Corporate, outdoor and adventure photography by Reno and Lake Tahoe freelance photographer Scott Sady.

Carson Valley fall colors with snow

Friday, December 10, 2010

With the onset of winter just a few weeks away, this post may be a little late in coming, but hey, what’s a blog for, right? The Tahoe Basin and specifically the Carson Valley is one place in this country we regularly get to see the compression of time. We have a long winter, and a long summer, and somewhere in-between is squeezed a totally unpredictable and makeshift fall and spring. One of the pleasant side effects of this is that we regular get “flinter.” It’s a combination of fall and winter and manifests itself most years in the beautiful turning of the aspens combined with mountains full of snow. Take a look, and you can always find more by searching my stock archive

Job's peak with changing cottonwoods and aspen in Gardnerville area.

A wider shot of the mountains with fall colors along Carson River.

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Lake Tahoe fishing bears

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

A mother black bear hunts for salmon on Taylor creek in South Lake Tahoe

Who says you need to go up to Alaska to make a picture of a bear catching a meal of salmon. In South Lake Tahoe every year around October, Taylor creek turns nearly red with Kokanee salmon returning to spawn. October also happens to be the time of year when the lake’s population of black bears (yes, I know they look brown) are desperately trying to fatten themselves up before winter sets in. Nothing works better for fattening up a hungry bear than 10-20 salmon a day. So head out early in the morning when the bears are most active, and for the love of God, keep your distance. You would be amazed at how many fools I saw chasing this mother bear and her cub (mother bears are known to be very nasty when they think their cub is in danger, and a mob of people trying to make photos on their iphones certainly counts.) I was keeping a good distance with a long telephoto lens trying not to disturb the bears and I could not believe how many idiots would walk up about 5 feet from them and stick a damn cell phone in their face to snap a picture. If you are taking pictures on a PHONE it is not going to be a great picture anyway, so keeping back an extra 10-20 feet won’t compromise your artistic integrity.

A black bear with a fish in its mouth at Taylor Creek in South Lake Tahoe. My wife took this shot at about the same time I took the next one from the road bridge above the river.

This close-up shot of a bear munching on a fish in South Lake Tahoe was taken from a different vantange point at just about the same time as the one before it. The main highway crosses over Taylor Creek and standing on this bridge, the river runs directly below you. This is the one time I would say it is probably OK to be close to the bears. If you are standing still on a bridge and the bear sees you and decides to walk right under you and go about it's business, then by all means, stand your ground and snap away. Just don't drop anything on them please!

Notice the look on the face of the salmon trying to not get eaten. I swear it is looking back at the bear in shear terror.

This is a picture of the mother bear lounging in the grass before she decided to go fishing. Her cub is lying down behind her. I literally had about three people walk right in front of me, then right up to the bear, extend their arm holding a cell phone out to a few feet from the bears face, and take a picture.....with flash!

One last shot of the black bear momma munching on a fish.

This is a new control fence put in just across the road on Taylor Creek. The salmon tend to back up against it and the bears just pick them off. I have a lot of pictures of the bear cub fishing as well, it just occures to me that this is the only post with the cub in is. So if you are interested in any of those, let me know.

Now for a bit of the sideshow. Shortly after some of the pictures at the top of this post were taken, people crowded along the shoreline so much that the bear freaked and ran right through a group of kids. I only caught the tail end of this from across the river.

Need I say more? The bear doesn't look so happy does it. At one point there were about 4 people all crammed on this log, and they weren't even the closest.

I don’t want my tone to discourage anyone from taking pictures of the bears, or from bringing your children to see this amazing spectacle of nature. All I ask for is a little bit of that precious commodity, common sense! For any of you picture buyers out there, feel free to search my archive for a much larger selection of bear photos, just use bear or bears in your keywords.

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November 10, 2010 - 7:07 pm

Candice Nyando - beautiful work you two!! i equally enjoyed your comments–love that sady wit!

October 11, 2011 - 8:24 pm

Lindsay - Hi – love your photos! I am visiting Lake Tahoe this week and ventured to Taylor Creek to see the salmon (and hopefully a bear or two). I went around 5:30/6p and didn’t see any bear.
You said early morning is best – what time frame do you recommend? I would like to go back again. Where did you see them? By the bridge or closer to rt 89?
Thanks!

