Water Trails

I captured this image of a coastal Gray Wolf as it made its way along the long and sinewy Khutzeymateen Inlet on the northern BC coast. The wolf was clearly "on a mission" and wasted little time as worked its way over about 4 km of the shoreline while we watched it over about a 40 minute period. Over that time the wolf alternated between using forest trails along the edge of the inlet, rocky beaches and - at times - even trotting in shallow water (as seen here). The wolf appeared to have a very clear destination in mind and, based on how fast it traveled over the rough terrain, it was obvious it knew the area very well.

With this shot I got a little lucky. I was shooting a 500mm lens at the time and we were in a moving Zodiac so, by necessity, I was shooting fully hand-held. Because of the movement of the wolf and the motion of the "platform" I was shooting from (and because I was hand-holding a super-telephoto lens) I bumped the shutter speed up a little higher than I do when shooting static wildlife (even when hand-holding big lenses). That higher shutter speed coincidentally allowed me to "freeze" the water trailing from the wolf's paws - and I especially like how the water trail behind the wolf's hind paw was rendered by the 1/1250s shutter speed. Cool, eh?

Subject: Female Coastal Gray Wolf (Canis lupus) trotting along water's edge
Location: Khutzeymateen Inlet, northern BC coast, Canada
Camera: Nikon D5
Lens: Sigma 500mm f4 Sport lens. Hand-held from Zodiac boat. OS on and in "OS1" mode, with OS1 stabilization customized to Moderate View mode; AF customized to Fast Priority AF.
Exposure: 1/1250s @ f6.3; ISO 640. -0.67 stop compensation from matrix-metered exposure setting.
Crop: Almost full frame horizontally - crop off top and bottom to attain 16:9 aspect ratio

A lot more info about this shot - including a 2400 pixel version it and a bit of a rant about how British Columbia treats wolves - can be found on my website using the link immediately below.

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

Comments and critiques welcomed - probably best to view the larger version (or, better yet, the new detail view) prior to doing so!

Cheers...

Brad

PS: Like all wildlife images on my website and that I post on NPN, the subject is fully wild and completely unconstrained. Besides the potential impact of my presence, nothing has been done to intentionally alter or affect the ongoing behavior of the subject and, of course, there has been no use of any form of bait or other form of wildlife attractants (including vocalizations).