-Today on Windows to the Wild we're going to hike to a very picturesque spot here in the White Mountains, and we're going to find ways to make it even more picturesque.

♪♪ Welcome to Windows to the Wild, I'm Willem Lange.

Well, today we're taking a hike with an outdoor digital photographer who not only sees pictures that we don't, but has techniques for capturing them and enhancing them so they leap off the printed page.

He's recently published a book, Outdoor Digital Photography.

His name is Jerry Monkman, he’s from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and he's right over here.

Jerry [Willem chuckles] -Hi Willem how are you?

-I'm fine, a pleasure, a pleasure.

Now, you chose to come along on this hike today to show us how to do things right?

-I did, and thank you for the invitation.

It's hard to turn one down where I have to spend a couple of days in the White Mountains in the fall.

I really work hard to try to capture the essence of the landscape and the place, so that when people view my photos, they'll just be inspired to go visit those places.

-Okay, and, you do digital photography exclusively now, right?

-Correct yeah.

I just threw out 50 rolls of film that have been in my freezer for ten years.

[both chuckle] -Yeah, it comes to us all, I guess, and use one camera most of the time?

-Usually yeah I have, always have a backup but I rarely ever use the backup yeah, I shoot with, with one digital SLR and, a variety of lenses and a few filters, and that's about it.

-Now, right here this is not awfully, well it’s so colorful but not too picturesque.

Do you like a longer view as a rule, or what are you looking for?

[leaves rustle in wind] -I love both kinds.

I love the big sort of landscape shot like we might see from Zealand Hut where we're headed, this afternoon.

But particularly on days like today where it's this nice, overcast, kind of misty kind of weather the light is beautiful for forest scenes like this and waterfalls so I'll actually head into the darkest places on purpose, because the light actually is best for those kinds of shots.

-You're going to sort of show us things as they come up, right?

Because we don't see em as you do.

-Right and, you know, I often don't see anything for hours sometimes and I really, -I'm used to that.

-Yeah.

[Jerry chuckles] I mean, I encourage people that I talk to about photography to, to not worry about taking pictures immediately when they get to a place and to spend some ti-- some time out exploring the landscape and, you know, hiking like we're doing, or maybe paddling a canoe, riding a bike just to sort of get away from their day to day lives and let the nature of the place sink in before they start taking pictures.

-Decompression, they would call it.

-Exactly, yeah.

-Forgetting what you got to do when you get back.

-Right, and you know, I never-- yeah I’ll sometimes I have ideas of what I want to shoot, but I never really know until I come across it so-- -Well let’s go see a few shall we?

-I'm sure we'll find something.

-Alright, we’re off!

-Okay.

♪♪ Jerry Monkman is an outdoor adventure photographer who's obviously fallen in love with wild places.

[water rushing] Like most photographers who go through life with big cameras on their chests and tripods over their shoulders, he's pretty spry.

♪♪ He’s shot nature at its finest, from southern Connecticut to Mount Katahdin.

♪♪ [water running] Jerry sees beauty in things that you or I hardly suspect exist.

♪♪ [water running] We stopped while he photographed the contrast between the white birch bark and the scarlet-leafed soft maples along the trail.

♪♪ Okay, Jerry got a little bit of sun.

Just a little.

And it’s kind of lighting up all these trees.

isn’t it?

-It is yeah.

-Very nice, what do you see?

♪♪ -I'm seeing the same thing.

I'm also seeing a nice trail that runs through the woods here.

-Yeah?

-You know, as we walked through this beautiful forest the last hour or so I didn't necessarily, stop to take photos because it was just a very complex, three dimensional visual mess kind of out there that looks great to our eyes, but it's hard to translate that into a photograph so, by finding these birch trees, which are a little more prominent than the surrounding forest, and some of them are leaning at a nice angle.

-Yeah.

