Jonny Armstrong Photography » Specializing in camera trapping, underwater, and conservation science photography

Growing up I was always fascinated by nature, but mainly with things you could catch, like butterflies, frogs, and fish. I spent a lot of time biking in the mountains behind my house, but never thought much about what animals might be lurking there. While visiting family a few years back, I started putting camera traps out in the woods I’d spent so much time in as a kid. What I found blew my mind: the forests were teaming with wildlife. Not only were there common species like black bear and gray fox, but my cameras also captured rare species like ringtail cat and Pacific fisher.

I was just home for an extended Thanksgiving/camera trapping extravaganza. When you have a short time to camera trap; you gotta put out as many cameras as possible. I went ahead and brought my entire fleet; all 5 of them. That added up to about 150 lb. of gear.

 

A friend of mine has spent 30 years restoring a 400 acre property that was formerly logged and mined. This amazing chunk of land is all I camera trap when I’m home. The rugged topography and range in elevation provide a variety of habitats to target. There are dry, sun exposed hillsides dominated by manzanita and oak, as well as lush draws with old growth incense cedar and Douglas fir. My goal on this trip was to capture environmental portraits of Pacific fisher. I wanted to showcase not only the animals themselves, but also the low elevation forests that support them.

My camera trapping got off to a slow start. First, this little guy his buddies chewed through the wires at three of my sets.

I soldered the many segments of wire back together and added some conduit for protection. That slowed the squirrels down, but then a new problem popped up; it rained about an inch and a strong inversion set in, leaving my sets under a layer of dense fog. This made for some beautiful conditions in the forest, but led to heavy condensation on all my gear, rendering it pretty much useless.

 

 

To add to my troubles, on one of these foggy mornings I had a visitor rearrange one of my sets for me, ruining some of my lighting gear.

I kept my hopes up because I knew there were fishers around. While scouting for sites to photograph, I found fresh scat on several travel routes along streams and on logs spanning draws. I also got one on a game camera I set out on the leaning madrone pictured earlier. The trail camera video reminded me of why it’s so fun to camera trap fishers-they are full of personality.

 

Finally the fisher shots started rolling in. My first shot came from a set I placed on an old growth cedar. I think of fisher as a semi-arboreal animal that thrives in old growth forests, so I wanted a shot of one climbing around on an ancient tree. This massive cedar fit the bill nicely, I was really taken by the lichen on the bark. Lighting and composing a subject perched on a giant cylinder was far more challenging than I had anticipated. I was thrilled with the shots I got, but I’m also looking forward to trying this again, perhaps with marten in Wyoming.

 

 

One of my favorite shots from the trip came on an old madrone log spanning a draw. My fiancee Jessi picked the spot. I strapped a wall plate with a 5/8 ” receiver to the log and mounted my camera to it with a Magic Arm. This set was a nightmare to keep running, the damp draw fogged up my housing half the nights it was out, and the squirrels in the area were especially fond of my flash synch wires. One day I checked the set to find that the arm had slipped and bent straight. When I checked my camera, I saw that the fisher had came through after the arm slipped; I was pretty frustrated.

 

Then I got a nice surprise as I scrolled backwards through the images: the camera suddenly snapped back into the position I’d set it in and there were some great poses from the fisher. My Magic Arm had indeed slipped, but only because the fisher had climbed onto the housing.

 

Though my local fishers seem to be doing well, the Pacific fisher was recently proposed for listing as a threatened species. The fragmented populations that remain are suffering from rodenticides used in illegal marijuana farms.

I submitted some photos to the BBC camera trap competition last June. I was thrilled to see some of my images of Pacific fisher, mule deer, and bears featured as runner up and commended selections. Also fun to see all the other great camera-trap photos folks are getting. Hopefully I’ll have some good contenders for next year as well. Click the links to see all the winning entries and check out Jason Ching’s awesome spotted skunk in the editor’s choice section. Surprised Jason’s stunning bear and fox images didn’t make it in.

The highlight of all this was seeing one of my bear images featured in the Guardian, a nice surprise.

 

We had our first real snow of the winter this week, which allowed me to resume one of my favorite hobbies—wandering around the woods looking for tracks. Yesterday I grabbed a furry companion, my friend’s dog Mina, and headed out to a nearby forest to look for marten sign and check a camera trap. I’ve been getting a seriously adorable marten on a game camera, but I just can’t seem to get it in front of my DSLR rig. These critters are so much fun to watch on video.

 

Mina and I found red fox prints everywhere but no marten. Perhaps they’re spending all their time up in the trees. There was fox sign all around my camera trap but the batteries had died due to the cold. It had been in the mid-60’s when I set the camera last week, but a couple days later it dropped to -20F. Winter arrived late, but it made a bold entrance.

