Jun 23, 2009 | Field Reports
Reprinted from the BT Journal, Vol. 7, Issue 2, May 2002
I’m sitting on an Alaska flight, heading to the Arctic while reading Ordeal by Hunger, the story of the Donner Party, when it dawns on me the irony. I left snow at my home; I’m heading for snow, reading about people who perished in snow. But for me, I know I’m going to be guided by someone who has lived, worked, studied and photographed on the North Slope with great passion for nearly three decades. While with the wind chill it probably reached well below zero, I was in good hands! I was afraid our scheduled week of exploration would be too brief for the slope, as I was incredibly excited about fulfilling a lifetime dream of venturing to this land. I was not let down with the time I spent at the home of the Bearded Ones!
Back in 2001, my good friend David Neel, Jr. had invited me up to a very special place on the North Slope, about 80 miles south of the Arctic Ocean, to photograph Musk Ox. David knew of my keen interest for these amazing animals from the help he had previously provided me with in photographing the Musk Ox of Nome. He graciously invited me up and teased me with incredible emails for over six months prior to our departure of the grandeur we were going to explore. In a land thought of as a desert, totally white in the winter, cold and austere to the unloving eye, the beauty, wonder and life we discovered, explored and photographed during our week will always be etched forever in my heart and soul! The Arctic in the winter is simply, brutally beautiful!
This B News is atypical as it’s not about the biology of one critter, but about the biology, ecology and passion I have for what is perceived as a barren land. I am by no means an expert on the Arctic. I haven’t even scratched the surface of this frontier and have a lifetime of plans racing through my head to get to know and photograph the Arctic better. Nor am I encouraging you to explore this region on your own, especially alone because it is a brutal place that can swallow up every trace of the novice. But rather, I want you to know the life and romance this region has to offer the wildlife photographer so if someday, you have the opportunity to be guided through this region of the north, you’ll know to take advantage of it. There is a lot more to the Arctic coastal plain, North Slope, than oil and ANWR; there is a life of abundance, of seasons and hardships. This is the land of Oomingmak (the Bearded One).
Our adventure began without my presence. David and his life long friend Earl packed up near Anchorage and started the long drive up prior to my arrival in Fairbanks. When they arrived at the airport to pick me up, I understood David’s emails much better in regards to prep time for the trip. The two pickups with two trailers in tow were packed with no less than 10 spare tires, 168 gallons of gas, sleeping bags and tents, food and supplies, snow machines and snow shoes, arctic clothing and camera gear. We were going to spend 24 hours on the Dalton Hwy, also known as the Haul Road, which has a very well earned reputation for eating up vehicles. So after buying food for the week (which was put into ice chests to prevent it from freezin g on our drive) and my buying new arctic footwear (LaCrosse Ice Kings, great boots recommended to me by David and another good friend who lives in Fairbanks ) off we went.
The Journey Begins
We left Fairbanks at 7am with the sun trying to break through the clouds. Despite knowing that I was in for a 12 hour drive, the anticipation of seeing all this new country made it seem so much longer! I had never been on the slope before; never driven the Haul Road but it had been a long time quest. Now, finally, I was living it. We had run into some friends of David’s while buying our food and heard about recent critter road sightings. But you know how that goes, “you just missed” stories. When nearly right from the start of our adventure I saw a Northern Hawk Owl perched right where the pavement ends and the dirt road begins, I knew the myths were true. I was stoked!
The Dalton Hwy follows the Alaskan Pipeline for the most part, to me a marvel of engineering. It winds its way up and down hills, through valleys and eventually across the Arctic Plain. In some places you’re right next to it, other places it’s far off in the distance while other times it goes underground. When you start to get to know the Haul Road, time and distance is ticked off by the passing of the seven pump stations that heat the oil and keep it moving. This very graphic line is a reminder of the distance being traveled down this very bumpy road!
We weren’t very far down the road when the stories began to flow about trips of the past. Sightings, adventures, mishaps and legends were told to me as the spruce trees slowly started to get shorter and then thinner as we traveled north. Along the road Ravens and Gray Jays were about. Here and there we would see a flash of red as a Pine Grosbeak went by. While the calendar might say it’s spring, no one seemed to have clued in the Arctic. Because while the sun appeared at 05:00am and set at 10:30pm, there was still plenty of snow and cold temps to convince us otherwise!
About four hours into our journey, we came to Coldfoot (no, I didn’t make up the name). A “truck” stop, it’s the last fuel and food until you reach the Arctic Ocean and Deadhorse (no, I didn’t make up that name either). You drive in a little ways off the road and are greeted by a sign that states, “On January 26 th, a new record was established when -82F degrees was recorded.” Knowing this was the last “civilization,” I did a mental check one last time to make sure I was prepared for the cold to come! After filling up the gas tanks and ourselves, our merry band continued on up the road. (I should note that by this time, we had already acquired 3 of our total of 7 windshield rock strikes. This road really does in a vehicle!)
To say we stopped a few times on our travels is nothing short of an understatement. This was all new country to me and my questions and desire to shoot would have driven the normal person nuts. It was a pleasure to ride with David whose love for the Arctic made it very easy for him to answer my questions and stop and look whenever I would holler. One of our stops was at the ” Arctic Circle.” No more than a pull off with a sign telling you that you were at the Arctic Circle, I was surprised to find spruce trees all around. We had to travel a ways before we would be in what most folks conjure up in their mind as the Arctic.
David was great at showing me all the “tourist” spots along the road (even though most “tourists” don’t make this drive). One such spot was the “The Northern Most Spruce Tree.” We stopped, stretched our legs and I went over to take a few shots of the “tree” (which David thinks was planted just for the sign). I was at the tree when Earl called out “Lynx!!” Sure enough, up the slope perhaps 50 yards out was a Lynx just out cruising. It stopped for a moment to check us out before venturing on its way. While we had seen the typical Alaskan wildlife like Moose, special glimpses of critters like Lynx was what I was so looking forward to on our adventure and was not disappointed!
We were now in the Brooks Range, a locale I’ve longed to see and explore. Shrouded in clouds most of the time we were there, I passed through yearning for more and asking even more questions. I could see this was a place just longing to be explored! I was amazed how deep the Brooks Range was as we drove. I didn’t realize that but I should have known that just like everything else in Alaska, the Brooks is one big ass piece of real estate. It wasn’t long after our Lynx sighting that we went up Atigun Pass, not a very friendly place for anyone who has never driven on snow.
While heading north, we could see the tops of the surrounding peaks. David told me of the Dall Sheep in the area and their summer habits in the pass, so I was on the look out. I didn’t see any heading north but on our southern trip out, I saw a couple up the slope in the fog. Their trail in the snow led my eye right up to them, deepening my amazement for these critters.
It was not too far after Atigun that the Arctic we all picture in our minds began to unfold before us. At first, low rolling, white covered hills spread out for what appears as far as the eye can see. It looks so barren at first, the eye latches onto every dark form in the white landscape, trying to make each rock a wolf, grizzly or caribou. Then as if someone opened up thousands of cages at once, the dark shapes begin to move and transform into caribou. At this time of year, the bulls don’t have any antlers, just the does. Driving along, some are way off in the distance while others are right next to the road. While you watch them graze you can sense they are on a mission; spring is in the air and it has them thinking of migration.
We had spotted one or two Willow Ptarmigan here and there all along the road up to this point (along with Snowshoe Hares). They come to the road to pick up gravel mostly and being, well, rather stupid (the locals call them stupid chickens) they tend to wait until the last minute if not too late to get off the road. The truckers, and there are a lot of them driving back and forth on the Haul Road, don’t slow down for the stupid chickens. Seeing them dead by the road is common, so is seeing the scavengers grabbing this quick and easy meal. There was one locale that I’ll tell you about shortly where the ptarmigan were flocked up in a group of at least 150 birds, it was stunning!
Once on the “flats” we traveled up the road in company of the pipeline. About thirty minutes after seeing our first caribou, we had gone past them all and it was back to checking out every black dot. Some snow had melted so there were many to look at. We passed pump station 5, then 4 and finally came up to the DOT station at Sag River. I had been looking forward to this point! Though the weather had started to close in on us (it changes seemingly at every bend in the road) I knew the one herd of Musk Ox, the point of our adventure, were around the DOT station. Sure enough, not too far down the road, there they were! We stopped of course to look and photograph them, but not for a really long time, as we still had a little ways to travel and we had already been on the road for 11 hours. Our destination wasn’t too much farther up the road.
Coming over a ridge, David said, “There’s Happy Valley ” where I knew their lodge was located. Up and over a couple of small rolling hills and we were pulling into the lodge. While the snow was falling, the generator was started, heaters turned on (it was below 20 degrees inside) and a path shoveled to and from the lodge to the vehicles. In very little time, we were warm and inside.
When folks think of an Alaskan Lodge, they conjure up beautiful log structures on the edge of a bluff, overlooking a glacier river. We were at such a lodge except.it was winter and the lodge is only running during the summer. This is for a very good reason! Little things like, no running water because the river is frozen solid (and while a beautiful river, it’s not under a bluff) so there’s no running water. (That outhouse is a long walk late at night, and oh, that seat!) We were warm and comfortable, but we weren’t being waited on by a lodge staff nor had a hot shower to get warm in after shooting. With that, my first day’s adventure in the Arctic came to a close.
The Purpose of Our Journey
The reason for our travels up to the Arctic at this time of year was to coincide with the calving of the Musk Ox. Before I get to that and photographing them, let me tell you a little bit about Musk Ox.
The first thing that strikes folks when they see Musk Ox for the first time is how small they are! Probably slightly smaller than a Shetland pony, these “walking carpets” or Oomingmak, the Bearded Ones were historically natives of the Arctic. They were hunted to extinction in Alaska back in the 1860s. In the 1930s, they were reintroduced (all Alaskan Musk Ox of today come from a group of 34 relocated to Alaska ), using Musk Ox from Greenland, which are the smaller of the two subspecies. The Musk Ox found in Alaska is the Greenland or “white face.” A big bull might stand five feet tall and weight around 800 pounds. While they can run up to 20mph for short distances, they would rather not because even in the dead of winter, they can overheat with their incredible thick coat. They are ungulates, related more closely to goats and sheep and not ox or bison. Like cows, they have a four chamber stomach (just what I’m sure you always wanted to know).
The Musk Ox doesn’t venture much nor do a big migration like Caribou. Their incredible coats permit them to survive in the harsh Arctic climate and their small size permits them to live on the little grasses, lichens and forbs they dig from under the snow. Their fur is truly amazing, not only how long and how much they have, but also its insulating qualities. In the spring/early summer, they shed their “winter” fur (as much as 6 pounds!) called Qiviut. This is collected in many regions to be used in special clothing. The Qiviut sells for as much as $90 a pound. When you see Musk Ox in a driving snow storm, the temperature way below zero and they’re laying and rubbing in the snow, it’s not hard to understand the insulating qualities of their fur! (It was amazing to me that the first day we saw the Musk Ox, none were shedding any Qiviut yet within a week, huge sheets were blowing off in the wind!)
Musk Ox are best known for their “circle” of defense behavior. This is where the Musk Ox form a circle and lock horns around most of the time new born calves to protect them from predators. While I was hoping to see wolves (which we never did) I was also hoping to see and photograph the Musk Ox protective circle. The problem is if they don’t perceive you as a threat, they don’t form a circle. They might bunch up a little, but with David’s expert guiding and our “no hurry” approach, the Musk Ox just went about their daily routine as if they are photographed every day. (David and I surmised that the Musk Ox figured that any critter willing to stand out in the cold, wind-driven, freezing snow must be too stupid to be a threat!).
Did we get to photograph any newborns? Regrettably, no. We were just days too early, which was a bummer on one hand, but on the other it gives me a great reason to go back, and I will! I found that no matter the age or sex, the Musk Ox have really great faces to photograph. Each and every one of the 25 in the herd that we photographed (typical herd size is less than 40 animals) was different. The combination of their age and gray hair (not related I think) gave each animal a distinct look. The horns grow differently between males and females and at different rates. When first born, they have no horns. They do not shed their horns; they just keep growing throughout their lives. As they grow older, the horns grow longer. If it’s the male, they start to grow by angling straight down to the ground whereas the female’s horns grow out from the head. As the males get older, the boss (big horn mass on top of the skull) grows closer together until there is no fur between the two horns. After this, the male’s horns start to grow in bulk. And just like a hunter, I kept looking for and focusing in on the biggest bull for my photographic trophy!
