Fake Photography? What is real?

(typical hunting magazine bullshit)

In Audobon magazine a few months ago there was an article about "fake" nature photography. Essentially the story indicated that most nature photography on the cover of magazines are photographs of tame animals from game farms. Places where you pay hundreds of dollars per hour to have huge bucks, or mountain lions and other animals posed any way that you like. If you prefer action shots, for example, they might throw a ball that the lion chases while you shoot away.

If you understand "Depth of Field" and have ever hunted you can begin to pick up on this pretty quickly. Take this photograph from the cover of "Outdoor Life" magazine. The grizzly bear, which looks wild and very fierce is facing the camera nearly straight on, really at just a slight angle.

A large grizzly is about 6.5' feet long. Since that bear is at an angle, let's say there is 5 feet of this bear in the picture. At my main nature photography len's lengh (400 mm) the most of that bear that could be in focus at any one time is about 2.5 feet if the bear was 60' away from the photographer. DOF for a true nature shot can be demonstrated here...

Notice that the beaver is not entirely in focus. In fact, only it's face is.

Anyone who has ever hunted knows that it's nearly impossible to get to within 10-20 feet of nearly world record size whitetail bucks. Yet, those exact animals are photographed with tiny lenses from those short distances and placed on the cover of every hunting magazine.

If you want to know something truely disgusting, the famed nature documentary maker Marty Stoffer, who shot the series "wild america" actually used to stage nearly every aspect of his fillms, including conflicts between predator and prey. He even threw lemmings off a cliff and made it appear as if they jumped.

So when you look at my photographs you should keep in mind a couple of things.

#1. They suck

#2. I spent thousands of dollars to make these sucky photographs

#3. They are wild animals

#4. I hate it when people fake nature photographs!

#5. I sometimes go to fairly extreme measures to get my photographs, especially since I do not wish to own or drive an automobile. For example, I left my home at about 3 am, rode my bicycle pulling about 100 pounds of gear 15 miles to that nature area in order to be in my blind before daylight. A little harder than say............driving to a game farm.

Here is another example of a person that I suspect is faking their nature photographs. Notice that here there appears to be maybe 20' totally in focus, the colors are almost neon and the entire scene is too perfect, especially when you consider that with that DOF he must have been like 4' away with a wide angle lens.

Now I dont try to sell my photographs for a number of reasons, but if I did, I could never compete with something like this.

Prairie Chicken Framed

I finally pulled the trigger and got one of my chicken photographs framed. It costs me nearly $90.00 to get it double matted and framed properly, which is why I only do a couple per year. That was such an enjoyable trip, that I'm really going to like having this on the wall.

Urban Wetlands

There is a urban stream about 1-mile from our house that is dammed which allows the water to back up in a park to create a shallow pond or wetland. There are several advantages to this:

• It slows water down during rainstorms which can help prevent flash flooding inside of the city. The pond collects huge inputs of water and releases it slowly.
• Water being pooled in a wetland setting is cleaned of pollutants by the bacteria and plant growth.
• It becomes a haven for wildlife.

This particular one happens to be a haven for beavers. They have already cut several trees and are working on many others in the area as you can see in the photographs. I dont know why the parks folks are letting them go. Maybe trapping isnt something they want to do?

I appreciate the beavers being there because it gives me something interesting to spot and try to photograph. However, I recognize that having beavers falling trees on urban streams can present several problems. Problems like possibly backing up the stream into someones basement or cutting trees in a park that will take 50 years to replace.

There is really nothing more relaxing than sitting in a blind and watching ducks floating around. They eat when they want, sleep when they want and just lazily float around; seemingly as happy as can be.
This blue heron has someone on its leg that looks like a piece of electrical tape. I dont think its a tag, it looks like some kind of trash.

Switched from the 400 2.8 to the macro lens for this shot.

Beaver working on a new tree

Its hard to imagine a large rodent being able to cut huge trees like these. It's pretty remarkable if you take the time to consider it.

