All Bull
Stuck in Paradise!
[envira-gallery id=”34879″]
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!
Happy Mommy’s Day!
Prairie Dog Style
Black Hills Gold!
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!
Kinda Dumpie ….
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
“Why Me?”
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.