Jan 28, 2013 | Wildlife Photography
Wildlife photography is just like Christmas morning quite often. You find that great subject and just like a kid on Christmas morning you just start wrippin and in the end, you have just the one present. The problem is the leftover pile of paper you have to clean up afterwards. The problem though for the wildlife photographer, all that wrippin really kills the great photo as you dig through all those images you have to delete afterwards! I understand all to well the excitement of seeing that gorgeous subject that you’ve never photographed it before and you just start clicking. I seen that happen with every subject on the plant by excited photographers and that’s just damn cool! That excitement will take you photography a long ways down the road! The problem with it though is it instills really bad photographic habits! Be vary, vary picky. Go into what I call sniper mode, get the one shot!
The top photograph is the first picture I took when we came up to this Spoonbill at Fort DeSoto. It was early morning so one knows that as the day gets older, the light gets harder. So wanting to take advantage of what you think is the best light, you shoot a lot trying to get the shot. What you have to do is take a deep breath and think the PHOTOGRAPH through. I’m much happier with the one clean shot then a thousand shots showing I can push a button (that you have to edit through later). In this case, the foreground and background are nasty. NASTY! The tide is out so lots of muck is coming through in the photo taking away from the beauty of the Spoonbill. Shooting with the D4 with 600VR2 with TC-20e3 and knowing the tide was coming in, waiting made sense to make the better photo. I’ll let the rising tide not only remove the busy foreground and background, but give me a reflection to work with. At the same time, the harder light will increase the contrast making those elements disappear even more. Finally, staying longer, the Spoonbill got use to my presence so would come closer. Yes, knowing all of this takes times in the field shooting. And learning not to astro blast through you excitement was learned easier when we shot film not digital because throwing away all those rolls of film really brings the point home. But I’m going to encourage you to be vary, vary picky!
Jan 22, 2013 | Wildlife Photography
I really have a thing for shorebirds and one of my favorite places to go to fulfill this love affair are the beaches of SW FL. Lying on the sands this morning shooting, it reminded me of just how sweet this pursuit really is. It really is easy to do. You grab yourself a panning plate, attach a D4 with 600VR2 and let the birds comes to you! I might be making it sound over simplistic, but that’s really all I do. If for no other reason, once I’m laying down flat on the sand, I simply don’t wanna move. It feels soooo good!/p>
Why go down flat? This Red Knot is a good example, it’s all about the background. I want this smaller, plain (winter plumage) lookin bird kinda just blends in when you shoot down on it from eyelevel. One of the goals of our photography is to make the uncommon out of the common. A simple way to accomplish this is simply getting down on their level and making them pop by removing the background. Then you add to this with a great color, in this case being careful to get only the blue in the background. Then you finish it off with gesture. Is this planned? In every way. Does the plan fall through? In every way. That’s the very nature of wildlife photography and why I love it so!
Dec 19, 2012 | Wildlife Photography
I’m often asked what is my “favorite” image. I’m incredibly fortunate that life has presented an amazing number of grand opportunities permitting me to have a number of favorite images. With the Bison image I posted yesterday, I had a couple of folks asking if it was my favorite winter shot. That had me thinking what I might consider my favorites for big game in winter. I couldn’t find just one and even three doesn’t quite cover it but it gets me close. This first photo was taken at -10 up in the Yukon territory with a D1H and 400f2.8 AFS. I’m looking down slope and the background for this Dall Sheep ram is a lake. It was snowing, cold and gorgeous and that probably makes it one of my favorite photographs more than the photograph itself. That was a great week!
It wasn’t nearly that cold when we were up in the Arctic with Polar Bears. In fact, it was bloody warm, so warm you see the Beaufort Sea and not pack ice! And that’s what I was thinking about when I saw this male walking the beach. It was like it was lost, couldn’t figure out which way to turn and was all alone. Of course I was projecting all of these feelings onto this poor male. We watched it stroll until we could see it no more except the lonely flock of gulls that followed it. To this day, for me it reminds me of the fate of this majestic northern traveler. This was a real simple D2xs / 70-200 shot.
Bighorn Sheep are just cool! They live such a simplistic, complicated life and depending on when you find them, it’s one or the other. This winter scene was definitely the simplistic when just walking the slope and munching was all that mattered. This big curl ram was fun to watch as he went wherever he wanted to and the younger rams just parted. He was a real easy shot to make as he walked on past us up on the slope. He would stop only long enough to see what the rest of the herd was up to. This is a D3, 200-400VR2 click. And like I said, this aren’t like killer images of a lifetime, just favorites from my winter travels that have great memories.
Dec 4, 2012 | Wildlife Photography
Life does get in the way of life so we have 1 opening in our Grizzly Bear Adventure in 2013. Now this isn’t your normal, run of the mill grizzly bear shoot. I’m not even saying where I’m taking folks as it’s not a place photographers normally get to venture to. It’s rather unique, it a locale where you’re just as likely to see and photograph wolves as your are griz. For me, watching these two top predators use the same area is fascinating as all get out and photographically makes for some unique opportunities.
Don’t snooze and let this opportunity pass you by! The beauty of the locale, you really don’t need more than a 200-400 lens, a big appetite (great food) and the desire to see wild, unspoiled Alaska. Click on the big box to the right if you need more info or just call Sharon (who is going as well) @ 760.924.8632 to join us!
Aug 29, 2012 | Wildlife Photography
Having Alvin around has been great fun! Hummers tend to have some personality but Alvin has the extra little bit that just makes you laugh at his antics! I’ve had lots of opportunity to photograph him (know it’s a him from the gorget) over the last couple of months and have enjoyed how he seems to have put smiles on many. That’s just cool! At the same time, folks keep asking how’d I get his portrait? It really is no great secret, nothing magical but it is a whole segment on my Beginning Wildlife Photography course we just filmed. Here’s the recipe, it’s pretty much right out of the Moose Playbook.
The gear set up is basic backyard formula, D4, 300f4 AFS & Pocket Wizard III set up on a tripod perhaps 4′ from Alvin. More importantly is the biological setup, something you won’t be able to see until the class is online. Alvin’s perch is a piece of Manzanita that’s in a Justin Clamp on a light stand 18″ from his feeder (and I mean HIS!) and that is 30 yards or so from the background. All I do is when is wait for the light and shoot. There is no more to it than that, sort of. Getting to this point though takes a little more which is why we made a class out it but when it comes to Alvin’s portrait, that’s everything.
Aug 24, 2012 | Wildlife Photography
That’s how my good friend, a biologist in the Rockies started his email to me yesterday. We call fall that because it’s in the fall that big game, moose, elk, deer, pronghorn, bighorn sheep and bears (though they are not big game) grow out with their gorgeous, new winter coats. It’s also the season when I think about getting out in the forests and photograph these majestic critters. For most big game, this is the season of love, what most normal folks call the rut. This annual ritual of life is a fascinating right of passage to watch. You see the classic battle of the big boys going at it. And then the younger, faster males shoot in while the big boys are fighter and mate and get out before the big boys know what happened. Then the big boys get all sexually frustrated and do things I’m not going to mention on this family blog. And the next day when the sun comes up, it starts all over again. It is an amazing, fascinating, ancient call of biology that is just a great show!
When it comes to photography, it’s a slam dunk! Really!! All you need is a lens in the 200 to 400 range, my favorite choice is the 200-400VR2 and this fall I can’t wait to take the D4 out with its 6 stop range. Why? I like the dramatic light, a spot light on the critter surrounded by darkness. While I like it, I don’t always get it but at least this fall when it is served up to me, I’m ready. But generally, fall presents the best light for wildlife photographers, especially in October. If you do your homework now, looking for where the big game are gathering in open areas, you can easily get great shots using just a 70-200 lens. All these photos here where taken with just a 70-200!
Now you might be looking for some big racks in a blog post about fall big game. Well, I thought I would give the moms a little call out today. Typically ignored, when mom has a kid in tow, they make for a great subject. One of these photos was taken in the spring. You know which one? And while I have your eye, I want to call your attention to something on NPR today, part of the reason of my friend’s email yesterday. It’s something we’ve been talking about for years and now more science is showing what we thought was happening actually is. It directly effects big game and our photography!
