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The Art of Sitting
June 23, 2009 by Moose
Filed under Biological Tips
Reprinted from the BT Journal, Vol.1 Issue 4, August 1996
Getting close physically, that’s a motto I’ve advocated since I first started writing about wildlife photography. Just after my last safari to Yellowstone, a participant made the comment after hearing what I photographed after all had gone home, “You save all the good stuff for after we all leave.” Giving me a bad time as he always does, he brings up a good point.
What I had told him about was a photo op I had with a bull Moose. It started at sun up when I saw the Moose in the company of two others. It was too dark so I couldn’t shoot. In fact, I didn’t take any photos of the Moose until four and a half hours later! What many call patience, I refer to as a sheer love of just being out in the wild. What I do when I’m all alone going after an image is not a methodology I talk much about and rarely teach, it’s the art of sitting. It’s one of the best ways I know of getting close physically to my subject. Sitting takes more than just having a butt to sit on (I should know since I don’t have much of one), but a state of mind and equipment to be successful.
Whether in a national park setting or out in the wild blue yonder, getting close to wildlife requires understanding basic biology. In a nutshell, wildlife tends to get closest when they approach us on their own terms rather than our trying to approach them. Case in point: my bull Moose in Yellowstone (I can’t figure out why, but I tend to gravitate towards Moose.)
We had photographed the three bull Moose earlier in the week. They had first been spotted by a group of tourists on the road to Mt. Washburn. Seeing the tourists, then the poor Moose they were chasing and the direction the Moose were heading, I turned our vehicle around and went to the Cascade Lake picnic area. There we set up our equipment and waited for the Moose to walk to us. They did just that, but they were still being followed by the tourists from the road. Their own personal space being crowded by the tourists, the Moose were pushed right out of the meadow and right past where we were standing. We did get some nice shots, but our time with the Moose was only a few minutes when it should have been much, much longer.
When I saw the bull Moose down on the lower end of Cascade Creek (near the road) a few days later after all my participants had left, I drove up to Cascade Lake trail and waited. From the experience of a few days prior, I knew the Moose meander up and down Cascade Creek through the meadow. One would eventually find his way up to where I was sitting. The question was, would he show up when the light was still nice and be lit in a flattering way?
Where to be “sitting” while waiting for the Moose to arrive? Well, the first consideration was the lighting. Being as dark as the Moose’s pelt was, I wanted front lighting on him. I also wanted a background that would help make the Moose pop in the photograph as well as communicate the world in which he lives. I was shooting with an F5 and 600f4 AF-I lens. The equipment I had played a key role in deciding where I would place myself.
The lens in use always dictates where I position myself. My motto in full says, “Get close physically and use optics to isolate.” Now typically I like shooting big game with a 300f2.8, but as I was shooting with the F5 and wanted to maintain the fastest possible autofocus, I went with the 600mm. (I was also hoping to find a Great Gray Owl while I was sitting for which the 600mm and 1.4x would have been perfect.) The 600mm’s narrow angle of view did allow me to be very selective of my background. So I set up accordingly, hoping that my prediction of where the Moose would show up would be correct.
Keeping lighting in mind, I also needed to place myself in a location where I wasn’t sticking out like a sore thumb. As I had my wife and two boys with me, our “hiding” place needed to conceal us all. I didn’t set up a blind or build a tree lodge to hide us. All we did was stand in the shadow of a small grove of Lodgepole Pines. None of us were wearing bright clothes, never do. Being in the shadow and standing, we took on the benign appearance of being part of the grove. Another real concern in our “concealment” was the fact we were in grizzly country. The trail we were on had just been posted as being frequented by griz. Being quiet is the last thing you want to do in griz country and you especially don’t want to surprise them. I took comfort in the fact that we were in the company of an old, bull Bison. He just grazed around us, sharing his flies with us some of the time (what a nice guy).
So there we stood. Now this is when many think, “you must have lots of patience!” Patience really has nothing to do with just sitting and waiting as far as I’m concerned. The time actually flew. While we stood there waiting, a bachelor herd of Mule Deer bucks came ambling through the meadow, grazing as they strolled by (great photo op). Gray Jays, one of our favorite birds, constantly kept checking us out for handouts (wonder where they learned that bad habit from, hmm…?). Various other forms of wildlife constantly ventured into the meadow to do their thing. This was a positive sign that our presence was not upsetting the nature of things. And finally, I was constantly on the lookout for the Great Gray Owl, a subject that eluded my F5 that week.
After four and a half hours, the bull Moose walked through the trees right at us. It nibbled on grasses as it strolled up towards us. It had come out of the trees a little to the east of where I had figured, so I had to move towards the east to get the lighting I wanted. In the process of moving east, the Moose moved into this gorgeous setting of shadow and sun and stopped. There it stood looking at us as if to say, “I’ve never seen you in my meadow before.”
Roll after roll of film went flying as the shot kept getting better and better. I started with the TC-14e 1.4x on the 600mm, but soon had that off as the bull had moved in quite close to us. We made sure to keep our distance from the bull (I have a lot of respect for those front legs). But the Moose didn’t care we were there for he just kept coming closer. At one point, he posed, providing me with my best shot yet of a bull Moose (possibly a cover for my upcoming book).
Then, out of the trees behind us came a crash! The bull Moose instantly stood at attention, ears forward. My wife had been watching our backs the entire time and called out when she saw Mule Deer bucks come running through the forest. I turned to see the bucks and then turned back to see the butt of my bull Moose move quickly off into the forest from whence it came. That was it, all over! Of course, we didn’t stick around to see what had caused the Mule Deer bucks to run, we left the meadow at a quick pace ourselves!
The point being, meeting wildlife on their own terms most often rewards us with the great photographs. Getting the big payoff for sitting and waiting comes from more than just having patience. You have to understand basic biology, in this case, knowing the Moose would walk back up the creek. You have to understand how to apply biology with technology, in this case, where to be positioned for the best lighting and angle of view for the lens in use. And most importantly, be able to become part of the scene and not stick out like a sore thumb.
I know many photographers who cannot sit for longer than a minute. There is nothing wrong with that and in fact, they probably produce more photographs than I with that style. But I like sitting back and taking it all in. In the four plus hours we stood in that meadow, I photographed the old Bison bull grazing, dust bathing, backlit with flies buzzing all about him; I photographed the Mule Deer bucks, the Gray Jays, chipmunks, and the bull Moose. For us, we were rewarded with not only being a part of the meadow to witness the passing of these creatures’ morning, but also with photographs that we can use to communicate what we saw to others. The art of sitting, like other arts, isn’t for everyone. But the rewards are greater than you can imagine!
Photographing Hovering Birds
June 23, 2009 by Moose
Filed under Biological Tips
Capturing hovering birds on film is one of the funniest pastimes in wildlife photography. On my recent trip to Churchill, Canada, I had the opportunities of a lifetime to practice and capture incredible images while having loads of fun. Every time I ventured out with my camera, I learned new, better and more creative ways to shoot. A big part of this learning came from shooting with my good friend, Arthur Morris, truly a master of photographing birds. I want to share with you what I learned so you might also learn and better enjoy capturing hovering birds.
Focusing
Those who have read my previous writings know I’m a manual focus kind of guy. At Churchill, I used three different setups for photographing flying birds, two manual and one autofocus. The setups were the F4e and 75-300 AF, F4e and 800f5.6 and Canon A2 and 400f5.6 Ultrasonic (head for Moose’s Camera Bag to see and understand what equipment he used today). I was able to get the same number of in-focus photographs with each system, but not the same quantity or with the same ease.
The F4 has never been regarded as a fast AF system and it isn’t. Its bright, 100% viewfinder though is great for manual focus. When used with the 800f5.6 for panning (to be covered in the next issue of the Journal) all the time, basically 90% of my flight shots came out tack sharp. The drawback though is its inflexibility. This is a system that is forever connected to the tripod. This limits my actions, so only birds that are flying basically parallel with the height of my lens can be successfully photographed. Birds directly overhead (some of the best light) just can’t be photographed. So flybys can be easily captured, but that’s shooting with your shutter release finger tied behind your back.
So to obtain mobility in capturing overhead flying birds, I switched to my 75-300. This sharp and lightweight lens does a great job of manually focusing on flying birds. In Churchill where birds are so close and in big flights, the 300mm focal length does an adequate job. But for the shy birds or flybys out in the marsh where they come out of nowhere, the 300mm is just too short. Now this setup used in autofocus mode works OK once locked on (something remedied with the F5). But that time delay in locking on the subject can be some of the best shots-lost. You must remember that with the F4 and N90s (but not the F5), you’re locked into having the subject centered when using autofocus. (This typically sucks compositionally!)
This brings me to the toy lens (as Artie calls it), the Canon 400f5.6 Ultrasonic. When it comes to birds in flight, you won’t find a better combo than the A2 and 400f5.6 (except for adding the EOS1n). The first big advantage is physical weight; there simply isn’t anything that hinders your actions with this system. Even the most inexperienced can swing up this system and get the bird in the viewfinder and in focus. Simply put, this combo was fast enough to capture everything I framed! And lastly, the A2 with its five AF sensors allows the photographer to compositionally place the subject while using autofocus. I don’t think you can find a better system at the moment for flying birds. There isn’t a place a bird can fly to escape this setup. (Sorry, I like this system a lot but not enough to switch to Canon. The F5 also makes a big difference and slight change in my plans concerning autofocus.)