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Photographing Oomingmak
I photographed the Musk Ox five days in a row and each day had totally different weather and light. This is typical for Alaska and especially the Arctic. We heard the weather forecast a couple of times before and during our trip. Not one forecast, no matter the source was even close to what we experienced! When it comes to photographing the Musk Ox though, I couldn’t have asked for anything better because I wanted in my short time to experience as much as possible! In my five days of shooting, I captured and brought home over 3000 images of just Musk Ox!
Photographic gear was really simple. I shot the vast majority of the images with the 400f2.8AFS on the D1H. At times I shot with the TC-14e and 80-400VR or 28-70f2.8AFS. My settings were the normal ones I use for the D1H, capturing everything on my new Lexar 512 24x cards (really sweet cards, nice and fast, which considering I was photographing a slow subject, was important!).
Personal gear was simple as well. I had my new LaCrosse Ice King boots which were fantastic, never a hint of cold. Normal Carhartt pants, thermal shirt and t-shirt with Nomar jacket and at times, Balaclava and Ice Climbing gloves. With all of this, photography was plain simple and fun!
Our first day of serious shooting found us in overcast and windy conditions. The wind was really nasty and cold, bringing the air temperature down to well below zero, which made shooting with a long lens a real challenge! Proper long lens technique was a must to dampen the wind’s vibration. Shooting with lots of depth of field with a slow shutter speed with all that wind was basically a no win scenario. Even though I knew that, I had to try on some images anyways, yet most of which ended up being deleted later.
I always find getting to know a critter for the first time real exciting. While having read the books and had the help of someone who has worked with the critter before, actually seeing and learning for myself is exhilarating for me! When we first slowly approached the Musk Ox, they sort of bunched up, a sign that they were not comfortable with us. Sadly I thought, as they did this all too seldom because I had no sooner begun to photograph this behavior when they went on about their business and ignored us. They did have a distance they would let us approach before slowly moving a step or two, it was enough of a distance that I would have to add the TC-14e if I wanted a tight head shot. The majority of the time, we were no more than 20 yards from these beasts.
What do Musk Ox do with their day? Man..darn little! They basically do like little babies – eat, sleep and make pooh! Upon first observing them you might ask yourself, just what am I going to photograph for five days? This quickly disappears as you train in and watch the dynamics of the herd, as there is a lot of social activity that goes on! It almost always centers on sex!
The herd is never really that spread out, as all the members seemingly are kept herded by the dominant male. Much of the activity we witnessed centered on the dominant and sub-dominant bull, nosing herd members around and the ripple effect caused by that. Intermingled with this were the activities of sleeping and eating, eating and sleeping. You could say that my first day with the Musk Ox was spent learning this trivia. (Keep in mind that what I’m passing along is “antidotal” information and not biological gospel).
There were at least two other younger bulls in the group. (I wasn’t about to pull up their hair to check for sure.) These two seemed to feed off the anxiety of the dominant bull at times and pace about literally being a pain in the butt. We didn’t ever know for sure what all the smelling of rears and lip curls were all about. We assumed it had to do with calving about to begin as the rut for Musk Ox is in fall.
This first full day with the Musk Ox found them in and amongst willows (mere bare branches this time of the year, perhaps six feet tall). Not very tall, not thick, just enough cover to make life difficult for clean shots. While some ate sparingly at the willows, the majority of their time was spent rubbing the Qiviut from their hides. In the big wind gusts, the Qiviut would leave the ox and fly for literally a couple hundred yards before ever touching the ground. I found documenting the large strands of Qiviut blowing in the wind to be a challenge, especially to get it sharp. It is much lighter in color and seems to “float” to the top prior to being shed. When a huge clump would float off, I was often distracted by thinking about finding it until the thought of my lens being blown over in my absence snapped me back into shooting mode.
The wind was really my main subject that first day. The “shag” on the Musk Ox is four feet long or better, starting at the curve of their back and nearly reaching to the ground. (We rarely saw more than a hoof and only an inch or two at best.) This incredibly long hair is what permits the Musk Ox to survive the cold of the Arctic and in the wind, makes for amazing patterns as it blows about. The challenge is: shooting with enough depth of filed to make it all sharp, at a shutter speed fast enough to freeze the motion while capturing the patterns you see as fast as they appear and disappear. My first day then was all about hair and wind.
You’ll notice that Musk Ox have very light patches of fur across their backs. The color contrast between the dark surrounding fur and these light patches just fascinated me because at times, the graphic nature of these combinations was striking. I thankfully noticed this the first day and started to play with the graphic nature of Musk Ox. I’m so glad I shoot digital because as I was going through my images that night I could see what was working and what wasn’t. I’m not sure I ever really captured exactly what my mind and eyes were seeing, but I kept working at perfecting it over the week.
This contrast in the hair I also used to my best ability for backgrounds for other Musk Ox photography. I found it frustrating and David commented on this fact as well. It seemed to us that as soon we focused on just one ox, it would do something so we no longer saw its face. Of course this could have just been snow blindness affecting our minds, but this in combination with using the hair contrast for backgrounds, made composition hairsplitting quick! We either got the shot within seconds of seeing it or didn’t at all!
The next day of shooting was an even greater challenge! While the day before we had overcast skies and wind, this day we added driving snow! Now it’s true that I wanted shots of Musk Ox in a snowfall, but I didn’t ask for driving snow. (Keep in mind the weather forecast was for blue skies all week!) From shooting in my own backyard, I knew that to capture the “blowing snow” effect I needed to figure out the correct shutter speed in correlation to the speed of the snow fall. Normally in the Sierra, I need to drop down to 1/30 to capture the falling snow. On this day, I was at 1/125! The wind was blowing that hard. In fact, I had my first ever weather problem in twenty years because of the wind driven snow.
I didn’t know it, but the wind was blowing so hard that it forced moisture behind the front filter of my 400f2.8AFS. I kept blotting the snow from my front element, nearly an every five minute task but it wasn’t enough. That night when I was tending to my gear I saw the condensation inside my lens, something that would plague me the next day!
When you have driving snow, you obviously need to point the lens in any direction except into the wind. Lucky for us, we could shoot at ninety degrees to the wind so we didn’t have too much snow building up inside the lens shade, but had to hold the lens incredibly still to capture a sharp image. Man, was this ever fun! (And yes for those inquiring minds, if you were not dressed properly, you would be done in within minutes!).
The driving snow slowed down the Musk Ox, not moving about a whole lot this day. Even the dominant bull (not as big as they can get by the way) wasn’t up to much. What really amazed me was that in this weather the Musk Ox could sleep! Now, I thought that with this driving snow the ox would turn their backs to the wind so as not to have it smashing into their faces as they slept. Wrong! The Musk Ox laid down seemingly wherever they felt like it (not doing any ground prep), flopping down like a big shaggy dog and facing right into the wind!
It was at these times that some snow would build up on their coats on the side facing the wind. I was amazed that while it did crust, it wasn’t a blank coat. When they stood up they didn’t make a big effort to shake off the accumulation of snow but rather, it kind of just disappeared by either falling or being rubbed off by a passing ox. To say these critters are adapted to their Arctic climate is nothing short of an understatement. I stood their in amazement, thinking about the evolution that had taken place to make it possible for these creatures to exist in their environment.
It was this day that we found the Musk Ox limit to our presence. We kept slowly moving closer as the day progressed until we saw the ox slowly move away from us. We were close, closer than normal David said. Like I said, we just figured that the ox must have assumed that anything stupid enough to be out in that weather wasn’t something to be afraid of!
The third full day we found very dramatic light dotting the landscape on our travel to the herd. The wind had ceased and clouds dotted the sky, creating God beams all about. This dramatic light was to die for! Upon reaching the herd, I instantly set up the 400f2.8. Seeing the contrast of the dark furred beasts against the snow, I was puzzled to say the least when I looked through my lens. I kept going back and forth, looking at the scene and through my lens until I realized the “flat” image I was seeing in my viewfinder was from condensation in my lens! Eeegads…great light and my lens was messed up! It was a photographic challenge to say the least, thank goodness again I was shooting digital.
I was able to still function by thinking harder than normal. First, I changed Custom Setting 24 to High to deal with the “flat” light coming through the lens. Next, I learned where I could shoot so I would not to be really totally affected by my fogged lens. Snow can flare just like if you were pointing somewhat towards the sun. Finally, when not shooting with the 400f2.8 and with another lens, I would point the 400mm towards the sun and remove the rear filter to let air move through the lens. I managed to keep shooting, but I sure didn’t enjoy having my attention taken away from my subjects and onto technical things! (This was of course my own fault as I was the one shooting in the driving snow!)
With the warm sun, the Musk Ox were busy feeding and being Musk Ox. With the light, the challenge was to capture this activity at the same time the dramatic light lit it up. It was this day that my favorite cow, the one with the most character in the face really started to shed her Qiviut. This natural contrast in the fur was incredibly eye catching! She seemed to sense I was watching her because when light and subject lined up and I swung my lens on her, I would loose the shot nearly every time. I was always surprised that when I checked my watch that hours had ticked by when it felt like just minutes.
It was on this sunny day that the faces of last year’s calves really struck me. While not as cute as the face of a spring calf, they are darn cute! They are really shy and often “hide” around a cow. They don’t hold still but like to rock back and forth slightly where they stand. This just adds to the challenges of photographing Musk Ox. I was scanning the herd one time and noticed a year old calf at the back of one of the cows; it seemed to be burying its head in the cow’s long fur. I stared at it for awhile until I realized it was trying to nurse. The cow soon shooed it away, but we took this as a sign that the cow was producing milk and perhaps a newborn would soon appear (which it never did while we were there).
The one aspect of the year olds that I liked were their horns. Mere nubs at this point, they are the same basic color as the fur on the top of their heads. The horns stick out and as such, look like the youngster is having a really bad hair day.
With the snow not stinging my eyes, I was able to watch the Musk Ox feed a little closer as well. Between an awkward kicking motion in which they try to paw at the ground and a nose shovel technique, they move the foot deep layer of snow. I had the opportunity this day to actually look at what it was they were digging for and eating. To me it looked like mere grass stubble and lichens so small I couldn’t see them without bending over and getting really close.
Our fourth day was much like our first, weather wise. I was out a short time on the last day where I captured the last thing I had preset in my mind. The weather had changed again; the temperatures were dropping and with it we could see the breath of these mighty animals. Finding a dark background so their breath was obvious wasn’t a problem. I have to admit that I was saddened when I had to pack up my gear on the last day and say goodbye to this herd; I had really come to enjoy being around and watching what it is to be a Musk Ox in the Arctic.
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More to Photograph than Musk Ox
Like I’ve already mentioned, the Arctic in April is one vast, rolling white carpet as far as the eye can see. It takes little training or concentration to pick up any black dot on this carpet, not any luck to find a moving black dot. Finding other subjects that would cooperate photographically in the Arctic is just the same as anywhere else. Good examples of this are Willow Ptarmigan, Caribou and Red Fox.
The Ptarmigan are a chicken sized bird, the state bird of Alaska. In the winter, they are pure white with only outer black tail feathers to separate them from the snowy background. I’ve photographed Willow Ptarmigan for over a decade, but never when there were pure white, so I was more than excited when we sighted our first ones. It wasn’t until later the next day that I was able to photograph them.
My first photographs of them were of a smallish flock of perhaps 30+ birds not far from the Musk Ox herd. This group wouldn’t permit me to approach on foot, so I had to photograph them from the truck. That was fine, as it gave me an opportunity to watch how they worked as a flock, socialized and foraged. It was a windy day so they were scrunched down most of the time, trying to get out of the wind the best they could. They also stayed to the lea side of the willows, which photographically left a lot to be desired. It was a couple days later that we really struck ptarmigan gold!
On our great light day, we ventured south on the Haul Road to see what else we could put in the great light. We were coming up to the Brooks Range when we ran into the Caribou again. We were heading towards them when we came into a group of Ptarmigan on the road. Like the others, they wouldn’t stick when we got out of the truck, so we proceeded on. We came back to the same spot about ten minutes later and stopped to get out and see if we could find the ptarmigan. We heard them all around us but it took a couple of minutes to visually acquire them. There were well over 150+ ptarmigan in this flock! They were everywhere once you found their little white heads, peering out over the snow covered tundra. It took my breath away!
