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Landscape and Portraits: Pronghorn Deer Running

Lesson 21 from: The Art of Wildlife Photography

Tom Mangelsen

Landscape and Portraits: Pronghorn Deer Running

Lesson 21 from: The Art of Wildlife Photography

Tom Mangelsen

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Lesson Info

21. Landscape and Portraits: Pronghorn Deer Running

Lesson Info

Landscape and Portraits: Pronghorn Deer Running

one two three four five six seven problem we're not there um maybe one dough and rest look like bucks and this one bigger buck who was kind of chasing the either the other males they're not really into the red quite yet they're just sort of toying with each other so we'll walk a little ways and just try to get a few portions of the individual animals and and so this is not a landscape shot um there's some power land through there so that would ruin any landscape shot seems like there's a lot of power lines in the world always interruptus could be kind of monkey should be careful but too bad the bucks walking this week is is interested in the girls so now he's feeding so he's not that interested he doesn't care about us see this so that's good so we could move a little closer would you bring this six hundred and a tripod and it's in the car like to get a closer portrait just and not long enough so that the buck is going over to the herd and there's some other young bucks here and the do...

or too so we're just gonna amble of their slowly and try to get a portrait of him he's quite nice I think the light is pretty flat but we get the right angle he's taking off now running he's chasing the female he's basically keep keeping his harem together so he was certain he will circle the harem make sure all the girls the wonder this guy's a sub dominant male here and he's trying to sneak in so we try to just approach slowly again came we can wait weaken he's gone on beyond the herd now little bit to make sure there's no lying ladies if we just go up there but this power pole and hang out here likely come back sir baywatch the background fence because it's distracting and we like to think that the and labor wild and free home on the range kind of stuff in the election be fenced in and that is the force over here so more fences for grazing cattle with this light he's got a back light I love back like most of time but mila dates harsh and crappy so we're going to try to move around that direction to get more sidelight more front light because it will be more attractive beautiful that yellow grass and see other light now is rimming his back and wait till you see it'll catch light in his eye I just hope you get it I just got it what do you see it look catch light if you ease isar sort of looking pretty black right now in the senate high so hard get running chasing the female now watch behind you for the other buck that's bigger who might want around his girlfriend's up he's looking this way what he's not too excited to hut okay let's go a little move a little closer that was pretty nice huh let's look at this one well tim did the right thing and he got both running antelope pronghorn as we call them and the history graham is perfect it's right in the centre but again it's just one peep because this monochromatic kind of nothing is looking at the detail you should at one hundred twenty fifth of a second and have twenty that's a lot of depth of field but not very fast but maybe it shows the in love movement which it does it has state motion blur which we'll talk about motion blur is cool you did it accidentally you're cool okay well I assume or did you do it on purpose okay lower the f stop he had way more he had he had f twenty all he needed was f eleven at f eleven he would have been a thousandth of a second it would've froze but actually I thought about the bird motion when they were running and if you do that you won't actually do it maybe even slower than the one point if they do like a sixty four thirty where's the legs are blurred so keep that in mind if you want to freeze it watch your what's your shutter speed are uh stop lower an amateur priority though he I didn't realize that when he was changing his f stop it's changing his shutter speed for him so he's not choosing both so bitter priority with again I recommend temperature priority over shutter part if you're shooting race cars all day long maybe horse races the runners and you want everything frozen skiers you may choose shutter priority when everything in a thousandth of a second and you say okay everything a thousand second they're worried by that stuff or depth of field watch is eloping running again tom his s o setting what would you recommend it's a two hundred I would put up to four hundred on the scare six forty six forty that influences if you're an average your priority this one dyle we'll change you can go from blurred motion you with this one day that average library you could go from blurred motion watch the shutter watch the what happens you're dating eight thousand here five for six you move that quickly like that one thousand f eighteen your four hundred twenty nine three twenty thirty two that's as far as you get that with this is that z you know that smacking me out both hood with one by on that's a bit of effort for priority you could look at that pay attention to your f stop your should be that one time in the camera could look through and see exactly what that's doing for you you weren't paying attention but you've got a nice picture he's gonna raise hell uh I'm going down my shutter speed to do some blurred motion stuff and I've got a crate down don't my so to do it that was nice huh it was you guys get it yes so what I did there and I didn't want to do it you could you could do it the geese are coming here somewhere you're going to go in front of the mountains where the okay to look so on a nice long run like that ah it laura is so I could have very quickly froze him a two thousandth of a second and also shot him in a twentieth of a second which would have blurred him I did it right at the end and be blurred motion when you're doing the emotion you have to be pretty much on a tripod or panning really carefully at the same speed to animal is moving because you have to something sharp preferably the eyeball of the animal or looks like you two screwed up you know use blurry but if you could he'll do it again maybe so I'm going to shoot some blurred motion I'm issued some to thousands of a second to freeze him an average of priority and want to crank it down they have stopped down to like after thirty two which will slow the shutter speed to twenty thirty forty fifty there's no exactly right blurred motion but somewhere between sixtieth and fifteenth will blur him a different you know that fifteen to just be a blurring mass that could be cool no my cheetah picture the cheetah chasing the gazelle I shot it at a twentieth of a second for this twelve hundred millimetre the same lens with the two x extender not that I really screwed up that was my lucky one like you just did does the hot cheese because I was shooting a portrait I had an f twenty two at a twentieth of a second and also cheated took off chasing the gazelle