Feb 12, 2018 | Wildlife Photography
FL Red-shouldred Hawk
captured by D5 / 800mm
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!
Feb 6, 2018 | Wildlife Photography
FL Brown Pelican
captured by D5 / 800mm
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.
Jan 25, 2018 | Wildlife Photography
Gray Wolf
captured by D5 / 800mm w/TC-1.25e
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!
Gray Wolf
captured by D5 / 800mm w/TC-1.25e
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!
Jan 9, 2018 | Wildlife Photography
Bullock’s Oriole
captured by D3x / 600VRII
It’s the staple of life! Water, birds need water every day, multiple days a day. They need it for both drinking and for bathing, both essential survival needs. In the summer, free water is scarce in many regions because pools evaporate. In the winter time free water freezes. Both scenarios remove water from the system. That’s why we have so many bird baths on our property, five to be exact and they always see more activity than our feeders. In the winter time, they have a simple birdbath heater to keep them open. And all of this means a great photographic opportunity for you!
Red-breated Nuthatch
captured by D500 / 300PF
The key is to have perches for the birds to land on coming to and leaving the bird bath. The Bullock’s Oriole above was coming into the bath and the 600mm isolated it against a great background. That was a planned perch, not luck. The bottom photo is a Red-breasted Nuthatch coming landing on a perch right on the bird bath up close with the 300PF. If the photo was to illustrate just the Nuthatch, I wouldn’t have included the bird bath. This is a very simple and effective way to attract and take care of your birds and photographic habit all at the same time. And when planned out, all from the comfort of your own home!
Dec 22, 2017 | Wildlife Photography
Rocky Mtn Bighorn
With the new snows of the season, I thought I’d answer a common question that floods in this time of year. “How do you (as in Moose) expose for snow?” Of course, living in snow, I have a number of off the cuff answers, but I’ll move past those and get to the heart of the question as I look at it. What color is snow? Unless a Moose or dog has passed by, it’s white, right? The common belief that if there is snow in the scene, automatically dial in +1. A recommendation that comes from the meters of the 1970s. We’re not in the ’70s. I honestly don’t think there are viewers of your snow photograph who wouldn’t recognize the white stuff on the ground as snow. With that being true, then seeing detail in every crystal of the snow (what +1 might does for you) is not mission critical to tell the viewer the white stuff they are looking at is indeed, snow. With that storytelling in place then, how do I expose for snow? Exposure is YOUR greatest tool to express the feeling, mood, and life in your photograph. Just because you see something white, don’t automatically do anything.
Bald Eagles
captured by D5 / 800mm
We have two photos here, both of snow. The feel of both is totally different. The top photo has a bluish-gray cast, the bottom photo the snow is your basic snow white. The top image makes me feel cold, that’s why I underexposed it in camera and did not remove the color cast in post. The bottom image, I exposed normally (no comp) and did remove the color cast in post (using ACR). The key to exposure for both images is the RANGE of light in the entire scene and not the fact there is snow in the scene. I exposed for the subject and not the white stuff. Like with most of my photography, I try to keep the light range within 3 stops. When that’s the case, then I just have to click, the D5, D850, D500 or D7500 meter will do the rest. When it’s outside the 5 stop range, to deal with the greater range of light I shoot with the D5, D850 and overexpose. This is totally ass-backwards from what I did for thirty years but it brings into play the 6 stop range of those cameras. Look at the light between the photos in that post and this. Can YOU see the difference in the light falling on the scene? It is exacerbated by the snow, but not determined in whole by the presence of snow.
SO how does Moose expose for snow? Just like any other scene, it depends on the subject, the light on the subject, the light on the rest of the stage and then the story I want to tell within the confines of my viewfinder. Exposure is way too powerful a tool to just dial in some value of exposure compensation automatically. The world doesn’t need another technically perfect photograph. The world needs another photograph with passion to move the viewer!
Dec 18, 2017 | Wildlife Photography
Gtr Sandhill Crane
captured by D5 / 300PF
I’m often asked how much lens do you need for bird photography? My response is a really old quote, “Go out with your longest lens or else you’ll comeback short!” And with that I always add, what’s the story you want to tell? Because for me after being so fortunate to photograph birds for four decades, the answer is real simple. Let me illustrate.
Gtr Sandhill Crane
captured by D5 / 800mm
My quick answer to the question is, 400mm as that’s the lens I started with. The long answer is 800mm but only us nutjobs spend that much on a lens. You really need to reach down and decide if you’re going to go with the herd and the easy route and simply stuff a frame with a bird and call it art, or the hard route and fill the frame with the birds word while making the bird the subject. Ya, it takes less lens for the latter, but a whole lot more skill and passion. And the complete bird photographer has both crafts in their back pocket to call on as needed. It’s real simple when the viewer looks at your bird photograph, do they ask is it a bird, is it a plane or is it …. ?