Light
There’s no question that light is essential in good flight photographs. Actually more than any other photography, flight photography needs a certain quality and quantity of light. It can be summed up in just two words: blue skies.
Why are blue skies optimum? The vast majority of the time our subject is above us. When shooting a light colored bird such as a gull or tern against white, cloudy skies, the bird doesn’t pop (among other things). The subject, especially its primary feathers, blend in with the background. This is true for dark birds against dark, cloudy skies as well. And dark birds against white skies, I dread the thought! Properly exposing for any of this creates a nightmare as well as overexposed skies. Yuck!
Blue skies provide us with a background that makes the subject pop no matter if the subject is light or dark. Blue is also a great background because no matter how we expose for the subject, it looks good. Exposing for a light subject, the blue is overexposed, darkening it creating a deeper blue. Exposing for a dark subject against a blue sky, the sky is underexposed creating a light blue sky. But in either case, whether the blue is light or dark, it’s a blue everybody can relate to. There is no one blue we all think of for blue sky, any shade of blue is acceptable.
Exposure
This brings us to exposure. This varies according to which system one is using, Nikon or Canon (and this changes with the F5). Keep in mind this info is in generalities and not carved in granite. There are a number of variables that could affect your results. For example, I rate my Agfa RSX 100 at 125 ISO slightly changing how “I” expose. Using the Canon EOS1n vs. the A2, there is also slight differences in the evaluative metering. The EOS1n is more sensitive to dark subjects and in some situations is right on while in others, it acts more like a spot meter opening up too much for dark subjects. The A2 only has 1/2 stop increments while the EOS1n has 1/3 stops. With all these examples, the subject fills at least half of the frame. Any larger doesn’t really change things, any smaller does which I’m not covering here. With all that in mind, let’s trudge foreword.
With the Nikon system, matrix metering with blue skies is pretty cut and dry (will be with the F5 as well). I point my camera up to what appears to be a middle tone blue and meter. A middle tone blue is not the lightest blue at the horizon or the darkest blue directly overhead, but at a point in between. I want my meter to give me a basic daylight exposure for this blue. So I dial in the exposure compensation needed to reach basic daylight and shoot away. Once this is done, whether a light or dark subject comes into the frame, the meter provides the correct exposure.
The Canon system is only a tad more complicated to understand. Nothing one can’t master in a relatively short time. Using the A2 and evaluative metering while shooting against a blue sky, for a white subject, dial in minus 1/2 stop and for a dark subject, leave set at zero. On a bright but slightly hazy, cloudy day, a white subject can be shot at zero or plus 1/3 (dialed in via the ISO setting) and a dark subject at zero. The Canon system opens up nicely for dark subjects, especially the EOS1n. But with Canon or Nikon, always watch what the meter is telling you.
Framing
Photographing hovering birds, physical movement though being frozen in space must be communicated in the viewer’s mind. How can we do this when basically there is nothing in the frame that is blurred, the wings frozen in mid-beat? There are a couple of things to keep in mind.
The main thing is the well known fact that birds fly. Having them in a clear blue sky, the viewer of the image knows the bird is flying. The second thing is positioning of the subject in the frame. We want to provide our subject with enough room in the frame to continue on its path mentally.
This means that the subject’s tail is closer than its head to the edge of the frame. If possible, we want to provide a space for the subject to fly into in the frame mentally. Now this for many means shooting the flying bird in a horizontal format. While this works perfectly for “flying” birds, I suggest you try shooting vertically for hovering birds. While the subject might be a tad smaller in the frame, this format does give the photograph a new sense of drama. “Is the bird ringing up or diving down” is what the viewer of the photograph will ask themselves.
The Secret!
If I learned anything in Churchill, I learned this: to capture spectacular birds in flight photographs, you want the wind blowing away from the direction of the sun. This means the birds are flying against the wind into the light. This slows them down or makes them hover, perfect conditions for shooting. And with them heading into the sun, the sun on your back, the lighting is perfect. This makes for really easy, fun and successful shooting.
Since my return home from Churchill, I’ve put all I’ve learned into practice on many occasions. The magic I learned there works just fine down here I’m happy to say.
Safely & Successfully Photographing Birds at the Nest
June 23, 2009 by Moose
Filed under Biological Tips
Reprinted from the BT Journal, Vol.1 Issue 2, May 1996
Spring is in the Air!
Spring has to be one of my favorite times of the year (but my nose hates it!). After I get through sneezing and my eyes stop watering, I take off for the shrubs and trees. I don’t set out to do any macro work, but to find nesting birds. Nothing charges my rockets like photographing nesting birds. I like the images I take and all that rot, but what I really enjoy the most is the opportunity to spend “quality” time with a wild creature.
Photographing nesting birds, no matter the species, can be done by anyone. There are only a few rules (I hate rules, but these are important) you need to remember:
- No photograph is worth sacrificing the welfare of the subject!
- Never have the parents off the nest for more than twenty minutes!
- Have Fun!
To get you thinking about nesting season, or better yet, get you out and doing it, I want to print some excerpts from chapter 1, vol.II of Moose Peterson’s Guide to Wildlife Photography (to give some of you a sample of what’s to come). The entire chapter deals with photographing nesting birds-cup, cavity or ledge nesters. There’s no reason why anyone can’t do it safely and productively. Here are some guidelines to get you started in what I think is one of the most enjoyable aspects of our profession.
Finding the Nest – Pre-Field Homework
When it comes to photographing a nesting bird, the first place to start is in books. I’ve always thought that’s what winters are good for, staying in at night and prepping for the coming spring shoots. You might find all the prep I do before going out in the field a bit much. But I’ve yet to have a nest fail (knock on wood!) which I attribute to my actions and the homework I do before entering the field. That zero failure rate is more important to me than getting the photographs! I tend to work mainly with endangered species where there’s no room for the slightest error. But even with common species, there’s still no room or reason for errors. This is especially true for your first shoot at a nest, if you do your homework first!
The first things to discover about the species you want to photograph is the time of year it nests. Many believe that just because it’s spring, nesting birds abound. In grand generalities this is true. But in specifics, it’s way off. For example, Great Horned Owls tend to nest very early, in the latter part of winter. That’s because they don’t make their own nests, but use inactive hawk nests from previous years. They nest early because hawks reuse their old nests and don’t take kindly to finding an owl in their home! Hummingbirds are another early bird (sorry, bad pun!). They can be sitting on eggs before New Year’s in many regions of the country. Clark’s Nutcrackers nest in the dead of winter in the high country. So don’t assume the nesting time or you could be left holding an empty nest (figuratively speaking, of course).
Researching and uncovering the answers to these questions can be frustrating. In many instances, little has actually been published on a species’ nesting biology. True, some species’ nesting biology is understood in great detail. But for many common nesters, there are no published details about their biology. Finding out what is known takes a little detective work.
Published Resources
There are a number of great resources out there where you can start your sleuthing. A good starting point is bird identification books. These provide one key piece of information, the species’ Latin name. This is quite often needed later in extracting information from scientific sources. Bird identification books also provide range maps. In a quick glance, these provide a rough idea of geographically where a species nests. The written account for a species often provides further insight about the nesting biology. The two bird identification books I find indispensable are The Peterson Field Guides (either the Eastern or Western guide to birds depending on your locale) and the National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America. (These should already be a part of your personal library!)
Another resource to check out while at the library (sorry, bad pun again) are books. If your library is anything like mine, it has many old volumes, some pre-World War II. Though old, they often have lavish accounts on species. (You’ve hit gold if you find one pertaining to what you’re researching.) These often can solve all of your research needs as they contain incredible amounts of information. As it often turns out though, you might find one or two books that only mention your species in passing, but every little bit helps. (To avoid spending tons of my time in libraries, I started my own reference library in my office long ago which makes research a more pleasant task. If you’re serious about documenting lots of nesting birds, you might consider doing the same. There are a number of natural history mail-order book outlets which make finding titles simpler.)
The one type of library that’s sure to aid you in your information quest are research libraries. These are most often found at universities and museums of natural history. A great treasure chest of information awaits you there in scientific journals. The journals are typically published quarterly by different ornithological organizations. They contain a collection of papers written by scientists/biologists on a variety of topics in avian biology. Accessing the data you’re after is quickest by reading through the index that is published in the last journal of the year. Here’s where knowing the Latin name for the species you’re researching is invaluable. By searching the indexes for a number of years, papers on the species your researching can be obtained. The one drawback to research libraries is you’re typically not permitted to check out material.
You might be wondering if there is a definitive source for information. There is one book in my library I rely on constantly in the spring, A Field Guide to the Nests, Eggs and Nestlings of North American Birds by Colin Harrison. In this one volume, basic information for each species on nesting habitat and requirements, nest type, breeding season, eggs, incubation, nestling and nesting period are listed. (This is the general list of the information you need to find.) Now not every minute detail is available for every species, but it’s pretty darn close. The one drawback to the book is it generically covers all of North America. Some regional adjustments need to be calculated in for habitat and time of year of nesting for your locale.
Then Comes Spring
In the spring, trees and shrubs have on their new wardrobes of green. Birds are returning from migration, filling the forests, meadows, grasslands and marshes with sound. Males are doing their best at alluring a mate with song after song. Most males also use their song to defend their territories from other males trying to do the same thing. These are your first clues that the nesting season has begun in earnest. It’s also time for your first step in finding an active nest.
