Elk Rescue Part 2...

Today's post is part 2 of the Elk rescue in Benezette, Pa. last week. If you compare yesterday's photos to today's you will notice that the bull was able to get the swing seats away from his eyes allowing him to see again, this occurred in the first 15 minutes we were there. But the downside was the chains from the swings got wrapped even more around his antlers giving him less room to move and a better chance of hurting himself. Every time he tried to escape I had the feeling that he was going to break his neck or hang himself, something I really didn't want to see but knew I could not prevent. To make matters worse more people began to show up making the bull try even harder to escape. Some people are just plain stupid, one man walked closer to the bull looking back to say if you have any bolt cutters we can get him out of here. He was right bolt cutters is what was needed but not with a conscious bull. He would have reacted even more violently causing harm to himself or gored someone with his antlers.

Sometime between 7 and 7:30 a.m. a Pa. Conservation Officer driving by was flagged down by one of the men watching the drama unfold. I was not able to hear everything said but I did get enough out of it to know that he would make additional notification and that he could do nothing to help the animal because he did not carry the drugs needed to tranquilize the bull.

The four photos posted today were all shot at the same settings, 277 mm, ISO 1000, f5 at 1/200. I should point out that my 70-200 2.8 shoots at f4 when the 1.4 tele-converter is added. The times of the photos were taken from top to bottom were 7:24, 7:26:30, 7:26:35 and 7:27:14. The video was taken by my son with the Nikon D90, please turn you volume up before playing it. We both have allot to learn about shooting the video and what we can upload onto this site. One of the biggest items we just learned in making this post is to adjust our white balance while in live view to reflect what we are seeing. It became apparent that we did not use the right WB when looking at the video and the photographs. We can't change WB in camera raw on videos. Some of his video was shot at 1280X720 (16:9), 24 fps, the ones he shot for the wed were taken at 320X216 (3:2), 24 fps. This video was taken at 7:17 a.m.

With the amount of photos and video I want to post and the length of the story I will continue it more this week to keep the post to a manageable size. My son Shane decided to get active again on his blog http://smyersphotos.blogspot.com/ , he posted photos and videos of the Elk ordeal today and plans to make post every Tuesday and Thursday. Please stop by and visit his blog, he is learning allot and taking some pretty good photos, now if he would just listen to Dad more often.

After almost two years of running this blog I have become bored with the template, I would love to make my own but since I can barely type on here let alone make something I just picked a new one from blogger. I hope you like the change of pace.