Ridgelining

Old school, shooting up on a subject makes them look more masculine. In the critter world, more majestic. Making a cow look more masculine might seem a stretch, but most don’t distinguish a cow from a bull, they just see a Bison. An easy way to accomplish this is to shoot from a lower angle. Getting down physically with Bison is not a smart idea, so we look for opportunities when they are on a slight hillside where we can shoot up on them safely. The best is the rarest occurrence, and that’s when they ridgeline. It’s a word I made up to quickly inform others that a critter is on the top of a ridge with only sky behind them, they should point their lens to make the shot. See, ridgeliner is faster than trying to say all of that in the heat of shooting. In this case, the background was the growing thunderheads of the Black Hills of SD. The drama, the light, it was simply breath taking and if I arranged all the elements correctly, that drama has been said. Or what I like to simply say, ridgeliner.