Morn' on the Prairie

[Mike Fuhr]

The other morning I left my house at 4 a.m. to drive 1.5 hours for the opportunity to photograph prairie chickens at sunrise. Unfortunately, I never saw the sun as clouds made their way across the sky during my drive only to reach the eastern horizon before sun up. So instead of sitting in my blind, I drove around looking for things to shoot in some very low light conditions. I managed to find a few bison who were grazing on the horizon as the east began to glow a bit. I set up may camera and popped off a few shots in the heavy wind. I ended up getting a few shots I liked so all was not lost. This was one of them. I actually converted this one to sepia tone and liked what resulted. I'd love to know what you think.

D300
100-300 (w 1.4x) @ 420
1/100
F/5.6 (-1.67)
ISO 400

[Steve Canuel]

Nice mood on this one Mike. I like the fact you got separation between all four legs and the layers of color in the sky. May just be me but the warmer colors of the sky make me think sunset rather than sunrise. Would expect more pinks. Regardless, works for me.

[Rachel Hollander]

Mike - I too like the mood and the separation. Interesting about the sepia tone, not something I would have thought to try. I see some noise in the darker portions of the sky so maybe a round of selective NR.

TFS,
Rachel

[Mike Fuhr]

Steve: I hadn't thought about the colors of sunrises vs. sunsets like that -- interesting though. You may be right about this shot seeming more like a sunset.

Rachel: I noticed it too but I don't mind the little bit of noise on this one since it's far removed from the subject...

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Mike, I like the perspective on this one and the slight incline works well.

Personally I might run some NR to smooth out the BG and then make the Bison & lower half as dark as possible, removing any slight detail so it becomes a silhouette. Not sure if I would call this Sepia, but I like the way it has turned out, worth the drive.

TFS
Steve