A flock of Northern Pintail (Anas acuta) takes flight into backlit ground fog. Dawn. Bosque del Apache NWR, New Mexico.
Sometimes, nature photography is just about being in the right place at the right time. As I’ve posted before, I had the great pleasure of shooting in backlit ground fog (“fire in the mist”) conditions at Bosque del Apache for four days this winter. I made more great images in a few morning hours at Bosque than I’ve made in the prior year.
This flock of Northern Pintail (Anas acuta) kept lifting off into the mist (probably scared by the resident bald eagle) wheeling around, landing, and then doing it again. Spectacular. To capture this image I carefully checked the exposure, composed for a strong line at the bottom of the frame to ground the image, and tried to give the birds a bit of space to fly into.
Check out the ducks in the water at right — I love the rows of roosting ducks receding into the mist. (Click on the image for a larger view.)
An American Bison (Bison bison) grazes on the bank of Yellowstone River at dusk, Yellowstone National Park
This image of an American bison (Bison bison) is one of my two or three favorite images from my recent visit to Yellowstone National Park. In particular, I like the strongly graphical nature of the image, the mirror-image shape of the dark foreground and the brightly lit background. And, of course, the warm yellow light on the (appropriately-named) Yellowstone River. On a macro level, I like that this is a departure from the conventions of “straight” wildlife photography. I certainly like that style of work as well, but my favorite images tend to be a bit more stylized, and with a heavy element of authorship.
I’m curious to get your reaction to this image. Please leave a comment!
Star trails from a one-hour-long exposure. Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming.
I captured image on a very dark night in Yellowstone National Park, just after I made the Milky Way image that I posted a few days ago. I like this image for a couple of reasons. First, it demonstrates just how many stars you can see on a clear dark night without light pollution. Nothing like shooting a hundred miles from the nearest town. Second, this is a great illustration that stars are many different colors. One can observe star colors with the naked eye, but this is a much more graphic way of seeing. Finally, I found it interesting that even the North Start (the center of the swirl of stars) moves ever so slightly. Be sure to click on the image for a better view of these details.
This is effectively a one-hour exposure. I say “effectively” because I made this image by combining approximately 120 30-second exposures. Digital camera sensors don’t react well to hour-long exposures: lots of noise, “hot” pixels, etc. Instead, the preferred technique is to make a series of short exposures, then merge them in post production. Capturing the images is easy. However, the tools to combine the images are still in their infancy. One of the standard image stacking programs, the “Startrails” application, doesn’t work very well. It generates star trails as dotted lines. I obtained much better results by using Chris and Dawn Schurs free Photoshop action. On a fast computer with lots of ram, it took me only about five minutes to stack ~120 images. However, setting up the action could be bit tricky if you’re not familiar with Photoshop.
Finally. It took way, way longer than it should have. But I’ve finally culled more than 5,000 images from Bosque del Apache down to a handful of selects. Fortunately (given how long it took) I’m pleased with the final product. These are by far my strongest Bosque images. Indeed, I created a couple of images that rank among the best in my portfolio.
As a sort of celebration of having finished, I created the video that headlines this post. I’ve been looking for a new, non-boring way to highlight my work. Looks like Animoto may be just the ticket. It’s easy. It looks great. Slideshows are usually so boring, but this keeps things interesting. There are only two real downsides: (1) Animoto gives no control over the way it assembles the final product. You click, wait, and hope. Mostly, this works fine. However, the software occasionally insists on cropping some images to a 4×3 aspect ratio. I couldn’t find any work around, no matter how many times I clicked the “remix video” button. (2) even though I’m using a paid version of Animoto, it insists on branding of embedded video.
Please watch the video (it’s short) and let me know what you think in the comments.
Below is a gallery of the images from the slideshow, in their full, un-Animoto’ed glory. Click on a thumbnail for a larger version and for links to purchase a print or greeting card, or license an image. (If you’re reading this through an RSS reader, the gallery will look much better if you click through to my website.)
A sandhill crane is silhouetted at last light, Bosque del Apache NWR, New Mexico
This is a less subtle take on the sandhill crane silhouette that I posted previously. Which do you prefer? Let me know in the comments.
A sandhill crane is silhouetted at last light, Bosque del Apache NWR, New Mexico
This is another favorite image from Bosque del Apache NWR. I’ve shot a number of silhouettes at this pool over the years. Something about the strong, graphical quality of the bird’s profile combined with the ever-changing quality of the light appeals to me. The understated pink and turquoise colors here make this image for me.
Sunset at Bosque, Bosque del Apache NWR New Mexico
My Bosque del Apache folder is the most daunting obstacle in catching up from my backlog of images from last year. After deleting the bad images, I still had ~2000 images to winnow down to my final selects. Unfortunately, I have a difficult time deleting technically competent, but aesthetically mediocre images. I should approach image editing by picking out the small percentage of outstanding, portfolio-grade images and deleting the rest. Instead, I find myself editing from the bottom up, deleting the weakest images during several iterations through a collection of photos. I keep thinking “that one’s decent . . . I might need it some day.” Needless to say, that approach is not very efficient.
