Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Life Begins In Elk Country...

Yesterday I made a post about my recent trip to SNP to photograph whitetail deer two weeks ago, last week Shane and I made the trip to Benezette for three days to photograph Elk. In particular we were looking for bulls in velvet and calves. We had a great time, wildlife was only out a few hours each day because of the summer heat and photographing was not easy but we found what we were looking for and bring back many good memories if not photographs.

Many good photographs were missed by me for one reason or another. Some because I was allowing Shane to use the tripod for his shots. A 200-400 lens just doesn't work well in low light hand held. Others were missed because of my own decisions, right or wrong I made them and as usual I got angry with myself. One morning we had 21 elk, six were calves, one was a small spike and the rest were cows in a field. It was foggy that morning so I had the ISO set high, the photos show considerable noise. On this occasion it was late evening after s thunderstorm and the light was bad. Not wanting to turn up the ISO I shot at a shutter speed that was so slow if the elk moved at all the images were blurry. Yes I was angry at myself again, maybe I should have turned up the ISO a little more. Those are decisions I need to make to get the shots. The more I do this the more I learn. One of these years maybe I will get it.

To give you an idea of how this shot was captured it was taken at 8:22 p.m. after the storm so it was darker than usual at this time. The camera setting were ISO 400, 1/25 at f4 at 600 mm and then cropped in some. The photo is not as sharp as I would have liked and hind sight had I bumped the ISO up to say 640 I could have gotten the shutter speed up more and had little noise. Live and learn I guess. I hope these turned out okay, I have been having computer problems and by the time you see this post I should have a new monitor and have it calibrated. More from this trip and the SNP trip in the future.

Please stop by Shane's blog today for a new post.

4 comments:

Sparky said...

Just another nice image. It looks like it is in the middle of the afternoon.

Brad Myers said...

Nope, visability was going away. That is what a high ISO or very slow shutter speed on a tripod will do for you. Many of my photos of wildlife are taken in low light, you just can't tell by the settings I am using unless I mention it. Thanks for looking everyday Dave.

Unknown said...

Looks great to me. Quit beating your self up!

Cincy Bill

Coy Hill said...

Beautiful shot Brad! Seldom does wildlife cooperate in the best light so we use the tools available to make it the best we can. To get the absolute best we must be our own worst critic and obviously that is where you are at, the shot looks great to me!