Trogon Photo Tours

This month's newsletter features thoughts on planning images while out in the field, particulary using the lighting and background to maximize the impact of your images.  It features photos of Pampas Foxes taken in the Ibera Marshes of Argentina.  Next month's newsletter will feature planning images of birds while in the field.  Most of the photography that I do is not what I would call project photography, where it's my idea to set up a situation where I will just photograph one or two species.  On my own and on our tours the vast majority of the time I am in an area that I think will be rich in wildlife photography and then I take advantage of the opportunities and species that present themselves in those areas.  That being said after I find a cooperative subject, I try to figure out how to make the most attractive and interesting images of the subject with the conditions at the time.  This month's newsletter goes through my thought process in a few situations.

Pampas Fox photographed at Rincon del Socorro in the Ibera Marshes of Argentina.   Canon 7D 500F4 1/60 F6.3, iso 500, Av mode, evaluative metering at 0, handheld.  This was one of my first shots when we found a pair of foxes basking in the late afternoon.  While it's pretty sharp and a decent portrait, other than the nice late afternoon light there is nothing all that interesting about the image.  In terms of settings, this was quite a low shutter speed for handholding.  With the 7D I generally tried to keep the iso at 500 or below.  But I am not focusing on settings in this article, I am going to be discussing more my artistic vision for the shots.  

As I took in the surrounding environment, I noticed that there was a tree which was being lit up by the setting sun.  I determined if I were able to change my position a bit and lie on the ground I would be able to frame the fox with the beautiful orange tree in the background.  I moved slowly and steadily to avoid scaring the fox away.  In terms of compostion, I moved the fox out of the center of the frame so the composition was not so centered and static as it was in the first image.  Lastly the fox did its part by making some nice poses for me.  It all came together for me for this image. 

As I said there were actually a pair of Pampas Foxes and at this point, they got together, I slowly moved my position so as not to scare them and again lied on the ground to get an interesting background.  I wish the fox which was lying down had also given me a bit more eye contact but this was my favorite image of them together from that afternoon. 

A couple of days later we visited another location which the guide had said was a good area to see foxes, especially around sunset.  By the time the foxes showed up this afternoon, the sun had already gone down so I was left without much light to work with.  This shot was taken with the 7D and 500F4 at 1/50 F4, iso 500.  I like the pose and background, I think it's a solid portrait but nothing spectacular.  

As there was very little light left this evening I decided to try some pan blur shots to try and achieve an artistic effect and show the motion of the fox.  This was taken with the 7D and 500F4 at 1/8 F4.5, iso 500.  At these very slow shutter speeds of between 1/5 and 1/10 of a second I find you will often get kind of a double exposure which has an interesting effect.  This was taken handheld following the animal along as he moved.  By panning with the animal both he and the background are blurred, this kind of shot often shows a painted effect on the background.  At that point, I didn't have a lot of options for making great images so I tried to make the lack of light work for me by shooting artistic blur shots. Although I wouldn't consider this one of my best pan blurs, it was my favorite for that evening.

We went back to the same location a couple of evenings later with the hope of photographing the foxes again before the sun went down.  This time they were more cooperative.  After a few moments I was able to see that we might be able to line up the fox against the full setting sun.  I dialed in some negative exposure compensation to try and keep from blowing out the sun too much.  My settings for the shot were Canon 7D 500F4 1/200 F7.1, iso 500, Av mode, evaluative metering -1.0.  I didn't do much in terms of adjusting this shot in post processing so it's pretty similar to the raw file. 

Next the fox really cooperated by sitting down right in front of the setting sun.  This was the shot I had envisioned with the fox's head encircled by the setting sun.  I used the same settings as the previous shot but the post processing was different for this one.  I remembered the sky around the setting sun being more reddish than pinkish so I warmed up the white balance, I also reduced the exposure to make the setting sun less blown out and to make the fox more of a silhouette.  Contrast these 2 shots with the first 3 shots from the article.  In the first 3 shots the sun was at my back and I was using front lighting to get nice light and detail in the subject.  In these last 2 the foxes were very much backlit so in both the shot and the processing I was going for more of a silhouette.  However, in both cases I was taking account of both the lighting conditions and the background in order to produce what I hoped would be a striking image. 

I think often as wildlife photographers we get too caught up in just capturing the subject well that we forget to take stock of the overall scene.  In doing so we capture the animal very well but don't always take the most artistic photo that is possible.  By always thinking about both the lighting and the background you can help maximize the amount of striking images you take.  Next month I will talk about planning images in the field with birds.