Big Bulls & 8 Other CO Mountain Species
Elk
I got up at 3:00 AM and made it to treeline before sunrise. A few pictures.
Well shit. The bowsite upload. The first four sky color looks more or less the same on my computer. Color is all wrong and gone :(. Oh well.
Amazing photos. National Geographic quality. The background color is fantastic.
John how far away are you typically when snapping these photos?
Species number 2 was moose none were very photogenic.
In a prefect world, I'd like to be no further than 100 yards. But that does not always happen. So, you can always crop some. That moose is probably 500-600 yards. I cropped at least in half and it is still small part of picture.
Species 1a elk of the female sex.
Species 4 a yellow-bellied marmot
Species 6 - Pika. Been looking for one of these little buggers for a long time.
7 was a Raven, I think a cool looking bird.
Number 8 was the turkey. I don't see them that often in the mountains. These were at about 9000 feet.
Last was the Big Horn. No rams but was not really looking for them.
Not a bad day and home by early afternoon. Figured a thread with few pictures is better than another political thread. But anything called ''yellow-bellied" has to be a democrat ;)
Those pictures are outstanding!!
Thank you for sharing. Mike
Bull elk are about done growing inches. They’ll be shedding in a couple weeks
Those are great. Thanks for posting.
Awesome pics. As usual. And yes definitely better than a politics thread
This is a cell phone picture of my computer. Right picture is the one before uploading (original) to bowsite. Left is what it looks like once on bowsite.
In other words on same computer split screen. Before bowsite and molested by bowsite.
Then the dreaded upside down iPhone pics.
awesome pics. I marvel at the clarity and vividness of those photos. Thanks for sharing.
Outstanding John, simply outstanding!!!!!!!!
Yep those are some fantastic pics!!
Thanks!
You might be gaining a little ground on BB, John! ;-)
Can you share some pics of your equipment, as well? Be interesting to see what you’re using to get these awesome pics.
Sorry Troy I only share pics of my 'equipment' with my wife.;)
But tomorrow I post a picture of my camera bag.
Ever see any Wolves in the Park John?
Good luck, Robb
John it seems to remove a lot of the vibrant colors. Maybe a computer expert can weigh in. It probably uses more storage or power to show the brighter colors. Just an uneducated guess
The picture above is all washed out without the very orange sky
Troy that is what I take with me.
Camera Canon 90D
Lens - Canon 24-70 F2.8, Canon 70-200 F2.8, and Sigma 150-600 F 5.6-6.3 Sport
Also carry a Tripod and flash I rarely use.
One more I liked and meant to post. Fingers Crossed the color is close.
Altitude interesting theory. I rarely mess with vibrance or saturation I find you get overly colorful photos that look fake. However, on at least a couple of these I did play with them on the sky. That might be it.
Very nice pics, even with the upload issues!
Really awesome pics. That upclose pic of the bulls face its like you can see what hes thinkin.. Thanks for sharing.
Great pics as usual.
As regards the Bowsite image function…..In the alternative you can always use your own hosting or other hosting and display the original images on here with html tags.
stick I thought of that. I used to do that with photobucket. Then they started charging. Any free service you would recommend? I give myself like a C+ on my tech skills, and that because I am grading myself and I am the teacher's pet.
Very nice pics. Heading your way in a month and it’s nice to see the quarry.
Charlie have fun! You headed back to Forest's place?
Great pics! Thanks for sharing!
amazing pics John Now i see what elk like to eat once in awhile.
Great pics as always!! Thanks for posting. I need to get back into that. Got a decent cam and mediocre lenses though.
JL mediocre lens are fine. Two things for wildlife are, first you need enough zoom. If not the more you crop the more your quality decreases (Think Thorton's deer pics). At first I thought my 200mm was plenty. I am a bowhunt I know how to get close to animals. Well when you think about how often do you really get with in bow range? FYI...A 35mm lens is basically no zoom. So at 600mm that is about a 17x give or take. Then the camera censor is either cropped or not and that has some bearing on it.