Given my high hopes for the marten set, I was feeling a little defeated on the drive home. Hoping to change my luck, I decided to check a spot in the foothills for cougar tracks. Hiking in, I saw lots of coyote, fox, and mule deer prints, partially filled in by early morning snowfall. As we made our way up a rocky canyon, Mina halted to a stop and buried her face in the snow. When I caught up to her I could see why she was so excited—she’d found a fresh set of lion tracks. I was hesitant to forward-track the cat, so I traced its route backwards up a steep brushy draw. Just as I started to think about what a good spot it would be for a cougar to ambush prey, I discovered that the cat had done a wide U-turn and headed back up the draw. I tracked it about 60 feet further and perked up when I noticed one of the banks was freshly eroded, with dirt strewn across the snow. Something had came crashing down the draw not too long before. Sure enough, I noticed some antlers sticking out of the snow, revealing the cached remains of a mule deer. Here’s a shot of Mina (wearing her I’m not a coyote vest) and the recent cougar kill.

 

At that point my adrenaline surged, not because I was worried about the cat, but because I knew I had stumbled upon an amazing camera-trap opportunity and I would have to work fast to pull it off. I dashed back to the car, drove home, and assembled a camera trap. I swapped out Mina for my friend Bailey Russel, who’s my collaborator on a photography project funded by the Berry Biodiversity Conservation Center. Bailey and I returned to the area with a little over an hour of daylight remaining. We found fresh cougar tracks on the hike in; they were right on top of the tracks I’d made hiking out a couple hours before.

When we returned to the cached mule deer, we found ourselves in a tricky spot. The steep, v-shaped draw left few places to set any gear. We had to do a bit of fiddling, but we finally secured a tripod and set the camera so that the head of the deer was in the foreground. There was no place to put my light stand except right behind the camera. I didn’t want my key light to be too on-axis, so I set it about 10 feet high, angling down. I zoomed the flash to 70mm, so the light would focus on the carcass and minimize hotspots in the surrounding snow. We placed a fill light off to the right. At this point we had a safe 2-light portrait and could have been good to go. We wanted to push the boundaries a bit, so we stashed a rim light in the background. I set the rim light a little hot so it would recycle slowly and not show up in all shots. Just when I thought we were good-to-g0, I noticed my camera battery was showing 1/8 power; usually when it drops that fast in cold weather it means it’s about to die. I wrapped it in some extra clothes and crossed my fingers, not liking my odds.

Bailey and I came back the next day to swap out my Canon 50D with a new Canon 6D that I’d rigged to run off external power. We followed a new set of lion prints on the way in, and as we headed up the draw a golden eagle flew out from where the carcass was. My camera wasn’t firing and had clearly died during the night. I flipped the power on and off and found it still had just enough juice to check the images. To our delight, we were staring at a lion on the LCD screen.

 

 

 

This was my first time setting on a fresh kill. A couple years back I passed on the opportunity to set on a wolf-killed elk, not wanting to mess with the pack’s meal. My experience (and those of other camera trappers I know) is that cougars are uniquely bold around camera gear and don’t shy away from shutter clicks or flashes. I was relieved to see that this cougar was no exception—it didn’t hesitate to dig into the carcass, and hung around for several extended periods from 8pm to 4am, eating a good portion of the deer. My friend Brett Jesmer once had a cougar surprise him while out on a night survey for flying squirrels. He threw a rock at the cat and it didn’t flinch; it just calmly looked over at the rock and then returned its gaze to Brett. I sense a similar reaction when looking at sequences of cougar photos from my camera traps. The cats lean forward and give the camera a curious gaze, but a moment later they are back to their business.

 

Here’s some more shots, hopefully more to come.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Like most camera trappers in the West, one of the first animals I dreamed of photographing was a mountain lion. There are too many reasons to be fascinated by these critters: they’re an apex predator, they’re America’s only big cat (not counting the handful of jaguars along the Mexican border), and despite their abundance, they’re rarely captured in photographs or film. There are countless amazing photos and video of Africa’s lions; yet there are very few of America’s lion. Anyone can go on a safari and see cats in Africa, but it’s extremely difficult to see the cougars that live all around us in the West.

My first camera trap photo of a lion came as a complete surprise. I set my camera in a steep, brushy canyon in Montana, hoping it would act as a funnel for animal movements. My light stands and tripods were in use on another project, so I found a nice boulder to set my camera on and secured my flashes to a tree and on a rock pile.

When I went to check the camera a while later I had a huge surprise waiting for me.

 

The mountain lion posed for three shots and then likely snuck by as my camera took a programmed 5s pause. The Canon Rebel Xti (400D) that took this picture failed shortly afterward (dead shutter); so I nearly missed my first big cat shot.

On a calm day last November I found cougar tracks following a rocky ridgeline in SE Wyoming. When I returned with my camera trap I learned just how nasty it gets in these sorts of areas. It was a sunny day in Laramie, but 40-60 mph winds had created a fog of blowing snow in the mountains. I needed bare hands to set my camera; but the wind chills were below zero, so I had to work in 30s intervals and then spend long periods warming my hands. I dialed in the shot using the 10s delay feature on my camera and quickly striking some cat poses, like this gem below. Any fur-trapper would do a face-palm if they saw this shot, as I’m polluting the set with my human scent, which is a deal-breaker for skittish critters like wolves or coyotes.