-By adding this trail, it sort of calms down the chaos a little bit, and, it'll create, I think, a nice photograph, I mean, it's basically the same elements, but just, here they're presented in a way that, will be easy to sort of enjoy looking at in a photo.

[camera flicks] ♪♪ [camera flicks] ♪♪ [camera flicks] ♪♪ There see, we made it stop raining.

[chuckling] [sighing] -The Zealand Falls Trail is probably the easiest in the White Mountains.

It follows mostly an old railroad bed, gently uphill for only 2.8 miles.

It's pretty much rock free, so you can open the throttle most of the way.

The trail passes brooks and beaver swamps on wooden bridges, except for a couple of stream crossings that you can get your feet wet in high water.

[water gurgles] Then the last few hundred yards to the hut are a pretty steep climb.

You end up on a solid rock bluff beside the falls with a magnificent view of the Pemigewasset wilderness.

[water rushes] [indistinct chatter] Hiking in the woods, you never know whom you're going to meet, but you can bet you share something with almost everybody.

Mutual friends, similar problems often related to age or just a love for wild places.

Sometimes the new friends you meet walk on four legs instead of two, and everybody's got a story.

-I'm excited to see you, I call myself, I aspire to be the female Willem.

-Okay.

-Okay?

- Willemina.

- Willemina there you have it, awesome.

Well I won’t keep you from your-- -Not at all -hike.

Enjoy!

-Our appointed grounds.

She hears somebody coming.

-Yes.

I try to put her on the leash when I hear folks.

Alright, very good.

[Willem chuckles] -Here we go-- -Well try to stay dry.

-We shall do our best, yeah.

-Always great to see you.

-Yep.

-Come on.

[raindrops patter] -Well, they said there'd be some showers today, and they were absolutely right.

We're in one right now, but I think that's about all it is, maybe another half hour or so we won't dissolve, we haven't yet.

We're at a spot where you cross an old, sort of a swamp and a beaver dam, when you see a lot of moose hair sometimes.

But they built this catwalk across and I see they're rebuilding it to protect the, the ground underneath so it doesn't get all chewed up.

Very nice place, and we're getting on toward the hut too.

[Willem exclaims triumphantly] Can't be too much longer.

[raindrops patter] So, there's the sun trying to break through over there.

[raindrops patter] It'll be nice soon, here we go.

♪♪ [raindrops patter] We arrived at Zealand Pond in a light rain and mist.

Jerry pushed his way through brush at the pond's edge to snap a few shots with his digital camera.

From here, we get our first glimpse of Zealand Falls tumbling down from Zealand Mountain.

[water churns] Now this is spectacular here Jerry.

Whoa!

Birches and red maples, spruces over here-- -Yeah some of the most intense colors I've seen yet.

Yeah, they are, and the falls up above.

Right and that's you know I kind of wanted to get this shot both because the color is great but it’s, that's our destination, so.

-Yes, that's very nice.

-Been, be fun to get a shot of that from down below before we're, huffing and puffing our way up.

[Willem chuckles] One of the things I think that makes fall in New England so spectacular is when you have this mix of, the conifers so you got the nice dark green spruce, sort of contrasting with the bright, yellows and oranges and reds of the maples and birch, and it, it really makes quite a scene.

-Now that cord you use to touch it off, is that the old-fashioned push cord?

The little spike-- -It's the same concept.

-Or is it electronic?

-It’s electronic.

-Okay.

-And this one's fancy enough I can dial in, intervals and it'll take a, as many pictures as I want so, you know I'm in a lot of these beautiful places by myself a lot of the time when I'm working and often I feel like I need a person in the picture to get it interest then, you know I used to do the self-timer shot and try to look like I was in mid-stride, but now I can just set this up to take a photo every second -Yeah.

-until I run back and forth and I finish up.

[chuckling] -You’re not wasting film anymore.

-That's right, yeah.

I used to spend about 33 cents every time I press the shutter but-- -Yeah.