Singing males mean there are females about. And where there’s two, well you know what happens (a clue: the birds and the bee thing). Be aware that in some species, males use more than song to attract a mate. Some species perform specialized flights, dances and parades, all in an attempt to impress the opposite sex. Swifts, terns, and shorebirds are just a few. Some species dance for a mate, such as, prairie chickens. Some even have very specialized means of drumming up a mate (bad pun again, sorry bad habit), such as, the Ruffed Grouse.
Finding Nest Building
Observing birds with nesting material is the quickest way I know of finding a nest. Now this can vary some so when doing your homework, determine the principle material used in nest construction. For example, hummingbirds collect spider webs by wrapping them around their bill. Birds of prey often collect dead twigs and branches and just before laying eggs, they collect green boughs. Song birds often use the natural down of cottonwoods or thistles to line their nests. Observing birds gathering, perching or flying with these materials are signals that nest building is in progress.
Using binoculars, observe where the bird is taking its nesting material. Now if it’s a bird of prey, the nest will be rather obvious. It’s very size and placement high in the tops of open trees or cliffs make them relatively easy to find. On the other hand if it’s a hummingbird, it can be the proverbial needle in a haystack. Narrowing down the search area from an entire forest, to a corner, to a group of shrubs, to just a shrub and then finally to a branch, is a chore. It’s a chore that’s lots of fun, but one that must be done with the utmost care!
Care must be observed when approaching a nest! All preliminary inspections should be done with binoculars and not the feet. The reasons are many, the main one being natural predators. Foxes, raccoons, skunks and domestic animals all tend to follow the scent of man. Your actions can lead one of these predators right to the nest. Remember one very important fact. You depend on the welfare and success of that nest! All your efforts in researching, discovering and photographing a nest can be washed down the tubes in a matter of seconds because of a careless act. Not only will all your efforts be wasted, but more importantly, a generation of birds can be lost! If after all this work, you cannot go to the nest without leading a predator to it, walk away to photograph the bird another day!
First Trip to the Nest
When you believe the pair is on eggs, make plans for your first physical inspection of the nest site. Give the pair a couple of days buffer from when you believe they first started incubating before making your first visit. Now I’m assuming you found the nest from all the birds’ activities. But what if you haven’t, this first visit could be hazardous for the birds.
First of all, take care in the path you walk to the nest. Use large, high steps to avoid beating a path to the nest. We don’t have a firm understanding of how birds select their nesting sites. It’s not unreasonable to believe that the foliage surrounding the nesting site is as important as the actual bush or tree they’ve selected. If there are any large downed trees you must cross to get to the nest, take care not to break off any branches. And if there are branches extending into the nesting bush itself, take great care not to step on them. You could adversely affect the nest by tearing at branches attached to the nest.
Every time you take a step towards the nest, watch to see if the birds flush. They can fly out in any direction from the nest, so keep a keen eye out. You shouldn’t have any camera equipment with you at this time, just binoculars. Proceed cautiously and carefully, especially if you aren’t sure of the exact location of the nest. If you get to the shrub or tree and no birds are observed flushing, you’re doing great. If a bird did flush, hold still and wait twenty minutes. If they don’t come back in that time, leave the area and watch with binoculars. If it takes them five or ten minutes to come back to the nest after you’ve left, find another nest as this pair is too sensitive to tolerate your presence. If they come right back after you’ve left, you’re probably going to be OK.
You’ve successfully approached the bush, now how do you find that nest? The best method is to use just your eyes. Position yourself if possible so the bush/tree is backlit with the light shinning through its branches. This reveals the location of the nest by silhouetting it, its size and shape, making it stand out from all the branches. By slowly moving up, down and sideways, you might be able to find its location without physically touching the bush.
Preparing for the First Shoot at the Nest
Here it is, the exciting day you’ve earned with all of your diligent efforts. Now’s not the time to lose your cool and go off half cocked. (Get it, film advance? Ha, it’s a joke.) You want to head off to the nest with a song in your heart and checklist in your head. You need either a physical or mental check list of all the equipment you’ll need at the nest. You need to arrive at the nest site ready to go. Once at the nest, you’ll need to stay put until it’s time to go home. You don’t want to make a couple of trips back and forth from the nest to gather all needed equipment. You want to be able to work lightly and quickly. What follows is my checklist of equipment for a basic nest setup.
Nest Site Equipment Checklist
- Camera bodies (most often two)
- Tripod lens for photographing the nest
- Cable release (min 10′ long)
- M acro lens
- C hair
- F ilm (min five rolls per session)
- W ater / munchies
- F lash(s)
- M icro-cassette recorder
- E xternal battery packs for flash
- H at (if required by sun)
- A ll needed flash cords
- B ranch clips
- F lash bracket
- Rubber bands
- B inoculars
You want to assemble your equipment away from the nest. This means not only having film in the camera and the camera turned on, but also having it mounted to the tripod and flashes in place. This also means having all cords attached and ready at hand, plus the ties for the branches readily accessible. The last thing you want to do at the nest is take time assembling your equipment and gathering yourself. Not going in ready not only limits your productive time at the nest, but also creates unnecessary busyness which can keep the parents away. You want to travel light and work fast when photographing a nest. This means having a battle plan for dealing with the branches and your lighting all ready thought out.
Holding the branches back out of the way for photography can be a little tricky. You obviously can’t hold them with your hands the whole time. You cannot cut them away either, right? For my method, I utilize some homemade devices made out of heavy duty binder clips (obtainable at office suppliers). I attach a heavy cord connecting two small clips which I can use to tie back a group of leaves or twigs. I can either clip the two clips together to form a circle or safely clip them to a branch without injury to the plant. I have the medium and large sizes set up in the same fashion, but I also carry single binder clips. I use these to hold back just one branch if needed.
Setting these up the first time at the nest takes time (referring to minutes rather than seconds here), but after that visit, it’s a snap. The first time takes so long because you must use such care when moving those branches for the first time. Remember, they could very easily be attached to the nest itself. Pulling on the wrong branch or twig could upset the nest and its contents. It takes a few minutes to unravel the maze of twigs around the nest, but it can and must be done carefully without any harm to the nest. (Remember when you leave, you must put back all the branches, twigs, and leaves just the way you found them to protect the nest. When you remove the clips and ties, ease everything back into place. Do not let the branches snap back into place because this could upset the nest!)
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First Sitting at the Nest
As soon as you’ve reached the nest site and the adults leave the nest, the clock is ticking. Your activities should not keep the adults off the nest for more than TWENTY MINUTES! If the adults don’t come back to the nest after twenty minutes, pull yourself out but leave your equipment. Pull back to a distance from where you previously observed the nest with binoculars and watch the nest. If within the next five minutes, the adults come back, great. If not, go get your equipment and pull it all out including any branch ties. (Take care of the path you’re creating this whole time.) We have few scenarios to work through now. Obviously if the adults came in, then skip down a few paragraphs.
If you leave the nest with your equipment still set up and the adults come back in five minutes, you have a couple of options. Whatever you do, you need to wait a while. The parents need time to tend to the eggs which they just came back to incubate. They should have at least fifteen minutes to secure the eggs’ temperature and any turning of them that is required. After this time, you can slowly approach your gear. The birds will probably flush again, but hopefully return within twenty minutes. If that’s the case, you’re in like Flynn!
Now if they don’t return again, attach a cable release to the camera and move back ten feet from the camera. Remember you need to be holding still during all of this. You can’t dance about from nervousness, being cold or needing to go to the bathroom (that sure can make one dance). Once you’ve moved back ten feet and the adults come back in five minutes, good. If they don’t, move back to your previous position and watch. When they come back to the nest, provide them with the appropriate time then walk back to the ten foot mark. If they stay at this distance, do some remote shooting and try getting to your camera the next trip to the nest. If at this attempt the adults leave and don’t come back in twenty minutes, go get your camera gear and try again the next day.
You’re There!
Wow, you’ve made it to the nest and you’re sitting with camera and flash on, waiting to take that first photograph. The first time the adult returns to the nest, don’t fry its feathers with a blast of flash! Take a deep breath and soak in the moment; you’re sitting next to a wild creature, sharing a very important time together. You’ve probably had to work hard to get to this point, so did the birds. Just sit for a while and take in all that’s happening.
I can almost guarantee that the first time you do fire that camera, the birds will flush. It’s not so much the light from the flash that bothers them as much as it is the noise of all the operations. They will come back, and within literally a few frames, ignore the whole picture taking process. But in the beginning, take it slow. You’ll always have to remain calm, making all movements very slowly and smoothly. This is especially true for focusing the lens. Hand movement around the lens barrel tends to make most birds nervous.
Observations of the parents made on the first visit to the nest now become invaluable. Sitting at the nest, you tend to grow blinders to the many things going on about you. The direction from which the parents come and go to the nest and the duration of their absences are all important factors to your photography. These are things you should have learned from your preliminary visits to the nest. When the adults leave the nest, for whatever reason, it’s important to be aware of how and when they come back. During their returns to the nest, it will be like the first time every time. They’ll watch you like a hawk (oh sorry, another of those bad puns)! Any movement you make, will possibly cause them to stay away from the nest that much longer. Since you only want to stay at a nest site for a couple of hours Amax, time away from the nest is photographs lost.
Now this is the abridged version, but it should give you a direction and the basics to begin photographing nesting birds.
