The magic of flight that birds appear to do so effortlessly is a photographic storytelling challenge. That’s because as we watch it in real time, the mind fills in lots of gaps so all that registers is that magic. But when you take just one moment from that flight, that single moment in flight might not translate that magic that we’re after. How do you bring home that elegance of flight in your photo to share with others? As you watch them ring up, raptors make circles and in that circle there is a photograph and only one moment. In that moment is the elegance but how do you capture that?
It all starts really with the gear you’re shooting with, in this example, I used the captured by D5 / 800mm but an easier set up for most would have be something handheld like the 300PF on the D5. The gear gives you not only the image size but ability to isolate the flight from the background. There is a general rule in bird flight photography, don’t photograph them with a gray background. The 800mm permitted me to grab the small slice of blue in the gray. Then in watching the Red-shoulder circle, I watched and shot ONLY when it was coming into the light AND it was looking around and not just straight down (other photo shows when not to click). In the lower photo you can see where even though the hawk is lit, the feeling of the magic of flight doesn’t come through. It’s a challenge to get the shot but just keep in the back of your mind, you want to say in your photograph the elegance of flight!
There are those moments when the air is still, the light has kissed it when the subject comes through to be blessed by it. With the D5 / 800mm mounted we had such a moment with this Fl Brown Pelican glided past. Our moment of zen.
There is an unspoken ingredient in the photographic chase that can be hard for some. It’s hard because one, it’s an ingredient not in the instruction book and two, even once known it’s hard to conjure up. And that’s an imagination. I often talk about photography is a visual storytelling medium, a way to tap the viewer’s heartstrings. While f/stops and shutter speeds are needed to make some of this process begin, it only travels home when passion drive by imagination wraps up that visual story and takes it to the heart. How can you find your imagination, expand it and exploit it? This was a question a photographer asked me recently and to be honest with you, being one with a vivid imagination, forever, I’m still searching for the answer. For now, I have this.
Last week we walked about Grand Prismatic in Yellowstone, what one in our group called the World Tour. With D850 / 18-35 or 105f1.4 or 70-200f4 in hand (me with my 18f2.8), we walked around the boardwalk and I called out all the continents I saw in the snow that had landed and melted shapes in the springs. It might be Greenland or the Rookies or Serangetti Highlands. And in doing that, for some the whole world of texture, color and photography opened up. We all had a ball and it was based simply on a vivid imagination. So when you’re out shooting next time and wanting to take your photography to the next step and that histogram and gettin you there, you might think of what it starts with …
We were to have pretty clear skies so the idea of a time lapse of the lunar eclipse crossed my mind. I went online and looked up the times for the eclipse at the house (didn’t have time to spend it on the flats) and saw that more than likely, the time of totality would be behind the mountain. And, it would be when the sun was rising in the east. None the less, I set up the D850 as it takes heavenly lights time-lapse to a whole new level of easy! I started with the D850 with the 18f2.8AF attached to a tripod. The D850 was set to Auto ISO with max of 6400 and shutter speed of 25sec, New Auto Natural WB, Aperture Priority at f/2.8, I went into the Time-lapse menu and dialed in the settings. I set the duration to 7hrs 59min, frequency to 1 every 30sec, Exposure Smoothing and Silent Shutter (which freakin rocks!). I shot one with the EH-5c/EP-5B AC adapter providing constant power to the D850. While no eclipse, I love watching what went through the skies while I slept.
It was SO worth the wait! All these years of coming to Yellowstone to be intimate with a pack was finally achieved. Sixteen members of the 8 Mile Pack made a kill the night before. The next morning nine were still working on the Bison kill. When we arrived we found them off in the distance with full bellies sleeping it off. There were two options when they woke up while we were there. They would come back and feed a little more or more likely, slip back into their secretive world of the forest disappearing from view. Within 30min of our arrival, they got up and at first, two of the adults walked back into the forest. My heart sunk! There were nine wolves when we arrived, now there were seven. Then they all started to get up, stretch and mill around. I figured that would be it. Then the alpha male made a 180 and walked right towards us and the kill. For the next two hours, I was treated to a lifetime experience I’ve been seeking for decades!
We were fortunate to witness so much amazing, total, cool and exciting biology! All this on the edge of a thermal casting steam about the scene. To be honest, I’m at the moment at a loss for words to describe it. Not having gotten through all my images to let them tell the story, I’m going to have to reflect on the spectacular time to better put words to it. In the coach driving back in, all I could come up to describe our time was, epic!
I wanted a sunset to sunrise time lapse of our winter skies, 16 hours of shooting time. Picking a night with no moon and moving clouds, I set out for what really is a simple process now. The D850 takes heavenly lights time-lapse to a whole new level of easy! At the same time, it produces some pretty darn clean results. I started with the D850 with the 18f2.8AF attached to a tripod. Using what I call the “too tired to think” settings, the camera set to Auto ISO with max of 6400 and shutter speed of 25sec, New Auto Natural WB, Aperture Priority at f/2.8, I went into the Time-lapse menu and dialed in the settings. I set the duration to 7hrs 59min, frequency to 1 every 30sec, Exposure Smoothing and Silent Shutter (which freakin rocks!). I shot one with the EH-5c/EP-5B AC adapter providing constant power to the D850. I got up during the night right at the 7hrs 59min mark to restart the camera to create the 16 hr time lapse. The D850 creates right out of the camera a 4k time-lapse movie as easy as touching the menu Start (yep, Menu is touch activated!). I just combined the two out of camera videos for what you see here. Really way too simple now, thank goodness. Now you can create an 8k time-lapse with the D850 as well. You would need to shoot Nef’s and then run those through a 3rd party program (like Photoshop) to create that high res time-lapse (which would produce the best results). Either way, it’s so simple it’s a ton of fun! Oh ya, didn’t know neighbors were going to throw an evening party. Kinda lit up the trees. mtc
