I have very little experience with wildlife photography, but I have recently acquired a Tamron 150-500 mm lens and conditions seemed favorable for a visit to the bison herd at Minneopa State Park, near Mankato Minnesota. Three or four inches of really light fluffy snow yesterday evening, clear skies at dawn, and chilly but dead calm (-9F as we parked the car). The bison are kept in a large paddock and vehicle access isn’t available until 9:00 am, so we took a gamble on where in the paddock the herd might be, then broke trail through the snow along the edge of the fence. Sure enough, we got into 500 mm range just as the sun broke the horizon.
Problem is, this is tall-grass prairie country, and the nearly all the bison were hidden behind tufts of grass. I tried to blur the nearer grass as much as possible while keeping the shuffling bison in focus, but most of the images didn’t turn out as well as I would have liked. It’s just hard to fidget with a camera with that big a lens when it is that cold. Bare hands don’t maintain feeling for very long, and even thin liner gloves are sometimes too cumbersome.
Here are the two that I think turned out best. I’m hoping to use one of the two in a public presentation I am doing in the spring about my development of a detailed map of the upper Midwest featuring the pre-settlement indigenous names for various landscape features. Not surprising for this gateway to the prairies, the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (Dakota, or Sioux) people who inhabited this region named several features for the Thatháŋka, or bison bull. Does this fellow (ok, it’s actually a gal) make the grade? Or does her bent-horned pal in the second image deserve honors?
Minneopa, by the way, is abbreviated from Mni hiŋhé’ noŋpa, which means “water falling twice”, so named for the lovely pair of waterfalls on a nearby tributary to the Mni Sota Wakpá (Minnesota or “clear water” River).
Specific Feedback Requested
Having very little experience with wildlife photography, I would especially welcome your thoughts on what I can do better next time (besides choosing a warmer morning). There really wasn’t much I could do about the tall foreground grass given my point of access, and trying to clone out that much (especially in the second image) doesn’t seem especially honest. And, the grass is a part of the landscape, and I did want to capture the bison in a landscape context to some degree. Anyway, suggestions or thoughts most welcome!
Technical Details
Is this a composite: No
Both images: Sony A7RIII with Tamron 150-500 mm at 500 mm; f/6.7 at 1/60 sec; ISO 400. Tonal balancing and slight color adjustment (slightly more red and less green in the bison’s fur) in Lightroom and Photoshop (TK8 tools); some sharpening in Topaz Sharpen AI.