Tahoe ski photography

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

This is what I call a two-fer. I had this location on Incline peak scouted for this shot on a clear day. Unfortunately when that clear day arrived, my wife was the only person available to hike up there with me. Fortunately she is a good photographer, so I schlepped the cameras up, set up the shot and had her pull the trigger while I skied the line and we ended up on the cover of this year's Lake Tahoe winter recreation guide.

My how cluttered our digital lives are getting. I remember when the internet made things quicker and easier. We had search engines for looking up stuff instead of going to the library, and we had email instead of mailing letters and waiting weeks. When did it all get so complicated? Just trying to keep up with letting anyone at all find me and my work now requires hours of web updates, managing my mobile searchable archive of stock images, keeping up with the facebook posts for our wedding photography business, keeping up with the summer blog posts for Reno Mountain Sports, which sponsors me as a semi-pro freestyle kayaker, and who knows what else. Time flies by in a whirlwind of shooting and sitting and I am only just realizing that I have been ignoring my main stock photography blog for nearly a year now.

Well, the other day it snowed on us and today dawned the coldest day yet, so I figure it is a good time to get pumped up about skiing and post some of my favorite ski images from the lake tahoe area from last season. Some of this work comes from the advertising work I do at Mt. Rose and some just for fun. Ski photography is really tricky. You can have great riders, and great snow and a great sky, but they rarely all come together at the same time. I think we had only two really deep bluebird powder days all last season. Most of the powder days were cloudy. One took me completely by surprise and I found myself up at Mt. Rose early during what was predicted to be a cloudy and stormy day, staring at 2 feet of snow and blue skies with no riders in site. After a quick phone call to the resort’s PR folks, we decided it would be worth a try to get something, so I grabbed some skiers out of the line and a couple of patrollers and we tried to make some shots. They were good, but still nothing like having a couple of pro riders there who can hit their marks and look good doing it.

Enjoy the photos, here is a quick link to my archive of winter stock photographs which you photo buyers out there can feel free to search.

Mt. Rose added a new dimension to their special events by hosting the first (that we know of) snow boater cross on the west coast. I was both competing and photographing this event. This shot of Jr. World champion kayaker Jason Craig was used by National Geographic Adventure for thier best adventure town blurb on Reno

A sunrise backflip on skis near the Mt. Rose summit. I had hoped Moment skis might be interested in trading one of these shots for some gear since my skis are getting busted up, but no bites yet.

Another big air shot on Moment Nighttrain skis

Even the little tykes love the backcountyr. Here 7 year-old Blaise poses on his custom kiddie Moment skis, handmade in Reno.

Well, we are in the wild west, so Moment rider Jared and I decided to screw around one day and borrowed a six shooter and some cowboy gear for this shot that we thought might be interesting.

JJ Shiller at the subaru freeskiing world championship competition at Kirkwood 2010

I was experimenting with my Go Pro camera set to shoot still photos to see if I could get an interesting angle on powder skiing. It didn't quite work, but next snowfall I know what to do to make it sing.

These are a few shots from the pond skim at Mt. Rose ski tahoe. I did the photography for them, I was also the forerunner for the course.

This year I was the forerunner for the course, which was a good thing because it was a very cold morning and we had the original start area so high up that I flew across the water, caught huge air on the exit and barely stopped before I crashed through the gate on my first run. We made a few adjustments and got it nice and friendly for the competitors. You can have a look at my POV video of the first few runs here.

Carving the groomers at Mt. Rose. This is a variation on one of the photos they used for a highway billboard and as their facebook icon for a while.

Mark riding rails at Mt. Rose ski tahoe.

Schmearing that turn

We wanted a few shots from Mt. Rose to show the beautifull falloff into the dry desert of Washoe Valley. Just a note to you budding pro riders out there, you can have super cool modern clothes and that is a good thing, but about 70% of what buyers choose to publish from my images involve red or yellow. Just food for thought.

Looking for the light in the backcounty near Donner Summit.

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