Something Different

Week 15

This week is about getting away from it all but instead of travel to an exotic country we went to a wildlife festival in Waterton Park in Southern Alberta.

The wildlife festival had multiple speakers and fieldtrips and there was a two hour photo course on wildlife that we went on where I took this picture. I photographed a number of animals in Waterton, but this black bear was the best shot. Some of my most favorite photographs are of birds and wildlife so I enjoyed getting this one.

When we first saw the bear, he was maybe 100 meters away and pretty small in my 70-300 zoom at 300mm focal length. The pro had a 600mm Nikkor AF-S 1:4 with a 1.4 extender and I tried that with better results. He recommended aperture priority at f/8 to make sure the face was well focused front to back with the long lens and that is where I had it. Unfortunately, the bear was in grass and shrubs so they weren't great shots. I took my camera off the 600mm so someone else could try it and put the 70-300 zoom back on the D3.

In a minute or two he started to amble down the hill and to the left. He disappeared into a gully and then came out. Just before he climbed down to the road I made this shot. Light is from fairly low morning sun to the right. I took a string of shots at 3 frames a second while he was turning his head and caught the face lit nicely.

The camera is a Nikon D3, ISO 200, set in aperture priority and still at f/8 from the long lens. The lens is a AF-S Nikkor 70-300mm 1:4.5-5.6 G ED VR. The resultant shutter speed is 1/200 second which is probably a bit slow. The D3 lets you set a minimum shutter speed (it varies ISO in the case of fixed aperture if shutter speed drops too far) and I'll set that in future at 1/300 second probably. The bear is maybe 30 meters from me and moving away and to the left. I had the presence of mind to frame him pretty well at least.

The post was to tweak curves for contrast and I also put a vignette around it. I cloned out some small rocks in the lower right. I could have left them in or cropped them but found them distracting and liked the original composition. I did crop it to 8x10 starting in the far lower right up to the top of the frame.

Idea based on Take a Break , pages 132-133 in the book 50 Photo Projects, by Lee Frost