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