Tracking the Coyote

Coyote, Yosemite Valley, California.  ©Terry VanderHeiden 2016

To improve your photography, make a point to go out and photograph with other photographers.  They will push your creativity and help you spot angles and subjects you might have missed. 

Early this winter I went with fellow photographer and naturalist, David Bozsik up to Yosemite National Park to photograph the first snow of the season. We missed that event by about a day but we did have a great experience following at Coyote along the valley floor. 

Early one morning, on the East end of the valley, Dave and I were out looking for scenic images to photograph and Dave noticed some movement in the tall grasses. As we crept a little closer, we saw that it was a lone Coyote hunting for food. 

Coyote hunting for food, Yosemite Valley, California.  ©Terry VanderHeiden 2016

Like I said, you can really improve your photography by photographing with someone else, but it really helps when your companion is steeped in the knowledge of animal behavior, like Dave is. Its' very important to know about your animal subjects and their tendencies. We know that Coyotes can travel as much as 12 miles a day in search of food. Since all of us knew that winter was about to descend upon Yosemite, the coyote was looking for food and we knew he was going to keep moving. 

The main diet of the Coyote is mice, rats, insects, rabbits, etc. They are also known to hunt day or night, whenever food is available. We followed the Coyote for a couple of hours and then lost him. He was keeping his distance from us and he was much better at maneuvering over fallen branches and soft ground than we were, so he had more control of how our photographs were going to come out.

Our technique for the chase was to follow on foot for a while, go back to the car, race ahead of where we thought Coyote was going be and set up in the hopes of seeing him come by.  This was an all day event.

Coyote, Yosemite Valley, California.  ©Terry VanderHeiden 2016

Finally, late in the day just as the sun was falling we were set up on the West end of the park hoping the Coyote might make it there before it became too dark.  We got lucky.

The Coyote emerged from one of his hiding places and walked right toward out waiting  cameras. 

This last shot was taken with a Nikon D4, using a 600 mm lens set at f/4.5 and shot at 1/800th of a second.  When working with a very long lens, you have to make sure your shutter speed will be able to keep up with your lens.  To avoid camera shake, I always try to shoot at a higher shutter speed than the length of my lens.  To do this, I set my Nikon D4 on Auto ISO.  With this setting you can be sure that your shutter speed is high enough to avoid camera shake.  The camera will pump up ISO  to compensate for low light conditions and keep your shutter speed where you want it.  I have mine set for a shutter speed of 1/800th of a second if I'm using my long glass. 

Coyote, Yosemite Valley, California.  ©Terry VanderHeiden 2016

The downside to this technique is that your ISO can get pretty high, wether you like it or not.  In this case the ISO on this image of the Coyote's face was a very high 10,000.  I knew however with the Nikon's ability to handle high ISO without a lot of noise and using a little bit of noise reduction in Adobe Lightroom, I could make a large wall print that looks very sharp. 

Saving Time in Lightroom

A great way to save time while editing in Lightroom is to use the previous button. This button, located in the lower right part of the Develop Module screen, can speed up your workflow quite a bit as you work your way through your images.

Once you make settings to an image, use the filmstrip on the bottom of the screen to access another like image.  Then hit the Previous Button.  All of your settings used on the last image will be automatically assigned to that new image.  Be aware, that if you don't make any setting on an image selected in Lightroom and move to a new image, the Previous Button won't apply any changes. 

Here is a quick video on how to use the Previous Button in Lightroom.

Smart Collections in Lightroom

I use smart collections quite often in Lightroom.  It makes it easy to find images that I have edited, which are generally the ones I need to access at a later date.

Here's a  video tutorial on setting up smart collections, give it a try!

Lightroom Tips

Here is a short video that shows you how I use the Gradient Tool in Lightroom.

Working with the auto mask feature in Lightroom makes it easy to create a custom gradient in Lightroom. 

Splash Photography

Creating splash photographs can be a lot of fun and most of the time a messy project. If you are interested in giving this a try, here are some things you will want to prepare for.

First, you are going to want to figure out what you want to splash.  If it's a cube of fake ice in a cocktail glass like a above, you will want plenty of the liquid star and some towels to clean up with.  

Each time you drop the cube, a splash occurs and leaves fluid all over you background.  Take some time before you clean up to see how far away you should be, to be out of the frame, be accurate to hit the glass and to determine how large of a splash you are looking for. Once you get this all figured out, along with your exposure, you can clean up and start shooting for real.

To get a larger wave of a splash, the table was tilted and the camera was tilted at the same angle so when the cube was dropped there is more area for the wave of liquid to escape.

In this example, I placed the drinking glass on a piece of black plastic. I like to use a fairly thick piece of plexi so that it doesn't flex during the shoot. Black works great for creating a nice mirror reflection.   I also had a second sheet of plexi (this one was white translucent) suspended as the background a foot or so away from the glass to avoid having to clean this each time.

Once you get all your splashing techniques figured out, you will have to set the lights to get the perfect exposure.  If you are using continuous lights or shooting outdoors, then you need to get your camera shooting with the fastest shutter speed you can get. Most of today's cameras can shoot at 1/8000 of a second which is pretty fast but not as fast a strobe flash. However, to do that you will likely need a lot of light.  Another way of shooting this kind of thing is using strobe units to provide the light.

I used Profoto B1 portable strobe units.  When set up properly, their flash duration can be 1/19,000 of a second.  Keep in mind that the flash duration is directly correlated to the power of the flash.  The lowest power gives you the faster flash duration.  With that in mind, you will need to have your strobes fairly close to the subject since there is so little light being output.  Also, with every diffuser you put on your strobes, the less light you will get, you won’t get a faster duration, but less quantity of light.

While the Profoto B1 units are great, they are kind of expensive.  If you have the small portable strobes like the Nikon SB910 or Canon 580’sthese strobes can fire off at 1/35,000 of a second, (Canon) 1/38,000 (Nikon) when set at their lowest output.

While these flashes can certainly stop liquid when set on their lowest power, they don’t put out a lot of light at such a low power, so you may need more than one flash unit.  Adding more flash units, can boost your light quantity and not effect the flash duration. Give it a try!