I was going through some old files recently and came across this badger I photographed in Yellowstone. I am hoping to go to Yellowstone next month (it's been 5 years so it's about time!) and would love to find more badgers. You don't see them very often in our area, but they seem to be everywhere in Yellowstone! I remember photographing this guy with my dad just inside Lamar Valley. This badger was digging and digging, and the dirt was flying! Because of the low light, it was pretty hard to capture. I did manage one with the dirt streaking through the image, but the badger was quite blurry, so it didn't quite work out the way I hoped. This fella would dig for a while then disappear into his den, then pop right back out and dig again.
Thanks for lookin'!
Nikon D7000
Nikkor 200-400mm @ 400mm
ISO 1000
1/60sec @ f/4
Comments
3 commentsLight was not on your side sadly, but hey these don't come out in the middle of the day, but I would have tried to push the ISO more to gain more SS, but no idea hw far you can go??? I feel I want to move the who crop left to have more to look into and reduce the dirt mound, but I feel it does work. I might add a Linear Curves adjsutment, as it's instant and quick, just brings some more 'pop'.
TFS
Steve
Interesting compositional "problem" to solve here - I definitely agree with keeping the "foot" of the mound in the shot but the direction the badger is looking does argue for more room on the right. Choices, eh?
When I look at your techs and with my own knowledge of the ISO performance of that camera body I would say that your chosen balance of ISO, SS, and aperture are about optimal. While a higher SS would have been nice (as Steve suggested), going appreciably higher (via use of a higher ISO) would have degraded the image with additional noise (and there are no obvious visible problems associated with the SS you used).
Cheers...
Brad