Once Upon a Time

[Kenn Christensen]

A heard of Buffalo on the Move..
shot at the Buffalo Roundup in Custer State Park
20D
500mm F4 Is L with 1.4TC
hand held

[Ivan Rothman]

Very nice image. The angle of the shot, the composition almost in an S configuration and the cloud of dust in the rear all give the sense of movement of this large herd.

I've been to Custer after the yearly roundup. I wondered whether some of the bison burgers that we ate in the park had come from this event. We were told that the selling of the excess numbers of bison rounded up in this fashion helped to support the running of the park.

[D. Robert Franz]

I particularly like the way the S curve of the herd leads back into the densest part of the herd.. You cut the herd off where it really starts to get interesting. An vertical capture may have worked very well. The dust is great.

[Milo Burcham]

Cool shot. It is especially nice that no animals were cut off in the front. It would be nice to see other compositions as Dale mentioned

[Judd Patterson]

I really like this image Kenn, and your caption is very fitting. It's very rare to be able to see a large bison herd on the move like this
anymore. The dust and the S-curve composition do add a lot. I wonder what you could have done compositionally with a wider angle lens, but it's hard to judge the options properly without being beside you that day. Nice job!

[Kenn Christensen]

The Buffalo Roundup is a unique place to experience a large heard of buffalo on the move.. it happens every year on the first Monday of October at Custer State Park in South Dakota.. its a pretty big deal.. Id say 7000 people there easy.. If you contact Custer State Park you can get a press pass for the event.. you REALLY need to do that... there are two sites you can be at.. this is the south site and you have a hilltop vantage of the herd being driven right at you and you can obtain shots like this.. I could NOT compose this deeper without showing the cowboys and vehicles that were hard on the heals of the herd driving them past the crowd on the north location... at the North Location the herd passes in front of you several hundred yards out... its an entirely different shoot.... Ive shot both locations.... I think I prefer south.. but its partly luck of the draw.. the herd is not really under control if you know what I mean... they can move them loosely in a given direction... but sometimes an old bull will peel off and a part of the herd will follow... who knows what will happen then... I think if you want wider angle something like a 100-400 zoom will be sufficient.. though... maybe a really wide angle would be cool too... you know what? Ive never tried it... I always went for closer in.... in that wide open territory the herd will NOT be as impressive... but it will be a completly different photo.. and probably quite interesting in its own right... but at that range it will be "see that cloud of dust and that dark area there? "

[Jasper Doest]

A lovely scene...that must have been amazing to witness. Regarding the photographic quality I'd have to say that I'm not really sure if you used the right focallength to capture this. Without the 1.4 extender (or at an even shorter focallenght), the S-curve would have been more obvious...... With a longer focallenght however you could have created a very nice abstract, with the dust and buffalos. Since this happens every year I'm looking forward to see next years photographs at a different focallenght.