With no provocation they took flight in one giant mass. It has to be one of the most impressive sights I’ve seen! All these white birds with black V tails, flying in mass over the snow, it was just gorgeous! Well, I had to photograph them so the stalk began. With 400f.8 / TC-14e, D1H in hand, I slowly started to walk down to where the ptarmigan had flown to. I could see and hear them as I slowly approached. I noticed that many of the birds where slowly walking up the slope to the road I was on (not the main Haul Road ). I slowly approached, caught up to them and then slowly moved just past the leaders of this walk. There I stopped and waited.
The ptarmigan slowly advanced, feeding off the partially exposed tundra as they went. It didn’t take too long until the first birds had walked up close enough for me to photograph them. And in a short while, I was amongst 40+ birds as they approached, stopped and then walked past on their journey up the slope. I couldn’t press the shutter release fast enough as this moving carpet of white approached. Keep in mind this is the same group that just minutes before wouldn’t let us approach them. Now they were approaching us on their terms, whatever they were, and all things were just fine.
We found this same kind of thing with the Caribou as well. No matter if they were right next to the road or 100 yards away, if we stopped the truck, off they would scamper. Get out of the truck and walk and stop and in a short time they would wonder up to us. It’s that stupid factor I mentioned with the Musk Ox. Critters must figure if you’re stupid enough to be out in that cold, you must not be too big of a threat! Nothing against the Caribou but since only the does had antlers and the bucks had little nubs, I wasn’t really into photographing them up close, so I didn’t spend that much time focusing in on them. (Get it, photography, focusing in on.?)
The Red Fox.there’s a subject I wanted in my viewfinder whenever we could! But like any other critter, some stick and some don’t. We came across a magnificent Cross Fox (a dark phase Red Fox) next to the road, it was stunning! It was busy digging up something but when we stopped, it left. Darn is not the word I said when it left!
On our beautiful light day when all the other wildlife was out and about, so were the foxes. After photographing the giant flock of ptarmigan I just described we came across the Red Fox along the side of the road. It had found a Caribou leg to gnaw on. As we pulled up to it, it didn’t run away. That was the first good sign. I was on the opposite side of the truck from the fox so I could get out and set up and because it was slightly down a slope, it couldn’t even see my feet as I got ready to shoot. I came out to shoot over the hood and the fox looked up. It was momentary enough to stop my heart and make me think that it was going to run. But instead, it went back to its leg bone meal.
I started to shoot and was a good 40 yards away. This was way too far away! I started to approach the fox, watching its actions, stopping to shoot when it seemed to be reacting to my approach. After about fifteen minutes I was within ten yards of the fox, which was still gnawing away. After a few more minutes I was as close as I wanted to be, the fox still happy to just pull, tug, gnaw and work on that frozen caribou leg. I kept shooting away as the fox kept eating away. After perhaps 30 minutes it had had its fill and started to clean its muzzle in the snow. Then the fox approached me!
If I didn’t have a camera planted to my face, I’m sure the fox would have seen my jaw on the ground as it kept walking right up to me. It stopped just at my MFD long enough for me to capture some head shots before it walked past me and on up the slope to disappear in the white world it has come to survive in.
That’s the Arctic ! This is such a magical world where wildlife has adapted to live in what is to us a brutally beautiful yet harsh world. The magic I experienced was a life long quest, a dream I have had after reading such books as Arctic Dream or looking at the images of other photographers who had come before me. You have to keep in mind that I live in a place where 25 feet of snow in the front yard is common, so you could correctly assume that I like the white stuff. Those who know me know I don’t get cold either but when I sent a photo to my web mistress of myself bundled up and crusted with snow, she said, “it must be cold if you’re wearing a jacket!” While the cold could be hazardous to the unprepared, the warmth I felt inside from being on the Arctic and seeing its magic for myself more than made up for any outside temperature! This was my first venture to the land at the edge of the continent, but I am already planning my next trip to the home of Oomingmak!
Jun 23, 2009 | Field Reports
Reprinted from the BT Journal, Vol. 7, Issue 1, February 2002
It’s February and there’s snow on the ground at my home. The XC skis are in the back of the truck all the time; snowball fights are a way of life. Yet I can’t help that my mind races to the sands of Florida when I sit back and clear my thoughts. Don’t get me wrong, I like snow and don’t wish to escape it. Rather, I long to be out with my long lens over my shoulder, feeling sand between my toes as I photograph wading birds. I have always found “wading birds”, a generalization for herons, egrets, ibises and storks, to be rather comical. When I hear the term wading bird, I think of some cartoon character pulling up its skirt of feathers as it tiptoes through the water. Perhaps comical at times, these birds are some of the most graceful members of the avian world.
Like most wildlife photographers, one of my first subjects was a Great Blue Heron. That pathetic image of a lone GBH, dead centered, perched on a boat buoy a thousand miles away still resides in my files as a reminder of my beginnings. One of North America ‘s most common and recognizable birds, the Great Blue Heron is also one of the most poorly photographed birds over and over again. The very nature of the heron, tall, vertical, living in a watery world and in many locations, incredibly shy, all lend themselves to poor results. Regrettably the time I have with these beautiful birds is limited, they just don’t haunt my typical locales. But over the decades, I’ve gotten my feet wet more than once, photographing the Great Blue Heron and other members of the wading bird family. The successes I’ve had and my switch to all digital combined with my desire to improve all my conventional files in digital, keep me striving to improve my wading bird files. These are some of the lessons I’ve learned in my quest to capture these elegant birds on film that I’d like to share with you!
Just how do you get close?
Biology
As with any subject, getting close is the name of the game. There are a number of techniques available to solve this problem. Quite often, we’ll commonly combine a couple of these techniques to get the shot. Some of the techniques are obvious, others may not be. Common sense like most things in photography wins out and captures the best image.
You probably can already think through our first option, biology. One reason why I love to photograph wading birds in Florida in February is because biology is thick in the air at that time of year; it’s the birds and the bees time of year. It seems that the bigger the subject, the larger the libido and the greater the distraction sex brings. You’ll find this is true for wading birds. Another great advantage to photographing wading birds this time of year is that they are all in their breeding plumes. Their beautiful breeding plumes, which was the cause of their near extinction in the early 1800’s is still a powerful magnet for the wildlife photographer.
Using breeding biology to get close physically can best be explained by closely looking at the common Great Blue Heron. Anyone who has been to Florida in the late winter months has most assuredly been to the Venice Rookery (a scenic locale behind the local highway patrol office). This is a hot bed of breeding especially considering the rookery is smaller than a tennis court. It’s here that you can see all cycles of the nesting biology of the Great Blue Heron in one day! Understanding their story pretty well explains what’s up with all wading birds when it comes to the birds and the bees.
Courtship rituals start and continue on through the nesting process for GBH. A big part of it has to do with the presentation of a stick/twig by the male to the female. If you want to mess with the mind of a male GBH, collect a ton of small twigs and make a pile of them. The male GBH’s first thoughts are, “Wow, I’ve died and gone to heaven!” Next, it’s “Man, am I going to score!” And lastly, “which one to select first?” The male GBH goes through testing a lot of different twigs before he selects the one he wants to present to his mate. The twigs eventually get used in nest construction so I’m sure the stage the nest is in construction determines the twig he selects.
How does this help your photography and getting close physically? Find the twig source and stake it out! All you really have to do is watch because very quickly you’ll see where the birds are gathering their twigs. You set yourself up with the right lighting, background and start shooting. Now you don’t start ten feet away but rather farther than you want to be for the image size desired. You slowly work your way in as the birds come back to get more twigs. This is just one biological technique you can use to get close. (A very important photographic technique at Venice Rookery is simply moving. Too many folks set up their tripod and never move all morning long. Your tripod has legs, so do you, so use them!)
When the GBH takes the twig back to the nest, he presents it to the female. More often than not early in the season, copulation occurs. Here’s another biological event you can use to get close physically. And don’t forget that anywhere during all of this are other great photographic opportunities you can capture on film, like the male flying back to the nest with the twig. If you keep your mind open and don’t drink too much coffee early in the morning, you can score too!
Another year round biological event you can use to get close physically is when the birds are feeding. Whether feeding alone or in a mass, food usually keeps wading birds’ attention pretty well focused (get it? focused, photography – hah, bad pun!). You normally know when wading birds are foraging because they are frozen in some sort of funny pose, staring off into the water. This is not a guaranteed way of getting close physically though compared to sex.
When using food/feeding as a distraction to your approach, you need to watch for a couple of things. While it’s not life threatening, you want to avoid causing the subject to miss its opportunity to eat, so here’s the game plan I use. I start the approach so that the background I want is the one that is always behind the subject as I move closer. I don’t want to even do any fine-tuning of the background if at all possible so as not to disturb the subject. My camera is set before I approach: f/stop, film counter, everything. And quite often I will have a teleconverter attached so I don’t have to get as close physically compared to shooting without one.
I watch the eyes! The subject typically isn’t making much if any body movement, but it will be moving its eyes as it tracks its prey. By watching the eyes, you’ll know things like if the food source is moving, how close it is to the bird and if it’s close enough to be caught. You’ll also know if the subject is being bothered by your approach. Don’t be in a hurry to get nothing! Move slowly, ever so slowly to get close physically.
The photo of the Reddish Egret with the flying fish (right in front of its breast) is a great example of this technique in use, with a twist. This Reddish Egret was photographed at Ft Myers Beach while it was foraging. What was unique about the situation is that I’m standing in water, the same as the subject. In approaching a subject while walking in water, you must make real sure you don’t disturb the water! This means that you walk by shuffling your feet along the bottom, not picking them up out of the water and then setting them back in and splashing. This is essential and in the natural process of doing this makes you walk slower! At the same time, when you pick up your tripod to move forward, you want to bring it up slowly and set it down slowly so it doesn’t splash as well. Once you’re in place, be sure to push the front tripod leg in the mud a ways for a stable platform to shoot from.
With all of those beautiful long feathers, preening is a common activity of wading birds. This is something you can take advantage of to get close physically! While they can preen anytime of the day, it is most common in the early morning before they head out foraging and in the late evening before they go to roost. You must be slow in approaching a bird that is preening because even though they might have their mind on straightening their feathers, they are also on guard for predators. And as far as they are concerned, photographers are predators.
Another excellent opportunity to photograph wading birds is when they are asleep! This is something you might want to tackle only if you have patience. Obviously getting close physically isn’t a challenged as long as you’re quite. This means that you’re all set to shoot prior to setting down the tripod to fire. If the bird is a little ways out in the water or up in a branch above eyelevel, you’ll have the best opportunity to find a bird that is deep asleep.
The patience part comes in as you wait for the bird to wake up. You naturally take a couple shots of the bird asleep with its eye’s closed, but that’s not the most desired of posses. The last thing I want you to do is cough or slam a car door (yes, I’ve seen this done) in an attempt to wake the bird either. You just wait because unless it’s standing dead, it will wake up. Most of the time when they awake and they find your standing there, they will perform rather than take flight. So waiting can pay big dividends!
With wading birds all being big or bigger than most birds, watching them to learn their biology is really simple. Unless they have been bothered in the past by humans, they are generally on the friendly side. If you find a place in Florida where fishermen are cleaning their catch, you’re sure to find at least one wading bird you could probably pet! Learn their biology and you’ll get close physically!
Optics
You’re probably saying, “Well yeah.duh, go buy a big lens and you’ll solve all of your problems.” Well I hate to say it, but in some sense that is the truth! For an excellent example of how and why this is so, I turn again to the Venice Rookery. When it comes to getting physically close to the action on the island, you can only get as close to the island as the edge of the lagoon (unless you can walk on the backs of alligators!). This means that optics are required to get the image size desired.
I see lots of folks at the rookery, shooting with 300mm lenses while I’m shooting at 840mm and I’m wishing at times I had more. What are they seeing I’m not, or, what am I capturing that they aren’t? Wading birds in general live in a watery world, typically a large body of water. All it takes for them to move out of camera range is to walk 50+ feet away, further out into the water and we’re out of business! While it’s true in some locations that you can proceed right out into the water as well, more often than not you’re going to need more glass.