Safely & Successfully Photographing Birds at the Nest
June 23, 2009 by Moose
Filed under Biological Tips
Reprinted from the BT Journal, Vol.1 Issue 2, May 1996
Spring is in the Air!
Spring has to be one of my favorite times of the year (but my nose hates it!). After I get through sneezing and my eyes stop watering, I take off for the shrubs and trees. I don’t set out to do any macro work, but to find nesting birds. Nothing charges my rockets like photographing nesting birds. I like the images I take and all that rot, but what I really enjoy the most is the opportunity to spend “quality” time with a wild creature.
Photographing nesting birds, no matter the species, can be done by anyone. There are only a few rules (I hate rules, but these are important) you need to remember:
- No photograph is worth sacrificing the welfare of the subject!
- Never have the parents off the nest for more than twenty minutes!
- Have Fun!
To get you thinking about nesting season, or better yet, get you out and doing it, I want to print some excerpts from chapter 1, vol.II of Moose Peterson’s Guide to Wildlife Photography (to give some of you a sample of what’s to come). The entire chapter deals with photographing nesting birds-cup, cavity or ledge nesters. There’s no reason why anyone can’t do it safely and productively. Here are some guidelines to get you started in what I think is one of the most enjoyable aspects of our profession.
Finding the Nest – Pre-Field Homework
When it comes to photographing a nesting bird, the first place to start is in books. I’ve always thought that’s what winters are good for, staying in at night and prepping for the coming spring shoots. You might find all the prep I do before going out in the field a bit much. But I’ve yet to have a nest fail (knock on wood!) which I attribute to my actions and the homework I do before entering the field. That zero failure rate is more important to me than getting the photographs! I tend to work mainly with endangered species where there’s no room for the slightest error. But even with common species, there’s still no room or reason for errors. This is especially true for your first shoot at a nest, if you do your homework first!
The first things to discover about the species you want to photograph is the time of year it nests. Many believe that just because it’s spring, nesting birds abound. In grand generalities this is true. But in specifics, it’s way off. For example, Great Horned Owls tend to nest very early, in the latter part of winter. That’s because they don’t make their own nests, but use inactive hawk nests from previous years. They nest early because hawks reuse their old nests and don’t take kindly to finding an owl in their home! Hummingbirds are another early bird (sorry, bad pun!). They can be sitting on eggs before New Year’s in many regions of the country. Clark’s Nutcrackers nest in the dead of winter in the high country. So don’t assume the nesting time or you could be left holding an empty nest (figuratively speaking, of course).
Researching and uncovering the answers to these questions can be frustrating. In many instances, little has actually been published on a species’ nesting biology. True, some species’ nesting biology is understood in great detail. But for many common nesters, there are no published details about their biology. Finding out what is known takes a little detective work.
Published Resources
There are a number of great resources out there where you can start your sleuthing. A good starting point is bird identification books. These provide one key piece of information, the species’ Latin name. This is quite often needed later in extracting information from scientific sources. Bird identification books also provide range maps. In a quick glance, these provide a rough idea of geographically where a species nests. The written account for a species often provides further insight about the nesting biology. The two bird identification books I find indispensable are The Peterson Field Guides (either the Eastern or Western guide to birds depending on your locale) and the National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America. (These should already be a part of your personal library!)
Another resource to check out while at the library (sorry, bad pun again) are books. If your library is anything like mine, it has many old volumes, some pre-World War II. Though old, they often have lavish accounts on species. (You’ve hit gold if you find one pertaining to what you’re researching.) These often can solve all of your research needs as they contain incredible amounts of information. As it often turns out though, you might find one or two books that only mention your species in passing, but every little bit helps. (To avoid spending tons of my time in libraries, I started my own reference library in my office long ago which makes research a more pleasant task. If you’re serious about documenting lots of nesting birds, you might consider doing the same. There are a number of natural history mail-order book outlets which make finding titles simpler.)
The one type of library that’s sure to aid you in your information quest are research libraries. These are most often found at universities and museums of natural history. A great treasure chest of information awaits you there in scientific journals. The journals are typically published quarterly by different ornithological organizations. They contain a collection of papers written by scientists/biologists on a variety of topics in avian biology. Accessing the data you’re after is quickest by reading through the index that is published in the last journal of the year. Here’s where knowing the Latin name for the species you’re researching is invaluable. By searching the indexes for a number of years, papers on the species your researching can be obtained. The one drawback to research libraries is you’re typically not permitted to check out material.
You might be wondering if there is a definitive source for information. There is one book in my library I rely on constantly in the spring, A Field Guide to the Nests, Eggs and Nestlings of North American Birds by Colin Harrison. In this one volume, basic information for each species on nesting habitat and requirements, nest type, breeding season, eggs, incubation, nestling and nesting period are listed. (This is the general list of the information you need to find.) Now not every minute detail is available for every species, but it’s pretty darn close. The one drawback to the book is it generically covers all of North America. Some regional adjustments need to be calculated in for habitat and time of year of nesting for your locale.
Then Comes Spring
In the spring, trees and shrubs have on their new wardrobes of green. Birds are returning from migration, filling the forests, meadows, grasslands and marshes with sound. Males are doing their best at alluring a mate with song after song. Most males also use their song to defend their territories from other males trying to do the same thing. These are your first clues that the nesting season has begun in earnest. It’s also time for your first step in finding an active nest.
Singing males mean there are females about. And where there’s two, well you know what happens (a clue: the birds and the bee thing). Be aware that in some species, males use more than song to attract a mate. Some species perform specialized flights, dances and parades, all in an attempt to impress the opposite sex. Swifts, terns, and shorebirds are just a few. Some species dance for a mate, such as, prairie chickens. Some even have very specialized means of drumming up a mate (bad pun again, sorry bad habit), such as, the Ruffed Grouse.
Finding Nest Building
Observing birds with nesting material is the quickest way I know of finding a nest. Now this can vary some so when doing your homework, determine the principle material used in nest construction. For example, hummingbirds collect spider webs by wrapping them around their bill. Birds of prey often collect dead twigs and branches and just before laying eggs, they collect green boughs. Song birds often use the natural down of cottonwoods or thistles to line their nests. Observing birds gathering, perching or flying with these materials are signals that nest building is in progress.
Using binoculars, observe where the bird is taking its nesting material. Now if it’s a bird of prey, the nest will be rather obvious. It’s very size and placement high in the tops of open trees or cliffs make them relatively easy to find. On the other hand if it’s a hummingbird, it can be the proverbial needle in a haystack. Narrowing down the search area from an entire forest, to a corner, to a group of shrubs, to just a shrub and then finally to a branch, is a chore. It’s a chore that’s lots of fun, but one that must be done with the utmost care!
Care must be observed when approaching a nest! All preliminary inspections should be done with binoculars and not the feet. The reasons are many, the main one being natural predators. Foxes, raccoons, skunks and domestic animals all tend to follow the scent of man. Your actions can lead one of these predators right to the nest. Remember one very important fact. You depend on the welfare and success of that nest! All your efforts in researching, discovering and photographing a nest can be washed down the tubes in a matter of seconds because of a careless act. Not only will all your efforts be wasted, but more importantly, a generation of birds can be lost! If after all this work, you cannot go to the nest without leading a predator to it, walk away to photograph the bird another day!
First Trip to the Nest
When you believe the pair is on eggs, make plans for your first physical inspection of the nest site. Give the pair a couple of days buffer from when you believe they first started incubating before making your first visit. Now I’m assuming you found the nest from all the birds’ activities. But what if you haven’t, this first visit could be hazardous for the birds.
First of all, take care in the path you walk to the nest. Use large, high steps to avoid beating a path to the nest. We don’t have a firm understanding of how birds select their nesting sites. It’s not unreasonable to believe that the foliage surrounding the nesting site is as important as the actual bush or tree they’ve selected. If there are any large downed trees you must cross to get to the nest, take care not to break off any branches. And if there are branches extending into the nesting bush itself, take great care not to step on them. You could adversely affect the nest by tearing at branches attached to the nest.
Every time you take a step towards the nest, watch to see if the birds flush. They can fly out in any direction from the nest, so keep a keen eye out. You shouldn’t have any camera equipment with you at this time, just binoculars. Proceed cautiously and carefully, especially if you aren’t sure of the exact location of the nest. If you get to the shrub or tree and no birds are observed flushing, you’re doing great. If a bird did flush, hold still and wait twenty minutes. If they don’t come back in that time, leave the area and watch with binoculars. If it takes them five or ten minutes to come back to the nest after you’ve left, find another nest as this pair is too sensitive to tolerate your presence. If they come right back after you’ve left, you’re probably going to be OK.
You’ve successfully approached the bush, now how do you find that nest? The best method is to use just your eyes. Position yourself if possible so the bush/tree is backlit with the light shinning through its branches. This reveals the location of the nest by silhouetting it, its size and shape, making it stand out from all the branches. By slowly moving up, down and sideways, you might be able to find its location without physically touching the bush.
Preparing for the First Shoot at the Nest
Here it is, the exciting day you’ve earned with all of your diligent efforts. Now’s not the time to lose your cool and go off half cocked. (Get it, film advance? Ha, it’s a joke.) You want to head off to the nest with a song in your heart and checklist in your head. You need either a physical or mental check list of all the equipment you’ll need at the nest. You need to arrive at the nest site ready to go. Once at the nest, you’ll need to stay put until it’s time to go home. You don’t want to make a couple of trips back and forth from the nest to gather all needed equipment. You want to be able to work lightly and quickly. What follows is my checklist of equipment for a basic nest setup.