and I was headed on a bean bag in a land rover and I followed I fought with that much depth feel everything isn't at the field I looked at my camera on my cot it was only a twentieth of a second it that well it could be really cool there's going to be terrible and it's in the new book this one my best selling image so it was a lucky accident of a griller running something we're shooting the true because I won a lot of depth of field in rwanda there's hold true preserves I wanted the portrait was so dark I headed like a fifteenth of a second I'll send the silverback took off chasing a younger silver buck just like the back just like these guys are kissing each other and it happened so quickly and I just went with it and it was like a twelfth of aside our fiftieth of a second and he's totally blurred again one of my most favorite pictures so you do have lucky breaks she can do it on purpose which is better so if he runs again that one's wanting off he's coming back I'm curious his other book isn't isn't intercepting him but he's he's this guy's pretty horny and he's going back to his girls if another young buck comes in he might do this again which I think about doing the blurred motion on purpose so slow down your s o to say four hundred or two hundred to a hundred put on two hundred and then try to follow follow him and keep him in focus did matter of stuff is really this show is because what you're worried about so you want to show speed is under six six year under and so whatever f stop it ends up at it'll be high automatically but if you if you're on s o two hundred it won't be that high so two hundred four hundred okay let's look and see what this I'm it's I also three twenty now ah okay I met three twenty its one hundredth of a second at f forty s o still too high so I'm gonna put it two one hundred and now I've stopped no I showed us be ran between a fortieth over there and a twentieth over there because the light is a little different my shutter speed was between a twentieth of for years from there to there I was looking at it and that uh stop was forty so I have tons of tons of in depth but I'm not so worried about that that just upset because everything is blurry so if you wanna look here I'll show you what the blood motion does can you see this incense prawn horns of the fastest mammal in north america you want him to make look you wantto make him look fast right so when you blur their motion they look fast they're running and freezing them they don't look fast so this is one animal is a post of bison you could do it in two okay so now so now I'm in there only be maybe two one three or four images that will the eyeball or something will be sharp and the work so it's kind of if it's a once in a lifetime saying that you only seat run once you probably want to freeze it is a bosom blurred angela run that's what they dio so another chance so I went from this's like um well you go look at it the details are ah five hundred the second he is pretty frozen at a five hundred k pretty frozen he's moving fast and then I go ahead do the snow shutter speed and then he goes from a forest you're going left I'm still faster probably okay he's at a hundredth of a second so he's still kind of semi sharpe not really blurred but his feet are his legs are moving and their little blurred but then I'm going to go a little further and you know he looks pretty cool running you see that we moved here we got the list right now he's going back now see what happens see these how blue there they're running together and it looks like a kind of like a cave painting you know like on those now with see with the dad is it's a fortieth if I remember reading it right it's a twenty fifth of a second at forty really blurred but kind of cool if you know if I stayed with him at the right speed you know we ran out of the frame now that's that kind of cool look at this it's his feet and legs it totally blurred and that but the body is fairly sharp because I panned with him so now I'm shooting at a one twentieth of that forty I s o one hundred with the with the one thousand millimeter lenses six entered the one seven so that's equivalent of a thousand moment leads so it's it's kind of it's fun to play with freezing action blurring motion and with this sort of city light you you have to do something special you know just another standing portrait pronghorn diamond does so this is a great little lesson about approaching animals are going slowly taking time stopping letting them eat see they raise your head and you stop and start feeding and so they're consumed in mating they're not at the peak of meeting right now in rut but there were two two bucks that were out there and there keeping their home together and one chased off a tiny buck and he was beautiful we had this nice run by this way and you came running back to the herd and you run back that way so I had the opportunity to shoot him in a very fast shutter speed to freeze him at a five hundred or thousands or to thousands of a second we talked about that a bit and then we talked about blurred motion in an animal's like pronghorn who are the fastest animals in north america it's cool to make them look like they're going fast so it's it's fun and special too do blurred motion and shoot them like a twentieth or thirty three fifteen through you know steven maybe a eighth of a second so we did it both ways and we have some examples we can look at later so it looks like they're really moving fast you can barely see their legs they have just blurred anyway so the other ones where you see every harry and hoof dropping out of thousands of a second so that was they gave us a good opportunity there too teo um do that do run by three times for forgiveness is great to have several chances so after all of those images you end up with a handful if you're lucky you know and so this would be obviously one of the nice portrait so the highlight any I um even with that harsh light but that certain angle it looks pretty nice in that grass and then uh you know the blurred motion that must be like a three fifteen seconds so it is the same animal you know just different shooters doing different things and out of those out of all those images we had to that we're kind of happy with hey I know that but is that is that realistic for you though that's realistic if I go home with one good picture day I'm happy you know I love sitting on and I just want to read a comment really quick I'm watching from australia with my two year old thank you for so much information sharing your settings a true gentleman who is willing to show others and take people to his favorite spots for images once in a lifetime opportunity those students have would treasure this opportunity myself I know they did is well so I want to say thank you to spencer jennifer becky and tim students who are out there with tom for this appreciate very very cool gregory stupid is a really fun way great time as you can tell yeah absolutely also since this was the last of the technique kind of section I want to say thank you also to brian our producer to stow who is and to stephen cervantes stones the who's actually directing this particular broadcast we're doing right now and