Wildlife in Motion: Let the Little Deer Prance

Unless you're a big time early 1960's rock 'n roll fan (like me), you may not immediately recognize the name Billy Bland. But if you've ever listened to A.M. radio in the United States, you've probably heard his hit record Let the Little Girl Dance (check out the Youtube video, you'll love it). Ever since I shot this photo a few weeks ago I can't stop hearing the song in my head when I look at it because the rhythm of the deer leaping away is perfectly matched to the rhythm of that song! By the way, just for the music buffs out there, Bland's song reached #11 on the Billboard Top 100 and he had a few other minor hits, but then left the music industry.

What does that have to do with a photo tip? Almost nothing. But hearing that song in my head when I look at this photo reminds me of one important quality that is lacking in a lot of wildlife photography: motion. Most photographers are so intent on getting good sharp photos of wildlife that they tend to shoot the animals only when they're standing rock still. But most animals, like this white-tail deer that I photographed on the John Jay estate in Westchester, New York (extra points if you happen to know who John Jay was) live in constant motion. For a deer (or most other wildlife, for that matter) to stand still too long is to invite the slings and arrows of higher-ups on the food chain (including humans). Using--even exaggerating--that motion is a great way to capture the true spirit of the animals you're photographing.

One way to photograph animals in motion and to get a relatively sharp (though not totally, as you can see here) image that also contains the essence of movement, is to use a technique called panning. By setting your camera to a slower shutter speed (use your shutter-priority exposure mode) and tracking the animal as it runs, you get a sharp(ish) image of the animal against a blurred background. Unless you're very good at panning and have some luck on your side, there will always motion in the subject, but that only adds to the realism. You can experiment with speeds from about 1/60 second (the speed I used for this shot) down to around 1/4 or 1/8 second, but the slower you go the more blur there will be in the background and in the subject. As you can see in this shot, even at 1/60 second, which is at the top end of the useful panning speeds, there is still quite a bit of motion in the deer's legs.

Selecting just the right speed is not easy and it takes some experimenting, and since you may 0nly have time to pop off a few frames, you're likely not to get a second chance with that one particular animal. But if you're in a situation where you're photographing animals that are moving around (deer, horses, bunnies, etc.), try keeping the shutter speed set slow and being ready mentally to follow the animal as you shoot. You'll get a much smaller percentage of "keepers" with this technique because it is so experimental, but the winners will really stand out and I think they capture the true spirit of wild animals.

One slight caution: when you intentionally use a shutter speed that you know is going to create at least a partially blurred photo, many photographers get scared off and go back to safe shutter speeds to try to stop the action. Don't do it! In order to succeed at a somewhat risky technique you have to commit to it and let the experiment run it's course. The worse thing that will happen is that you'll get some out-0f-focus photos, but even then, I think you'll be excited by the results because they'll be different than most of the action shots you see.

Of course, you can also use the exact same technique to photograph your own little heard of wild animals as they run through the local park or ride their bikes up and down the street--and that's a great time to practice your wildlife panning skills. By the way, intentionally using a wide aperture (for shallow depth of field) and using a long lens (pretty much required to get close to animals anyway) will exaggerate the motion even more.

Visit Your Sewage Treament Plant

OK, I'm kidding. But that's exactly where I shot this photo--at a stream near a local sewage treatment plant. And I had no idea this pretty stream was there.

I was out last week on my second day of testing my new D90 and decided to drive down to a small park on the shore of the Housatonic River, just a few miles from home. The river was pretty boring but there were some nice tall phragmites (river grasses) growing near the edge of the parking lot and so I drove over to take a look. Much to my surprise I found this pretty stream behind the tall grasses. The light was fading fast, but I was able to pop off a few dozen different exposures hoping to get a nice flow of water over the rocks. I shot this frame at 1/15 second at f/10 with a 70-300mm Nikkor lens.

Here's the weird thing: I couldn't see the stream clearly from on foot, but from the high window of my Ford van I had a clear view--so the best shots were all made from inside my car. I just rolled up a sweater and laid it across the door frame and was able to shoot fairly long exposures without any camera jiggle.

Anyway, the most interesting part of the shots for me was that I had no idea this stream was there and I go to this park a lot. I never saw the stream before. The stream is, I think, where water (hopefully clean and treated) flows from the sewage treatment plant into the Housatonic River (a fairly big river--probably a half-mile wide in some places). So, you never know where you'll find a good stream to shoot--just don't look too carefully for the source of the stream.

Create Ribbons of Water

First of all, sorry that I've been away from the blog for a week. I have a book deadline at the end of this month and just haven't had any free time. The book is on the subject of how to win photo contests though and I'll write more about it later this week. But right now, onward to one of my favorite tricks: turning waterfalls and streams into a flowing ribbon of water.

I'm sure you've seen a lot of waterfall photos done this way and creating the effect is very simple: To turn flowing water into those pretty white ribbons of motion, just set your camera to the shutter-priority exposure mode and select a longish exposure. The actual length of the exposure depends on how fast the water (or any other subject, for that matter) is moving and how much you want it to blur. I find that most moderately-fast moving streams and waterfalls blur nicely between 1/2 and one full second. Any longer than that and you run into a situation of diminishing returns: a blur is a blur is a blur once it's maxed out. In other words, the blur doesn't get any better or more dramatic and, in fact, can get too soft looking.

I think it's better if you actually cut back on the length of the exposure a bit once you reach that point because then you also get some detail in slower moving areas (like after the water hits the pool at the bottom in this case--you can actually see some detail in the foam, etc.). I exposed this shot for 1/2 second at f/20, for example, but also shot some at 2 seconds and 4 seconds and I thought the water was too soft and blurry, so I sped up the shutter speed to 1/2 second. Again, it really depends on the speed of the motion and just how much of a blur you want.

By the way, you may get frustrated when working in bright light that you simply can't select a shutter speed that slow without the photo overexposing. That's because your camera doesn't have an aperture small enough to balance out the long exposure. One solution for that is to use a neutral-density filter over the lens. These filters reduce the light hitting the sensor without changing its color. Cokin sells some that I think are reasonably priced. I'll write more about them in a future posting. For now, just do a Google search on "neutral density filters" and you'll find plent of info.