May 13, 2014 | Landscape Photography
One of the real challenges of photography is knowing when to say, when. That’s to say, the best photo has come and gone and it’s time to move on. Let me share this sunset from the other night in Custer State Park as an example of what I’m talking about. The top photo is why I stopped the car. At one of my favorite locales for sunrise, this night is was perfect for sunset. So with Df /18-35AFS in hand, I made the click you see above. The clouds I stopped for has already changed slightly in the fast moving storm, but I still made this first click. And having already seen “the” shot I liked slip away, I stayed watching the heavens. Pretty natural reaction to beauty.
As you see, the uniqueness in the texture in the clouds slowly got jammed up, it became a mass. Now if you look really, really closely right above the trees, the bottom photo has a better “sunset” compared to above, but it is so small it makes no impact. But when you’re standing there, you mind’s eye sees that so you go click. When you get back to the computer though, that giant sky is now only as big as you computer screen and that detail is now truly small. When it comes to photography and in this case landscapes, you have to know when is when at the time of going click and then also when it comes time to sharing. You wanna put your best foot forward and knowing when to say when is a big part of that!
May 12, 2014 | Wildlife Photography
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Yeap, flight canceled so dang it, I’m stuck in paradise. Ya, South Dakota and in particular Custer State Park as far as I’m concerned is a wildlife photographers paradise. Had simply an amazing morning of shooting all my favorites and to my hearts content. So while those images are ingesting, thought I would post a couple of clicks of a favorite critter, the Pronghorn. It was a gorgeous sunrise and as we went around the bend, we came upon a band of bucks. The youngsters were busy “sparring” while the adults went about trying to ignore them. This particular buck came close and just looked at us. Shooting with the D4s / 800f5.6, simply went click and watched the fun. Shot from the road, standing next to the car with breakfast waiting for us around the corner. I’m tellin you, it’s a wildlife photographer’s paradise!
May 11, 2014 | Wildlife Photography
Prairie Dog Style
May 10, 2014 | Wildlife Photography
Ya, I’ve used that pun and post title more than once but I don’t know how else to describe the magic and beauty of the Black Hills, Custer State Park in particular. I’m here shooting for just a couple of days but oh boy, what a 36hrs already! Here are two “out the window” shots from last night and this morning. The top is the mud incrusted head of a big boy Bison. One of the HUGE benefits of the snow is the mud it made. The bison roll in it and much of it sticks. It takes the common and makes it uncommon. I’ve heard, that’s a good thing :-)
Then there are the Pronghorns. Like the Bison, they have a unique profile so you don’t have to show that whole animal for folks to recognize it. With that, you can when offered to you, make the shot showing its amazing world in which it thrives, the grasslands. Both shot were handheld simple clicks using a D4s / 80-400VR3 right out the window of the Suburban. These are two examples of not only telling the story about the subject up close and far away, but the rich diversity that is, Black Hills Gold!
May 9, 2014 | Wildlife Photography
weather but it’s always great in the Black Hills. Arrived to snow and great promises. Stay tuned! FWIW shot handheld 1/13 D4s / 80-400VR3
May 7, 2014 | Wildlife Photography
We’ve been having abinormal weather of late with a single day of bigtime winter snows. On these days, our birds flock to the feeders and clean them out in minutes. I like to take advantage of the moment and shoot like crazy. We seem to have a huge number of Steller’s Jay this spring so they seem to be dominating my viewfinder. This is in part because prior to nesting their blues are so electric. At the same time, they are characters and that comes across in the photos.
The shooting is pretty straight forward. I’m inside shooting out an open window. Wanting a narrow angle of view to control the background, I’m shooting the D4s / 800mm. And with the dark skies, I needed some white light to clean up the colors and bring the blue to life. I have a SB-910 / SD-9 / Rapid Box Strip off to the right of the Jay popping in at -1 exp comp to simply clean up the color of the light, not to effect the exposure.
