20% off all products!   Sale ends tonight at midnight EST.

I See You

Rod Best

Blog #7 of 13

Previous

|

Next

January 4th, 2015 - 03:25 PM

Blog Main Image
I See You

Yesterday I spent the morning out at Beaver Lake Nature Center, in Upstate NY, that is not terribly far from my house. My plan was to hike around the trails to see if I could find any wildlife to photograph. Though I have to say I have never really had great luck seeing wildlife out there, besides crows and geese and one time two deer. I did also see a saw-whet owl last winter, but as luck would have it, no camera in hand. I know other people that go out there regularly and tell me that see all kinds of wildlife on a regular basis, I just haven't been one of them. So I decided to just make my hike slow and deliberate, stopping to listen frequently. I also decided that I wasn't going to carry my backpack full of lenses, I would pick one lens and take my tripod. Thinking (it was very overcast) that if I saw any deer, they would probably be fleeting, so I opted for my shorter focal length lens, but faster (Tamron 28-75mm f2.8) and left my Canon 70-300mm f4-5.6 lens in the car. So I start off, hiking the Deep Woods trail and am not seeing anything, so I am grabbing pictures of the snow on the trees, some color shots of trees with dead, yet colorful, leaves on them covered in snow. I am finding all kinds of deer tracks, but so far no deer when I am about half through the 1.4 mi trail, I spot two deer off to my left, bedded down. They spotted me too and weren't terribly far away, but far enough that I couldn't fill the frame with them at my maximum focal length. I already had my camera mounted on the tripod, so I went about opening up the tripod and started shooting. As I was taking the photos I was mentally kicking myself in the rear for not having the longer lens with me, because I certainly could have changed lenses and they would not have minded at all. The deer were so laid back, that the mother stood up, watched me, then went about lifting this leg, then that one to groom herself. The shot I added to this blog is the one I like the best, so after shooting numerous photos of them I continued on my hike. When I got back to the car, I grabbed my back pack, changed lenses, but took everything with me and headed out on another trail where a saw-whet owl has been known to hang out, but found nothing, nil, nada!! I hiked one more trail and skunked again!! I learned a lesson though, which was not to anticipate what one will find out on the trail, so be prepared. I'm happy with the shot I got, but I had to crop the crap out of it to get it to where I wanted it to be! Oh well, live and learn. Til next time, Happy Shooting!

Click Here for More Information

Comments

Post a Comment

There are no comments on this blog.   Click here to post the first comment.