sorts of content. I really enjoy both of these books. Check them out if you enjoy Guillermo del Toro’s films. And if you’ve never seen Pan’s Labyrinth, give it a try. You just might enjoy it.

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