I was fortunate to spend last Sunday morning shooting at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal NWR with Mark and Claudia Brown. We were hoping to find the huge mule deer buck I saw the week before. We couldn’t find him, but still came away with a couple of nice images. As is apparent from a couple of these photos, I was trying hard to make a nice deer “headshot” portrait with a clean background. In retrospect, though, I think I should have tried a little wider lens for the shoot. Nonetheless, I am pleased with these images. Getting a decent background for these deer is a perennial challenge.
Mark and Claudia were nice enough to let me try their 7D’s during the trip. Wow — the viewfinder is gorgeous, and I could sure use the 18MP for my large prints. Very tempting, though Darwin Wiggett’s post about the 7D producing soft images gives me pause. I can’t quite decide whether to get a new 7D or a used 1DMIII.
Here are a couple of additional images from the trip; click on the image for a larger version:
This is very large Mulie from the Rocky Mountain Arsenal NWR. The deer rut is on, so these big guys are much easier to find than usual. I like the framing effect of the trees in this image. Now only if the deer had a slightly more regal pose . . . . As always, click on on the photo for a larger version
I am nearly caught up with my backlog of photo editing, so I am finally able to post current images rather than photos from earlier in the year. I went looking for foxes this morning, but didn’t see a single one. This Ring-billed gull was a nice consolation prize, though. Twice I saw him swoop over the water, make a plunging dive from four or five feet up, and emerge with a crayfish in his bill. He was less adept at actually eating the crayfish, and repeatedly dropped it in the water and then plucked it out again. The action was great, though it was difficult to make an image that adequately conveyed the micro-drama of the fight between bird and meal.
This is one of a flock of Northern Flickers that I found feeding in a patch of snow-covered cattails. Unusual behavior (I have not seen Flickers feeding in a flock before, nor feeding in mashland), though less dramatic than the gull. I like the sense of habitat from this image, though I wish that it were a tad less cluttered.