[camera flicks] -Now it's just time.

♪♪ Rains kinda, ♪♪ fogging things up quite a bit out there.

-Yeah.

[rain falling] -The falls are a part of this shot.

They’re going to be a small part, but, I'm trying to sort of set them off center a little bit so they sort of flow down into the, into the forest below, which really is just a riot of color.

♪♪ ♪♪ [water rushes] -This is the final stretch, up to the hut along the falls.

[raindrops patter] First two and three quarter miles of this trip, you climb only 520ft.

You can see why they used a railroad up here to take out the logs 100 years ago or so, but the last few hundred yards, are the equivalent of climbing an 18-story building, [both chuckle] which we're doing now.

but we may make it.

-I'm pretty sure we will.

-One more time.

Yeah, okay.

-I'm sure they've got some hot stuff waiting for us.

-Oh, that's a good idea!

All right.

[raindrops patter] [hiking poles clack] [raindrops patter] [hiking poles clack] [raindrops patter] Aha.

I see the top.

[rain falling] Well as you can see, we've made it to the hut.

Well done, not bad either.

-Same to you yeah, good trip.

-Skipped right along, that’s that’s making a trail, except for the last, quarter mile maybe.

-Yeah, we’ll be able to sleep that off soon.

-Oh we will, not tonight, it's still.

It's still really crummy out there.

There's no view or anything.

-It is, it's not great for taking pictures at the moment.

-Unless you're a fog specialist.

But, I think if we, sleep in tonight, it's supposed to be clearing tomorrow.

We'll have another go at it, right?

-Absolutely.

-Okay.

Jerry and I grabbed a couple of bunks.

I like mine down low, stashed our packs, and sat down on the front porch to talk about his book, the AMC Guide to Outdoor Digital Photography.

As you might expect, it's a beautiful book.

Ah, isn’t that nice?

The presidentials.

[raindrops falling] Yeah.

-I actually used to be a software engineer in my previous job.

-That's-- -But I didn't like that [both chuckle] -Okay.

-I love the creative process of photography much more.

I don't want that to get in the way of making photos, so my goal with the book was to try to teach a workflow that's, that's simple enough and easy to understand.

I mean it still takes a little practice, but but will let you get the hang of things so you can, can concentrate on the creative aspect of photography more.

-Alright.

Now this is taken, this is natural, right?

This-- -That's what the camera sh-- when the camera shot it that's, that's what it came out looking like yes-- -But you thought there was little too orange, right?

-Correct, yeah.

-So you can change on your computer the balance of the color-- -Correct, yeah.

-Would you add, add something and take away something else or what?

-You can basically adjust the color balance by, just a couple little sliders in a, in a program called Lightroom or another one called Adobe Camera Raw, which is part of Photoshop, and you basically tell it, do you want it to look warm or cool?

-Yeah?

-And just move the slider around till it looks right.

Photographers have always sort of, done similar things in the darkroom.

-Yeah.

-This is just a different way to do it and, and in reality I think it's an easier way, a more fun way you know, one of the my favorite quotes from Ansel Adams was, he talked about the, the negative, which in this case would be the file you end up with when you press the shutter, -Yeah.

-so the negative is the score and the print is the performance -Oh.

-And, to me, you know, that says, you know, the fine art photographers got a lot more work to do after you presses the shutter to really come up with the finished product.

-Got it.

Well there haven’t been too many big vistas today, but-- -Today is a close vista kind of day.

[indistinct chatter] -But this is outdoor photography right here-- -It is, and-- -We’re freezing to death out here.

-Yeah, it's getting chillier and chillier.

♪♪ -Eh, the rain wasn't letting up at all, so we finally retreated into the hut.

We'd get out the next morning to catch some of those incredible views from Zealand Falls.

♪♪ [water rushes] It must have cleared during the late evening because we had a bright moon shining in the windows.

