Phocal
Senior Member
The recent gator photo threads has prompted me to share my take on photographing them. They are my favorite wildlife subject and one you typically don't see a lot of photographs of. They are a challenging subject to photograph because of their size and that they are very low to the ground. Because of the challenges I hardly ever shoot full body shots of them and concentrate more on close up shots in and out of the water.
I have more gator photographs in my LR catalog then bird photos if that gives you an idea about how much I love photographing them, but only have 36 uploaded to DPR. So, let me share some of those shots with you, you can click thru to the album for all of them. I will start with the adult gators.
This is my most recent gator shot and one that I am very pleased with, probably my favorite gator shot yet.
This big guy was sitting right in the middle of the trail, you only had about 7-10 feet on either side to get around him (otherwise you were in the swamp). Because of the sloping bank I was able to get a really great low perspective on him.
Photo is a little soft because I was laying about 8-10 feet away when this 12 foot gator decided to stand up and move over to the other side of the trail. I was super nervous when I saw him standup thru the viewfinder because I was not sure what he was doing. I zoomed out and quickly snapped this shot as I was standing up.
This is me before he stood up in the above shot.
[ATTACH alt="Still not sure if I like the grass or not. When I saw this thru my viewfinder all I could think of was the movie "V for Vendetta" and for that reason titled the photo "Vendetta" "]media_3554859[/ATTACH]
Still not sure if I like the grass or not. When I saw this thru my viewfinder all I could think of was the movie "V for Vendetta" and for that reason titled the photo "Vendetta"
I really like the green grass he was laying in and the partially open mouth.
This big male gator was super aggressive and swam up to the bank and starting bellowing at me. He was in a spot that I went by 3 different times and each time he came up and bellowed at me. During mating season the park had to close this section (which was a hassle because it is where 3 very popular trails intersect) because of his aggressive behavior. After I reported my incident with him they made the decision to remove him from the park............which because of his size means killing him as they don't try to trap and move large gators........this guy was at least 12 foot.
The first photo and this one are probably my two favorite gator shots.
This shot was taken from the same location as the above shot and actually right after. It is of another gator that came up from behind me and slid into this section of the swamp. I talked about it one of the other gator threads where I showed photos of myself shooting gators.
The gator in this photo is from the above shot and the gator in the shot above that (just the eyes) is in front of me and kind of to the right about 15 or 20 feet.
In this shot I was testing a setup I don't typically use. It was my 50-200 f2.8-3.5 with a 2x TC. The next two gator shots are also taken with that combo.
This is the same gator as above, but this time at full zoom........which gives me 800mm of reach in full frame terms.
That is a photograph of me taking the above to photographs. This is where that big gator walking above moved to............this was the same day as that shot and all these gators were in this area at the same time.
This is another shot of me taking the above two gator photographs. I am not 100% positive but I believe the gator in the distance is the one walking from above (to much time has gone by for me to remember all the details)
This is the same gator in the above shots but taken from the other side.
This is an older shot but it shows nice close up details, I like capturing close up shots like this.
I was trying to get in front of this gator to get a head on shot of one walking towards me.
This somewhat soft shot is the best I got. By the time I got right in front of him the grass was to high.
This is from a spot where there is a small spillway. It was early morning and this use to be one of my favorite sunrise places because it attracted all kinds of different animals. The gator was facing into the current waiting for it to wash a fish over. This area is now choked with weeds because we have not had a good hard freeze to kill off the invasive plants that have taken over many of our waterways. With no open water it doesn't attract the wildlife it use to.
Now we can move on to some of my baby or young gators. When I say baby gators I am usually talking about gators that are 1 day old to about 3 years old, they grow about a foot a year, so a 3 year old gator is about 3 feet long. The reason I consider up to about 3 years old as babies is because they still have that baby gator coloring that helps them hide from predators. The young will stick around the mother for 2-3 years and during that time she will protect them. It is not uncommon to see the current babies and the previous years baby all on her back. That is why you will see some that around 12 inches long and some that are 18-24 inches all on/around her at the same time. If the mother allows the up to 3 year olds to be in the area they don't climb on her like the younger ones, but will be in the general area. There is a mama gator and babies I have been trying to get shots of for the last month (hoping to get them tomorrow) that almost always has the last two hatchings on her back with 2 or 3 of the holder almost 3 year olds around.
Babies are also hard to photograph because they are not very big, are low to the ground, and have an ever present very protective mother gator that will not hesitate to attack if she feels her babies are threatened.
Ok, enough talk........................................
This is one of my all time favorite shots..........somewhere I have a very long thread about what this shot means to me. If anyone expresses an interest I will hunt it down and link it.
This may or may not be the same gator in the above shot. I found a group of about 12 young 2 foot gators that would all swim with a few feet of me every time I laid down at the edge of the water.
