So yesterday I spent around five hours at Brookfield freezing my face off. It wasn't THAT cold, maybe between 14 and 20 degrees.. but while the rest of me was well protected, I couldn't exactly walk around wearing a ski-mask.. With the increased suspicion that photographers have come under, the last thing I need is to look like a masked robber at the same time. Anyway, there was a reason for that behavior. I wanted to get some shots of animals with snow underfoot. Most of my photographic time there has been in the summer. Everyone does photography there in the summer. I wanted the special winter shots. I developed a new technique. In the summer I take a backpack, but for the winter I slimmed my gear down to the essentials and loaded them into a vest that I wore under my winter jacket, then I tucked my camera (with 70-200 lens attached) under my jacket to try to keep it warm. This initially may have backfired, I think it made some wolf shots I took come out a bit less sharp at first because the lens wasn't at thermal equilibrium yet. I know that's an issue for telescope optics, I can only guess that the same thing applies to camera lenses. But at the same time it let me keep my gear warmer so that I could use it inside buildings, like the relatively humid Tropic World building that houses their primates. When shooting outdoors I tried to give the lens time to cool off, then when I was done I put it back inside my jacket to get it started warming up again. I've got a sampler pack of my results here. They just don't look as good sampled down to fit in the forums, my initial versions were sized for wallpaper on my laptop, which has an exceptionally high resolution screen (1920x1200). They look astounding at that resolution. The leopard scenes were my favorite. I'm a cat person at heart, and I really like the leopards. I paid a lot of attention to the Snow Leopards (scientific name Uncia Uncia, the cat so nice they named it twice.. unfortunately I'm going to lose that joke, it seems like it's being moved into the Panthera genus because it fits in there for genetic reasons) last summer, but they were fairly inactive. I don't blame them, they're really cold weather specialists. In the wild they move above the treeline in mountainous regions in the summer to get to cooler weather. So Midwestern summers can't be all that pleasant for them. But yesterday I found them active. By a stroke of luck (I really need to try to plan these things) I caught them when they were getting direct sunlight. I was able to lower the ISO to 200 but still use narrower apertures in the quest for sharpness (I was shooting through a glass window, I wanted all the sharpness I could get), and they were close enough that I could sometimes get close to a full frame head shot. I'd gotten that before, but never when in full sun, and at an angle that minimized the chromatic abberation that the glass was giving me. I was in photographic ecstasy. Muttering and giggling to myself about how good an angle I was getting, pacing back and forth in the deep black slush that had accumulated at the viewing window as I sought the perfect view, ignoring everything else. I didn't even notice that the woman who had walked up next to me was a keeper until she spoke to me, telling me that she was going to be opening a door and that they might be leaving my field of view in a moment. I was not upset. I'd had the best opportunity with the Snow Leopards ever. I felt like cheering as I walked back to my car. To paraphrase Steve Irwin.. "Big cats RULE! Woohoo!"
your shots are getting real close to stock quality 6050 needs to entered in a photo contest right now, you got the eye expression, nailed it as they say gary
Wow, really, you liked 6050? That one is an odd one to me. You're not the only one to like it.. but.. it seems like such an awkward expression. To me big cats should be mighty, majestic.. all that sort of thing. But to me the angle makes it look.. I don't know, I can't justify this, but to me it suggests weakness, an uncertain sad looking animal. But that's the whole point of posting this stuff. I know my own tendencies are too heavily weighted towards favoring ultra sharp fur detail even in the absence of good composition (like the wolf picture). Clearly I need to give 6050 more consideration. I can see that the picture gives you a feeling of making eye contact with the leopard, if makes you feel connected. The little bit of snow on it's chin is darned cute too. It's not easy to see at forum resolutions, but it's there.
take it from us, we are cat people(6), that's the way one of our smaller versions looks at you when you get up from a nice lazy afternoon nap too soon, "aw mom do you have to get up and go to work?" that eye contact is what makes the picture, just my opinion, but all the stand out fur detail in the world without the expressive just makes it another sharp shot, and there's a million sharp shots out there, i know this, i've taken more than my fair share of technically perfect dull as drying paint shots
