Driving the Northern part of the Bow River Parkway, in Banff NP, AB, Canada, we spotted two nice bull elk still in velvet alongside the railroad track. While taking a few photos, we heard the train coming. The bull really humped up when the engine first came whistling by, but then decided to look around a bit to see if anything else was coming. After about the fiftieth car went by it went back to grazing and stayed right there until the train passed. It’s partner was much more skittish, and went to hide in the nearby bushes when our car pulled up and before the train ever came on scene.
Specific Feedback Requested:
It was getting late in the day, and it was raining. I was shooting in manual mode and I should have decreased the aperture a bit and sped up the shutter. I’m not sure why I had a negative Exposure Value other than I think I may have rolled the wrong button at the wrong time. I liked the resulting motion blur from the train, and I hope the elk is sharp enough. It really was pretty cooperative and didn’t jerk, or move too much especially while it was grazing. Your comments and suggestions are appreciated.
Pertinent technical details or techniques:
Canon 7DMii, f7.1, 1/80 sec, iso 2000, -0.3 EV, 182 mm (100-400 lens)
Pretty cool, Ed. The elk looks plenty sharp in all the images and the blurred train works well to illustrate the calmness of the elk. Given the traffic on the transcontinental tracks in Canada, they’re probably very used to the noise and appearance of trains. I don’t know what mode you were shooting in, but if it was Aperture priority, your shutter speed would have been even lower without it, so it may have been a good mistake. I remember shooting half a dozen bull elk sparring in a river once with my old 7D which didn’t have a lock on the mode dial which I moved in picking it up. They looked OK on the camera, but all were too badly motion blurred to use.
Thank you @Dennis_Plank. I too remember shooting a young bull elk duel in the Land Between the Lakes in Kentucky one evening with this same set up, thinking it would be really cool, just to find that all of the shots were too blurry to use when I turned the computer on . . .
Ed, Nice series of shots indicating how adaptable wild animals can be to human intervention; sometimes to their detriment. A small heard of elk were hit by a train in the Yakima River Canyon last winter. There are so many trains through there that they were probably too complacent and couldn’t get off the tracks fast enough. It is thought that snow and their being accustomed to trains contributed to their demise. They did, however, provide winter food for a lot of other birds and animals. Oh, your shutter speeds were just right to keep the elk sharp and demonstrate the train movement. Very nice.
Thank you very much @Jim_Gavin. Ouch! Rough on the elk herd. Trains have been tough on animals since the steam locomotives started hitting bison on the tracks. In the same stretch of track as the elk, the alpha male grizzly has been hit at least twice. Fortunately, it apparently bounces off and has fully recovered both times. . .Ed