So, what’ the minimum? If we’re photographing birds in every situation except flight, I can’t imagine shooting with anything shorter than 600mm. Can you reach 600mm with a 300mm and 2x teleconverter? Sure, but then you’re battling the fact that you can’t go any longer, two stops of light loss and an incredibly shallow depth of field. For myself, I can’t start with anything less than 600mm, but I typically don’t stop there. More often than not, the 1.4x teleconverter is attached to the 600mm. This gives me 840mm to work with, the focal length I most prefer to photograph birds, any bird.
There is another HUGE benefit to the longer glass that you’ll come across at places like Ding Darling NWR in Florida. Wading birds live in a rather busy world, one with sticks, grasses, roots and the like all around them. All of this living matter can really ruin a great photograph! There is nothing worse than having a Green Heron in gorgeous light at Alligator Alley with a background of roots going every which way! Not that a long lens will make all of the roots go away, but the longer the lens, the narrower the angle of view, which means the less background you’ll see.
Where this is truly effective is when you have just one twig, one other bird or some small thing in the background you want to disappear. With the long lens and its narrow angle of view, moving slightly to the left, right, up or down can make it disappear.
Perhaps you don’t have money for a long lens, I can understand that. You have an option open to you that you might not have considered, going digital. How does this gain you greater optical reach? Because digital cameras only capture half of a lens’ optical path, the result is an increase in focal length by 50%. You can pick up a used D1 for around $2500 and when married to an 80-400VR, you have a 120-600mm lens! This combo is a lot less than a new 600f4AFS II. Something to consider!
I can honestly say that on my last trip to Florida when I shot with the D1, 600f4 AFS and TC-14e at 1260mm, it was really fun and incredibly productive. And in a pinch I could use the TC-20e 2x and have 1800mm! When I first used this combo for photographing wading birds at the Venice Rookery, man was it ever fun. Getting up close and personal with some of the subjects was killer, incredibly easy and most of all, yielded marvelous quality.
What about flight shots? Photographing their massive wings is too way cool to describe in words, so by all means you want to go after flight shots. Whenever I’m in Florida photographing wading birds, I always have a second body on my side with a lens attached just for flight photography. Last year when I was in Florida I used the 80-400VR. This lens is tack sharp but when it comes to focus acquisition from a dead stop, you might as well go for a cup of coffee (unless you prefocus but that’s hard to do from a dead stop). I did come back with some marvelous flight shots, but it was more work than fun.
If I were to be shooting right this moment I would have the 300f4 AFS. When attached to the D1/X/H, this is a 450f4 AFS lens, it screams! While this can be too much lens at times for photographing a six foot wing span in flight, the speed of acquisition is just too good to be true!
I don’t want you to think that flight photography is for handheld glass! Photographing birds in flight is a no-brainer using the Wimberley Head and a long lens. The only real trick is to be sure you use proper long lens technique and stand between the legs of your tripod when shooting. Looking at my files, I figure that it’s 50/50 the number of flight images of wading birds I capture handheld versus tripod bound.
The best of all worlds is to get close physically with long glass. You’ll find the vast majority of great wading bird images were taken in that manner. But that’s just the start to photographing wading birds successfully!
Hey, aren’t these white birds on blue water?
Of course they are, so we automatically dial in +1 stop compensation so we can shoot. NOT! The old “white bird on blue water” let’s get rich articles really should be retired, along with those writing them. There is no such thing as a subject that requires automatic compensation and white birds are no exception. Actually, photographing white birds on blue water is a no-brainer if you use your brains!
What’s the key to this, a gray card? NO, not that either!!!! The key to getting the exposure correct is the light. You must shoot within the three-stop range of light that the film can hold if you want perfect white bird on blue water exposure. You can get it when the light is not within three stops, but your birds are going to be dark or your water is going to be dark; you can’t have both.
Probably more than most birds, these graceful creatures require an eloquent light to be shown off at their best. When a soft breeze off the Gulf of Mexico is fluffing those breeding plumes, I can’t think of any other lighting than less than two stops of early morning or late evening light. When you work within this range not only will you have ZERO metering problems, you’ll have captured in my opinion the essence of the wading bird.
Can I tell you one time not to photograph white birds on blue water, that’s when the water is gray! Any bird, wading bird or not should not be photographed on water when there is overcast skies in my opinion. I don’t think there is anything worse than this type of images! Yeah, you can dial in plus compensation to brighten up the image, but it will now just be a brighter shade of gray.
This pertains to flight shots as well. DON’T DO IT on overcast days! The other giant problem besides the horrible gray background is exposure. Shooting up on a bird with a gray background is a no win situation when it comes to metering. The underside of the bird that you are photographing is going to be dark to black while the sky is gray. This will well beyond the three stops of light you want for the best images.Wait for the blue and three stops of light, you and your images will be much happier!
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Which way do I turn the camera?
Do I shoot these critters horizontally or vertically? This is a very common question in which you might not find a comfortable answer for yourself for some time. Do I have my own personal set of guidelines for shooting one way or the other? I sure don’t. When deciding which format to shoot a subject, vertical or horizontal, I ask myself (in a heartbeat in reality) a couple of questions. First and foremost what does my gut say? If I don’t have a firm feeling one way or the other, I ask myself other questions.
With my main focus always being the background, I wonder if I can remove unwanted elements in the background by going either vertically or horizontally. There are times that a smaller subject can be made to appear larger by going vertical, so I ask myself this question. Going through this very informal checklist which at times I might not be able to do at all because time doesn’t permit is simply my own requirements of what I’m looking for in my images.
I wonder for example if there are elements in the subject itself that one format over the other will emphasize or de-emphasize. At the same time I look at the watery background and see it’s really cool. Will one format or the other emphasize it? These are not rules you need to commit to memory; they are just questions I ask myself in deciding if I’m going vertical or horizontal.
I have a good friend who is emphatic about framing in regards to the bird’s feet. Whether you can actually see the feet or not (hidden below the water’s surface) you need to leave space for them to be present. In other words if you can’t actually see the feet, leave room in the photo for them anyways, don’t crop them out. As you can see from my images, I don’t hold to this rule myself. My point is that each one of us must find the style that we like from our own vision to make the images magical!
I’m fortunate that now after two decades much of this is so second nature that I really don’t rationalize through the decision process when I’m actually shooting. What’s right for me might either be right or wrong for you, and that’s perfectly fine! Photography has lots of variables built into it, use them to your advantage and you’ll come out a winner!
I’ve included two images here, both of the same Snowy Egret shot late one afternoon at Ft Myers Beach. Both shots were taken just seconds apart of the exact same bird. The subject size is nearly the same in both frames. The natural orientation of the Snowy Egret is horizontal. It’s strolling along, shifting its feet in the mud trying to scare up a Goby to eat. Its very intent stare into the water and the lighting on its breeding plumes is what caught my attention. Instead of my having to move closer to the egret, I let its foraging path bring it to me.
You’ll notice there is nothing in the background that needs to be removed. The water itself is nothing special and there is no reflection. Of the two formats, which do I prefer? I like the vertical because for me, it captures what it was that moment to be a Snowy Egret. There is no right or wrong answer, but perhaps one that is simply better for you and what you want to communicate!
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One exception to V or H
There is one thing that when I see it, I automatically go vertical and that’s reflections. When the air is still and the water like a mirror, my mind starts looking for reflections, which means I turn my camera vertically. If I have one rule, that’s got to be it.
There are actually times you can plan for reflections and make them happen. The best example is pre-dawn at Ft Myers Beach and post-sunset at Ding Darling. The first obvious thing here is, there is no one else around at these times which can really help you succeed! This is essential because I find myself often in the water at Ft Myers Beach in the early am. And at Ding Darling, most folks pack their bags and fold their tents and go home once the sun sets which to me is when some of the best photography is just beginning. In either case, it’s the weaning light levels that I’m looking for as well as certain biology.
It’s at these hours that wading birds preen. I’ve already discussed how we can use this activity to get close physically, but I didn’t mention the other really great part of preening. When birds preen, they open up their feathers and show them off for all of their magnificence! In spring that means breeding plumes and I can’t think of anything better to show twice in a photograph than breeding plumes all fanned out!
This activity is a two edge sword though when it comes to photography. It lends itself to some of the best poses of wading birds to be captured in a reflection. At the same time, this activity involves movement as the bird cleans each bard on each feather. This is something you don’t want when there is no light (no, VR or IS will not help in low light when the subject is moving!) and of course, no shutter speed. One of my favorite ways to photograph wading birds then is one of the trickiest!
After getting up early or staying late, after finding the subject on a mirror surface, after turning the camera vertically, there is one other very important thing to do. That’s dial in exposure compensation! We’re working in basically no light and while our meter will deliver the right exposure, who wants the right metering reading for dark! I generally start by dialing in +2 stops and work my way down to 0 from there. How do you know how much is enough compensation? If you’re shooting conventional, you bracket for effect and if you’re shooting digital, you check your monitor and histograms. Bracketing for effect means just that, you have no idea what effect the plus compensation is going to render so you bracket and make your selection once you have your film back. With digital, you simply view your image and information and compensate accordingly.
Most importantly your exposing for personal preference! There is no really right or wrong but rather, personal taste in what you want to or not to communicate in your image. I can guarantee you that the viewer of your image will have no clue how you exposed for the scene, let alone the time of day you actually took the photo. If you thought you had enough on your mind selecting vertical or horizontal, you ain’t seen nothing until you get into these unique scenarios where the truly spectacular images are captured!
One last tidbit on photographing the reflections of wading birds that are preening. Quite often they will flare out their wing, turn their head upside down and preen away. This is an awesome photographic opportunity if you’re ready for it. Besides all that I’ve already written above, to capture this shot, you need to wait for peak of action. In this case, the peak of action is when the bird has finished running a feather through its bill and stops for just a heartbeat before grabbing the next feather. You either need to have a lightning fast trigger finger or no problem depressing the shutter release and letting the captures fly! Of all my wading bird images, it’s this pose in this type of light that I love the most!
There are some photographers out there that I’ve met who do nothing but photograph wading birds. Who can blame them? Waders are both eloquent and challenging! I know that if they were where I am, I sure would spend one heck of a lot more time photographing them. For beginner to experienced alike, they make for great subjects to learn from and photograph. I’m still learning after twenty years and I hope you too have just as long a time learning from these beautiful members of our avian world!
Jun 23, 2009 | Field Reports
Like most wildlife photographers, one of my first subjects was a Great Blue Heron. That pathetic image of a lone GBH, dead centered, perched on a boat buoy a thousand miles away still resides in my files as a reminder of my beginnings. One of North America’s most common and recognizable birds, the Great Blue Heron is also one of the most poorly photographed birds over and over again. The very nature of the heron, tall, vertical, living in a watery world and in many locations, incredibly shy, all lend themselves to poor results. Regrettably the time I have with these beautiful birds is limited, they just don’t haunt my typical locales. But over the decades, I‘ve gotten my feet wet more than once, photographing the Great Blue Heron and other members of the wading bird family. The successes I’ve had and my switch to all digital combined with my desire to improve all my conventional files in digital, keep me striving to improve my wading bird files. These are some of the lessons I’ve learned in my quest to capture these elegant birds on film that I’d like to share with you!
Just how do you get close?
Biology
As with any subject, getting close is the name of the game. There are a number of techniques available to solve this problem. Quite often, we’ll commonly combine a couple of these techniques to get the shot. Some of the techniques are obvious, others may not be. Common sense like most things in photography wins out and captures the best image.
You probably can already think through our first option, biology. One reason why I love to photograph wading birds in Florida in February is because biology is thick in the air at that time of year; it’s the birds and the bees time of year. It seems that the bigger the subject, the larger the libido and the greater the distraction sex brings. You’ll find this is true for wading birds. Another great advantage to photographing wading birds this time of year is that they are all in their breeding plumes. Their beautiful breeding plumes, which was the cause of their near extinction in the early 1800’s is still a powerful magnet for the wildlife photographer.
Using breeding biology to get close physically can best be explained by closely looking at the common Great Blue Heron. Anyone who has been to Florida in the late winter months has most assuredly been to the Venice Rookery (a scenic locale behind the local highway patrol office). This is a hot bed of breeding especially considering the rookery is smaller than a tennis court. It’s here that you can see all cycles of the nesting biology of the Great Blue Heron in one day! Understanding their story pretty well explains what’s up with all wading birds when it comes to the birds and the bees.