they went out and they were the guys who did the appreciates and they didn't amazing job great first question here from jenny and then also from john wallis jenny wants to know why is catch light important in the eyes particularly and then john wallace do you ever add a catch light in post okay yeah you're good catch like this makes animal alive that's all just it just adds that life you know to the animal it's with a dark black eye especially animals like bears were really small eyes very difficult to get catch late when you do it it makes it better that he goes with birds everything and no I have never added catch light in post I was gonna go over here in the last couple of videos we saw you on exposure and would not you mentioned if you're going to air air on a site of under exposure did I hear that correct in a sense I'm more interested in keeping detail in the highlights like in the clouds and the snow and the sand or whatever it is that's a personal thing other people who may be more interested in the shattered detail and then there's times like talk about the bear or the bison where you want the details a hair so then you would would open it up or you change it so that you depends on what you're shooting but I tend to want to I'm not so concerned about you saying the grill a picture showed earlier it was a black background on the grill was a foreground had a white you know shiny nose I was interested in keeping that that shiny nose with detail and I didn't really care much about the shadow behind him so I tend to you know and I think most photographers want to keep detail in the highlights in other words the light spots you want to be ableto see that detail in the snow of possible a lot in reality like clouds why cause there's really no detail in a white cloud that you you know you can see so you also khun you know say it's not reality so don't worry too much about it but attend toe always keep the history graham off the right side which is over exposure overexposed pictures as you saw in the teton uh arm or boring say or there's a detail in that snow in the face of the mountain there's a really light picture where you when you made it darker you got more dramatic and it was still salvageable according to the history graham so that's always just preference of keeping detail ing in the light areas because there's one feel of thought always uses the accurate him shoot to the right stt r so they're always talking about you always wanted you wantto have because all the colors are on there right on the dark side there's no color to recapture another three and that that is great for those people that you know I like it that way and my my technical guy says always or expose more than you do but I'm sort of the old school with film some film school and always err on over not over exposing but that's because I'm an old dog hi there you've given us a ton of information about different techniques for all sorts of things but one of the things I haven't heard you mention is hdr to use hdr it seems to me a few times but I haven't been very successful with it thank you over here as well with that okay I've got one coming up here jolla and one of the person in a lot of other people earlier any tips on birds in flight anything special you do for them well is my professor who have mentioned yesterday who was my mentor and my my first bird photographer teacher I said you have to you know birds a flight shooted five hundred of a second that was in film days when esos were fifty or sixty four or maybe a hundred and five hundredth of a second will basically stop a bird in flight most birds of flight you know not small birds not like hummingbirds and things like that but ducks geese swans but today with being able to shoot higher I s s I tend to shoot birds of the thousands of a second or even a two thousand if I want to freeze them but a lot of times you like that little motion blur on ends the wings so then you go maybe two two fifty three fifty or five hundred two you'll get that little bit of motion blur so they look like they're flying so it's much like the pronghorn uh you can shoot him again it fifteenth of a second like those cranes that were ah picture of cranes earlier where they were just sort of these bodies with with really blurred wings so basically five hundredth of a second for shooting larger birds in flight I got one from kim wits with tchaikovsky and one other person have you ever tried taking pictures of the animals from far away from the camera and using a remote or on a timer expecting the animal to get close to the camera tripod camera tripod up going far away and we're triggering it remotely right and that's what that little um gizmo was yesterday I forgot the name of it now but it's good for like five hundred feet of use all kinds of radio remotes and if you read remotes and put them you know near ness or say that carcass with the the one aka carcass with the pumas yesterday that was camera that it could have set you know remote I mean it could have tripped it remotely but he decided to use it near kilometer which is on a timer instead and of course there's kind of traps that are emotion censored which you know well we'll shoot when something moves in front of it andi uh there's lots of ways of doing a yacht's those especially these these new little remote's on that thing is like eighty nine dollars or something so it's really inexpensive a much more inexpensive than he used to be of course nikon makes all kinds of those kinds of things to maybe maybe you could send me one what does tom think about the use of predator calls quite a few photographers and they put photographers in quotes use them in alaska I used to use them when they first started like in nebraska for coyotes and things that foxes I haven't used one since um I suppose that's one of those um it is a kind of unethical thing it's not nothing really big deal about it but if if too many people do that they use a lot for hunting you know they're calling in foxes and and wolves and coyotes and and that's how they kill them you tracked you know elka bugling let's if I have enough people to blow out the back door to here the elk in the neighbourhood everyone so well when you're sitting in the hot tub just for kicks you know uh butt and uh you know obviously group of duck calls and who calls and stuff so I you know it's kind of neither here nor there I guess I just think maybe hopefully people don't overdo it so the same animal isn't wasting a lot of time going to a predator call and not actually going to a dying rabbit so major taken away that but it's just not a big deal but um most parks places like that dont allow them but they don't want you to use them on dh so I tend not to anymore but depends on the location one from eso a final one here from mel hughes and one of the person I want to know this when you're looking to get really accurate color do you ever use like a color checker of some kind something you hold up take a picture of and then use that to get an accurate reading off of in post no well I suppose I mean we we just our monitors you know monthly that kind of thing check the color on the monitor make sure that they're up to snuff but not in the field

