Wildlife Composition.  At times I enjoy talking about wildlife composition even more than I do landscape or macro comp.  It is too easy to take what we get, and accept the composition that our subject presents us with.  Today many of our wildlife images are crops.  That means that sometimes we even have the opportunity to compose at home.

As much as I love those tight detail laden portraits of wild animals, I truly like making more distant pictures with more compositional options.  I have made many up-close pictures of Prairie Dogs and Muskrats.  The more distant images below not only gave me the chance to truly compose my photos, they gave me the opportunity to take the compositional rules to the extreme

Meet Sal  Any time I get the chance to work with an animal species for more than a few seconds, the very least I want to accomplish are some images that range from distant to tight. I was photographing beetles with my 105 macro lens when this salamander appeared. With no zoom lens, I had to consistently reposition myself in order to capture a variety of pictures.  I love moments like this. There was no way I could possibly create enough depth of field to cover this animal. That made point of focus very important. I shot all of these pictures at f20.  That left me with a shutter speed too slow (1 to 1.3 sec.)  to stop movement by the salamander. I made all of these pictures with a tripod and the hands off technique of using my self time.  I was begging him to remain still.  It worked.

Stark  The term stark describes this picture as well as any. This snowy, foggy March day was powerful in its own right.  It is always hard to bring yourself to create a landscape type image that is not pretty. My goal here was to impart the feeling I had inside when I approached the scene.  I wanted to spread out some trees and let the distant ones fade into the fog.  Every picture does not have to be pretty.

Spring Forest  This trip backwards into the spring, shows some of my favorite wildflowers….the Geranium.  Groups of forest wildflowers can be incredibly difficult to compose.  As always, simplifying the flowers and their surroundings, is the key to success.

The Season of Red & Gold  I continue to close my posts with pictures from this great season we call autumn. It is unlikely that I will make any fall pictures this year, but a recent trip to the store showed many gorgeous colors.  Go out and enjoy autumn.

This autumn road is different from the one I showed a few posts back.  That one was made in the wilderness of a northern forest, and this was created on a road through a local county park.

One of the great things about photography is the ability to “capture” your vision and share that with others.  I don’t know about the rest of you but I would have stopped making pictures a long time ago if the resulting imagery was kept to myself.  It is the joy of sharing your vision, and viewing the “photographic mind” of others that makes it special. Sharing without viewing would seem hollow to me.

Enjoy the season and make (and share) a lot of pictures.

Just a few truly nonpartisan words about last nights presidential debate.  From a standpoint of debate format, moderation, the two candidates and how they handled both themselves and their interaction with each other…..this was clearly in the top three of presidential debates of my lifetime.  That was a respectful heavy weight match presented professionally, that actually put on display the differences between two candidates.