Courtship rituals start and continue on through the nesting process for GBH. A big part of it has to do with the presentation of a stick/twig by the male to the female. If you want to mess with the mind of a male GBH, collect a ton of small twigs and make a pile of them. The male GBH’s first thoughts are, “Wow, I’ve died and gone to heaven!” Next, it’s “Man, am I going to score!” And lastly, “which one to select first?” The male GBH goes through testing a lot of different twigs before he selects the one he wants to present to his mate. The twigs eventually get used in nest construction so I’m sure the stage the nest is in construction determines the twig he selects.
How does this help your photography and getting close physically? Find the twig source and stake it out! All you really have to do is watch because very quickly you’ll see where the birds are gathering their twigs. You set yourself up with the right lighting, background and start shooting. Now you don’t start ten feet away but rather farther than you want to be for the image size desired. You slowly work your way in as the birds come back to get more twigs. This is just one biological technique you can use to get close. (A very important photographic technique at Venice Rookery is simply moving. Too many folks set up their tripod and never move all morning long. Your tripod has legs, so do you, so use them!)
When the GBH takes the twig back to the nest, he presents it to the female. More often than not early in the season, copulation occurs. Here’s another biological event you can use to get close physically. And don’t forget that anywhere during all of this are other great photographic opportunities you can capture on film, like the male flying back to the nest with the twig. If you keep your mind open and don’t drink too much coffee early in the morning, you can score too!
Another year round biological event you can use to get close physically is when the birds are feeding. Whether feeding alone or in a mass, food usually keeps wading birds’ attention pretty well focused (get it? focused, photography – hah, bad pun!). You normally know when wading birds are foraging because they are frozen in some sort of funny pose, staring off into the water. This is not a guaranteed way of getting close physically though compared to sex.
When using food/feeding as a distraction to your approach, you need to watch for a couple of things. While it’s not life threatening, you want to avoid causing the subject to miss its opportunity to eat, so here’s the game plan I use. I start the approach so that the background I want is the one that is always behind the subject as I move closer. I don’t want to even do any fine-tuning of the background if at all possible so as not to disturb the subject. My camera is set before I approach: f/stop, film counter, everything. And quite often I will have a teleconverter attached so I don’t have to get as close physically compared to shooting without one.
I watch the eyes! The subject typically isn’t making much if any body movement, but it will be moving its eyes as it tracks its prey. By watching the eyes, you’ll know things like if the food source is moving, how close it is to the bird and if it’s close enough to be caught. You’ll also know if the subject is being bothered by your approach. Don’t be in a hurry to get nothing! Move slowly, ever so slowly to get close physically.
The photo of the Reddish Egret with the flying fish (right in front of its breast) is a great example of this technique in use, with a twist. This Reddish Egret was photographed at Ft Myers Beach while it was foraging. What was unique about the situation is that I’m standing in water, the same as the subject. In approaching a subject while walking in water, you must make real sure you don’t disturb the water! This means that you walk by shuffling your feet along the bottom, not picking them up out of the water and then setting them back in and splashing. This is essential and in the natural process of doing this makes you walk slower! At the same time, when you pick up your tripod to move forward, you want to bring it up slowly and set it down slowly so it doesn’t splash as well. Once you’re in place, be sure to push the front tripod leg in the mud a ways for a stable platform to shoot from.
With all of those beautiful long feathers, preening is a common activity of wading birds. This is something you can take advantage of to get close physically! While they can preen anytime of the day, it is most common in the early morning before they head out foraging and in the late evening before they go to roost. You must be slow in approaching a bird that is preening because even though they might have their mind on straightening their feathers, they are also on guard for predators. And as far as they are concerned, photographers are predators.
Another excellent opportunity to photograph wading birds is when they are asleep! This is something you might want to tackle only if you have patience. Obviously getting close physically isn’t a challenged as long as you’re quite. This means that you’re all set to shoot prior to setting down the tripod to fire. If the bird is a little ways out in the water or up in a branch above eyelevel, you’ll have the best opportunity to find a bird that is deep asleep.
The patience part comes in as you wait for the bird to wake up. You naturally take a couple shots of the bird asleep with its eye’s closed, but that’s not the most desired of posses. The last thing I want you to do is cough or slam a car door (yes, I’ve seen this done) in an attempt to wake the bird either. You just wait because unless it’s standing dead, it will wake up. Most of the time when they awake and they find your standing there, they will perform rather than take flight. So waiting can pay big dividends!
With wading birds all being big or bigger than most birds, watching them to learn their biology is really simple. Unless they have been bothered in the past by humans, they are generally on the friendly side. If you find a place in Florida where fishermen are cleaning their catch, you’re sure to find at least one wading bird you could probably pet! Learn their biology and you’ll get close physically!
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Optics
You’re probably saying, “Well yeah…duh, go buy a big lens and you’ll solve all of your problems.” Well I hate to say it, but in some sense that is the truth! For an excellent example of how and why this is so, I turn again to the Venice Rookery. When it comes to getting physically close to the action on the island, you can only get as close to the island as the edge of the lagoon (unless you can walk on the backs of alligators!). This means that optics are required to get the image size desired.
I see lots of folks at the rookery, shooting with 300mm lenses while I’m shooting at 840mm and I’m wishing at times I had more. What are they seeing I’m not, or, what am I capturing that they aren’t? Wading birds in general live in a watery world, typically a large body of water. All it takes for them to move out of camera range is to walk 50+ feet away, further out into the water and we’re out of business! While it’s true in some locations that you can proceed right out into the water as well, more often than not you’re going to need more glass.
So, what’ the minimum? If we’re photographing birds in every situation except flight, I can’t imagine shooting with anything shorter than 600mm. Can you reach 600mm with a 300mm and 2x teleconverter? Sure, but then you’re battling the fact that you can’t go any longer, two stops of light loss and an incredibly shallow depth of field. For myself, I can’t start with anything less than 600mm, but I typically don’t stop there. More often than not, the 1.4x teleconverter is attached to the 600mm. This gives me 840mm to work with, the focal length I most prefer to photograph birds, any bird.
There is another HUGE benefit to the longer glass that you’ll come across at places like Ding Darling NWR in Florida. Wading birds live in a rather busy world, one with sticks, grasses, roots and the like all around them. All of this living matter can really ruin a great photograph! There is nothing worse than having a Green Heron in gorgeous light at Alligator Alley with a background of roots going every which way! Not that a long lens will make all of the roots go away, but the longer the lens, the narrower the angle of view, which means the less background you’ll see.
Where this is truly effective is when you have just one twig, one other bird or some small thing in the background you want to disappear. With the long lens and its narrow angle of view, moving slightly to the left, right, up or down can make it disappear.
Perhaps you don’t have money for a long lens, I can understand that. You have an option open to you that you might not have considered, going digital. How does this gain you greater optical reach? Because digital cameras only capture half of a lens’ optical path, the result is an increase in focal length by 50%. You can pick up a used D1 for around $2500 and when married to an 80-400VR, you have a 120-600mm lens! This combo is a lot less than a new 600f4AFS II. Something to consider!
I can honestly say that on my last trip to Florida when I shot with the D1, 600f4 AFS and TC-14e at 1260mm, it was really fun and incredibly productive. And in a pinch I could use the TC-20e 2x and have 1800mm! When I first used this combo for photographing wading birds at the Venice Rookery, man was it ever fun. Getting up close and personal with some of the subjects was killer, incredibly easy and most of all, yielded marvelous quality.
What about flight shots? Photographing their massive wings is too way cool to describe in words, so by all means you want to go after flight shots. Whenever I’m in Florida photographing wading birds, I always have a second body on my side with a lens attached just for flight photography. Last year when I was in Florida I used the 80-400VR. This lens is tack sharp but when it comes to focus acquisition from a dead stop, you might as well go for a cup of coffee (unless you prefocus but that’s hard to do from a dead stop). I did come back with some marvelous flight shots, but it was more work than fun.
If I were to be shooting right this moment I would have the 300f4 AFS. When attached to the D1/X/H, this is a 450f4 AFS lens, it screams! While this can be too much lens at times for photographing a six foot wing span in flight, the speed of acquisition is just too good to be true!
I don’t want you to think that flight photography is for handheld glass! Photographing birds in flight is a no-brainer using the Wimberley Head and a long lens. The only real trick is to be sure you use proper long lens technique and stand between the legs of your tripod when shooting. Looking at my files, I figure that it’s 50/50 the number of flight images of wading birds I capture handheld versus tripod bound.
The best of all worlds is to get close physically with long glass. You’ll find the vast majority of great wading bird images were taken in that manner. But that’s just the start to photographing wading birds successfully!
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Hey, aren’t these white birds on blue water?
Of course they are, so we automatically dial in +1 stop compensation so we can shoot. NOT! The old “white bird on blue water” let’s get rich articles really should be retired, along with those writing them. There is no such thing as a subject that requires automatic compensation and white birds are no exception. Actually, photographing white birds on blue water is a no-brainer if you use your brains!
What’s the key to this, a gray card? NO, not that either!!!! The key to getting the exposure correct is the light. You must shoot within the three-stop range of light that the film can hold if you want perfect white bird on blue water exposure. You can get it when the light is not within three stops, but your birds are going to be dark or your water is going to be dark; you can’t have both.
Probably more than most birds, these graceful creatures require an eloquent light to be shown off at their best. When a soft breeze off the Gulf of Mexico is fluffing those breeding plumes, I can’t think of any other lighting than less than two stops of early morning or late evening light. When you work within this range not only will you have ZERO metering problems, you’ll have captured in my opinion the essence of the wading bird.
Can I tell you one time not to photograph white birds on blue water, that’s when the water is gray! Any bird, wading bird or not should not be photographed on water when there is overcast skies in my opinion. I don’t think there is anything worse than this type of images! Yeah, you can dial in plus compensation to brighten up the image, but it will now just be a brighter shade of gray.
This pertains to flight shots as well. DON’T DO IT on overcast days! The other giant problem besides the horrible gray background is exposure. Shooting up on a bird with a gray background is a no win situation when it comes to metering. The underside of the bird that you are photographing is going to be dark to black while the sky is gray. This will well beyond the three stops of light you want for the best images.Wait for the blue and three stops of light, you and your images will be much happier!
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Which way do I turn the camera?
Do I shoot these critters horizontally or vertically? This is a very common question in which you might not find a comfortable answer for yourself for some time. Do I have my own personal set of guidelines for shooting one way or the other? I sure don’t. When deciding which format to shoot a subject, vertical or horizontal, I ask myself (in a heartbeat in reality) a couple of questions. First and foremost what does my gut say? If I don’t have a firm feeling one way or the other, I ask myself other questions.
With my main focus always being the background, I wonder if I can remove unwanted elements in the background by going either vertically or horizontally. There are times that a smaller subject can be made to appear larger by going vertical, so I ask myself this question. Going through this very informal checklist which at times I might not be able to do at all because time doesn’t permit is simply my own requirements of what I’m looking for in my images.
I wonder for example if there are elements in the subject itself that one format over the other will emphasize or de-emphasize. At the same time I look at the watery background and see it’s really cool. Will one format or the other emphasize it? These are not rules you need to commit to memory; they are just questions I ask myself in deciding if I’m going vertical or horizontal.
I have a good friend who is emphatic about framing in regards to the bird’s feet. Whether you can actually see the feet or not (hidden below the water’s surface) you need to leave space for them to be present. In other words if you can’t actually see the feet, leave room in the photo for them anyways, don’t crop them out. As you can see from my images, I don’t hold to this rule myself. My point is that each one of us must find the style that we like from our own vision to make the images magical!
I’m fortunate that now after two decades much of this is so second nature that I really don’t rationalize through the decision process when I’m actually shooting. What’s right for me might either be right or wrong for you, and that’s perfectly fine! Photography has lots of variables built into it, use them to your advantage and you’ll come out a winner!
I’ve included two images here, both of the same Snowy Egret shot late one afternoon at Ft Myers Beach. Both shots were taken just seconds apart of the exact same bird. The subject size is nearly the same in both frames. The natural orientation of the Snowy Egret is horizontal. It’s strolling along, shifting its feet in the mud trying to scare up a Goby to eat. Its very intent stare into the water and the lighting on its breeding plumes is what caught my attention. Instead of my having to move closer to the egret, I let its foraging path bring it to me.
You’ll notice there is nothing in the background that needs to be removed. The water itself is nothing special and there is no reflection. Of the two formats, which do I prefer? I like the vertical because for me, it captures what it was that moment to be a Snowy Egret. There is no right or wrong answer, but perhaps one that is simply better for you and what you want to communicate!
