Spirits of Winter
G’day Everyone,
While I consider myself a druid of sorts I’m not prone to numinous tendencies. Then again, I have my moments.
I was photographing snow geese at the Dead Creek Wildlife Preserve in Addison, VT on a bitterly cold morning a few autumns ago when I happened to glance away from my camera. My eyes were tearing in the biting wind and I had to wipe them every few moments. As I turned to swipe the sleeve of my fleece jacket across my face, I was confronted by the transfixing stare of a snowy owl.
Single-strobe Hummingbird Photography
G’day Everyone,
Conventional wisdom recommends using several strobes for photographing hummingbirds. Typically, hummingbird setups employ two strobes at about 45 degrees either side of the bird and level with it, a top and bottom light, and one or two additional strobes to light the background. My brief note here is not intended to refute the merits of this standart technique, not at all. Indeed, most circumstances will require a number of strobes to properly illuminate the scene and freeze the wing motion, especially in the field when one is not entirely in control of all the variables, i.e., flash to subject distance, the distance between the main subject and the backgroud, ambient light, etc.
However, under certain conditions, it is possible to capture outstanding images of hummingbirds with a single strobe…and a little help from the sun.
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Camera Hunting with Remote Setups – Epilogue
G’day Everyone,
In this final briefing of our experiences using high-quality game cameras to produce publishable images of otherwise elusive wildlife, I’ll cover the important considerations for placing the cameras in the field, that is, for locating field sites with a reasonably high potential for yielding usable images of the intended subjects, and I will also provide you with some pointers on properly positioning the cameras. Though I will use our experience with bobcats to illustrate our techniques and provide examples, the concepts I outline here are generally applicable to virtually all wildlife.
Read MoreThe 2010 Blue Ox Moose and Fall Foliage Magical Mystery Tours
G’day Mates,
Another fall and my focus shifts once again from fieldwork to desk work and writing. The top of Jay Peak is already white with about 14″ of snow and I suspect that Rob is dusting off his winter wear and digging out his snowshoes even as I’m settling into my garret to work on yet another memoir (while my first continues to make the rounds of the publishers) and to finish the addition to our house. Encouraged, however, by our success last winter in getting one publishable frame of a bobcat (to appear in this winter’s issue of Northern Woodlands magazine) my friend and naturalist, Jeff Parsons, and I will keep our snowshoes and long underwear handy in order to venture out about once a week to set out and check our three game cameras.
Read MoreCamera Hunting with Remote Setups – Introduction
In Walden, Henry David Thoreau acknowledges that many a naturalist’s initial introduction to nature is by way of hunting and fishing:
Indeed, my first forays into the woods were with a gun over my shoulder on my uncle Victor’s 400 acre farm in upstate New York. By the time I was 17 years old, I had shot my share of woodchuck, grouse, rabbit, and deer. And, growing up on the Great Lakes in the fifties and sixties, I’ve caught and eaten enough perch and walleye that, if you turn off the lights, what with the accumulated dioxins, PCBs, mercury, and who knows what else in me, I’m surprised I don’t glow in the dark.
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