I drifted off to sleep, to the soft rushing of the falls and the snoring of the other hikers in the bunk room.

[water rushes] ♪♪ Jerry was up before the crack of dawn.

The sky was a deep red, but photographers call that half hour before and after dawn, the golden hour.

♪♪ [water rushes] [camera flicks] ♪♪ [camera flicks] ♪♪ ♪♪ [water rushes] [camera flicks] ♪♪ ♪♪ [raindrops fall] [camera flicks] ♪♪ ♪♪ [water rushes] Now Jerry, [water rushing intensely] I get up at dawn and your bunk was empty.

[water rushing intensely] [Jerry chuckles] Where were you?

[water rushes intensely] -I was right out here on the waterfall.

-Is that right?

-Yeah.

-So getting, what catching rosy fingered dawn, as it were?

-Exactly yeah I love to get out and shoot in what I call the golden hour of the day, so the half hour before sunrise til half hour after sunrise.

And we had, some nice pink clouds up above the ridgeline, across the way there and, with the color and the waterfall, it all sort of meshed together nice.

-That's great, you got it?

-Yeah.

-Now you gonna shoot some more here?

-I am yeah, I'm going to, just scramble up the falls here and see what I can find.

-Okay.

You don’t mind if I don’t scramble up there with you?

-You can sun yourself on a rock like a turtle.

[water churns] -Zealand falls is a spectacular spot for photography.

Jerry went scrambling up the water’s smooth slabs, I scrambled after him in spirit only, no sense biting off more than I could chew.

♪♪ [camera flicks] ♪♪ [camera flicks] ♪♪ Jerry, how would you describe your style as a photographer?

-It's tough for me to sort of describe my own style I guess, but I mean, I definitely, you know, think after 10 or 15 years of doing this, [camera flicks] I have a certain look to my photos.

[water rushes faintly] You know, I definitely have a romantic vision of the world I love beautiful, early morning light, the golden hour kind of light.

I love the classic landscape, and I like taking pictures of people who are actually enjoying themselves in the outdoors.

♪♪ [water rushes] -So you carried what, 30-35 pounds worth of gear up here today?

-I did yeah.

-So if I wanted to, if I want to be a digital outdoor photographer, I have to lug an extra 30-35 pounds around with me?

-Well you could lug it for me and then I'll take the pictures for you.

[Jerry chuckles] [water rushes faintly] No, absolutely not I mean, [water rushing] I take great pictures with my iPhone sometimes.

I carry all that gear because, you know, I am a professional, I need to be able to make really large prints from these images sometimes so I might need a little higher resolution cameras and bigger lenses.

But the average person can, can really make great photos with, with just about any camera and, it's really more about the composition and capturing the moment.

[camera flicks] ♪♪ [camera flicks] ♪♪ And putting some emotions that you're feeling at the time into what you're pointing your camera at or whatever device it is that’s capturing the scene.

♪♪ [camera flicks] ♪♪ -After photographing the beauty of Zealand Falls, it was time to leave.

We decided on our way out that we'd stop to capture some more bright images on the Zealand Falls Trail, and along the way, I shared an experience I'd had with my late friend Dudley some years ago, on skis.

One very cold morning I said Dudley, What would you say if I suggested we stop in a minute or two to take a picture?

He stopped.

My skis hit the back of his toboggan and down I went.

[Willem chuckles] Not so fast, Dudley, not so fast!

[leaves rustle] [hiking poles clack] Galehead seven-two that’s farther than I thought it was.

Yeah.

-That's what I said after about six miles when we hiked there from here in the summer.

This is farther than I thought it was.

-It’s a nice hike though.

It's, yeah, good views, once you get over and on the Bonds.

-Yeah.

-Very nice.

[Willem pants] [footsteps crunching] [poles clack] Ah, yes.

[footsteps crunching] -Yeah this looks, yeah I might take a picture here anyway.

-Okay.

It involves getting out the, tripod-- -Getting out my tripod, yeah.

