One gets a real respect for these amazing animals by putting oneself where they live,in the conditions they encounter. i'd spotted this one from the road,drove away parked up as this storm briefly hit and passed over. My lady looked at me as though I was mad as I scrabbled for gloves hat facemask as the snow come hail, screamed against the van.
Blighty has a mild grey climate compared to what you guys might know,our extremes not really that extreme. But this was pretty hard core for us softies,the wind howling bitterly cold. After this I manged via a big detour(wind direction and light) to get in on a couple right out in some young rape. When one is there no cover no hide on that bitterly cold ground,even with all my layers on,just how these animals survive amazes me. It was utterly brutal,i'm sure now, I have a special kind of madness, just to even convince my self to try for the latter,(part of a group of eight that were boxing ) was frankly insane. These are our hares though and I was so thrilled that the lurcher men hadn't done for all of them I had to try. We have been hard hit but at least some have got past the dogs,which is something. I love what the wind did to her whiskers and guard hairs mind it was ferocious
I feel I could have upped exp by 1/3rd at shutter press and generally could have done better all round,but hey nice to finally have another go. Processed in dpp pic style neutral, colours, gamma, 16bit tiff to PS, masks levels curves nr and sharps two fold, a bit extra to the head brushed in and an edge sharp mask technique I'm learning.
Canon 1Div 400DOii is 1.4ext iii HH while lying on the ground
1/800 f8 iso 5000
Thanks for the comments on my previous images,apologies for the low post count, of late. It#s nice to get back in the saddle with the hares, incredibly cool actually,and my first chance with some white stuff for good measure
Hare in a snowy gale
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