(*see my November 12th post below for info about the pair of wolves that were killed recently by a rival pack)
After many of you photogs shamed me into putting together the "Yellowstone in Winter" slide program (after I failed to show it at the recent Little Rock program), I discovered that I had a 19-shot sequence of a sleeping pack of wolves that I got to use in the new show (there are 9 or 10 wolves in this shot). It was snowing very heavily, and this pack was all bedded down about 3/4's of a mile away from our location. A group of us "wolfarattazi" stood there in the blowing snow trying to get any sort of shot, but it was tough, even with very long and expensive glass (due to the great distance and the heavy snow - we could hardly see the wolves at all, but a little levels helps bring them out).
In the sequence that is in the new program this lone wolf gets up and roams around the pack and then starts to play with something - a hide or other tasty morsel - then he lays down - only one other wolf in the pack ever bothered to look up, and the lone wolf is the only thing in the frame that ever moves. It makes an interesting sequence in the new show. As a photographer, if you get the chance to come to one of these programs in the next six weeks I highly recommend it - there are a lot of nice close-up images of wolves and other wildlife too.... (Here is the slide program schedule - everything is free and open to the public, although the World Trade Center did not want me to advertise their program next week since they will be serving some "good" refreshments and did not too many people to show up!) Conway and Springdale next week.
Posted by Mark Pelton on November 8, 2007 at 10:40 PM
Superb shot, Tim.
Posted by David Bush on November 8, 2007 at 11:35 PM
That must have been a really long lens! Nice shot with the one active wolf. I get a sense of the environment, blowing snow, wind and cold. I'd be bedded down some where to.
David
Posted by Tim Buchanan on November 9, 2007 at 12:04 AM
I plan on seeing the Nature Center show here in Springfield - I always look forward to your slide shows!
Posted by Larry Daniel on November 9, 2007 at 7:43 AM
brrrrr
Posted by Tom Kennon on November 9, 2007 at 9:28 AM
Tim, see you in FS on the 19th.
Posted by Jason C. Doss on November 9, 2007 at 10:12 AM
Nice one! Kind of hard to tell which are the wolves and which are the rocks. Actually, now that I have a closer look... did you throw that wolf a frisbee?
Tim,
What a great image! I'd love to see the sequence, unfortunately, Arkansas and Missouri are a little far for me to travel for the slide show. Have you considered posting a little animated sequence on Cloudland.net? I think that sounds like a great idea!
Tim cool I will try to make it for sure in FS
Thanks for the info. I know I'll want to go back to Yellowstone as soon as I see the slideshow.
Posted by TIMERNST on November 10, 2007 at 8:24 AM
Dominic:
I just made a web version of this show - the pixel size is less than half this image size aboe, the wolfs are dots at that size, the file size is 48mb, and the quality is, well, about what you would expect from a web show that has been down-rezzed from a fullsize, high-res program of tiff files (I use a special program from Germany to produce my shows, and the tiff files remain at full resolution and are never compressed or turned into jpgs - the quality difference with every other program of its kind is amazing). In other words, the few people who would endure the long download would be greatly disappointed in the image quality! This is the main reason we still don't produce DVDs of our shows - the image quality of DVDs is still crap when compared to what you see on the big screen at full resolution tiff. (And the web movies are only 15 frames a second while my slide programs are 60 frames a second - that makes quite a difference in the moving image quality too). One of these days they will get the technology down and we'll be able to do this, but for now image quality remains the most important factor, and it is terrible an anything other than fullrez.
I think there are only two rocks in the photo - the rest are wolves. We think that must have been some sort of hide or some other dead object he was throwing up. The lens was a 500mm with 1.7x converter on a 1.5x crop camera (1275mm), and it was cropped a little bit so more like a 1500mm scene.
By the way, while we were standing around in the blowing show waiting for the wolves to do something, anything, a colorful coyote walked right up to us on the highway - no one noticed him until he was about 20 feet away from the group of "wolfaratizzies" - there is a shot or two of him in the slide show too, plus one of the photogs.
Here is a shot of the same Druid Pack of wolves taken about two hours before, also shot with a very long lens - Druid Pack.