This is another one from the same group of gators as the above 2 photographs.
This is the last of the shots from that group of gators. This group is still there, checked on them 2 weeks ago.
This baby gator's mama is the one I had my encounter with and this shot was actually taken a few hours after that encounter.
These baby gators are this years hatch (well actually August of last year) of the mama to the photo above.
These babies are from the same group as the above photograph.
This one is also from the same group as the above 2 photographs.
Now.....talking about the above mama gator and my encounter with her. She has built her nest in this same general area for 4 years that I know of. It is right near a trail that goes from a parking area to the Houston's Museum of Natural Science's Observatory. Needless to say it is a heavy traffic area. The babies often lay right next to the paved trial or on it. The park puts up this plastic fencing to not only keep people from trying to touch the babies (which could result in a mama gator attack) but also to keep them off the path. I am still amazed every year when she builds another nest in the area, she evidently is not all that worried about people hurting her babies.....that doesn't mean she is any less protective tho..............I know this from first hand experience.
This was about a 3 foot gator that insisted on following me for most of the morning while I was fishing from my kayak.........he was looking for an easy meal. I actually held my camera over the edge of the kayak to get this nice low perspective. I love having the flippy LCD screen that makes getting shots like possible when you can't frame thru the viewfinder.
This is a young gator I stumbled on one day and have not seen since. When I find young gators I try to return to the area to get more photographs as well as to track their progress as they grow.
Not long after taking the above shot he slid into the water and I got this shot.
One of my attempts to capture a baby gator with the fisheye lens. I also am working on a setup to get a fisheye shot of an adult gator with the head filling the frame...........not going to be easy and could result in the destruction of a camera and fisheye lens.
This is the same gator as above. The two shots give a good example as to why low perspective shots of these guys can be difficult. There are lots of little weeds and stuff that can block your view when getting low, which is my favorite perspective for gators.
This is the same gator as above. The photo only has a very small crop from me leveling it. You can see how the small pieces of weeds can get in the way.
This is one of my favorite shots of the gator in the last shots. I spent 3 different trips photographing this young gator, he was about 2 feet long. He was in an area that I had never seen babies and was the only one around. After my 3 trips of photographing him I did not make it back for about 2 months and when I did he was not there anymore, probably got eaten without a mama to protect him. I have been by several times since and have yet to find him again.
Well, that was a lot of photographs.......wonder if anyone will get all the way thru it.
As always, any and all comments are welcomed and I hope you enjoyed looking at them............I can get a little fanatical when it comes to gator photographs.
Regards,
Ronnie
I have more gator photographs in my LR catalog then bird photos if that gives you an idea about how much I love photographing them, but only have 36 uploaded to DPR. So, let me share some of those shots with you, you can click thru to the album for all of them. I will start with the adult gators.
This is my most recent gator shot and one that I am very pleased with, probably my favorite gator shot yet.
This big guy was sitting right in the middle of the trail, you only had about 7-10 feet on either side to get around him (otherwise you were in the swamp). Because of the sloping bank I was able to get a really great low perspective on him.
Photo is a little soft because I was laying about 8-10 feet away when this 12 foot gator decided to stand up and move over to the other side of the trail. I was super nervous when I saw him standup thru the viewfinder because I was not sure what he was doing. I zoomed out and quickly snapped this shot as I was standing up.
This is me before he stood up in the above shot.
[ATTACH alt="Still not sure if I like the grass or not. When I saw this thru my viewfinder all I could think of was the movie "V for Vendetta" and for that reason titled the photo "Vendetta" "]media_3554859[/ATTACH]
Still not sure if I like the grass or not. When I saw this thru my viewfinder all I could think of was the movie "V for Vendetta" and for that reason titled the photo "Vendetta"
I really like the green grass he was laying in and the partially open mouth.
This big male gator was super aggressive and swam up to the bank and starting bellowing at me. He was in a spot that I went by 3 different times and each time he came up and bellowed at me. During mating season the park had to close this section (which was a hassle because it is where 3 very popular trails intersect) because of his aggressive behavior. After I reported my incident with him they made the decision to remove him from the park............which because of his size means killing him as they don't try to trap and move large gators........this guy was at least 12 foot.
The first photo and this one are probably my two favorite gator shots.
This shot was taken from the same location as the above shot and actually right after. It is of another gator that came up from behind me and slid into this section of the swamp. I talked about it one of the other gator threads where I showed photos of myself shooting gators.
The gator in this photo is from the above shot and the gator in the shot above that (just the eyes) is in front of me and kind of to the right about 15 or 20 feet.
In this shot I was testing a setup I don't typically use. It was my 50-200 f2.8-3.5 with a 2x TC. The next two gator shots are also taken with that combo.
This is the same gator as above, but this time at full zoom........which gives me 800mm of reach in full frame terms.
