Ah, you're a Texan! I always thought you were an Aussie.
nope, sorry to disappoint you
Speaking of getting closer: how in the world do you do it? I know you're using a Kayak most of the time, but even then I find it completely incomprehensible how you get that close to your herons, for example. I am not the stealthiest person in the world, but I never managed to get closer to one than, say, 8m (~30ft I think).
It is part moving toward my subject and part letting it come to me. If I see a bird hunting along the edge of the water they are typically concentrating on the hunt and if you move slowly while belly crawling you can get pretty close. Sometimes a bird will move along the edge of the water while it hunts. When they do that I just get myself in front of them and lay there and wait. Typically they will pass right by getting to close for even the close focusing 300/4 to focus.
It takes time, sometimes an hour or so just to get into position. The kayak does help, but it is not the golden goose for getting close. Even in the kayak it takes time and skill to get close. But when on the river you can let the river move you towards a subject and if you still and everything goes your way you can get very close as they may just think you are a log drifting by.
Another way is spending time with the same animal. I found a pair of young Great Blue Herons hanging out in this one section of the river. I spent a month on that section mostly to photograph the Green Herons but the two young GBH's became accustomed to me. I would occasionally see others on the water and noticed if they spoke the GBH's would take off, or if it was a power boat coming by with the engine running (with trolling motor they seemed ok unless someone on the boat spoke.) But over that month they came to regard me as not a threat and it allowed me to drift by them so close that I was able to fill the frame with ones head. I had to use PS to expand the canvas and Content Aware to fill in the new canvas so I could get a good composition (a trick I like to use when I can get that close). The resulting image
I am actually working on a wildlife photography book. Going to be a bit different than anything out there currently. Each chapter is going to be a story about a day shooting and it will be up to the reader to pick out the lessons and techniques I used to get the images. It's not going to be a book written in an instructional way, more using stories to get the point across. Sure it will be filled with great images and there will be some technical information (kind of have to do that), but I want it to be enjoyable to read.
And I can't even imagine how you got to that critter there. Did you hide out and got lucky?
That photo is a Prairie Dog. They live in large colonies called Towns and can cover miles of territory with hundreds to thousands of holes going down into their burrow. I would look for a spot where I could watch 3-4 holes from a close distance and just lay there waiting. Eventually one would pop up and after awhile they stopped paying attention to me and would go about their daily activities. I think I laid there for 4 or 5 hours taking photos and just watching them.
I think that because I love to just watch wildlife it really helps me in my photography. To do what I do to get some of my photos comes from a love of just being out there observing. If you don't truly love just being out there you will never be an amazing wildlife photographer, especially dealing with all the nasty stuff out there. By that I mean the fire ants that I get bit by on a regular basis, the mosquitos, the gnats, the chiggers, the fungus infections, the spider bites (last one laid me up for almost 3 monts), the very real threat of venomous snakes or getting attacked by a gator. I can come home looking very rough after a day of shooting.
I also watch and learn the behavior and habits of my subjects and figure out ways to use it to my advantage to not only find the subject I am looking for but also how to get close or get them to come close to me. For example. I prefer to shoot at my subjects eye level and for gators that means laying on the ground. I have learned that when you lay on the ground around baby gators it peeks their interest. If you walk up to some water where they are they will take off and hide. But if you lay at the edge of the water they will get curious and swim right up to you.
YES...…………...doing this is dangerous because of mama gator and I don't advise anyone to do this.
I only attempt this when I know where mama gator is and can keep an eye on her. Because this trick will also get larger gators to swim up because they don't typically see people in that position. But it is one technique I use to capture my baby gator photos.
it worked to get this guy to move from 40ish feet away (way to far away to photograph a baby gator) to capture this image.
about a 2 foot baby gator, taken from 22 feet. has about a 400px crop, so almost full resolution
Regards,
Phocal