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One exception to V or H
There is one thing that when I see it, I automatically go vertical and that’s reflections. When the air is still and the water like a mirror, my mind starts looking for reflections, which means I turn my camera vertically. If I have one rule, that’s got to be it.
There are actually times you can plan for reflections and make them happen. The best example is pre-dawn at Ft Myers Beach and post-sunset at Ding Darling. The first obvious thing here is, there is no one else around at these times which can really help you succeed! This is essential because I find myself often in the water at Ft Myers Beach in the early am. And at Ding Darling, most folks pack their bags and fold their tents and go home once the sun sets which to me is when some of the best photography is just beginning. In either case, it’s the weaning light levels that I’m looking for as well as certain biology.
It’s at these hours that wading birds preen. I’ve already discussed how we can use this activity to get close physically, but I didn’t mention the other really great part of preening. When birds preen, they open up their feathers and show them off for all of their magnificence! In spring that means breeding plumes and I can’t think of anything better to show twice in a photograph than breeding plumes all fanned out!
This activity is a two edge sword though when it comes to photography. It lends itself to some of the best poses of wading birds to be captured in a reflection. At the same time, this activity involves movement as the bird cleans each bard on each feather. This is something you don’t want when there is no light (no, VR or IS will not help in low light when the subject is moving!) and of course, no shutter speed. One of my favorite ways to photograph wading birds then is one of the trickiest!
After getting up early or staying late, after finding the subject on a mirror surface, after turning the camera vertically, there is one other very important thing to do. That’s dial in exposure compensation! We’re working in basically no light and while our meter will deliver the right exposure, who wants the right metering reading for dark! I generally start by dialing in +2 stops and work my way down to 0 from there. How do you know how much is enough compensation? If you’re shooting conventional, you bracket for effect and if you’re shooting digital, you check your monitor and histograms. Bracketing for effect means just that, you have no idea what effect the plus compensation is going to render so you bracket and make your selection once you have your film back. With digital, you simply view your image and information and compensate accordingly.
Most importantly your exposing for personal preference! There is no really right or wrong but rather, personal taste in what you want to or not to communicate in your image. I can guarantee you that the viewer of your image will have no clue how you exposed for the scene, let alone the time of day you actually took the photo. If you thought you had enough on your mind selecting vertical or horizontal, you ain’t seen nothing until you get into these unique scenarios where the truly spectacular images are captured!
One last tidbit on photographing the reflections of wading birds that are preening. Quite often they will flare out their wing, turn their head upside down and preen away. This is an awesome photographic opportunity if you’re ready for it. Besides all that I’ve already written above, to capture this shot, you need to wait for peak of action. In this case, the peak of action is when the bird has finished running a feather through its bill and stops for just a heartbeat before grabbing the next feather. You either need to have a lightning fast trigger finger or no problem depressing the shutter release and letting the captures fly! Of all my wading bird images, it’s this pose in this type of light that I love the most!
There are some photographers out there that I’ve met who do nothing but photograph wading birds. Who can blame them? Waders are both eloquent and challenging! I know that if they were where I am, I sure would spend one heck of a lot more time photographing them. For beginner to experienced alike, they make for great subjects to learn from and photograph. I’m still learning after twenty years and I hope you too have just as long a time learning from these beautiful members of our avian world!
Jun 23, 2009 | Field Reports
Traveling through a glowing tunnel of yellow even though the sun was still below the horizon, the fall color of Maine lit the way as we came to the trailhead parking. We set up our cameras and started up the trail. The weather report promised ideal Moose photography weather, slight overcast and cool temps, which turned out to be off only a tad. We reached the pond and a cow Moose greeted us along with wind driven snow that stung our cheeks. The wind gusts that blew off my hat didn’t slow down the shutters because as the little sunlight that was breaching the clouds appeared so did five Maine Moose!
This might sound a little strange, but I’ve got Moose fever! One image that still eludes me after all the thousands upon thousands I’ve captured, is that of a giant bull Moose with its head slightly cocked like that of my logo. I made two big pushes in 2001 to capture that image; both times I came close but no cigar. The last attempt was in the heart of Maine in October. The trip was killer, absolutely knock you down gorgeous with the fall color and fantastic Moose ops. It was more than the heart could take at times! And while I didn’t get my giant bull shot, I want to share with you the adventures we had with Maine Moose.
The Days’ Events
Hitting the road at 5:10am, we went to our favorite local diner for breakfast. We quickly became “regulars” and were well taken care of because by 5:45 we would be out the door for our hour drive. In the predawn darkness we couldn’t see much of the magical tunnel of fall color that we were zooming through. On our first day we were rained out of our Moose locale, so I opted for fall color photography and good thing we did because the next storm that night finished it all off. The second day, we had snow in our faces. We were getting the hint that Mother Nature wasn’t going to make it easy for us to succeed!
We reached the parking lot in Baxter State Park ten minutes before sunrise each morning, saddled up our gear and began the walk up the trail. For the group’s first exposure to Sandy Stream Pond was a cow Moose twenty feet away at sunrise! If the sunrise had delivered all the color it promised, things would have been truly grand but as it was, it was fun because it was the first exposure to Moose for some of the participants.
Over the next couple of hours the weather slowly deteriorated to the point that by noon our cheeks were stinging from the wind driven snow. Leaving a cow and calf, we walked back down the trail and headed back to our motel. This might sound pretty wimpy, but there is no refuge at Sandy Stream Pond; you’re just standing out there and whatever weather is happening, it’s happening on your head.
We awoke the next day to clear skies and brightened hopes. When we reached the pond though, there wasn’t a Moose in sight! In fact, we had a few hours of nothing, well as for Moose, but we did have the most spectacular view that Sandy Stream Pond offers the adventurer willing to get there at sunrise. No sooner had the lunch come out than the Moose appeared and in a short time, a dozen Moose were cruising about the pond in great light!! Yes, I said a dozen, twelve Moose, all within a couple acres of space, some as close as, well you’ll see.
There were a couple of Moose we had already come to know in a short time. One was “spiky,” a bull only a couple years old with poorly formed spikes. This young bull was desperate for love, I mean desperate! We always knew when he was around because the cows would be complaining about his affections! Complaining or moaning, as only a complaining cow Moose can. Another Moose we came to know was the Pond Bitch who had the reputation of treeing folks. She was nothing but sweet to us, as she and her calf provided us with nearly endless photo ops. And it was on this afternoon that we had the “incident” with the Pond Bitch’s calf.
There is a very small wooden boardwalk at one of the viewing points, which is where we were set up. The “boardwalk” reminded me of a wooden, raised cattle guard about fifteen feet long and just wide enough for a tripod. It had wooden slats with spaces between them that made setting up a tripod on the boardwalk difficult. The cow and calf came on over to us, which was quite normal. We’re talking to within just feet of us! I had pulled the group back as far as we could go to give the Moose the right of way. I said to the group, “don’t worry, I can’t imagine they would walk on this boardwalk.” Sure enough, the cow, the Pond Bitch, walked around the boardwalk and us. But not her calf!
The calf walked right up onto the boardwalk and then right to us! How close did the calf get? How about licking a 400f2.8, cleaning the three legs of a carbon fiber tripod and then causing the “incident?” I won’t mention any names, but the calf sexually assaulted two of the male participants! Luckily it only used its tongue and not its teeth because I was laughing so hard it was difficult to take photos (of course, it’s all recorded on film) let alone rescue them! The calf, the sweetest thing you ever did see was incredibly curious and literally all over us. So for a while, we were held captive by a Moose calf!
Now with mom right there and her having the reputation she had, the last thing we wanted to do was startle the calf and have the cow come over to defend it, but we couldn’t let the “incident” proceed. So with a sharp little noise made by squeezing an empty plastic bottle from my jacket pocket, the calf got the message to move on and we went back to taking photos. After that, the Moose went back to their normal routine of eating while the photography in the late afternoon light was just marvelous. But up to this point, the big bull had eluded us. That was all about to change.
The next morning, the clouds were back, the beautiful light of the day before only a memory! We arrived at the pond to find three cow and calf groups feeding. There was no hesitation as the shutters began to rip. With no shortage of Moose photos to capture, I brought home over 2000 new images of just Moose in five days of shooting, two of which were rainouts!
During the entire time, I kept scanning for any flash of white in the trees, signaling the presence of a bull Moose. There was this one little tree of fall foliage that was just at the right height that, when the wind blew it just right, would start my heart to pounding only to be let down once I could zero in on it. And then from the trees emerged a bull, a three year old with barely two tines! This was a “little” bull maybe five years old that would come and go, and its small rack would flash, getting my adrenalin going, but it was no big bull. While better than nothing, he was a far cry from a big boy. This older bull had fun sparing with Spiky (only when there wasn’t a cow around, otherwise Spiky was occupied), which was fun to photograph. The sun came up, brightened up the scene though it didn’t shine directly and we stood there capturing all the photo ops.
Around 9:00am I saw a flash in the forest. I waited a moment to make sure it was moving and not some leaves and then called out, “BULL!” A minute later, a nice bull emerged from the forest, our first for the trip. For the next three hours the big bull shared its affections with a cow and calf until that went nowhere with the other three smaller bulls present. While the big bull presented us with some really nice photo ops, it never came closer than 100 yards from us. For the welfare of the habitat and the Moose, we didn’t go chasing after the Moose, but depended on them coming to us instead. This worked great with the cows and calves, but this bull kept its distance. Not too long before sun down (which was 4:20pm because we were working behind a mountain) the big bull faded back into the forest from where he came and we didn’t see him again for the rest of the trip.
The next two days were tons of fun, but without that big bull that we all really wanted, me especially, it’s safe to say we all had our fill of cow shots. Hearing wolves call one afternoon was a thrill, as well as watching the comings and goings of all the wildlife of the pond. On day four we were driven out by wind and rain at noon and on our last day, we left an hour early, again because of rain and wind. We went on a drive to another section of the park where the sun was still out, a beautiful place called Stump Pond, which also can have Moose at times. It was here while in the forest that I had a Fisher come up to me and greet me. I didn’t have anything to take its picture with at the time, so I just watched it check me out before returning to the small stream and foraging. We finished our trip by photographing a beautiful sunset on Stump Pond.
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Photographing Maine Moose
This was an all-digital safari, as all participants and I shot with the D1, D1X or D1H. This along with current airline inconveniences greatly influenced our photography. Taking into consideration our subject, Moose, my strategy of waiting for them to come to us and shooting digitally, I found the 400f2.8AFS to be the perfect lens. The 80-400VR was also a very popular option and captured great images. One thing much more important though than camera and lens selection in photographing Moose is light!
Moose are kind of the same scenario as photographing Bald Eagles. That’s to say, you have a really dark body and light head, a big exposure range that is killer for film to record. And while digital can record up to five stops of light, this is the last thing you want when photographing Moose. You must have three stops or less of light to really capture great Moose images!
This means that slightly overcast light is ideal for photographing Moose. Their lighter heads and the bottom of their legs along with their really dark bodies scream for less light, not more! This is especially true when they’re out in the pond foraging! Another essential at least for me, is either really quality side lighting and frontlit Moose. A backlit Moose unless done so with a sunrise/sunset just doesn’t look that great. This means that on dark days when the gray clouds are reflecting non-stop off the water, you really have to watch your background or you will have horribly backlit Moose.
The background is essential in Moose photography. They live in a very, very, very, busy world of trees, branches, grasses, shrubs and rocks. The majority of the tree trunks and rocks are bright in color, from silver to white. With these in the background of a dark animal, they stick out and ruin an otherwise great image! This means you must be vigilant in watching the background and know when to depress the shutter release and when not to!
Another very popular lens on this safari was the 28-70f2.8AFS. This lens worked really well when photographing the Moose up close, which we did nearly every hour! The small boardwalk where we stood was a major thoroughfare for the Moose so cows and calves were constantly venturing through. The 28-70 was the perfect focal length to capture just the animal, or the animal as part of a scenic. It was important though when taking the “Moose scenic” to use a split graduated neutral density filter to bring the sky exposure down within the range of the foreground exposure for the film to record.
One last note on photographing Moose, the big bull. We never had the “big boy” but the one nice bull we had brings up a very important point in photographing them. Their racks, those giant antlers and their big nose don’t compositionally fit perfectly into 35mm/digital format. You must “play” with the position of the antlers/head/nose in the frame to make an image that represents the forest giant you’re photographing. I’ve found that going shorter in lens selection works better than going longer.