That is a photograph of me taking the above to photographs. This is where that big gator walking above moved to............this was the same day as that shot and all these gators were in this area at the same time.
This is another shot of me taking the above two gator photographs. I am not 100% positive but I believe the gator in the distance is the one walking from above (to much time has gone by for me to remember all the details)
This is the same gator in the above shots but taken from the other side.
This is an older shot but it shows nice close up details, I like capturing close up shots like this.
I was trying to get in front of this gator to get a head on shot of one walking towards me.
This somewhat soft shot is the best I got. By the time I got right in front of him the grass was to high.
This is from a spot where there is a small spillway. It was early morning and this use to be one of my favorite sunrise places because it attracted all kinds of different animals. The gator was facing into the current waiting for it to wash a fish over. This area is now choked with weeds because we have not had a good hard freeze to kill off the invasive plants that have taken over many of our waterways. With no open water it doesn't attract the wildlife it use to.
Now we can move on to some of my baby or young gators. When I say baby gators I am usually talking about gators that are 1 day old to about 3 years old, they grow about a foot a year, so a 3 year old gator is about 3 feet long. The reason I consider up to about 3 years old as babies is because they still have that baby gator coloring that helps them hide from predators. The young will stick around the mother for 2-3 years and during that time she will protect them. It is not uncommon to see the current babies and the previous years baby all on her back. That is why you will see some that around 12 inches long and some that are 18-24 inches all on/around her at the same time. If the mother allows the up to 3 year olds to be in the area they don't climb on her like the younger ones, but will be in the general area. There is a mama gator and babies I have been trying to get shots of for the last month (hoping to get them tomorrow) that almost always has the last two hatchings on her back with 2 or 3 of the holder almost 3 year olds around.
Babies are also hard to photograph because they are not very big, are low to the ground, and have an ever present very protective mother gator that will not hesitate to attack if she feels her babies are threatened.
Ok, enough talk........................................
This is one of my all time favorite shots..........somewhere I have a very long thread about what this shot means to me. If anyone expresses an interest I will hunt it down and link it.
This may or may not be the same gator in the above shot. I found a group of about 12 young 2 foot gators that would all swim with a few feet of me every time I laid down at the edge of the water.
This is another one from the same group of gators as the above 2 photographs.
This is the last of the shots from that group of gators. This group is still there, checked on them 2 weeks ago.
This baby gator's mama is the one I had my encounter with and this shot was actually taken a few hours after that encounter.
These baby gators are this years hatch (well actually August of last year) of the mama to the photo above.
These babies are from the same group as the above photograph.
This one is also from the same group as the above 2 photographs.
Now.....talking about the above mama gator and my encounter with her. She has built her nest in this same general area for 4 years that I know of. It is right near a trail that goes from a parking area to the Houston's Museum of Natural Science's Observatory. Needless to say it is a heavy traffic area. The babies often lay right next to the paved trial or on it. The park puts up this plastic fencing to not only keep people from trying to touch the babies (which could result in a mama gator attack) but also to keep them off the path. I am still amazed every year when she builds another nest in the area, she evidently is not all that worried about people hurting her babies.....that doesn't mean she is any less protective tho..............I know this from first hand experience.
This was about a 3 foot gator that insisted on following me for most of the morning while I was fishing from my kayak.........he was looking for an easy meal. I actually held my camera over the edge of the kayak to get this nice low perspective. I love having the flippy LCD screen that makes getting shots like possible when you can't frame thru the viewfinder.
This is a young gator I stumbled on one day and have not seen since. When I find young gators I try to return to the area to get more photographs as well as to track their progress as they grow.
Not long after taking the above shot he slid into the water and I got this shot.
One of my attempts to capture a baby gator with the fisheye lens. I also am working on a setup to get a fisheye shot of an adult gator with the head filling the frame...........not going to be easy and could result in the destruction of a camera and fisheye lens.
This is the same gator as above. The two shots give a good example as to why low perspective shots of these guys can be difficult. There are lots of little weeds and stuff that can block your view when getting low, which is my favorite perspective for gators.
This is the same gator as above. The photo only has a very small crop from me leveling it. You can see how the small pieces of weeds can get in the way.
This is one of my favorite shots of the gator in the last shots. I spent 3 different trips photographing this young gator, he was about 2 feet long. He was in an area that I had never seen babies and was the only one around. After my 3 trips of photographing him I did not make it back for about 2 months and when I did he was not there anymore, probably got eaten without a mama to protect him. I have been by several times since and have yet to find him again.
Well, that was a lot of photographs.......wonder if anyone will get all the way thru it.
As always, any and all comments are welcomed and I hope you enjoyed looking at them............I can get a little fanatical when it comes to gator photographs.
Regards,
Ronnie