Nest Site Equipment Checklist
- Camera bodies (most often two)
- Tripod lens for photographing the nest
- Cable release (min 10′ long)
- M acro lens
- C hair
- F ilm (min five rolls per session)
- W ater / munchies
- F lash(s)
- M icro-cassette recorder
- E xternal battery packs for flash
- H at (if required by sun)
- A ll needed flash cords
- B ranch clips
- F lash bracket
- Rubber bands
- B inoculars
You want to assemble your equipment away from the nest. This means not only having film in the camera and the camera turned on, but also having it mounted to the tripod and flashes in place. This also means having all cords attached and ready at hand, plus the ties for the branches readily accessible. The last thing you want to do at the nest is take time assembling your equipment and gathering yourself. Not going in ready not only limits your productive time at the nest, but also creates unnecessary busyness which can keep the parents away. You want to travel light and work fast when photographing a nest. This means having a battle plan for dealing with the branches and your lighting all ready thought out.
Holding the branches back out of the way for photography can be a little tricky. You obviously can’t hold them with your hands the whole time. You cannot cut them away either, right? For my method, I utilize some homemade devices made out of heavy duty binder clips (obtainable at office suppliers). I attach a heavy cord connecting two small clips which I can use to tie back a group of leaves or twigs. I can either clip the two clips together to form a circle or safely clip them to a branch without injury to the plant. I have the medium and large sizes set up in the same fashion, but I also carry single binder clips. I use these to hold back just one branch if needed.
Setting these up the first time at the nest takes time (referring to minutes rather than seconds here), but after that visit, it’s a snap. The first time takes so long because you must use such care when moving those branches for the first time. Remember, they could very easily be attached to the nest itself. Pulling on the wrong branch or twig could upset the nest and its contents. It takes a few minutes to unravel the maze of twigs around the nest, but it can and must be done carefully without any harm to the nest. (Remember when you leave, you must put back all the branches, twigs, and leaves just the way you found them to protect the nest. When you remove the clips and ties, ease everything back into place. Do not let the branches snap back into place because this could upset the nest!)
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First Sitting at the Nest
As soon as you’ve reached the nest site and the adults leave the nest, the clock is ticking. Your activities should not keep the adults off the nest for more than TWENTY MINUTES! If the adults don’t come back to the nest after twenty minutes, pull yourself out but leave your equipment. Pull back to a distance from where you previously observed the nest with binoculars and watch the nest. If within the next five minutes, the adults come back, great. If not, go get your equipment and pull it all out including any branch ties. (Take care of the path you’re creating this whole time.) We have few scenarios to work through now. Obviously if the adults came in, then skip down a few paragraphs.
If you leave the nest with your equipment still set up and the adults come back in five minutes, you have a couple of options. Whatever you do, you need to wait a while. The parents need time to tend to the eggs which they just came back to incubate. They should have at least fifteen minutes to secure the eggs’ temperature and any turning of them that is required. After this time, you can slowly approach your gear. The birds will probably flush again, but hopefully return within twenty minutes. If that’s the case, you’re in like Flynn!
Now if they don’t return again, attach a cable release to the camera and move back ten feet from the camera. Remember you need to be holding still during all of this. You can’t dance about from nervousness, being cold or needing to go to the bathroom (that sure can make one dance). Once you’ve moved back ten feet and the adults come back in five minutes, good. If they don’t, move back to your previous position and watch. When they come back to the nest, provide them with the appropriate time then walk back to the ten foot mark. If they stay at this distance, do some remote shooting and try getting to your camera the next trip to the nest. If at this attempt the adults leave and don’t come back in twenty minutes, go get your camera gear and try again the next day.
You’re There!
Wow, you’ve made it to the nest and you’re sitting with camera and flash on, waiting to take that first photograph. The first time the adult returns to the nest, don’t fry its feathers with a blast of flash! Take a deep breath and soak in the moment; you’re sitting next to a wild creature, sharing a very important time together. You’ve probably had to work hard to get to this point, so did the birds. Just sit for a while and take in all that’s happening.
I can almost guarantee that the first time you do fire that camera, the birds will flush. It’s not so much the light from the flash that bothers them as much as it is the noise of all the operations. They will come back, and within literally a few frames, ignore the whole picture taking process. But in the beginning, take it slow. You’ll always have to remain calm, making all movements very slowly and smoothly. This is especially true for focusing the lens. Hand movement around the lens barrel tends to make most birds nervous.
Observations of the parents made on the first visit to the nest now become invaluable. Sitting at the nest, you tend to grow blinders to the many things going on about you. The direction from which the parents come and go to the nest and the duration of their absences are all important factors to your photography. These are things you should have learned from your preliminary visits to the nest. When the adults leave the nest, for whatever reason, it’s important to be aware of how and when they come back. During their returns to the nest, it will be like the first time every time. They’ll watch you like a hawk (oh sorry, another of those bad puns)! Any movement you make, will possibly cause them to stay away from the nest that much longer. Since you only want to stay at a nest site for a couple of hours Amax, time away from the nest is photographs lost.
Now this is the abridged version, but it should give you a direction and the basics to begin photographing nesting birds.
Photographing Alaska's Coastal Grizzly Bear
June 23, 2009 by Moose
Filed under Biological Tips
Reprint from Nov ’99 BT Journal
Note: You should not take the information here and then go find a grizzly bear to photograph. This information is provided so when you go with a guide such as myself, you are photographically prepared to capture the image.
Alaska has a number of big mammal species that I want to get to know better (and photograph) with the Grizzly Bear definitely at the top of that list. While science categorizes grizzlies into just a couple of species, with my limited exposure to them, I like to think of the grizzly a little differently than science does. This B News article is about the group of Alaskan Grizzlies that I think of as the coastal grizzly. These are the grizzlies that make their home in the coastal stretches along the Alaskan Range, the west side of Cook Inlet.
Now by no means am I going to pass myself off as a Grizzly Bear expert, having thousands of hours of observation time under my belt. What I have to offer you are insights that I’ve gathered after a couple of weeks of daily observation and photography of coastal grizzly bears. I was amongst two dozen individual Grizzly Bears and at times just feet away from them. I went on my adventure with all sorts of thoughts, stories and myths about grizzlies in my head, many the same ones you might have. But the experiences I had dashed the myths surrounding these magnificent creatures. It’s my hope to enlighten you about these gentle giants, enticing you to come to Alaska and experience for yourself the coastal grizzlies!
The “myth” I went to Alaska with that I think a lot of others have is that getting physically close to a grizzly is like courting death. When another photographer told me that his headshot of a grizzly was taken with an 80-200f2.8 lens, I was in awe, thinking that getting that close was living on the edge to say the least. Photographing grizzlies in socially uptight locales like Brooks Camp or McNeil River where there are lots of grizzlies in a small space, getting physically close is probably not a wise thing to do. There are too many “bear things” going on that we humans just can’t see or know about all the time. But in situations where grizzlies are doing grizzly things in wide open spaces without other “bear pressures”, getting physically close is not life threatening. In fact, being just a few feet from an 800lb sow and three cubs is one of the most exciting wildlife experiences this old photographer has ever done in his life!
Like all articles I’ve written where I’ve stressed understanding basic biology, photographing grizzlies more than any other species, depends on basic biological knowledge. Much of what I have to share with you I first read in biological reports, having the biology lessons reinforced by personal observation. I had a 900lb male griz run at me from more than one hundred yards out. He ended up passing by me still in a run by less than ten feet (yes, I was shooting the entire time). Being able to experience and distinguish that bear’s behavior as running and not charging was personally and photographically rewarding! But it’s that kind of basic biological understandings I’m stressing folks have so they experience the rewards of Grizzly Bear photography. (Please understand that photographers are seemingly killed each year by grizzly attacks, yet most of the time the fatalities are because of the photographer’s ignorance and not grizzly aggression.)
Coastal grizzlies have two main foraging strategies, grazing and fishing. Both of these strategies offer great bear viewing and photography. Understanding what you’re seeing and being able to capture the best possible photograph relies directly, in my opinion, on your knowledge of what you’re seeing in the viewfinder. Let this be the start of your bear lessons.
The Grazers
Grizzly Bears emerge from their winter dens hungry. They have been living off their fat reserves for many months as they slept and they emerge in a mode to replace the fat they lost plus more. But they typically have at least forty-five days to wait until the first big salmon runs begin. While they might find carrion like a winter moose kill or washed up seal or possibly whale carcass, it’s not enough to sustain one grizzly let alone a whole population of grizzlies and their hungers for long. And if we’re talking about a sow nursing spring or second year cubs, there is an even more pressing need for immediate food. The grizzly has evolved amazingly to succeed through the eons not on these seemingly bare pickings but by foraging on the sedges of the sloughs and coastline until the salmon run (and still eating sedges after the runs have started). What boggles my mind is these gentle giants become giants on grass!
The sea of green sedges, covering many coastal beachhead stretches attracts bears from all over the region. The lush, new growth of these grasses, believe it or not, sustains the coastal grizzly (or as the locals call them, brown bears where as the interior bears they call grizzlies). In fact, they are even able to start putting on fat from this forage. At one of my favorite locales to photograph griz, Silver Salmon Creek, the grizzlies are like cattle on the flats, grazing on the grass as a treasured delicacy!
