I got up Saturday, grabbed the Z7, FTZ with the 60f2.8micro and headed outside with Sadie to photograph the leaves frozen in the bird bathes and well, nothing. I moved leaves around the meadow, chased the light and Sadie, nothing. No worry, I’ll head to some of the trees and went for backlighting, nothing! That afternoon, the next morning, that next evening, nothing. It simply wasn’t speaking to me, I just wasn’t feeling it, the photo. The closest I came was this shot of Mt Tom Sunday evening and while there is fall color in the foreground, you wouldn’t know it as I went B&W. But that’s OK, the challenge really was just to get out, anything that came from that was icing on the cake. So my weekend challenge, well so much for color.
I refer to all deer as “Bambi” for one reason, nearly everyone has seen the movie, Bambi. That powerful imagery can affect how viewers of our deer images look at our photographs. Preconceived visions are the “rose-colored” glasses we look through at the world, our own built-in filter. When it comes to critters, this is important to consider if you want that cute and cuddly appeal of critters to come through in your photographs. So with deer, here is the biggest element to never forget!
You gotta have those ears pointed forward! Why? That’s a darn good question! It starts with the movie Bambi and the preconceived idea of deer being innocent, playful, and full of life. Those ears of the Mule Deer are HUGE! They can pivot independently taking in the sounds surrounding the deer. The direction of their ears can communicate visually all sorts of emotions and if you wanna grab heartstrings then you have only one option, ears pointed at the camera. Standing there in Roosevelt Nat’l Park hand-holding the D5 / 180-400VR after the sun had set, I watched their ears and once all were pointed at me did I think about firing off some frames.
An additional benefit of having those giant ears pointed at you is being able to have other body parts hidden. With the “Bambi” syndrome conquered then the mind tends to fill in the rest of the story. For me, it permits setting the stage where the critter lives because, without that habitat, they disappear, sometimes for good! You can see that in one photo nearly everything is missing except one eye, but I have both ears. So the challenge and ease in which we can visually tell the story of deer we can thank Disney and Bambi.
I wish I knew the genesis of some of the photographs I want to capture. I have this unspoken list that often I don’t know I have until I see the photograph appear in my viewfinder. I’ve worked with Bison for decades and have thousands of images in my files taken in many different habitats in all sorts of weather. Yet with all of that, certain images still elude me that I want. Why I want them I can’t tell you. Be it someone else’s image that has inspired me, a “possible” photo my imagination conjured up or a combination of the two, it’s in my head in either case.
This past week at Roosevelt Nat’l Park offered me one of those opportunities. It was early morning, twenty-nine degrees out as the sun popped over the horizon. There beside the road was a gorgeous Bison bull, it’s fur coated in a layer of frost. As the sun struck him, the frost turned to steam. I watched through the D5 / 180-400VR as he slowly turned just a tad so rather than being all backlit, he was now a combination of backlit/sidelit and that glancing light lit him up a tad but more importantly, the steam from his back and breathe. I got quite a chuckle that the first image caught his tongue sticking out, a symbol of my years looking for this image. But then I caught the shot and that made me very happy.
I had a ton of fun this summer photographing hummingbirds. The thought crossed my mind to use the “slow motion” video mode in the D850 for the first time and record their flight in and out of the feeders. This was a helluva learning experience for me. For example, while it’s obvious, at the time it didn’t occur to me that shooting at 1920×1080 30p x4 sound wouldn’t be recorded. Duh! So while shooting stills with the D5 / 180-400, I had the D850 / 70-200f4 just running. I came back with 1TB of video from this experiment, yikes! I edited it down for a little fun. You can see some of my Hummer stills here at my AZ Bird Portfolio. Enjoy!
It started long ago, a tradition from back in film days and thankfully it’s continued this summer. Alvin Sr. is an Allen’s Hummingbird and at the end of most summers, fledgling Allen’s come to our feeders in good numbers. But not every year do we have ones with the character of the original Alvin. This year’s crop of hummers have been a bit funny, I think in part because of the heavy days of wildfire smoke and our warmer temps. Things started to settle down this past week and when it was all done, well, there was Alvin Jr! He’s quite a character even chasing the Mtn Chickadees that come near “his” feeders. Finally, I got some Alvin time in and he’s a hoot to work with!
With the smoke being the heaviest in the afternoons, I changed up my shooting to the AM. There is a small window of time when the light comes in and backlights the perch I’ve got stuck in a Justin Clamp. The piece of Manzanita that I select for the perch has to have its own character as well as be small in diameter. I then left my tripod set up in the location I will eventually place the camera rig so he could get used to it. He instantly perched on the tripod so the break-in period was short! With that, I just need to attach the rig and shoot.
I changed the rig up this year shooting with the D5 / 180-400VR (@560mm) rather than the 300PF in the past. I did this for a couple of reasons. First is I just used the 180-400VR at Madera Canyon with great success. Second is while the 300PF can focus a couple of feet closer than the 180-400VR it’s too close for the hummer’s comfort range. With the 180-400VR I have more focal length at that comfort distance and therefore a bigger image size.
The goal of my shooting Alvin Jr. is more a character portrait then inflight shot. This means I use natural light rather than setting up the SB-5000s which makes it easier. The only downside at this moment is I’m getting Alvin Jr. use to my presence so I’m shooting remotely. With the WR-R10, I’m standing back about 15′ from the rig and when Alvin Jr. comes in, I fire. But I know it’s Alvin Jr. cause like his predecessors, he seems to like to give me directions! mtc
Back in 1988, we went on our first hunt for the Elegant Trogon. With Brent in a backpack on my back, in the cool of the morning, we hiked up that canyon. Far off in the distance, we could hear its call ever so faintly. Up we went along the trail but it eluded us that week, never ever getting a glance of it. It would be another thirteen years before I would get glass on one with only one click being somewhat decent. And so it would be until last month.
The Elegant Trogon is a rare bird in North America where its northern range stops at Madera Canyon, SW Arizona. Over a foot long with a 16″ wingspan (big bird), its colors and rarity are what drives birders nuts trying to catch a glimpse of this gorgeous bird. Your best bet of finding them is in spring when the male’s loud call rings through the forest giving away its location. You would think a bird this big, this colorful would be easy to find in a forest. You’d be mistaken.
Then we have this male who was disparately wanting to fall in love. It was late July and he was still seeking a mate, pathetically calling in the canyon nearly all day long. The call is a loose term as his call sounds like a dog bark more than any birdsong. It echoes through the canyon and when calling in your direction, you have no problem locating its source. This massive bird nests in abandoned woodpecker nests and when the female is within a short distance, he sticks first his head into the cavity and calls, then he gets in the cavity out of site and calls more. This male had two nesting sites to offer his potential mate. One in a telephone pole and the other in a more typical Sycamore tree.
By the end of the week, our male (I say that cause we were pulling for him to find love) finally seemed to have attracted a female to the area. She was calling back to him and on two occasions, we saw her come close to the proposed nest cavity. The male would fly up and down the canyon calling and the female would be a distance behind him. This elusive bird afforded us on two occasions opportunities to captured some clean shots but otherwise, it was just a dash of red and green as it flew through the canopy. I can say that at least after thirty years, I finally got glass (D5 / 800mm) on the Elegant Trogon!
