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98652 Sandhill Cranes

Back in the days of film, you didn't have the option of boosting the ISO to extremely high values when light levels dropped low. You had to improvise. This may have led to more creative approaches to problem solving (there being more problems to solve). One evening in New Mexico, as the cranes flew in after sunset, I had pushed my roll of Fujichrome one stop (to ISO 200!) but my shutter speeds were still very slow. Rather than quit, I just kept shooting, hoping I would get a lucky image using motion blur.

 

I resisted the temptation, during scanning and processing, to remove or minimize the grain in this shot. I like it. To me, the cranes look ethereal, almost like angels.

 

Photographed at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, New Mexico. Scanned from the original Fujichrome Provia 100 slide (with a 1-stop push). The camera body was a Nikon F100, the lens a Nikon 300 mm + 1.4x teleconverter. Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission © 2003 James R. Page - all rights reserved.

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Uploaded on April 5, 2017
Taken on November 22, 2003