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As the quiet of the morning began to come alive with the early morning light peaking its rays over the mountainous terrain, we methodically moved together as one as we approached the grazing bison bull. His every breath echoing in the silence of the early morning calm, exhaling a vertical trail of steam as his breath condenses into the brisk fall air. He casually glances up from time to time to let us know that he sees us but is seemingly undaunted by our presence or the crisp clicking sounds of our shutters. Moose continues to cautiously leads use into a position that majestically frames the large bull against the colorful grasses with the sun gleaming off his frost covered coat. And this is only the first morning! After a phone call and a few emails, I was signed up and ready to go on my first photo safari. I had no idea what I was in for or what to expect. Up to now I had not had any formal photographic training, only a passion for the outdoors and a willingness to better myself. I had read many of Moose’s articles and his book on wildlife photography, so taking a leap in faith, I signed up for one of his photo safari’s. Besides admiring his photography and his writings on nature photography, I knew he only took a limited number students on each safari, usually four, which would ensure that he would be available for some one on one instruction.
Spending the week with Moose is an experience in itself. He is outspoken, very confident in his ways and extremely self-motivated continuously pushing himself to come up with new and innovating ideas in photography and marketing. I quickly found that the mechanics of operating the camera was just the tip of the iceberg of what was to be covered during the week and that equally important was the general understanding of the animal’s basic biology traits. This was reiterated over and over during the course of the week, like his motto states "no photograph is worth sacrificing the welfare of the subject!" But this was the beginning of my education into wildlife photography. The days were long and the nights were short. We were up and gone from the motel long before the sun was up and back after dark each night. When you show up for a safari be well rested and ready for long days. We took advantage of the good light at both ends of the day. Contrary to what many may think, it’s not a necessity to be equipped with top of the line pro gear and big glass to go out with Moose and learn. If you want to get the most of a safari like his you need to stay close to him and ask questions, the more you ask the more trivia he elaborates on. This being my first outing, I made lots of mistakes and asked thousands of questions. How do you frame an image to communicate to others what you see and feel? What is your subject? What type of light do you have? Is the subject front lit, side lit or backlit? Foreground, middle ground, background? Depth of field? Moose patiently helped me find the answers to these questions and many more. Being out in the field is where you’ll really start to learn what it takes to capture a successful image. You can read thousands of how to articles but in the field is where the rubber hit the road. Early one morning we were setup to shoot the sunrise. I had a few days under my belt so I was ready to show Moose all that I had learned. I had a wide-angle lens mounted on my F4 to capture this beautiful scenic along with a split ND filter to keep the sky from burning out the foreground. The setting was perfect, hoarfrost covering the ground, fog hanging over the water and scattered clouds in the sky. Waiting for the light to come I stood there full of anticipation for the moment. As the sun began to peak over the distant mountains it was time to start shooting and as I pressed the shutter button all that could be heard was the sound of the auto focus motor traveling from one stop to the other. Moose looked up from his camera to see this panicked and puzzled look on my face. He walks over without saying a word, loosens the tension in the ballhead so he can position the camera upward to see the front of the F4, toggled the auto focus switch on the camera body to manual, twisted the focusing ring to infinity and said ‘give this a try’. Sometimes you just have to learn from your mistakes.
We had no means of getting film processed and back to us so we used the next best method, after composing the image, we let Moose take a peek through the viewfinder. This was a humbling experience at times because you never knew what he was going to say. I arrived home after the trip energized and already anticipating my next outing. My images came out great and you could see a vast improvement in them from just a weeks worth of instruction. A safari with Moose can be a tremendously useful means to improve your photography as well as a great training ground for how to get new images for your files. I still look back on that trip with a fondness of the experience and the sharing in many of its wonders during that week. |
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On
Safari with Moose Peterson
After
a few days in the field, as we began to settle into the pace of the long days,
Moose treated us to an evening slide show of his images. Then it was our turn to
be in the hot seat and show ours. The critiquing of my own slides as well as
listening to him critique the others turned out to be one of the greatest
learning exercises of the entire trip. Moose constructively went though each
slide and gave comments as to why it was a good image, or what could have been
done differently to make it better a better image. To be successful in this
business you must learn to be critical of your work.