Circumspect

Circumspect

I have an admission to make: I love wild animals (and some selected not-so-wild ones too, like my two Portuguese Water Dogs!). Part of it is their sheer beauty. But even more than the aesthetics, I'm amazed and intriqued by the behaviour of wild animals. I caught this female coyote giving this look as it paused along the side of a busy highway and seemed to be deciding if the potential reward for crossing the road was worth the risk of doing so. It may be anthropomorphic, but I think it's hard to look at this photo and not think the coyote is pondering some decision...

Two further comments about this photo and the situation that lead to it. First, even though I shoot images almost daily and tend to use some pretty nice equipment, I'm still amazed at what advances in camera technology have meant to our images and what we can even consider shooting. This image was captured early in the morning, before the sun had even rose above the mountains that were surrounding me. In short, while it wasn't dark, there wasn't a whole lot of light. We saw this coyote along the edge of the highway while driving along and knew we had to move fast to get the images - there was no time to get out tripods out and set up. I had my 600mm lens on my D4 at the time and it was literally "grab camera, point, adjust a few settings, and shoot". So this image was captured while hand-holding a 600mm lens (while sitting cross-legged on the other side of the highway) at ISO 2000. Stuff you couldn't even imagine doing a few years back. Cool. And what an exciting time to be a wildlife photographer!

Second, this image was captured during a week when I had an enthusiastic wildlife photographer from The Netherlands with me for private tutoring. It's real easy to assume that the way you have always done things is the way everyone does them. But early in the week I realized that what comes "natural" to me is definitely NOT what would come "natural" to others. Early in our week together we were discussing how we actually shoot images. My client (who I call by his real name - Henk) had always focused on a subject (locking on using Single-Servo AF mode) and, once locked on the subject, then recomposed his shot. I have always composed my image first, then toggled my AF bracket to where it was needed to get the right part of the image in focus. And, I almost always use Continuous-Servo AF mode. So, the first thing Henk does is focus, while the last thing I do before capturing the image is focus. No right or wrong here - just different approaches to the same end. And, if one's subject is stationery it should make no difference at all to the final outcome. But, animals move - that's why I like focusing at the absolute last moment before I click the shutter (and that's also why I like using Continuous-Servo AF - those darned animals move, including in the last microsecond between acquiring focus and triggering the shutter). Does my approach (compose first, focus last) produce a higher percentage of sharp images than Henk's (focus first, compose last) approach? Possibly, but the reality is that I actually don't know. But it's something to think about and perhaps experiment with...

Subject: Female coyote (Canis latrans) debating her options
Location: Kootenay National Park, BC, Canada
Camera: Nikon D4
Lens: Nikkor 600mm f4 VRII lens - hand-held. VR on and in "Normal" mode.
Exposure: 1/640s @ f5; ISO 2000. -0.33 stop compensation from matrix-metered exposure setting.
Crop: This is about 70% of full frame image

Additional details about the image (including processing details) available here:

http://www.naturalart.ca/galleries/latest/.

Comments and critiques welcomed - probably best to view the larger version prior to doing so!

BTW: In a perfect world I'd would have liked a tiny bit more room on the bottom (if, for no other reason to stem those "where's the virtual feet?" comments!! ). But if I included even one more pixel below it would have been road! C'est la vie!

Cheers...thanks for looking...

Brad