Yellowstone NP Spring 2010

[aster]

Hi Kevin,

Thank you! Wonderful case study of wildlife in Yellowstone NP. How I love wild creatures that are happy in their natural habitats! And your photos deliver very intimately close moments and details; the wind brushing their fur, the snow falling, the bison drinking icy water,..., the herds...

They are all very lovely and you made a good trip very memorable. Also a tiny lovely car too!

Enjoyed them all!

Thanks for sharing,
Yildiz

[KevinBarrett]

Thank you all for the feedback!

Aster: Thank you! I did mostly focus on wildlife, but I tried to get plenty of environment for context, as well; like the young lodgepole pines growing up to replace their parents after the fires of 1988, or the geothermal features that give the park its unique climate. See Old Faithful below...

Mike: The grizzly bear was a lucky find--a lone bison had it cornered against a cluster of geysers! We only saw the one bear on our last day in the park, headed home. There was no legal pull-out area, and the shoulder of the road was already lined with cars. I was stopped in the middle of the road when I took the bear picture.

John: You'd fare better on a trip like this with your Land Rover and your 100-300 zoom! I've no regrets about the car, but I wish I'd gone and got a longer lens (oh, that's right, I decided to put my wife through nursing school instead!).

David: Thank you! There was definitely no shortage of bison, though historically speaking, there is. The current population is barely a percentage point of what it was when the white man started pushing west across North America. A population of millions dropped precipitously. With careful management, a population of just 15,000 wild bison still exists today.

[Birma]

Hi KB - a great series - very interesting to look through. I like the common tonal quality that runs through the whole set, but I guess you would have liked a greater variety of weather? I think the last one is probably my favourite - I love the muted colours of the road running off in to the distance. I can hear the Iggy Pop song just looking at the picture

I'm afraid that you will now just have to get the Sony 70-400

[KevinBarrett]

I'm afraid that you will now just have to get the Sony 70-400

I'm actually debating between the Sigma 70-200/2.8 + TC and the Sigma 120-400/4.5-5.6. The first would be more versatile and might actually pay for itself by doing double duty in portrait/wedding kits. The later will be slightly less expensive and hopefully preserve more optical quality since it doesn't use a teleconverter. I have some homework to do.

[Birma]

My 'vote' would go for the versatility of having a 70-200/2.8 that you could sometimes use with a tc. I think the 70-200 would get used more often.

[Greg Beetham]

What a great trip KB, I really liked the Bison photos, Elk and Bear too, and also the alpine ridges, for some reason I just pause and look at those for a long time.
Must have been tough finding some of those photo opportunities in a car that's about three inches off the ground. Very well done, overcoming the obstacles and the weather/road conditions too get the shots you did get.
Greg

ps. In the Unimog shot, where have the luggage containers that were on the rear rack on your car gone too? In a Motel perhaps?

[Lonnie Utah]

Kind of low contrast

I agree with this. Compositionally, the are fine, but for most of them there isn't really any vibrance to the shot. They seem kind of flat really. It could simply be that it's early spring in the west (I know it can be kind of drab at times), but I'd like to see more "pop" in them. I am also surprised that most of these are wild life shots and you don't really have any/many shots of the geothermic features. To me, that's the most interesting stuff at Yellowstone.

[KevinBarrett]

I agree with this. Compositionally, the are fine, but for most of them there isn't really any vibrance to the shot. They seem kind of flat really. It could simply be that it's early spring in the west (I know it can be kind of drab at times), but I'd like to see more "pop" in them.

Thanks for the feedback! I've gone through and reworked some of the worst offenders, considering your advice.

[Lonnie Utah]

Much better Kevin.

[aster]

A little conttrast does bring the shot an extra depth, Kevin. These are enjoyable too. For some, the dreamy submissions of the first run is also worthy though.

Yildiz

[Lonnie Utah]

I'm not sure what happened, but I was just trying not to clip shadows or highlights.

I think that this photo has some blown highlights.



But, it did win the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photojournalism. Technical perfection is not everything.

[KevinBarrett]

I went back to my Yellowstone pictures again...

[Greg Beetham]

I like that first one especially.
Greg

[Birma]

Hi KB, I like the subdued colours.

[KevinBarrett]

Hi KB, I like the subdued colours.

I like that first one especially.
Greg

Thank you, guys! I chose not to punch up the colors here because the distance and the light level really desaturated them quite naturally. I tried independently increasing their saturation or vibrancy, and combinations of both, but it was all too distracting

I did tweak this one very slightly, though, because since there was more direct sunlight in the image, some more punchy colors wouldn't look unreal: