Fly Like A Weasel
Fly Like A Weasel - Juvenile Long-tailed Weasel takes flight with with a To Go(pher) meal In an amazing feat of agility, these young hunter snagged a Botta's Pocket Gopher from it's burrow and switfly dispatched it. This happened so quickly, I wasn't aware. I then noticed this little guy kept picking up and dropping his prey.
I knew I had very little time to act so I positioned myself in the direction he was headed, lay down and fired away nabbing the frame I wanted. Bringing the Nikkor 500 f/4G made all the difference as the Nikkor 200-500 f/5.6 was just too slow to focus last time.
Since I acquired the Nikon D850 last November, it has been a major goal of mine to capture action images with the same level of artistic composition and detail as static portraits. I feel that capturing artistic action images is one of most difficult challenges of wildlife photography, and was one of the holes in my skillset as a photographer. I've invested a lot of time reading up on the Nikon Autofocus system and am slowly starting to develop my skills. I still have long way to go, but achieving this weasel prey jump image was a huge step in the right direction! It is amazing how much technology has advanced in digital photography. Modern equipment allows us to capture images that were simply impossible to capture decades ago during the film days. The only thing holding us back is our imagination and technical understanding
Species: Long-tailed Weasel (Mustela frenata) + Botta's Pocket Gopher (Thomomys bottae)
Equipment: Nikon D850 + Nikkor 500mm f4G ED VR
Settings: 1/3200s, ISO: 400, f/5.0 @500mm, -0.3 EV, Handheld
Fly Like A Weasel
Fly Like A Weasel - Juvenile Long-tailed Weasel takes flight with with a To Go(pher) meal In an amazing feat of agility, these young hunter snagged a Botta's Pocket Gopher from it's burrow and switfly dispatched it. This happened so quickly, I wasn't aware. I then noticed this little guy kept picking up and dropping his prey.
I knew I had very little time to act so I positioned myself in the direction he was headed, lay down and fired away nabbing the frame I wanted. Bringing the Nikkor 500 f/4G made all the difference as the Nikkor 200-500 f/5.6 was just too slow to focus last time.
Since I acquired the Nikon D850 last November, it has been a major goal of mine to capture action images with the same level of artistic composition and detail as static portraits. I feel that capturing artistic action images is one of most difficult challenges of wildlife photography, and was one of the holes in my skillset as a photographer. I've invested a lot of time reading up on the Nikon Autofocus system and am slowly starting to develop my skills. I still have long way to go, but achieving this weasel prey jump image was a huge step in the right direction! It is amazing how much technology has advanced in digital photography. Modern equipment allows us to capture images that were simply impossible to capture decades ago during the film days. The only thing holding us back is our imagination and technical understanding
Species: Long-tailed Weasel (Mustela frenata) + Botta's Pocket Gopher (Thomomys bottae)
Equipment: Nikon D850 + Nikkor 500mm f4G ED VR
Settings: 1/3200s, ISO: 400, f/5.0 @500mm, -0.3 EV, Handheld