Red River Pro
Peter Randall

The Photographer
Peter Randall is a landscape, nature, and documentary photographer who works out of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Most of his images have appeared in magazines and in ten published books of his work.

The Client
Publisher assignment for a book project on the Isles of Shoals, islands off the coast of Portsmouth.

© Peter Randall

The Assignment
Photograph wildlife, landscape, and human activities on the nine islands. Rare in northern New England is a colony of large wading birds, in this case Snowy Egrets. The effort involved constructing a bird blind on the off-shore island and weekly trips, beginning in early May, to photograph during the nesting season.

The Execution
“This is a Tri-X image made with a 1000mm Nikkor mirror lens from the bird blind. Even with a fixed aperture of f11, this lens has very little depth of field so if a bird moved its head it would be out of focus. The feeding process happens quickly so the technique used was mostly focus, shoot; refocus, shoot; etc., and hope for a sharp image.”

Post Production
“The film was digitized using a Nikon Super Coolscan 4000 and adjusted in Photoshop CS3.”

The Output
“The prints for a related exhibit were output on Red River's Ultra Pro Satin paper at 13 x 19 on an Epson 3800 printer. The Ultra Pro Satin's surface provided a clean, lustrous, graduated black and white tone that kept both shadow detail in the vegetation and highlight detail in the birds.”

Contact
Peter Randall’s web site is: petererandall.com. He can be emailed at petererandall@gmail.com.