Chuck Salisbury Photography

This was basically our route... started up North and made our way down

The end of November 2023, I had the opportunity to head out to Fairbanks for a work trip... I thought I would take advantage of the opportunity and see if I could get lucky with the Northern lights. The first 3/5 nights was completely cloudy and we couldn't even see the moon. The 4th night there was a few breaks in the clouds... we went out hunting for the lights. I gave up at 9pm and called it a night, only to hear my coworkers talking about the awesome lights they saw around 9:30 (angry face). My final night I headed up to Fairbanks to fly out in the morning. We got into town and grabbed a quick dinner and then drove out to Cleary Summit Aurora Viewing area. You couldn't really see the Northern lights with the naked eye, but when I took a photo you could see them. Unfortunately, we were at the end of the show. My first shot had some good lights and then they quickly faded away... we stuck around for another 2 hours just in case, then finally called it. While not as good as I would was hoping for, here is what I got.

Africa Photo Safari: A few weeks ago (July 20-29, 2023) I went on an “Ultimate Photo Safari” at the Maasai Mara National Reserve in Kenya Africa. We spent 9 days traveling around the 1,510 sq km (580 sq miles) and had awesome wildlife experiences and made memories that will last a lifetime. It was a lot of driving around searching, but the talented guides were able to get us in the right places and set us up for photography success. In fact, multiple times the animals ended up right next to our truck… Plus, the trip was timed for the Great Wildebeest migration and we saw two crossings on our safari. One crossing lasted over an hour! With all these opportunities and two cameras firing away I came home with 27,339 pictures. That is a lot of pictures, but during this trip I made a concerted effort to put the camera down and be present in the moment. I’ve been asked about my most memorable moment from the safari. Sure we had elephants, giraffes, lions, and cheetahs close enough to our truck that I could touch them, but the strongest memory I have was watching a herd of elephants visit the remains of a fallen elephant and pay their respects. I have seen it on the TV shows, but it was something to witness in person.

If you are interested, the trip was sponsored by Pauls Photo (https://paulsphoto.com/) using Meikan Safaris (https://meikansafaris.com/).

Technical info. I used two camera bodies. My Canon R5 with the 70-200 f/2.8L and rented a Canon R3 and 400mm f/2.8. I shot most of my pictures with the R3 and 400mm f/2.8 combo. The R3 shoots at 30 frames a second which is why I ended up taking 27,000 pictures. LOL

I have spent the last few weeks going through those and have it down to about 225, and down selected even more for this post. I hope my pictures do some justice and you enjoy them.

May 17-20 I made a trip to Moab, Utah for some Milky Way photography. Unfortunately clouds blocked out most of my opportunity to actually shoot any Milky Way photos. But we did spend a sunrise and sunset at Dead horse Point state park and enjoyed a nice sunset at Delicate Arch. Like I told them at work... a bad day out taking pictures is still better than a good day at work. ;)

I think its time to quit the day job and depend on photography full time form my income. I just had a sale on Wirestock for 32 cents. Yep, I'm a baller now. The previous sale for .09 cents didn't get me excited, but 32 cents... that's a game changer!!! Look out Peter Lik I am coming for your record of most expensive photo sold ($6.5M)
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You Earned $0.32

Hi Chuck, you have 1 paid download(s) today for a total of $0.32.

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Closeup of a grizzly bear under the sunlight in the Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

Downloads: 1

Earnings: $0.32

This was my first time playing with gels. Thank you for your patience and for the vision and asking me to be on the team.

If you haven't heard... there is a Snowy Owl that is currently hanging out in Cypress, California (Orange County). No idea what he is doing down here in sunny southern California, but whatever reason the owl is down here. Diana and I decided to try and find it this weekend. So we hopped in the car and headed to Cypress and was able to find it. Granted it was easy once we got to the neighborhood and saw the 40 people standing on the sidewalk looking at a roof. Granted the skys were blah with a rain storm, but I also only had to drive 30 minutes and walk 100 yards to take the picture vs. searching in sub zero temps and hoping to find one. I will take what I can get. :)

I recently had the chance to attend a Peter Coulson portfolio building workshop in Melbourne Australia. The workshop was informative and I got to work with some great models. Given it was a workshop and there were 15 photographers, I didn't spend a lot of time working for "the shot". The models we great and didn't act like they minded, but I felt bad that there were lines of photographers basically asking for the same thing, and I tried to be sensitive to that.

Beauty shoot with .williamss