Its been a long, long time

I just havent had the camera gear out lately. My main two focuses in life have been working out and work. LOL I need to put more of a focus on my photography but I just havent been.

Anyway, there are chipmunks around my town and especially around the complex. They are really bashful for living inside of a town so I've never been able to photograph them until today.

Muskrat

This afternoon I was struggling to get something written for work so I grabbed my blind, camera, lenses and laptop and took off. I rode my bike and trailer down to the local park where I had seen muskrats before and set up. After about ten minutes I had plenty of shooting and writing opportunities.

Walk to the grocery store

Tonight Cia and I took a walk to the grocery store. I decided to take the camera and macro lens along. I love my macro lens because insects are everywhere and they are so much fun to shoot.

One is a bumblebee, another a lightning bug and the third was a damselfly.

-insects arent really my thing so I could be off on any of these : )

New Condo

Here is the new condo. The pics are backwards from what I wanted on here. You can "click" on them to make them larger. I did not carry my tripod over so they are not sharp.

Slate floor in the entryway. Its really beautiful, i'm glad we picked it.
toilet and shower. Our real toilet will be a "dual flush" model. The contractor stuck this one in there so it would pass appraisal but will switch it with our real toilet later.
Upstairs looking towards vanity and sinks. The toilet and shower is to the right and a walk in closet to the left. Its not THAT dark up there, the camera just could not account for the bright lights.
View from kitchen looking towards door (first floor). My "office" is under those stairs. That is where my desk is now only in the unit right across the wall from it.
View from the front door

gobble gobble

Killed a gobbler yesterday. I'll write more tomorrow.

Great Turkey photos

Last night I had 3 gobblers come into the blind and hang around for about 90 minutes. They never strutted but I did get lots of great shots.

This morning I snuck up to within 15 feet of some gobblers. They were on the other side of a fence and a brush line. I could see their fans and sometimes their heads. I had the safety off and started to squeeze the trigger once but it just was not a responsible shot. There was too much stuff between me and them so I did not. Then I tried to get even closer and spooked them. When you are within 15 feet of several gobblers, do not try to get any closer. LOL

My new sniper suit is awesome BTW. Hopefully I'll get some pics up tonight.

Busy but there is hope!

WOW!

In the past two weeks I have been working nearly non-stop. I had to prepare a presentation, travel to Tennessee and give it. Write a 32 page campaign manual for a consulting job that we have and prepare for our biggest event of the year where I'm involved in probably 6-7 different events.

That is in addition to my normal job duties. Yesterday I worked on the campaign manual for 14 hours including being at the office until 3:30 this morning.

But tomorrow I'm leaving for Humansville Missouri and plan on turkey hunting/photography for the next 2.5 days. I wanted to leave tonight but I literally just clicked "send" on that 32 page project. Its in the client's inbox right now and I'm really proud of it.

So I hope I have not bored away any viewers of this blog. Trust me, I'd much rather of been sitting in the woods this whole time.

More macro

I took the redbud while walking across the MU campus the other day on my way home. I took the dogwood blossom in my kitchen. I used a bicycle light to light it from left to right and a flash. I have not even really looked at these. Just converted them to jpeg and threw them up here. I've been too busy to do hardly anything lately.

Fooling around with Macro photography

On the way to work this morning I packed the macro lens. Little did I know the wind was blowing about 20 mph!

I took a few shots. This is one of a dogwood blossom. I tried to focus on the anther.

I think I am going to like macro photography but I need to learn more about it.

Depth of Field and Fighting Birds.....a tough combination

This week I was hoping to get a shot of two male prairie chickens jumping in the air fighting....or at least trying to impress the girls. After watching several of these fights it seems that neither really wants to get hurt or hurt the other one, just look tough for the girls.

Anyway, there is a concept in photography called "depth of field." That is the area of a photograph that can be in focus at any given time in front of and behind the focal point. For a shorter lens, like a cell phone camera or on a point and shoot the depth of field is so large that most people have no reason to even know the term. For larger lenses, the depth of field becomes much smaller. For a lens the size of mine the depth of field is only a couple of inches. This means that I cannot focus on two birds at the same time unless they are both the exact same distance from me. If they are standing at an angle than its impossible.