The spring light bathes the ocean of grass as the bears come out of the trees to graze. The scene is seemingly tranquil to us humans with the bears spaced out over the landscape, feeding. But there is an unspoken law of the land where the bears live, and survive by, that needs to be understood by us humans before we go further on in this story.
There is a hierarchy on the fields of sedge much the same as on the stream or slope. It can be summed up basically as the largest has the right of way. But there are a few caveats to this basic “king of the hill” structure that you, the bear observer and photographer, need to understand. While the biggest griz is most likely a large male or boar, there are times when it could be a female or sow. And when a sow shows up with cubs, even the biggest boars give them space. So a female with cubs sometimes supercedes the largest in size. The pecking order basically goes from the largest to the smallest with size typically being directly related to age, the older the bigger. And you know what they say about age, the older the wiser. I think this truly relates to the grizzly.
I bet you’ve heard the warning, “never get between a sow and her cubs.” This is generally a very good rule to go by. But getting in between them is not a guaranteed death sentence. I have a good friend who has been in this situation many times, and still walks to tell the tales. The little caveat to this myth is, if you’re between the sow and cubs and the cubs bawl, communicating that they feel threatened, the sow will crash through anything in the way to reach her cubs and make them feel safe. If you’re in the way, well, you’ll be flattened. But if the cubs go about their business and never bawl or express that they feel threatened, the sow will go about her business.
And there are times when you’re so close to a family group that the cubs will come right up to you. Cubs are naturally curious about the world around them, just as they are when they become full size bears. You need to understand that this curiosity is how bears survive, learning and finding new food sources amongst other things. When those cubs walk up to you, you need to avoid panicking! You must keep your wits about you, trying to keep from being placed between the curious cubs and their mom. You must keep the cubs from feeling menaced even though they approached you! Moving away from the cubs while talking to them softly as you move is what has been suggested to me as the best course of action when in this situation.
The sedges is one of the best places to first see and photograph spring cubs, which are without a doubt, the cutest and most entertaining creatures on this earth! Photographing the cubs takes a quick hand and sense of humor I think. A quick hand is necessary because cubs are busy little bundles of fur, bouncing about while learning about their world. The cubs that I got to watch were characters! One time while I was fly fishing, a sow with two cubs walked by on the creek bank. (I was fishing in the main channel of the creek.) The family was walking by, watching me while looking for salmon. The family led by the sow crossed a small creek flowing into the one I was fishing. The sow walked across first, followed by the first cub and then the second. As the second cub reached the center of the creek, a salmon must have hit it in the foot because that little cub jumped into the air, bawled and then flew the rest of the distance across the creek to the safety of its mother’s side! Oh, I wish I had a camera that moment! I was laughing so hard I lost the salmon I had on my line!
Typically it’s the dominant male cub that’s the most active it seems, off exploring a squirrel’s hole, playing with a salmon carcass or bouncing off the side of mom. That’s why I say you need to be quick at hand and have a sense of humor. Being quick, you’ll be able to follow the action. Having a sense of humor, you’ll be able to anticipate the action, sort of. While we camped in Denali Nat’l Park on another trip this year, we had to sleep in our vehicle one night and not in our tents because we were told that two cubs had taken a liking to bouncing off the sides of tents. They weren’t hurting anything, just bouncing off tents like they were trampolines!
When photographing the bears grazing, getting a tack sharp image can be a challenge. For one thing, they are tearing at the sedges like pulling out weeds, more than biting the sedges off at the roots like typical grazers. This action means their heads are constantly in motion. When you focus on the eye, as you should, the jaws and their powerful muscles are right below and in motion. Just after they tear the grass they have a mouthful of sedge, which they seem to then grind slightly in their jaws before swallowing. This causes their facial muscles to tremble as they chew. Photographing the bears while they’re eating and capturing a sharp image on a sunny morn or afternoon is a no brainer, but in typical low light situations in Alaska, this can be a real difficult scenario.
This is the reason I bought the 400f2.8 AFS. Being able to work in lower light is a whole lot easier with f2.8 not necessarily because of a faster shutter speed because as in the scenario I just described, in low light there isn’t a faster speed fast enough to stop the action. No, rather the “fast” lens permits me to be quick to follow the action as the lens can focus in the lower light and I can see more in the viewfinder. I did note though that in some situations with some of the bears with a near even coat, no lights or darks but all the same shade of color, in lower light situations, the F5 sometimes had a hard time finding focus. The lack of contrast was the problem.
When photographing the grazing bears, first you want to check the wind direction. Not that you have to make any adjustments, but you want to be aware of it because of the bears incredible smelling ability. We watched one bear perhaps half a mile away, down wind of us, run the entire half mile to a salmon carcass lying fifty yards in front of us. There is no way the bear could see the carcass, just us standing there, but it smelled the carcass at that distance and came running (honest, I showered that day!).
The grizzly bear depends on their noses to tell them when other bears, potentially bigger and badder bears are in the area. They use their noses to find food as well as provide them with ideas of where and where not to look. Watching their noses and being aware of the wind, you can have some idea what they are doing and know when to worry about your own back. When shooting bears, I always keep checking behind me every few minutes. I’m not worried about some surprise attack harming me. However, I want to stay aware of a situation where I might all of a sudden be between bears that aren’t happy to see each other or a sow just emerging from the forest with her cubs, wanting to fight the big boar that I’m photographing. By shooting with the wind on your back when facing a bear, you can rely on their nose to help tell you when other bears are coming.
The Fisherman
I’m sure you’ve all seen the image of the grizzly either at McNeil River or Brooks Camp where the griz is standing in a waterfall, catching leaping salmon. This is definitely the most commonly thought of way how grizzlies catch salmon. But if you ask any Alaskan what other waterfalls in Alaska where this occurs, you might hear a list that’s mighty short. While it’s the most commonly photographed, catching salmon at waterfalls appears to be the least common way that grizzlies fish.
The more common method of fishing for grizzlies is simply along the many thousands of creeks, which salmon migrate up each summer to perpetuate their kind. Salmon can be so thick that they are crammed side by side, tail to head in a creek! The run I saw come in from the ocean this September was a dark cloud in the water, tails and jaws teaming, squirming, fighting and pushing to get upstream. For the fisherman and grizzly alike, this is a sight before eyes!
When it comes to catching the salmon, the grizzlies can use any one of a hundred tactics to catch a salmon. You won’t know the tactic the bears you’re watching will use until they actually start fishing. They might just jump in, sending salmon and water flying! They might stand on the side of the stream and snare a salmon as it goes by with the delicate touch of the claw of their paw. They might have a favorite rock or small island in the middle of the creek they prefer to stand on like Snoopy on his doghouse, hunched over waiting for a salmon they can grab. They might take a plunge and “swim” about with their heads underwater, looking for salmon to snatch. They might run through the shallows of a creek, chasing salmon in hopes of pinning one under their paw. I even saw one bear in a deep portion of a creek, wade in and fish like a ballerina, nose just above the water line as it felt for salmon with it hind legs. Another tried the same thing, but used its front legs to pin a salmon in its own grasp.
Like I said, there are a lot of different ways that the grizzly bears on these creeks have evolved to catch salmon. A lot of times, they are methods taught to youngsters by their mother and passed down generation to generation. Even fishing sites, holes, times and strategies are passed on by the sow to the cubs! So it only follows that if you want to photograph grizzlies fishing, you’ve got to find salmon!
The same basic rule of the largest gets their way applies to the fishing holes as well. The best holes are garnered by the biggest and baddest except for the exceptions as mentioned earlier. The difference here is the bears tend to get fuller faster, and so go sleep off their meal, allowing other bears to come and make use of the great hole until the big boys wake up and want to feed some more. Finding the great holes where bears like to hang out is really easy, just look at the tracks in the mud. You’ll see where the big boys like to be as their big tracks are really easy to see!
Photographing the fishing bear takes more skill than that of the grazing bear. The reason is the action that’s occurring, the bear actively in one form or another, trying to catch a fish. You’re also going to have to deal with the water, where all this action is going on. For example, on an overcast day, which is my favorite light to photograph the bears, the water can look rather drab to say the least. And when the griz has that squirmy salmon in its jaw, you’d best have a lot of light for a fast shutter speed to get the eye sharp!
The one technique you ought to be really good at when photographing the fishing bear is panning. They are on the move it seems quite a lot. You’ve got to be able to pan and fire to capture the really killer images of the bears in action. I would also strongly suggest you have an 80-200f2.8 or similar focal length-f/stop combo hanging on a second body on your shoulder. There are times that they are so close you’ll need this focal length to capture the action.
A Thought on Bear Light
The Grizzly Bear got its name because the first ones seen by white man had a “grizzled” look about them. I wouldn’t say no two look alike, but they are as different in pelt color as a photographer might desire. And it would seem everyone has his or her favorites. I personally like the slightly darker ones with the grizzled tinge to their coat. But you can have them as dark as sin or so light that they look almost white with every shade and combo in between that your imagination can conjure up. And depending on the pelt, different lighting can make a real difference.
Photographically, I think overcast days in general is the best light for bears the majority of the time. This permits one to take advantage of the natural color contrast inherent in the coat of the griz. All the subtleties can be captured by film, which is the real trick here. As always, I dial in +1/3 stop to brighten up the scene and then go about shooting as normal. The griz has a small eye and in a lighter pelted individual, it’s a whole lot easier to see that eye, which is very important so the viewer of the image can make contact. But with darker individuals, those little dark beady eyes can get lost without some sort of directional light striking them. But don’t think for a moment that if the sun comes out, I wouldn’t photograph the bears.