Tim, I know what you mean about DVD quality. I have tried some DVD slideshows, and frankly, they are embarrassing to show(IMO). I hope that high definition/Blue-Ray or whatever sticks around will be a big step in the right direction. I think good compression is the key. As for web stuff, I forgot that file size would be so large even at pretty poor quality. Thanks for the update.
Posted by TIMERNST on November 12, 2007 at 11:49 PM
We just found out that two of the wolves that are in the new slide program - the alpha female and alpha male of the Hayden Pack that we photographed on a kill that was just 100 yards away (different pack than these in the photo above) - were killed by the rival Mollie's Pack a few days ago. The alpha female was a beautiful white lady that you could not help but fall in love with. She was also the boss of her pack - that is the way it is with wolves, it is the female that rules the roost (kind of like in human packs too!).
One thing the wolves in Yellowstone show us is the constant life and death struggle they must endure each day. It is not always pretty, and often quite sad, but is the way of the world.
Discussion
11 repliesAfter many of you photogs shamed me into putting together the "Yellowstone in Winter" slide program (after I failed to show it at the recent Little Rock program), I discovered that I had a 19-shot sequence of a sleeping pack of wolves that I got to use in the new show (there are 9 or 10 wolves in this shot). It was snowing very heavily, and this pack was all bedded down about 3/4's of a mile away from our location. A group of us "wolfarattazi" stood there in the blowing snow trying to get any sort of shot, but it was tough, even with very long and expensive glass (due to the great distance and the heavy snow - we could hardly see the wolves at all, but a little levels helps bring them out).
In the sequence that is in the new program this lone wolf gets up and roams around the pack and then starts to play with something - a hide or other tasty morsel - then he lays down - only one other wolf in the pack ever bothered to look up, and the lone wolf is the only thing in the frame that ever moves. It makes an interesting sequence in the new show. As a photographer, if you get the chance to come to one of these programs in the next six weeks I highly recommend it - there are a lot of nice close-up images of wolves and other wildlife too.... (Here is the slide program schedule - everything is free and open to the public, although the World Trade Center did not want me to advertise their program next week since they will be serving some "good" refreshments and did not too many people to show up!) Conway and Springdale next week.
David
What a great image! I'd love to see the sequence, unfortunately, Arkansas and Missouri are a little far for me to travel for the slide show. Have you considered posting a little animated sequence on Cloudland.net? I think that sounds like a great idea!
Thanks for the info. I know I'll want to go back to Yellowstone as soon as I see the slideshow.
I just made a web version of this show - the pixel size is less than half this image size aboe, the wolfs are dots at that size, the file size is 48mb, and the quality is, well, about what you would expect from a web show that has been down-rezzed from a fullsize, high-res program of tiff files (I use a special program from Germany to produce my shows, and the tiff files remain at full resolution and are never compressed or turned into jpgs - the quality difference with every other program of its kind is amazing). In other words, the few people who would endure the long download would be greatly disappointed in the image quality! This is the main reason we still don't produce DVDs of our shows - the image quality of DVDs is still crap when compared to what you see on the big screen at full resolution tiff. (And the web movies are only 15 frames a second while my slide programs are 60 frames a second - that makes quite a difference in the moving image quality too). One of these days they will get the technology down and we'll be able to do this, but for now image quality remains the most important factor, and it is terrible an anything other than fullrez.
I think there are only two rocks in the photo - the rest are wolves. We think that must have been some sort of hide or some other dead object he was throwing up. The lens was a 500mm with 1.7x converter on a 1.5x crop camera (1275mm), and it was cropped a little bit so more like a 1500mm scene.
By the way, while we were standing around in the blowing show waiting for the wolves to do something, anything, a colorful coyote walked right up to us on the highway - no one noticed him until he was about 20 feet away from the group of "wolfaratizzies" - there is a shot or two of him in the slide show too, plus one of the photogs.
Here is a shot of the same Druid Pack of wolves taken about two hours before, also shot with a very long lens - Druid Pack.
One thing the wolves in Yellowstone show us is the constant life and death struggle they must endure each day. It is not always pretty, and often quite sad, but is the way of the world.
Here is my favorite photo of the Alpha Female, Hayden Pack.