Second one of the big things you get with more expensive lens are they are faster, meaning faster shutter speed. That equals less blur/more sharp everything else being equal. You get that with a lens with a wider aperture. For example my long lens is a Sigma 150-600mm sport. It aperture is F5.5-6.3. Canon top line 600mm lens has a aperture of F4. So you get faster shutter speeds and that important in lower light - when you often find more critters. That also gives you less depth of field that gives a photo a nice look. Quality of glass is better to. The other big difference between the two is about $10,000. New my Sigma is about $2500 the Canon is $12999 new.
When you are in a National Park often you don't need a long lens. Many of those elk were with my 70-200mm. They let you get close, near roads and out longer in day. If you enjoy photography and do it often, soon you will know what you want next and what your willing to spend. One day I might buy the Canon 600mm but it hard to justify. I don't see a path to really make any money in wildlife photography and the Sigma does a decent job. Same debate can happen with camera bodies as well. Those can approach 10k.
Sorry long answer to your comment. I like being out side with critters but I guess need a purpose to do it. Either trying to shoot with a arrow or a camera that you can year round.
Very nice John! That's incredible to see that many kinds of animals in a day in one location! We don't even have that many animals in Manitoba lol. Great work hitting them all yet! That Raven is awesome. Love how his beak looks pretty beat up. Somehow looks like an old warrior lol.
I know Adobe and Canon don't play well. With the 90D looking so noisy in Lightroom/Photoshop I highly highly highly recommend Topaz DeNoise. Super cheap and will blow your socks off getting rid of that noise if you want. Just makes a world of a difference on the high MP crop sensors.
Awesome photos. Thanks for sharing.
Great pics, thanks for sharing!
John...thanks for the info. In low light, don't you want a slightly slower speed to let more light in?
My camera is a Nikon D5200. The zoom is a Nikkor 55-300. I've got some decent critter pics but it's stretching the zoom.
Cool pictures I really to enjoy them thats a great situp you have thanks for shareing .
JL you want as fast of a shutter speed as you can get away with most of the time at least with wildlife. A larger aperture (small F number) will let in more light so you can get a properly exposed photo with a faster shutter speed. The slower the shutter the higher the potential for blur/not sharp pictures, from either camera shake or subject moving. This is also more of a problem or better said more likely with the longer the lens you use.
Try this take your lens at 300mm and take a picture handheld of something down your street like street sign or license plate in the middle of day. Do this in AV mode (I think it is just 'A' mode on Nikon) open your aperture wide open (Smallest F number your lens will go. Write down your shutter speed pic was taken at. Then repeat this close to dark when light is low. Two thing you will notice one your shutter speed will be much slow in low light, two the photos with a slow shutter speed will likely be less sharp because you just can't hold camera still enough when shutter is open. To see how much difference the aperture of your lens really makes during the low light turn your F number to a higher number like F22. You will see your shutter is really slow and picture less sharp because of camera shake.
The other thing you can do to help with this increase your ISO. But the higher you go with ISO the more noise you will get in your photos. I usually can get away with ISO up to about 3200 but at that level photo quality suffer. Higher than that they mostly suck.
Understand how your camera works really will help you get a higher percentage of properly exposed and sharp pictures. Also doing it quickly because critters often don't pose for long. With that said I could post up plenty of pictures just on SD card currently in camera that are not sharp and or not properly exposed.
To better explain read through link I attached.
Nice job, John! Those are some great pics! By the way… BB is a tough measuring stick. :)
Rick he is a yard stick. I am a ruler.
John, that is a good link. I remember the triangle from when I was first starting out. I usually run in "A" or auto. It's a great refresher....thanks.
I was thinking six inch scale, John. :)
Rick six inch is more than enough if we are not measuring camera skill anymore. ;)
JL cool pics!
As always John great pictures!!