When the sun is out, you just have to work the bears and the situation to make the most of it. For example, a dark colored bear in the fresh green of spring, on a full sunlit day can be a little contrasty. The same bear in the same grasses but in fall when they have turned tan can be real contrasty. You either look for a lighter colored griz to photograph, hope for a cloud to come by to diffuse the sun, or realize that your film might not be able to hold all the detail. One saving grace is that these bears are in Alaska where the morning and evening light lasts for such a long time. This is one creature that truly looks its best in the light of these times of day.
One of the cool things about the griz is being able to photograph it side or back lit. Their hairs just tend to naturally glow when lit either of these ways, making all sorts of other photographic possibilities possible. You just have to remember that with dark individual bears when lit this way, it will be hard to see their small dark eyes. And seeing the eyes is very important to the success of your image!
Now by no means would I walk up to a griz that I hadn’t photographed before and just start firing away! Sharon and I spent hours watching grizzlies in Denali for example, learning their individual behavior and characteristics, watching outside pressures and waiting for them to get close on their own terms before I started to photograph them. I also talked with another photographer who I greatly trust and learned from his experiences as well before taking on these gentle giants. Understanding their basic biology not only kept me safe and permitted the bears to do their thing, but also helped capture the images I desired. You can do the same thing with the same rewards by following these words of advice I’ve offered here.
I found photographing coastal grizzly bears to be one of the greatest challenges I’ve faced as a photographer. Capturing great images of the bear eating, running or foraging isn’t the challenge. Capturing the size, power, strength of the bear and the grandeur of the grizzly bear’s home is the monumental challenge. When you spend any time in its home and walk its path, you get an insight into this creature that I generally don’t see in photographs of the griz. After getting over the “wow” factor (and that takes along time when you’re so close to these magnificent creatures) and getting down to communicating, this challenge kept me awake at night. That challenge will keep me thinking all winter until I venture to Alaska again, to photograph the coastal grizzly bear!
Want to get in on the challenge? Where I photograph these coastal grizzly bears is open to anyone wanting to take up the challenge! You can’t drive there, but must fly in by a small plane and land on a beach. The folks at Silver Salmon Creek Lodge are there waiting when you land to share their incredible slice of Alaska with you. David Corey, the owner and host, is a native with a big smile and desire to share this piece of Alaska with you. Arne, photographer and bear guide expert, will get you safely so close to these bears, you will come back a changed person. You can contact the folks at Silver Salmon Creek Lodge at 907.262.4839. I hope to see you there!
Photographing Alaska’s Coastal Grizzly Bear
June 23, 2009 by Moose
Filed under Biological Tips
Reprint from Nov ’99 BT Journal
Note: You should not take the information here and then go find a grizzly bear to photograph. This information is provided so when you go with a guide such as myself, you are photographically prepared to capture the image.
Alaska has a number of big mammal species that I want to get to know better (and photograph) with the Grizzly Bear definitely at the top of that list. While science categorizes grizzlies into just a couple of species, with my limited exposure to them, I like to think of the grizzly a little differently than science does. This B News article is about the group of Alaskan Grizzlies that I think of as the coastal grizzly. These are the grizzlies that make their home in the coastal stretches along the Alaskan Range, the west side of Cook Inlet.
Now by no means am I going to pass myself off as a Grizzly Bear expert, having thousands of hours of observation time under my belt. What I have to offer you are insights that I’ve gathered after a couple of weeks of daily observation and photography of coastal grizzly bears. I was amongst two dozen individual Grizzly Bears and at times just feet away from them. I went on my adventure with all sorts of thoughts, stories and myths about grizzlies in my head, many the same ones you might have. But the experiences I had dashed the myths surrounding these magnificent creatures. It’s my hope to enlighten you about these gentle giants, enticing you to come to Alaska and experience for yourself the coastal grizzlies!
The “myth” I went to Alaska with that I think a lot of others have is that getting physically close to a grizzly is like courting death. When another photographer told me that his headshot of a grizzly was taken with an 80-200f2.8 lens, I was in awe, thinking that getting that close was living on the edge to say the least. Photographing grizzlies in socially uptight locales like Brooks Camp or McNeil River where there are lots of grizzlies in a small space, getting physically close is probably not a wise thing to do. There are too many “bear things” going on that we humans just can’t see or know about all the time. But in situations where grizzlies are doing grizzly things in wide open spaces without other “bear pressures”, getting physically close is not life threatening. In fact, being just a few feet from an 800lb sow and three cubs is one of the most exciting wildlife experiences this old photographer has ever done in his life!
Like all articles I’ve written where I’ve stressed understanding basic biology, photographing grizzlies more than any other species, depends on basic biological knowledge. Much of what I have to share with you I first read in biological reports, having the biology lessons reinforced by personal observation. I had a 900lb male griz run at me from more than one hundred yards out. He ended up passing by me still in a run by less than ten feet (yes, I was shooting the entire time). Being able to experience and distinguish that bear’s behavior as running and not charging was personally and photographically rewarding! But it’s that kind of basic biological understandings I’m stressing folks have so they experience the rewards of Grizzly Bear photography. (Please understand that photographers are seemingly killed each year by grizzly attacks, yet most of the time the fatalities are because of the photographer’s ignorance and not grizzly aggression.)
Coastal grizzlies have two main foraging strategies, grazing and fishing. Both of these strategies offer great bear viewing and photography. Understanding what you’re seeing and being able to capture the best possible photograph relies directly, in my opinion, on your knowledge of what you’re seeing in the viewfinder. Let this be the start of your bear lessons.
The Grazers
Grizzly Bears emerge from their winter dens hungry. They have been living off their fat reserves for many months as they slept and they emerge in a mode to replace the fat they lost plus more. But they typically have at least forty-five days to wait until the first big salmon runs begin. While they might find carrion like a winter moose kill or washed up seal or possibly whale carcass, it’s not enough to sustain one grizzly let alone a whole population of grizzlies and their hungers for long. And if we’re talking about a sow nursing spring or second year cubs, there is an even more pressing need for immediate food. The grizzly has evolved amazingly to succeed through the eons not on these seemingly bare pickings but by foraging on the sedges of the sloughs and coastline until the salmon run (and still eating sedges after the runs have started). What boggles my mind is these gentle giants become giants on grass!
The sea of green sedges, covering many coastal beachhead stretches attracts bears from all over the region. The lush, new growth of these grasses, believe it or not, sustains the coastal grizzly (or as the locals call them, brown bears where as the interior bears they call grizzlies). In fact, they are even able to start putting on fat from this forage. At one of my favorite locales to photograph griz, Silver Salmon Creek, the grizzlies are like cattle on the flats, grazing on the grass as a treasured delicacy!
The spring light bathes the ocean of grass as the bears come out of the trees to graze. The scene is seemingly tranquil to us humans with the bears spaced out over the landscape, feeding. But there is an unspoken law of the land where the bears live, and survive by, that needs to be understood by us humans before we go further on in this story.
There is a hierarchy on the fields of sedge much the same as on the stream or slope. It can be summed up basically as the largest has the right of way. But there are a few caveats to this basic “king of the hill” structure that you, the bear observer and photographer, need to understand. While the biggest griz is most likely a large male or boar, there are times when it could be a female or sow. And when a sow shows up with cubs, even the biggest boars give them space. So a female with cubs sometimes supercedes the largest in size. The pecking order basically goes from the largest to the smallest with size typically being directly related to age, the older the bigger. And you know what they say about age, the older the wiser. I think this truly relates to the grizzly.
I bet you’ve heard the warning, “never get between a sow and her cubs.” This is generally a very good rule to go by. But getting in between them is not a guaranteed death sentence. I have a good friend who has been in this situation many times, and still walks to tell the tales. The little caveat to this myth is, if you’re between the sow and cubs and the cubs bawl, communicating that they feel threatened, the sow will crash through anything in the way to reach her cubs and make them feel safe. If you’re in the way, well, you’ll be flattened. But if the cubs go about their business and never bawl or express that they feel threatened, the sow will go about her business.
And there are times when you’re so close to a family group that the cubs will come right up to you. Cubs are naturally curious about the world around them, just as they are when they become full size bears. You need to understand that this curiosity is how bears survive, learning and finding new food sources amongst other things. When those cubs walk up to you, you need to avoid panicking! You must keep your wits about you, trying to keep from being placed between the curious cubs and their mom. You must keep the cubs from feeling menaced even though they approached you! Moving away from the cubs while talking to them softly as you move is what has been suggested to me as the best course of action when in this situation.
The sedges is one of the best places to first see and photograph spring cubs, which are without a doubt, the cutest and most entertaining creatures on this earth! Photographing the cubs takes a quick hand and sense of humor I think. A quick hand is necessary because cubs are busy little bundles of fur, bouncing about while learning about their world. The cubs that I got to watch were characters! One time while I was fly fishing, a sow with two cubs walked by on the creek bank. (I was fishing in the main channel of the creek.) The family was walking by, watching me while looking for salmon. The family led by the sow crossed a small creek flowing into the one I was fishing. The sow walked across first, followed by the first cub and then the second. As the second cub reached the center of the creek, a salmon must have hit it in the foot because that little cub jumped into the air, bawled and then flew the rest of the distance across the creek to the safety of its mother’s side! Oh, I wish I had a camera that moment! I was laughing so hard I lost the salmon I had on my line!