-Yeah.

[zipper zips] -But, you know, you know, yesterday we had the, the nice overcast light, which-- -Yes, that was-- -I talked about being beautiful for, forest scenes and, this morning I had the, the golden hour light that I prefer for landscapes.

Now, we kind of have something that's in between that can be so-so, but, let's see what I can do.

-Okay.

-Sometimes the scenery is just so nice you can't help yourself.

[Willem chuckles] -Besides, people need postcards.

-That's right.

♪♪ [wind blows softly] [leaves crunch] [Willem sings] ♪♪ Roamin’ in the Gloamin’ ♪♪ ♪♪ by the bonnie banks of Clyde, roamin’ ♪♪ ♪♪ in the gloamin’ with me lassie by ma side ♪♪ Harry Lauder!

They knighted him.

He was Sir Harry.

[hiking gear rustling] [Willem chuckles] [footsteps] [leaves shuffle] [Willem chuckles] -Thought we should stop.

-Yes, and we did, okay.

[Jerry chuckles] -I just love this, look with the, the small spruce and fir and the understory, and then the tall trees and there's some paper birch, which-- -Oh, yeah.

-Always adds interest to a shot, and, the trail adds a nice, nice line that sort of-- -Beautiful trail.

leads the eye to the foliage and, and the trees in the background so, okay if we stop and I take a few pictures?

-We already have.

-Okay-- [Jerry chuckles] -You’re right you do see things that I don't.

[Jerry chuckles] So this is, this has been speaking to you in-- -Oh, no, I smell the balsams I thought, that's fantastic.

I love that smell.

But the, the contrast with the tall trunks, I hadn't noticed, see?

And you have.

-Okay-- -So we shoot!

Well let's see if it actually turns into a good photo.

-We’ll know.

[camera flicks] ♪♪ [camera flicks] ♪♪ I never heard a sound.

-Huh, yeah?

[Willem chuckles] See?

-You did.

-Voila.

-That's beautiful.

[Jerry chuckles] Yeah, well I was right.

♪♪ Take a shot.

-Taking a couple more shots here.

♪♪ [Willem narrates] -Jerry and I pause for some beautiful reflections on a beaver pond.

♪♪ -Some nice puffy clouds reflecting in the pond.

-Yeah.

♪♪ [camera flicks] -Digital has made it easier in a lot of ways.

It's, certainly easier to make sure you get a correct exposure, ♪♪ but I think even more important, is you can sort of refine your composition, in the field, by seeing it on the, on the LCD after you've shot.

So it's in some ways actually a more organic creative process because there's a sort of feedback loop of shooting and, and having it, appear and let you sort of change, change your mind as you're going.

[camera flicks rapidly] [wind blows softly] -We've had a lovely two days here.

Well, actually just about 24 hours.

-Yeah.

-We started out, what were you thinking when we started out in the rain like that?

-I thought it's time to cover up my camera gear, [both chuckle] -But everything got there okay?

-Everything got there great and actually, the light was perfect for, for peak foliage, which we had, in abundance this, these two days.

-Yeah and then today we got some sunshine after a nice night in the hut.

-Yeah.

-And I gotta tell you, I learned a lot just in the few hours I've been around you.

-Oh good.

-Like why you do what you do and how you do it and that sort of thing.

I will read your book.

-Thank you.

With much more enthusiasm than I might have at first, what's the book?

-The book is the AMC Guide to Outdoor Digital Photography, and, people can find it at the AMC website.

outdoors.org.

-Wow, okay.

-And, -It's full of beautiful pictures -Thanks.

[both laugh] It is, It's fun to look at I think.

It’s good to look at.

-It's great, which means it has come once again to that part of the show I like least, time to say goodbye.

So, that's what we'll do.

Goodbye.

I'm Willem Lange and I hope to see you again on Windows to the Wild.

♪♪ ♪♪