Today, however, I made some real progress. While my family was out of the house, I culled the images down to around 500 (this leaves about 150 photos per day of shooting; not terrible). As I head into the editing home stretch, here’s a nice sunset silhouette image to celebrate my progress. At sunset, thousands of birds on the Bosque del Apache NWR fly to their night-time roosts. (The birds in this image are snow geese and sandhill cranes, in case you’re wondering.)
This looks best big. Be sure to click on the image for a larger version.
Denver Skyline Silhouette
This is the Denver skyline, silhouetted by the evening sun. (I used a telephoto lens to “compress” the scene and make the skyline appear close to the mountains.) Cool image. I particularly like the cranes and capital dome at lower left, along with the barely-visible ridges in the background. The only downer: the pretty yellow haze is actually air pollution — the notorious brown cloud. I still like the photo, though.
Note: I did not watermark this photo, because the watermark detracts too much from the image. Please don’t steal it though — its still copyrighted, watermark or no.
Sandhill cranes with rising sun, Monte Vista NWR
I never quite get what I expect at Monte Vista National Wildlife Refuge, but I always seem to come away with something good. On my first visit, I was unexpectedly treated to backlit ground fog, leading to some of my all-time favorite images (samples here). Last year, no ground fog. Instead, I made a wonderful image of a roosting sandhill crane, though I never expected to get close enough to do so. (Cranes don’t like company when they’re asleep).
This year was no exception. The biggest surprise was that my favorite image from the trip is of a road, not a bird. But another surprise was that my images came out much better than I initially expected. Indeed, I was a little bit bummed on the drive home, thinking that I’d wasted the weekend. This is not false modesty. Instead, I think, it is the result of four factors. First, I’ve spent a lot of time photographing sandhill cranes (Grus canadensis) already, and so it’s hard to make an image that really excites me. The flight image, below, is a good example. Three or four years I’d have been ecstatic to make such an image. These days I’m happy enough to capture a good flight image. But with lots of practice, it’s not that hard for me to capture these anymore, and I already have a stack of similar images.
Sandhill in crane in flight over farm field, Monte Vista NWR
Second, the lousy weather affected my mood and sense of photographic opportunities. It was horrendously windy and dusty. At one point, the wind was blowing so hard that I had trouble keeping my tripod upright. Photos are ultimately about emotion. An unpleasant and frustrating experience, I guess, makes one discount the emotional impact of a scene.
Sandhill crane in "T" pose, Monte Vista NWR
Third, I tried some challenging new techniques and I wasn’t sure that my experiments would result in any good images. The sun image at the top of this post is a good example. For a variety of reasons (including not wanting to burn a hole in my retina) these are somewhat of a “hold-down-the-shutter-and-hope” image. Likewise, flight images with the bird directly overhead, like the one above, are tough. The birds pass overhead very quickly (more so with the howling wind), and only a few images come out well.
Sandhill crane on ice, Monte Vista NWR
Finally, as usual, Monte Vista was different than before. Not worse. Just different. For example, there was no ground fog, and indeed the pool where I photographed the lovely ground fog/mist was dry. My plans to make previsulalized images went out the window. Happily, I eventually overcame this change in plan. For example, instead of roosting overnight in the “ground fog pool”, birds roosted in different spot where they were illuminated by beautiful morning light. (Example above). And, there was great behavior on display this year. The cranes were “dancing” (really, fighting) like crazy (see below). Plus, I witnessed a huge crane “blastoff”, where thousands of cranes take to the sky at once. (One example is below; others are in the thumbnail gallery at bottom). Instead of coming away disappointed, I should have realized that these unexpected opportunities would serve as material for some nice images.
Sandill cranes dancing, Monte Vista NWR, Monte Vista NWR
Here is a gallery of additional images; please click on a thumbnail for a larger view. (If you’re reading this from an RSS feed or by e-mail, this won’t look right. Long story. Please click through to my website to see this as intended. Sorry!)
See something you like? Please leave a comment. See something you really like? Please consider supporting my photography by purchasing a print.
Bighorn Sheep at the Precipice
At first I wasn’t crazy about this image of a bighorn looking over a precipice. But somehow the image grew on me. Let me know what you think of this image in the comments.
I am torn about this elk silhouette as well. On the one hand, I like the colors and the fact that this isn’t just a boring, “straight” portrait of an elk. On the other hand, it somehow seems a bit too sentimental. Kind of like a painting-on-a-mirror that one might buy at a low-end souvenir store.
Finally, here are two more bighorn images. These guys were in absolutely gorgeous late evening light. Unfortunately, all they wanted to do was rest in the sun. Still, I don’t see bighorn all that often, so I was happy to make these images. I just wish this ram would have rurned his head a bit to camera right.
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