Typically it’s the dominant male cub that’s the most active it seems, off exploring a squirrel’s hole, playing with a salmon carcass or bouncing off the side of mom. That’s why I say you need to be quick at hand and have a sense of humor. Being quick, you’ll be able to follow the action. Having a sense of humor, you’ll be able to anticipate the action, sort of. While we camped in Denali Nat’l Park on another trip this year, we had to sleep in our vehicle one night and not in our tents because we were told that two cubs had taken a liking to bouncing off the sides of tents. They weren’t hurting anything, just bouncing off tents like they were trampolines!
When photographing the bears grazing, getting a tack sharp image can be a challenge. For one thing, they are tearing at the sedges like pulling out weeds, more than biting the sedges off at the roots like typical grazers. This action means their heads are constantly in motion. When you focus on the eye, as you should, the jaws and their powerful muscles are right below and in motion. Just after they tear the grass they have a mouthful of sedge, which they seem to then grind slightly in their jaws before swallowing. This causes their facial muscles to tremble as they chew. Photographing the bears while they’re eating and capturing a sharp image on a sunny morn or afternoon is a no brainer, but in typical low light situations in Alaska, this can be a real difficult scenario.
This is the reason I bought the 400f2.8 AFS. Being able to work in lower light is a whole lot easier with f2.8 not necessarily because of a faster shutter speed because as in the scenario I just described, in low light there isn’t a faster speed fast enough to stop the action. No, rather the “fast” lens permits me to be quick to follow the action as the lens can focus in the lower light and I can see more in the viewfinder. I did note though that in some situations with some of the bears with a near even coat, no lights or darks but all the same shade of color, in lower light situations, the F5 sometimes had a hard time finding focus. The lack of contrast was the problem.
When photographing the grazing bears, first you want to check the wind direction. Not that you have to make any adjustments, but you want to be aware of it because of the bears incredible smelling ability. We watched one bear perhaps half a mile away, down wind of us, run the entire half mile to a salmon carcass lying fifty yards in front of us. There is no way the bear could see the carcass, just us standing there, but it smelled the carcass at that distance and came running (honest, I showered that day!).
The grizzly bear depends on their noses to tell them when other bears, potentially bigger and badder bears are in the area. They use their noses to find food as well as provide them with ideas of where and where not to look. Watching their noses and being aware of the wind, you can have some idea what they are doing and know when to worry about your own back. When shooting bears, I always keep checking behind me every few minutes. I’m not worried about some surprise attack harming me. However, I want to stay aware of a situation where I might all of a sudden be between bears that aren’t happy to see each other or a sow just emerging from the forest with her cubs, wanting to fight the big boar that I’m photographing. By shooting with the wind on your back when facing a bear, you can rely on their nose to help tell you when other bears are coming.
The Fisherman
I’m sure you’ve all seen the image of the grizzly either at McNeil River or Brooks Camp where the griz is standing in a waterfall, catching leaping salmon. This is definitely the most commonly thought of way how grizzlies catch salmon. But if you ask any Alaskan what other waterfalls in Alaska where this occurs, you might hear a list that’s mighty short. While it’s the most commonly photographed, catching salmon at waterfalls appears to be the least common way that grizzlies fish.
The more common method of fishing for grizzlies is simply along the many thousands of creeks, which salmon migrate up each summer to perpetuate their kind. Salmon can be so thick that they are crammed side by side, tail to head in a creek! The run I saw come in from the ocean this September was a dark cloud in the water, tails and jaws teaming, squirming, fighting and pushing to get upstream. For the fisherman and grizzly alike, this is a sight before eyes!
When it comes to catching the salmon, the grizzlies can use any one of a hundred tactics to catch a salmon. You won’t know the tactic the bears you’re watching will use until they actually start fishing. They might just jump in, sending salmon and water flying! They might stand on the side of the stream and snare a salmon as it goes by with the delicate touch of the claw of their paw. They might have a favorite rock or small island in the middle of the creek they prefer to stand on like Snoopy on his doghouse, hunched over waiting for a salmon they can grab. They might take a plunge and “swim” about with their heads underwater, looking for salmon to snatch. They might run through the shallows of a creek, chasing salmon in hopes of pinning one under their paw. I even saw one bear in a deep portion of a creek, wade in and fish like a ballerina, nose just above the water line as it felt for salmon with it hind legs. Another tried the same thing, but used its front legs to pin a salmon in its own grasp.
Like I said, there are a lot of different ways that the grizzly bears on these creeks have evolved to catch salmon. A lot of times, they are methods taught to youngsters by their mother and passed down generation to generation. Even fishing sites, holes, times and strategies are passed on by the sow to the cubs! So it only follows that if you want to photograph grizzlies fishing, you’ve got to find salmon!
The same basic rule of the largest gets their way applies to the fishing holes as well. The best holes are garnered by the biggest and baddest except for the exceptions as mentioned earlier. The difference here is the bears tend to get fuller faster, and so go sleep off their meal, allowing other bears to come and make use of the great hole until the big boys wake up and want to feed some more. Finding the great holes where bears like to hang out is really easy, just look at the tracks in the mud. You’ll see where the big boys like to be as their big tracks are really easy to see!
Photographing the fishing bear takes more skill than that of the grazing bear. The reason is the action that’s occurring, the bear actively in one form or another, trying to catch a fish. You’re also going to have to deal with the water, where all this action is going on. For example, on an overcast day, which is my favorite light to photograph the bears, the water can look rather drab to say the least. And when the griz has that squirmy salmon in its jaw, you’d best have a lot of light for a fast shutter speed to get the eye sharp!
The one technique you ought to be really good at when photographing the fishing bear is panning. They are on the move it seems quite a lot. You’ve got to be able to pan and fire to capture the really killer images of the bears in action. I would also strongly suggest you have an 80-200f2.8 or similar focal length-f/stop combo hanging on a second body on your shoulder. There are times that they are so close you’ll need this focal length to capture the action.
A Thought on Bear Light
The Grizzly Bear got its name because the first ones seen by white man had a “grizzled” look about them. I wouldn’t say no two look alike, but they are as different in pelt color as a photographer might desire. And it would seem everyone has his or her favorites. I personally like the slightly darker ones with the grizzled tinge to their coat. But you can have them as dark as sin or so light that they look almost white with every shade and combo in between that your imagination can conjure up. And depending on the pelt, different lighting can make a real difference.
Photographically, I think overcast days in general is the best light for bears the majority of the time. This permits one to take advantage of the natural color contrast inherent in the coat of the griz. All the subtleties can be captured by film, which is the real trick here. As always, I dial in +1/3 stop to brighten up the scene and then go about shooting as normal. The griz has a small eye and in a lighter pelted individual, it’s a whole lot easier to see that eye, which is very important so the viewer of the image can make contact. But with darker individuals, those little dark beady eyes can get lost without some sort of directional light striking them. But don’t think for a moment that if the sun comes out, I wouldn’t photograph the bears.
When the sun is out, you just have to work the bears and the situation to make the most of it. For example, a dark colored bear in the fresh green of spring, on a full sunlit day can be a little contrasty. The same bear in the same grasses but in fall when they have turned tan can be real contrasty. You either look for a lighter colored griz to photograph, hope for a cloud to come by to diffuse the sun, or realize that your film might not be able to hold all the detail. One saving grace is that these bears are in Alaska where the morning and evening light lasts for such a long time. This is one creature that truly looks its best in the light of these times of day.
One of the cool things about the griz is being able to photograph it side or back lit. Their hairs just tend to naturally glow when lit either of these ways, making all sorts of other photographic possibilities possible. You just have to remember that with dark individual bears when lit this way, it will be hard to see their small dark eyes. And seeing the eyes is very important to the success of your image!
Now by no means would I walk up to a griz that I hadn’t photographed before and just start firing away! Sharon and I spent hours watching grizzlies in Denali for example, learning their individual behavior and characteristics, watching outside pressures and waiting for them to get close on their own terms before I started to photograph them. I also talked with another photographer who I greatly trust and learned from his experiences as well before taking on these gentle giants. Understanding their basic biology not only kept me safe and permitted the bears to do their thing, but also helped capture the images I desired. You can do the same thing with the same rewards by following these words of advice I’ve offered here.
I found photographing coastal grizzly bears to be one of the greatest challenges I’ve faced as a photographer. Capturing great images of the bear eating, running or foraging isn’t the challenge. Capturing the size, power, strength of the bear and the grandeur of the grizzly bear’s home is the monumental challenge. When you spend any time in its home and walk its path, you get an insight into this creature that I generally don’t see in photographs of the griz. After getting over the “wow” factor (and that takes along time when you’re so close to these magnificent creatures) and getting down to communicating, this challenge kept me awake at night. That challenge will keep me thinking all winter until I venture to Alaska again, to photograph the coastal grizzly bear!
Want to get in on the challenge? Where I photograph these coastal grizzly bears is open to anyone wanting to take up the challenge! You can’t drive there, but must fly in by a small plane and land on a beach. The folks at Silver Salmon Creek Lodge are there waiting when you land to share their incredible slice of Alaska with you. David Corey, the owner and host, is a native with a big smile and desire to share this piece of Alaska with you. Arne, photographer and bear guide expert, will get you safely so close to these bears, you will come back a changed person. You can contact the folks at Silver Salmon Creek Lodge at 907.262.4839. I hope to see you there!