That would not be a problem because just having one bird in focus during a fight could be pretty attractive. The problem is that they usually jump forward or backwards when they fight, leaving the focal point that I was at and they are FAST. They tend to lay down in front of each other and stare each other down for a few seconds before jumping. Even with that warning I never caught the action when the birds were close enough to make a great photograph. When the birds were a couple of hundred feet away the D.O.F. increases some and it was easier but none of those shots are that great.

Anyway, when I saw the birds face off I would turn up the ISO (what used to be film speed) which allowed me to increase the shutter speed so I could be prepared to capture this fast action without blur. Then I would position the bottom of the frame at the birds feet so I would have room in the frame for them to jump. I also switched the autofocus to "servo" so it would automatically track the forward and backward movement and adjust the autofocus. I still never caught one, darn it!

I still had the time of my life but as I look at these two shots I can't help but wonder about what might have been if I could have gotten them in focus. They are SO CLOSE and they would have been fantastic!!!

Quite an experience

This morning I was back at Jane's ranch. She and I had our blinds right next to each other and were set up before daylight.

I will remember this morning for the rest of my life. The birds came onto the lek and were all around our blinds before it was light enough to see anything. They were booming and making their lonesome call and dancing by quickly stomping their feet on the grass. The birds were so close we could hear their feet hitting the earth. I knew it was too dark to try to photograph anything so I laid in the bottom of my blind and just listened.

I would hate to overstate this but hearing those birds that close definitely had an effect on me. I could lay there and imagine unknown Native Americans over thousands of years waking up listening to that call. The photographer for the Missouri Department of Conservation wrote, "they sounded lonely and sad. The calls penetrated my soul like a spirit whispering in my ears." Wow, I could not agree more. This is one of those things that might sound cheesy unless you experienced it for yourself.

I will write more about this experience later. For now I will just say that it was one of the more meaningful moments in my life and I will never forget it. Jane said it all when after exiting her blind she said, "I cant think of a better way to spend Easter morning." I could not agree more.

These are two of the photographs that I got. I'm just spent a few minutes looking through the 300 shots I got this morning and picked out two to put up on this blog. I have several that are quite good IMO.

Matfield Green

Today was really exciting. I stayed at a place near Matfield Green Kansas called the Tallgrass Spiritual Retreat Center last night ran by a really neat lady named Billie Blair who signs her emails "the pastor in the pasture." We had a nice evening of conversation before turning in for the night.

This morning we left the retreat at 6 am and drove to meet Jane, a local rancher who partners with the retreat to host prairie chicken watchers. Jane drove us up to the lek (pronounced like HECK) and we had not even gotten into the blind yet when we started hearing the birds. That is one thing that has surprised me about these chickens, they start their booming before the sun even comes up.

The light this morning was PERFECT but unfortunately the birds never got very close to the blind. On this trip I have either had close birds with light or light and birds at a distance. Tomorrow is looking very positive because Jane made a very generous offer to me.

She is letting me come back by myself in the morning to photograph the birds and she let me set up my blind anywhere that I wanted. I went back to the lek with Jane this morning before leaving and set up my blind and she set up her own pop up blind. I told her that for her generosity I would get a photograph printed, double matted, framed and shipped to her. That would be over $100 but still not enough in my opinion. Prairie chickens are rare and having a lek on your property is even rarer. To have someone let me put my blind where ever I wanted was a very nice thing to do.

Hopefully tomorrow I will get a fantastic shot that will grace her wall for years.

Manhattan Kansas, where I am staying, is about 2.5 hours from the lek so I am going to have to be in the car driving at 3 am.

If the good lord shines a little light on these birds in the morning I will be able to do their beauty justice for the fist time on this trip.

These are the shots that I got today.

