Yellowstone Winter 2015

[Rob de Jonge]

I did visit the Bavarian Forest 4 times; 3 times in the winter and also one time in the autumn
This year I visit Yellowstone for the first times in the winter and it was a great experience.
For the landscape-photographer, Yellowstone in wintertime is like heaven, but also “shooting” wildlife is great. You can compare the Yellowstone wildlife with the Bavarian Forest. There is the bison, the bear (in hibernation off course), the bobcat (Lynx), wolf, elk, otter and the beaver. But there is a big difference in the opportunity, the distance to the animals en the time. When you spent enough time, you will see always the animals you like to photograph.  In Yellowstone you are driving in a snow-coach (caterpillar + skies) and you see only the animals near the road. Luckily there is snow and no leafs on bushes or trees.
I saw lots of bison’s, coyote, but no wolf, elks, 4 evenings on a row the bobcat and that’s very special, red fox and bald eagle. For wildlife in Yellowstone you need a good camera for high ISO’s  and a telelens at least 400mm.
Here are some examples:

[Rob de Jonge]

Here is a second upload:

[Hayo Baan]

Hi Rob,

Thanks for sharing these nice images from Yellowstone! I (we) still need some time to process the images from our Bavarian Forest workshop, but you can expect some soon, hopefully .

As always, I will give some feedback (note: I merged your two posts so I can comment in one go)

Coyote: I quite like this one, especially the look in his eyes. I'd brighten it a tad bit, but that would be all, I think.
Of these 7, this is definitely my favourite!

Bison: Lovely snow/ice covered coat. Just a shame he is looking away from us. Also given the general composition, I think I would have liked a little more room around (especially on the right).

Deer: This one doesn't really work for me; I don't really like the stance of the animal, and compositionally he is smack in the middle too (a crop would definitely help here). It's a bit on the warm side too (evening light?), but that is taste (and can be fixed easily).

Bobcat: The Bobcat is a different species from the Lynx you find in Bavaria, but similarly beautiful . I like the image, to improve it (in my opinion), I would crop some off the right to have more relative space in front of the animal. Oh, and if we're nitpicking, I would have liked a different stance for his hind leg; it kinda looks funny, hanging in the air, right now.

Eagle: Nice environmental shot, great looking dead tree! Ideally the eagle should look “outside”, but one can't have everything Post processing wise, I'd alter the white balance a bit as it looks a bit too blue-ish/magenta-ish now. Also, perhaps crop a bit to lose the bottom branches.

Red fox: Beautiful animal!

Bobcat2: Ha, this setting with the fallen trees looks very much like the setting in Bavaria! Nice I'd crop it a bit to get more attention on the animal.

I reckon you shot all these with your D810 coupled with your 300/2.8 (perhaps with a TC)? This set gives you tremendous flexibility (you can crop a lot with still great quality), without weighing too much, especially compared to my D4 with a 600mm (which I'd need to get similar results I guess).

Thanks again for sharing these definitely cool images !

Cheers,
Hayo

[Rob de Jonge]

Thank you, Hayo for your comment.
Funny, your favourite photo is shot with my back-up camera, the Nikon V2 + Nikkor 70-200mm f2.8 VR II. Thanks to the cropfactor 540mm.  It was already very dark, 17:45 and a cloudy day. This photo is taken at 1600 ISO, F 2.8. The guy next to me took this shot at 6400 ISO F 5.6 with the 200-400mm Nikkor. So, the original photo is pretty dark and after pot-processing there is a lot off noise. That's the inconvenience of convenience. It's a nice, very light set and I can move easily through knee deep snow, but you can't compare the quality of this set with my D810 + 300mm F2.8 + TC. The first two days I took all the tele-photo's with this combination because  I had to learn the limitations of this set.  With good light it is a joy to work with this set, but around and after sunset the results are poor. I wonder, would it be better to shoot + 1stop at 3200 ISO (more ETTR) than at 1600 ISO and to crank up the photo in post-processing?
In Bavaria you have much more time for better composition and the distance is limited, but it's wildlife in captivity.

[Hayo Baan]

Hi Rob,

  it is indeed funny to have selected the V2 image as my favourite (it still is). Pity quality-wise it will not be as good (but I didn't notice that in this web version, of course).

Looking at the images, I think the D810+300/2.8+TC works well. A very good question regarding shooting at higher ISO to get a better/brighter exposed result versus shooting at lower ISO and cranking up the exposure in post. My shots from Bavaria this year seem to suggest that shooting higher ISO with a correct/bright exposure is very likely the best option. Heck, I have correctly exposed shots at ISO 12,800 that seem to have less noise than shots at 4000~5000 ISO that I had to crank up. It all depends on the situation, of course, but it's still probably a good idea to experiment with this.

Cheers,
Hayo

[Rob de Jonge]

Although, there is a lot of wildlife, the landscape is also very impressive.
it's hard to create landscape photos that are more original than the well known picture-postcards.
Let's give it a try!


Rob
 

[Hayo Baan]

Hi Rob,

Nice! I think you quite succeeded on getting some out-of-the-ordinary shots!

“Bonsai”: Nice composition. I like the fact it sort of resembles a bonsai tree. Also the fact it is so “clean”, I like a lot.

Misty trees: Sure, this could almost be a postcard, but the atmosphere is really great!

Shore: While the forms in the foreground are really nice, it doesn't really work as well as your others for me. Perhaps its because the lines lead out of the image? I'm not sure…

Trees in the clouds: Lovely. How did you take this? You must have been pretty high up for this shot, or what?

Thanks again for posting. Inspiring

[Rob de Jonge]

Hi Hayo,

Thanks again for the comment.
The last picture "Trees in the cloud" was taken in Mammoth Hotsprings. "The clouds"are steam from the hotsprings. I'm standing on a platform about 10-20m away from the trees.
I will show my last set of photos.  Details/ abstractly. I think not everybodies "piece of cake", but I like it; for me it are living paintings, born out of minerals and bacteria.


Rob

[Hayo Baan]

Nice! I like them all very much. They look like mountain landscapes, but then seen from very high up in the sky, cool

Compositionally/technically I can't see anything I could comment on, so I leave at a “Beautiful” for all of them 

Thanks!