Class Materials

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Last Great Wild Places
Adorama Gear Guide
Elk in the Willows
Elk River Crossing
Lighting at Magic Hour

Ratings and Reviews

a Creativelive Student
 

There is probably just one word that comes closest to describing Tom Mangelsen’s photography. Glorious. There are other good words too, of course. And they are also inadequate. Mangelsen’s panoramas are (cumulatively and separately (any one of them)) the best I’ve seen. Mangelsen teaches by example and his examples are exemplary. I’ve seen several photographers giving courses on CreativeLive lately many of whose photos I would love to have taken - but with Mangelsen I envy his possession not just of his photos but of their subjects too. And he does possess his subjects in ways many outstanding photographers fail to - possesses them and then leaves them to continue on with their lives. There are other reasons I’m grateful for this course too - his field trips and critiques have shown me (as with other CreativeLive courses) just how lazy I’m being with my work. And if his critiques aren’t motivation enough I only have to view his slide show ‘Last Great Wild Places’ for more inspiration. The photos in this series are revelations all on their own - even without commentary. Thank you CreativeLive for continuing to bring us the finest wildlife and nature photographers at work today - and thank you to photographers like Tom Mangelsen for giving us a look at the way they work.

user-5a9732
 

I could not stop watching this class and set aside time each day until I finished it. I guess you could saw that I binge watched it. Then I was really sad when it was finished! Like a good movie that stays with you and that you don't want to end! This is a wonderful class and the best I have taken at CreativeLive. I learned so much and have a great fondness for Tom Mangelsen. He really knows how to pull you into his passion. I am so grateful to have taken this course and grateful to Tom for all that he has done in his career to further his craft and to share it. I am inspired! If you are going to purchase and course from CreativeLive, this is one to be sure to take!!! Thank you again.

Dub Maitland
 

Excellent class! An incredibly talented photographer who has a vast knowledge of the subject matter as well as an outstanding ability to deliver the information. It was as enjoyable as it was informative. I first saw Tom's work in an office in Denver in 1991 and have been inspired by him ever since. Thank you Creative Live, for giving us the opportunity to spend this time with the Master! And thank you Tom for your willingness to share your talent with us! Dub Maitland, Missoula, MT.

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