My first choice for photographing Moose is the 300f2.8AFS II. Because of current airline restrictions, I went with the 400f2.8AFS because it securely fits in the Pro Trekker. Since I knew that on at least one leg of my flight I was going to have to check my camera bag, I wanted the Pro Trekker since it affords the greatest amount of protection. Ideally, I’d take the 300f2.8 in the Nature Trekker, but it is a tad too short to really protect the D1H & 300f2.8. Anyway, why do I prefer the 300f2.8 for Moose?
The 300f2.8 provides me with the focal length that works best with the big rack of the big boys. On the D1H, the 300f2.8AFS is equal to a 450mm lens (the 400mm = 600mm, too big for big game for me). This is pretty darn close to my ideal focal length for big game for my style of photography. Additionally, the 300f2.8AFS can easily and beautifully work with teleconverters so that in case I need longer, it’s no problem.
You might be asking yourself, “Was the Moose photography any good?” We had five days, of which one day was an entire rain out and two others were half days because of either snow or rain. With all of that, I still came back with over 2000 Moose images from the week. That’s pretty darn good shooting! I didn’t come back with THE bull Moose shot, but I was quite happy with some of the images of the bull that was present, like the one on the cover. I would and will go back to Sandy Stream Pond to photograph Moose again, as it’s way too gorgeous and way too much fun not to go back!
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Working Around Moose
Moose are big, ornery, powerful creatures that can change their minds in a heartbeat. There is a good reason why many folks give them wide berth in the wild. Before you go out to photograph Moose, you should do some basic biology homework and understand a few basic facts.
Moose are really, really, big deer. Those large ears are great indicators of what a Moose is thinking. When photographing Moose, you want them thinking happy thoughts, which would be indicated by their ears being forward generally. If the ears are both back, this should be assumed as indicating they are not happy. While this might not be the case, it’s best to assume such. One way that Moose, especially cows, defend themselves is by kicking. In a heartbeat, they can raise themselves up on their back legs and kick deadly blows with their front legs. You never, ever want to put yourself in this kind of danger.
Some folks like to tell about how they were “treed” by a Moose. What this means is, they had to put a tree between them and the Moose, not climb a tree, so as not to get kicked. If you’re walking down a trail and happen upon a Moose, you might have to use this method of defense since you surprised the animal. But you should never have to do this when actually photographing a Moose unless you’ve done something really wrong.
Getting close physically is a technique I often talk about. This is something I don’t advise the Moose photographer, for a number of reasons. One is what I’ve just mentioned above. Another is it can be very difficult in many areas to approach Moose. Living in heavily wooded areas in the northeast, there typically is lots of forest litter on the ground. Moose use those big ears to hear things like twigs snapping under the weight of a predator’s foot. Trying to sneak up on Moose for most folks is just not a good plan because you’re more likely to push them away from you by your very approach.
I think wearing camo clothes is downright silly for wildlife photographers. So is wearing a red jacket during hunting season! Wearing clothes with muted colors is the best way to “blend” in with the natural world and still have some self-dignity. It’s better to avoid nylon, a material that when rubbed against itself makes a high frequency noise we cannot easily hear, but wildlife can.
Photographing Moose is a lot of fun! They are very interesting and intriguing members of our wild heritage. You have to travel north to find them, which in itself is exciting. The biggest Moose are in Alaska and northern Canada. They get progressively smaller as you go south. Big or small, male or female, Moose are some of the best wildlife photography you can focus in on. Head to Maine, Yellowstone, Jasper or Denali and treat yourself to what I consider one of wildlife photography’s challenges, capturing the great bull Moose shot. But if you get the great bull Moose shot, please don’t tell me about it, at least until I get one of my own!
Jun 23, 2009 | Field Reports
Reprinted from the BT Journal , Vol.3 Issue 3, August 1998
We’ve just rounded a curve in the road while heading into Canyon, Yellowstone Nat’l Park when out of the corner of my eye, I see this tall, gray form perched on a fallen pine limb on the edge of a clearing. I speed ahead, turn around and drive back, parking at the first pull out. I get out and assemble my F4 and 800f5.6, putting it atop my trusty Gitzo and hustle back to where I’d seen the gray form. It’s late in the day, the last rays of light casting their warm glow on the region. I walk back to the clearing in time to see the Great Gray Owl as it stares back at me. I hurriedly set down my tripod and pointed my lens at the magnificent creature eyeing me when a big, smelly tourist bus stops right behind me, opening its doors for someone to yell out, “what d’ya see?” At that very moment I press the shutter release, exposing the first and only frame as the owl lifted off from its perch to sink deeper into its forested world.
For the rest of the week during our stay in Yellowstone, my family and I kept looking in that same clearing every evening for that owl. We walked the surrounding forest on a couple of days, but we never saw it again. We’ve gone back to Yellowstone many times over the years since that first encounter in 1990, but we’ve never seen the Great Gray Owl there again. Yet it’s that first encounter, standing there in the fumes of that bus that the gray ghost of the forest captured my imagination and fueled a life long passion.
It’s 1998 and the four of us stand in awe in the Blue Mountains of Oregon. Perched before us is a male Great Gray Owl on a lone snag. In a clearing amongst a stand of Douglas-fir a stone’s throw from its nest, we watch the male as it calls to its mate hidden up a draw, a deep, throaty call. It calls in a different, shorter hoot to its two young now branchlings amongst the downed timber around us. And it watches us now as we’ve entered its domain. It’s been an hour and a half, 18 rolls of film are in the shot pocket of my vest. The time has gone by way too fast, the encounter all too brief. We’ve just packed it in for the morning when it begins to sprinkle. It’s 24 May, and it’s a good day!
This is an opportunity I have been waiting for and working for a long time! On numerous occasions my good friend Michael Frye has tried to help me photograph these magnificent owls in Yosemite Nat’l Park where all I was able to do was enjoy seeing them fly by. This was the fourth year I had made contact with the biologists working with these owls in Oregon. The previous three years, there had simply been too much rain for me to gamble on the long journey paying off with photographs. The rain had hurt the nesting success so much that I didn’t want to add to the owl’s problems. But this year there were three active nests and we had a window of four days, so off we went. Like so many of our fortunate encounters, this was an experience of a lifetime, being face to face with those big yellow eyes and massive gray facial disk in the serenity of the forest. This is also an experience you too can be a part of, capturing the gray ghost of the forest on film.
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Basic Biology
The Great Gray Owl can be found in many parts of North America, making it extremely accessible to thousands upon thousands of photographers. They breed in North America from central Alaska, northern Yukon, northwestern and central MacKenzie, northern Manitoba, and northern Ontario south locally in the interior along the Cascades and Sierra Nevada to central California; in the Rockies from northern Idaho and Montana to western Wyoming; and to central Alberta, central Saskatchewan, southern Manitoba, northern Minnesota, and south-central Ontario.
They are physically the largest owl in North America. Males have a wing span of 410-447mm and females 430-465mm. Males have a length of 300-323mm and females 310-347mm. Males weigh an average of 936grams and females 1237grams! In comparison, your basic warbler is 7-10 grams. Their coloration though is as basic as they come, gray all over. Yes, there are shades of gray from dark to light, but they’re called great gray for a reason, size and color. To see them fly, the first thing that impresses you is their wing size with their long, broad graceful sail-like wings catching air underneath their plumes.
Their nesting biology is rather straight forward for an owl. The Great Gray Owl does not make its own nest, but rather uses abandoned nests of other raptors especially of the Northern Goshawk. They typically make their nests atop broken snags as well. Owls have a specific nesting biology with their own terms. When the chicks are born, they are called nestlings. At about four weeks old, the nestlings still covered with down and a hint of emerging feathers, leave the nest in a controlled crash to the ground. They then become what is called branchlings. The young scurry about the ground, along downed trees and walk up branches to get fed which is where the term branchling comes from. They stay around the nest area during this time. They become fledglings and start moving out of the nesting territory at a couple of months old. Spring Creek Ecology
The nesting Great Gray Owls of Spring Creek, Blue Mountains Oregon were discovered in 1982. What makes this unique is the area was logged in the 1970’s. The typical habitat for Great Grays is old to virgin forests. What makes Spring Creek truly special in regards to Great Grays is the nesting density of the owls. There are at least eight pairs of Great Grays nesting in a four square mile area! This is a special population also because they have successfully nested every year accept for one since 1982. Great Grays typically nest successfully in a direct relationship to the prey base which for some reason does not come into play with this population as dramatically as with other owl populations.
The logging in the 1970’s created an open, patchwork habitat of tree stands and meadows. These “park-like” stands of Ponderosa Pine with islands of denser stands of Douglas-fir is ideal habitat for the Great Grays. They hunt in the more open Ponderosa Pines and nest in the denser Douglas-fir. The reason they prefer the denser Douglas-fir is the protection it provides for their young from predators such as Great Horned Owls and Northern Goshawks. Certain hilltops and ridges have Forest Service signs signifying they are old stands of Old Growth forest, small islands saved from the ax. But as you travel through the area, the richness of the forest is stunning, the diversity inspiring!
The Great Grays begin courtship in the Spring Creek area during February. The Great Grays are quite vocal during this time. Their calling occurs mostly at night and can be heard as a series of low “whoos.” Owls have a very complex vocabulary which we are only starting to understand, but they have at least 40 different “hoots.” For example, the female’s food begging call, part of courtship consists of a soft two-note “whoo-up.” Incubation starts from mid-March to early April and lasts 30 days. The Great Gray during this time is very hard to find and don’t make a hoot. The female has incubation duty, the male providing her with food while she sits on the eggs. The female also broods the young once they hatch and are nestlings.
To help the Great Gray Owls, the Forest Service has a nesting platform program established in the Spring Creek area. With the loss of some natural nesting platforms (broken snags) from logging the artificial platforms help the owls while the process of nature creates platforms with time.
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Photographing the Owls
On our first afternoon, we head for the first known nesting site. We reach the site a few hours after the rain has stopped. We weave our way through the Douglas-fir grove towards the nesting tree. We are greeted by the call of a Douglas Tree Squirrel as it announces our presence in the forest. We cross fresh track and sign of Rocky Mountain Elk and see a few Mule Deer on the edge of the forest, watching us pass by. We walk a quarter of a mile and come in sight of the nesting platform. We set up our Kenko Pro Field 70 Spotting Scope and check out the nesting platform and surrounding trees, no one. I glass the surrounding forest and spot a Swainson’s Thrush busy foraging, but no owls. We’re too late; this pair has already raised their young and moved off from the nesting territory. We walk back through the forest, looking forward to the next day’s exploration.
The next morning after eating a scrambled egg breakfast in the warmth of our trailer, we head out for the second nest site. It rained during the night and the rain had just stopped and the sun had broken through the clouds as we left our campsite. He arrive on the dirt road heading up the ridge as the clouds start to pile back up, threatening to rain again. Off we set the four of us, my wife, two sons and myself through the forest to the second nest site. I knew the owl was there, I could feel it, but we get to the nesting platform to find nothing. We stop, set up our scope again and begin to look.
I move down the slope ten feet to clear some trees to see across the small clearing in front of us when I spot the male atop a snag across the way. Oh, what a magnificent bird! Our eyes make contact as I look at the male through the bins. I look at the owl, where it’s perched, the background, the foreground and a possible path I could use to walk up and get closer. I leave my wife with the bins and my boys with the scope to keep an eye on the male as I set up my F5 and 600f4. The light level is too low to add the 1.4x, the clouds had begun to come back. I set up as quickly as possible in case the owl took off. I check with my observation team to find the owl is still in the same place.
I ease down the slope towards the clearing and the owl on the other side. My team keeps a watch on the owls as I work my way towards it. The owl knows we’re here, there’s no hiding from those big eyes. I work my way slowly down the slope in plain view of the male, perched atop a dead snag. I watch its eyes and body for any movement suggesting I’m bothering it. At about eighty feet I stop and take my first images. Framing that incredible bird in my viewfinder has my heart racing, the thrill of so many years waiting up to this moment make it hard for me to hold still as I focus on the male. While the owl only fills 1 of the frame, those big, yellow eyes burn into my soul. With the owl’s obvious OK with my presence, I move closer and closer until I have a nearly full frame image. With the cloudy skies and the gray plumage, my F5’s autofocus has a hard time locking on, so I switch to manual focus. I’ve ripped off a couple of rolls of film when I hear the owl make a new hoot and within a couple of seconds it defecates. A voice comes over the radio, my wife telling me it’s defecating, alerting me that it’s about to take flight. Fly it does, about fifty feet to the left to a large branch on a live Douglas-fir.