I let the camera sit for a couple weeks and then went to check it with my friend Jake Goheen, who works on carnivores in Africa. As we got to the ridge I saw my camera in the distance and started to get excited about what might be on it. Then I noticed a patch of melted snow 100 ft. or so in front of the camera. It turned out a cougar had killed an ungulate (probably a mule deer) just down the ridge from my camera, and then dragged it off somewhere. To my disappointment, I didn’t manage to capture any of the action on my camera. It wasn’t a total bust though, because we found lots of cougar tracks that gave us hints into how the cats traveled the ridge line. Jake found a nice path through some rocks and suggested we set there; he even struck a sweet cougar pose to help me dial in my camera (Canon 50d/Tokina 35mm f/2.8) and flashes (two Nikon speedlites).

I need to learn how to look cool and composed like The Goheen when I dial in my camera traps. I’d encourage Jake to leave science for a career in male-modeling, but he’s doing pretty well using his brain.

Bright conditions like this are actually horrible for setting camera traps, because you can’t see the effects of your flashes. The sun is doing all the work lighting Jake; my flashes add only a tiny bit of fill light in the shadows. At night, my flashes will be the only light available; they will make-or-break the image. Luckily I’ve spent enough timing camera trapping (and reading David Hobby’s incredible lighting blog) that I can fairly accurately guess how different lighting setups will look at night. In this case I duct-taped my key light to dead tree at camera right, and placed a fill light on a boulder to the left.

Weeks went by and I got some great mule deer shots, but no cougar.

 

I knew the cats were traversing the ridge, so I began to worry that they were wary of my camera setup. In my experience, once an animal makes your set and decides to avoid it, your odds of getting them become slim.

I came back in April with one of Jake’s graduate students, Brendan Oates, who studies moose. We checked a different camera on the way up to the ridge and got a big surprise: a partial shot of a cougar. The cat was so big that it didn’t fit in the frame! I’m guessing it was a dominant male. My colleague who used to work on cats in the region said they once captured a 200 lb. tom that patrolled this area, perhaps this is one of his offspring.

 

We huffed it up the ridge to check the 2^nd camera and found another big surprise: a cougar had visited that set as well; and this time we could see its face. I loved how my key light was off-axis enough to cast a shadow on the right side of its face, but I still managed to light both its eyes. Small details like this are very hard to get right when you’re camera-trapping. Also, my fill light keeps the shadows from going completely black, so you can still see detail on the animal’s right side (camera left).

 

As a bonus; it wasn’t just a single cougar, but instead an adult female with two teenage offspring (one of them pictured below).

 

On our hike out at dusk, we stumbled upon a narrow line of deer hair headed straight down the hillside. We followed it 100m or so to find a fresh mule deer carcass stashed in a draw.

 

Cell phone snap of Brendan doing his wildlife biologist thing and investigating the kill:

I thought the cats were done feeding on the deer, because they hadn’t buried it and most of the meat had been picked over. I came back the next day to set a camera on the scraps and in hopes of getting a scavenger. I discovered that the cats had actually came back during the night and reduced the carcass to a few bones. It’s fun to think that they were probably bedded down nearby when Brendan and I stumbled upon their kill.

About a week later I snapped this fox cruising up the draw.

 

Hopefully I’ll be posting more cougar pictures as winter returns and I begin moving my camera traps back to this spot.

 

 

 

 

I recently contributed images to The Nature Conservancy’s Cool Green Science Blog, which featured my good friend Peter Lisi’s recent paper on the rodent-eating habits of Arctic Grayling, which he published as part of his PhD dissertation in Daniel Schindler’s research group. Article here

The Arctic grayling’s signature trait is its big floppy dorsal fin-it’s quite a sight.

 

What’s less appreciated are the grayling’s amazing colors. They’re easy to miss when you see the fish out of water; but underwater, with a little ambient light or some flash, the colors really pop-reds, blues, greens, and even a few purple spots on the dorsal fin.

I first photographed grayling in the summer of 2010, when I’d just gotten an underwater housing for my SLR camera. It was a humbling experience. I threw on a dry suit and crawled out into a riffle, expecting to have an easy time shooting the abundant grayling. Instead I learned how hard it is to position yourself in a river when you’re wearing a big buoyant dry suit and holding a camera housing the size of a toaster oven. I flailed around and scared all the fish away at first. Then I found some big boulders to anchor my feet in and was able to hold still enough to let the fish calm down. I was shooting with an ultra-wide lens to minimize the amount of water between the fish and me for clearer shots. As a result I had to get really close to the fish to make them large in the frame. My trick in these situations is to stir up the sediments a little to kick up bugs and give the fish a reason to come check me out. This grayling came in to nab a mayfly nymph, and I swung my camera out like paparazzi to get close-up. It took several attempts to finally get a reasonable composed, in-focus shot.

Every summer I return to Alaska I make sure to get back to this spot to spend time underwater with these amazing fish. The more my collaborators and I observe them, the more they surprise us. My friend Kale Bentley recently found that grayling are way more mobile that we thought, capable of swimming back and forth across vast watersheds as they search for good foraging spots. We built the antennas pictured below to monitor grayling movements.

 

I can’t wait to snorkel with some more grayling in 2015.