I’ve been busy the past few weeks since my trip to Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, working on pictures, catching up with work and daily life. In reviewing the photographs I’ve taken I’ve come up against the limitations that exist currently in both my ability and equipment. I’ll start with the second one first, since being outside my self, that’s always the easiest to identify and evaluate.
In spite of the fact that the new telephoto lens I bought is much better than the one I had, its reach is still never going to be as long as I want it to be! As I’ve talked about before in this blog, I love shooting animals, especially wildlife in their natural habitat. And of course the challenge is that they’re not always near you (harder to focus on) and they move (requiring high enough shutter speed). So I get home and look at my pictures (where I can actually see them on a full screen) and in the majority of cases, I’m often disappointed because when I zoom in to 100% or more if I’m cropping the picture, it’s less sharp, or the area that the animal encompasses is just too small to be able to crop into a compelling photograph.
Here is the original shot I took of this cute little colt whose picture I stopped to take. I have a 100-400mm and I don’t know how far away he was, but far enough, so that this was my shot at a focal length of 400mm. It was almost 7pm so the light was lower, but still acceptable. I had raised the ISO to 250, had the aperture set to 11.0 and my shutter speed was 1/80 sec. At 100% I can see that the colt is a bit soft, so obviously my focus wasn’t spot on, but at its original size, it came out okay but it has a bit of noise.
This leads me to the first part of limitations – my ability or habits as a photographer. In hindsight, I might have taken the aperture down to 8.0 or even 5.6 to get a higher shutter speed. But I still get so caught up with wanting to get the picture (in this case before the colt moved behind a sagebrush, or turned away from me) that I went into my snapshot mode. So I don’t have the ability now to crop and get a sharp picture. 
Here is the picture cropped to just the colt, and you begin to see the problems. Of course these are low resolution files at smaller width and heights than the actual files, but the comparison should still be telling.
When I look back at pictures I took in Kenya with a film camera almost 20 years ago, I’m amazed at some of the pictures I got. I had a cheaper lens at that time (Pentax camera/Tamron 400 mm lens) but the differences are: 1) my digital camera now is a full frame, which means my reach isn’t as long – 400 is 400 instead of maybe 640; 2) film didn’t have the noise that digital cameras do; and 3) shooting in Kenya, I generally had much more light to work. However, I still love my digital camera for many reasons, not limited to post processing control (never had a darkroom) and ability to adjust ISO for each shot (whether I’m always great at doing that is another matter altogether) to name just the first two that stand out. The fact is that I need to find a way as a photographer to form better habits in order to work both with the tools I have (which are quite good) and the limitations that present themselves (moving animals, low light, etc).
So the disappointment in not getting the shots I hoped I had gotten turns into a learning experience and a resolve to get better. I still will cherish the photo and the others I took of this colt, because he was beautiful, and I loved the way he seemed to be trying out his legs. I decided to enhance the photograph in Photoshop and added some artistic/impressionistic type effects. This is the result. 
The following two photos are two more examples of a similar situation. I shot this photo, and actually I do like it, but again, it was shot in low light at nearly 8pm. So I took up the ISO to 800. Since the mule deer did not seem particularly disturbed by me as they were at quite some distance, in retrospect, I probably should have used my tripod and kept the ISO lower to avoid the noise. The aperture was 10.0 and the shutter speed was 40, but the photo was still fairly sharp – there was just a lot of color noise.
However, I felt the photograph was a bit conflicted. Was the subject matter the herd of mule deer (not close enough to really be about them) or the landscape? In the end, as the result of a suggestion from a fellow photographer in a forum, I decided to just concentrate on the beautiful colors in the landscape.
I reassessed the picture, erased the herd of mule deer from the scene, blurred the edges of the photo, and played with effects to give it more of an abstract feel, since the photo really lent itself to that. See the second reinterpreted photograph.
You can judge for yourself. Some will like the more true to life version, and others the artistic interpretation. I always feel there’s room enough for more than one version.
Luckily, the telephoto lens did work quite well with some of the animals that were closer to me. I especially like this capture of a little house sparrow that was taken at Malheur Wildlife Refuge, but wasn’t so crazy about the fact that he was just sitting on a metal plant protector thing. But I kept returning to him, because I was so charmed by his expression and the fact that he was looking directly at me. This is the initial photograph.
In this case, I was able to crop quite a bit, and have him remain very sharp, although I did add a texture and a color filter to make his background more visually interesting. 
Next week I will move on from Harney County, Oregon, although I am sad to do so as it was a great experience on many different levels. I did want to share a few more photographs.
This is of the Hot Springs where my friend and I stayed, Crystal Crane Hot Springs.
The next picture shows a close-up of a mule deer that was taken earlier in the day near the same spot where the herd was, and this deer was closer to the road (love it when that happens!)
And finally I wanted to show you a composite picture I did using the little calf from the first post on Harney County – Wild Horses, Part 1. I had two landscape pictures I liked, (but not enough on their own), so I combined them with this calf. I wanted to create an image that reminded the viewer of one of those old paintings you see at museums. This is entitled, “The Lost Calf.”
So in closing – acknowledge and evaluate your limitations, be inspired by them to break through them, and persevere! I’m not usually this Ra, Ra, but sometimes we need to do that for ourselves, just so we can deal with expectations that get a little banged up along the way.
Musings with Camera in Hand 