Friday April 2nd - Kansas Day 2- Second post today

This morning my guide sent me about 200 yards away from the blind. She is really giving me special treatment because I am a "photographer." I appreciate it but I'm not sure its fair.

We knew there was a chance of thunderstorms before we set off this morning and we saw it lightning before we even got the lek. My guide told me that if the lightning too close that she would call me and that we would leave before the birds left.

It was dark this morning because of the storm. It never got any lighter than me having my camera at 2000 ISO (maybe 1600 once), f 2.8 and about 120th of a second shutter speed. Thats the most light there was and that was only for about the last ten minutes or so. I had several birds really close but because there was not any light I did not get anything too wonderful. I'm really optimistic about the next two mornings though. Tomorrow morning I will be in Matfield Green, Kansas which is about 100 miles away from where I have been the past two mornings.

While I was driving today I saw a group of turkeys in a field. I quickly pulled over, got my camera put together and changed the head from the tripod to the car mount. Then I got the camera mounted on the window and backed back up the highway. It was scary because I was thinking that the camera might fall off as I was backing up but it turned out ok. I got some good shots of these jakes. Too bad they weren't big toms or else this would be a frame worthy shot.

I'm at a McDonalds in Emporia, Kansas right now. I'm not sure how or why i ended up here. I just needed something to do because I cant get to my location tonight until about 6 or 7 and I was thrown out of my hotel at 11 am this morning.

Konza Prairie Trail

Me at the start of the trail.

The flint hills of kansas.

Well maintained trail to eliminate erosion. Everything at the Konza was done with the environment in mind. No pets are allowed on the trails and this trail is the only place you can access any of the property.
One of the creeks has all of its headwaters contained within the Konza. This means that its used as the "benchmark" or baseline of streams in the midwest since its not contaminated with pesticides, herbicides and fertilizer the way the majority of our midwestern streams are.

Buffalo Wallow last used over 150 years ago.

Coyote Scat. I've never been in a place with so many coyotes. You could not walk 5o yards without seeing piles of this everywhere.
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Yesterday afternoon I took a 6 mile hike on the only area of the Konza Prairie that is open to the public. The Konza Prairie is owned by the nature conservancy. It is 8,600 acres in the flint hills of Kansas just south of Kansas State University. The nature conservancy lets KSU conduct biological research on the property. It's really quite fascinating since the land was never plowed and much of it looks exactly as it looked before European settlement changed the landscape of Kansas. In fact, there are buffalo wallows along the trails that I toured today. These were made by wild bison that were last seen on that property in 1857.

All along the trail there are signs of research projects. There are various types of traps, plants that were purposely protected from burns and signs all along the trail telling hikers to stay on the trail and not disturb the ongoing research.

The trail was really well maintained and overall I was really impressed. I am also impressed with my camera bag. This was my first long hike with the bag and it felt great even though it weighs about 45 pounds with all of my gear.

The wind was blowing 30 mph in town and it felt much higher on top of some of these hills.

First Morning in the blind

Last night the guide called me. She said that the birds had been staying quite a bit away from the group blind and she wanted to know if I could shoot from her SUV. She said that the birds do not really mind automobiles and she would like to get me closer.

I told her that I had brought my hunting blind and she agreed to let me use that. Little did I know that there would be 30 mph winds this morning.

She had me set up my blind about 30 yards ahead of everyone else who was in the group blind. I'm glad I bought the best blind I could because I've been in cheaper ones that would have flapped like a flag and scared everything off. The way it was parts of the blind would occasionally move in the more severe gusts and the birds never got any closer than about 50 yards. I thought it was because of my blind and I was concerned that everyone would be angry at me when the morning was over.

When the guide exited the group blind and came over to tell me that we were finished I asked her if my blind scared the birds and I was relieved to hear her say that it did not.

Here are some shots from this morning. Like I said, I did not really ever get that close so these are crops.

I'm going to take a nap and then try to head out somewhere this afternoon. Tomorrow morning I will be in the same spot although there is a chance for thunderstorms.