As the owl takes to the air, those giant wings beat without any effort. The owl seemed to leave just because it felt like moving, giving no sign of being upset by my approach. In fact, by this point in time, my entire family had joined me where I was photographing the owl, all enjoying the experience of being so close to such a magnificent creature. From its new perch, the male hoots, calling to its mate hidden up the draw whom we assume is hunting. I move slowly towards where the male is now perched and within little time, I’m thirty feet away from it. Just as I focus on the owl, the sun comes out shinning a magical beam on the owl. My eye loves the beauty in front of me, my film is screaming in pain.
I can see those big, yellow deep eyes perfectly. But the shadows created by those deep eyes now caused by the sun, darken the eyes so the film can’t see them. The yellow has no sparkle, no life, a problem I hadn’t thought about until I see it through my viewfinder. Where I was hoping for sun to come out to make magic, now I can’t wait until the cloud covers it back up again. I still fire off a couple of rolls and have my oldest son over who has now attached his camera body to my 600mm and is photographing the owl. He just finished his second roll when the owl moves again, this time flying just ten feet to the right, to the top of a broken off snag. This is the photo on the cover of the Journal, a magical moment which didn’t last long. I had taken maybe twenty frames when the male takes flight, this time going up the slope and out of my view. My wife and youngest son radio they have the male in sight. My son and I turn around to go back to the clearing to see we’re being watched!
Totally unknown to us, a branchling had worked its way down the slope and atop a branch right behind us. We knew of a branchling that had popped up way up the slope behind us, but this was a new little guy. Now I knew why the male was moving about; it was staying in a place where it could keep both branchlings in constant view. They are very protective of their young, not hesitating for a second for example, to drive a person into the ground if too close to one of their young. We move cautiously away from the branchling, my wife watching the male to make sure we don’t upset it. We walk around so the branchling is frontlit, grab a few frames of it and then move away.
Already an hour and a half had flown by. The four of us walk back up the slope to where the male has perched and watch it for a few minutes has it starts to call with another new hoot. The skies get dark, too dark to shoot with no opportunity of light coming, so I decide to pack it in. I never spend more than two hours with a nesting bird anyway even when everything is going perfect and with the first sprinkles that reach my head, we leave. As we reach the top of the ridge and look back on the owls to say thanks, we see three sets of eyes staring into ours. The branchlings from their perches and the male from his, watch us as we fade over the ridge. We’re just getting back into the cab of the truck when it starts to really get wet.
We drive down the road to check out the third nest site on our way out. We locate the platform to see a set of yellow eyes staring down over the rim at us. We stay for only a moment to look at the owl before we leave the area altogether. What an incredibly, incredible morning!
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You Can Do It Too!
I first found out about this opportunity through contacting various researchers. I finally found and was put in contact with the lead researcher of these Great Gray Owls. But to my amazement, the information I was seeking is available to anyone in the public. In fact, the Forest Service will mail anyone a map taking them right to the nest sites! Here’s the info you need to make contact:
US Forest Service
La Grande Ranger District
3502 Hwy. 30
La Grande, OR 97850 541.963.7186
Before you get all excited about journeying to Oregon next season, reread what you just read. It took a few years before all the conditions were right before I made my first trip to this locale. I waited until I was sure I would make no impact on the owls. Even though the Forest Service provides maps to every active nest to anyone wanting to see them, I still firmly believe that no photograph is worth sacrificing the welfare of the subject!
I’m not the first person to photograph or write about these magnificent creatures at Spring Creek, nor will I be the last. When you write or call the Forest Service, they will provide you with a brochure on the owl and the area. The backside states an ethical guideline for observing and photographing the owl. We all need to do as these guidelines suggest and more to insure the welfare of the owls and our continuing ability to observe and photograph them in the future. Don’t ever forget that without wildlife, we have nothing to photograph.
Technical Second Thoughts
The overall gray of the Great Gray Owl is such that in low light or shade, the autofocus system cannot lock on. Manual focus or, M/A manual focus is required. As I learned firsthand, full sun can be a mixed blessing. While I’m able to use AF when the sun is out, the shadows on those deep eyes are a killer. The optimal situation would be very early morning or very late evening when the sun is very low to the horizon. At this low angle, the sun is able to shine directly into and light up those magnificent yellow eyes.
You best be a master of light, because flash ain’t going to work for you here! Someone is probably wondering why “Mr. Flash” didn’t simply put a flash on the lens by using the Really Right Stuff extender bar to put light in those eyes? The reason is really simple. Those giant eyes just don’t work with flash, I’ve seen it tried. The other reason is physical. Moving about the forest with that big bracket while trying to maneuver through branches is difficult at best. Also trying to get a clear shot through the branches with the lens is difficult enough without trying to also align the flash. Photographing Great Grays requires you to be a master of light, no ifs, ands or buts about it!
If you head for our web site, you’ll see that first, blurry image I took of the Great Gray Owl in Yellowstone. Too awful to waist precious Journal page space, but I want you to see what lit my passion for these beautiful creatures. Success photographically doesn’t necessarily come with the first frame or first encounter with a subject. But quite often, the first encounter can start a lifelong quest for either that subject, family, photograph, perfection or desire to be the best. The magic of wildlife photography comes in many forms, the rewards from an incredible array of possibilities. Follow your passion, seek to perfect your craft and chase that impossible subject. You will find the rewards your photography can bring to you!
Further Reading References
The Great Gray Owl – Phantom of the Northern Fores t by Robert W. Nero, ISBN#0-87474-672-8
North American Owl – Biology and Natural History by Paul A. Johnsgard, ISBN#0-87474-560-8
Jun 23, 2009 | Field Reports
Reprinted from the BT Journal, Vol.1 Issue 4, August 1996
Getting close physically, that’s a motto I’ve advocated since I first started writing about wildlife photography. Just after my last safari to Yellowstone, a participant made the comment after hearing what I photographed after all had gone home, “You save all the good stuff for after we all leave.” Giving me a bad time as he always does, he brings up a good point.
What I had told him about was a photo op I had with a bull Moose. It started at sun up when I saw the Moose in the company of two others. It was too dark so I couldn’t shoot. In fact, I didn’t take any photos of the Moose until four and a half hours later! What many call patience, I refer to as a sheer love of just being out in the wild. What I do when I’m all alone going after an image is not a methodology I talk much about and rarely teach, it’s the art of sitting. It’s one of the best ways I know of getting close physically to my subject. Sitting takes more than just having a butt to sit on (I should know since I don’t have much of one), but a state of mind and equipment to be successful.
Whether in a national park setting or out in the wild blue yonder, getting close to wildlife requires understanding basic biology. In a nutshell, wildlife tends to get closest when they approach us on their own terms rather than our trying to approach them. Case in point: my bull Moose in Yellowstone (I can’t figure out why, but I tend to gravitate towards Moose.)
We had photographed the three bull Moose earlier in the week. They had first been spotted by a group of tourists on the road to Mt. Washburn. Seeing the tourists, then the poor Moose they were chasing and the direction the Moose were heading, I turned our vehicle around and went to the Cascade Lake picnic area. There we set up our equipment and waited for the Moose to walk to us. They did just that, but they were still being followed by the tourists from the road. Their own personal space being crowded by the tourists, the Moose were pushed right out of the meadow and right past where we were standing. We did get some nice shots, but our time with the Moose was only a few minutes when it should have been much, much longer.
When I saw the bull Moose down on the lower end of Cascade Creek (near the road) a few days later after all my participants had left, I drove up to Cascade Lake trail and waited. From the experience of a few days prior, I knew the Moose meander up and down Cascade Creek through the meadow. One would eventually find his way up to where I was sitting. The question was, would he show up when the light was still nice and be lit in a flattering way?
Where to be “sitting” while waiting for the Moose to arrive? Well, the first consideration was the lighting. Being as dark as the Moose’s pelt was, I wanted front lighting on him. I also wanted a background that would help make the Moose pop in the photograph as well as communicate the world in which he lives. I was shooting with an F5 and 600f4 AF-I lens. The equipment I had played a key role in deciding where I would place myself.
The lens in use always dictates where I position myself. My motto in full says, “Get close physically and use optics to isolate.” Now typically I like shooting big game with a 300f2.8, but as I was shooting with the F5 and wanted to maintain the fastest possible autofocus, I went with the 600mm. (I was also hoping to find a Great Gray Owl while I was sitting for which the 600mm and 1.4x would have been perfect.) The 600mm’s narrow angle of view did allow me to be very selective of my background. So I set up accordingly, hoping that my prediction of where the Moose would show up would be correct.
Keeping lighting in mind, I also needed to place myself in a location where I wasn’t sticking out like a sore thumb. As I had my wife and two boys with me, our “hiding” place needed to conceal us all. I didn’t set up a blind or build a tree lodge to hide us. All we did was stand in the shadow of a small grove of Lodgepole Pines. None of us were wearing bright clothes, never do. Being in the shadow and standing, we took on the benign appearance of being part of the grove. Another real concern in our “concealment” was the fact we were in grizzly country. The trail we were on had just been posted as being frequented by griz. Being quiet is the last thing you want to do in griz country and you especially don’t want to surprise them. I took comfort in the fact that we were in the company of an old, bull Bison. He just grazed around us, sharing his flies with us some of the time (what a nice guy).
So there we stood. Now this is when many think, “you must have lots of patience!” Patience really has nothing to do with just sitting and waiting as far as I’m concerned. The time actually flew. While we stood there waiting, a bachelor herd of Mule Deer bucks came ambling through the meadow, grazing as they strolled by (great photo op). Gray Jays, one of our favorite birds, constantly kept checking us out for handouts (wonder where they learned that bad habit from, hmm…?). Various other forms of wildlife constantly ventured into the meadow to do their thing. This was a positive sign that our presence was not upsetting the nature of things. And finally, I was constantly on the lookout for the Great Gray Owl, a subject that eluded my F5 that week.
After four and a half hours, the bull Moose walked through the trees right at us. It nibbled on grasses as it strolled up towards us. It had come out of the trees a little to the east of where I had figured, so I had to move towards the east to get the lighting I wanted. In the process of moving east, the Moose moved into this gorgeous setting of shadow and sun and stopped. There it stood looking at us as if to say, “I’ve never seen you in my meadow before.”
Roll after roll of film went flying as the shot kept getting better and better. I started with the TC-14e 1.4x on the 600mm, but soon had that off as the bull had moved in quite close to us. We made sure to keep our distance from the bull (I have a lot of respect for those front legs). But the Moose didn’t care we were there for he just kept coming closer. At one point, he posed, providing me with my best shot yet of a bull Moose (possibly a cover for my upcoming book).
Then, out of the trees behind us came a crash! The bull Moose instantly stood at attention, ears forward. My wife had been watching our backs the entire time and called out when she saw Mule Deer bucks come running through the forest. I turned to see the bucks and then turned back to see the butt of my bull Moose move quickly off into the forest from whence it came. That was it, all over! Of course, we didn’t stick around to see what had caused the Mule Deer bucks to run, we left the meadow at a quick pace ourselves!
The point being, meeting wildlife on their own terms most often rewards us with the great photographs. Getting the big payoff for sitting and waiting comes from more than just having patience. You have to understand basic biology, in this case, knowing the Moose would walk back up the creek. You have to understand how to apply biology with technology, in this case, where to be positioned for the best lighting and angle of view for the lens in use. And most importantly, be able to become part of the scene and not stick out like a sore thumb.
I know many photographers who cannot sit for longer than a minute. There is nothing wrong with that and in fact, they probably produce more photographs than I with that style. But I like sitting back and taking it all in. In the four plus hours we stood in that meadow, I photographed the old Bison bull grazing, dust bathing, backlit with flies buzzing all about him; I photographed the Mule Deer bucks, the Gray Jays, chipmunks, and the bull Moose. For us, we were rewarded with not only being a part of the meadow to witness the passing of these creatures’ morning, but also with photographs that we can use to communicate what we saw to others. The art of sitting, like other arts, isn’t for everyone. But the rewards are greater than you can imagine!
