Attached Link: Arizona Game and Fish Photography Contest Winner

Arizona Game and Fish held a photography contest to find the best wildlife photos to use in their new calendar. This is a video by the winner of that contest. He explains the process of how he got his entries.  Thought you might enjoy hearing what wildlife photography at its best is all about.

Thanks, PJ.   I have not seen the video yet but will soon.  The relatively few truly wild wildlife photos I have done are small critters in general and a coyote and turkey or two...not particularily good shots.   This is not an easy task and in some cases location is the deciding factor before you even leave your camp or room to go hunting.    I will see how this winner does it...thanks for the link.          Tom.

He uses some pretty specialized equipment.  As a photographer, I have not been nearly as successful at capturing wildlife as I was as a HUNTER.  While hunting, I found out that the person who can keep still and keep their mouth shut will have a much higher success ratio than the figety talky person. 

Dan, you are so right on that. : )

I once sat on a small mountain side in the Senoran Desert with my sister on a deer hunt in the desert.  I had cactus behind me, rocks under my butt and as the fridgid morning opened up into a blazingly sunny day, I began to feel cross-eyed from glassing the valley below and the hill beyond. I lowered the binoculars to wipe the sweat from my face and realized I had a tarantula only 4 inches from my left knee and moving in!  Suffice it to say, we were not successful in our hunt. After 4 hours of freezing, boiling, itching and getting past the ache of pointy rocks under my rear, I jumped up. Not that I was afraid of the huge spider, but had it crawled in my lap, I would have become more than twitchy anyway.

Enough sudden movement to let any self-repecting deer know where we were.  But we had a great time finding a valley empty of deer, and two days and a new location later, we finally got our prize. :-)

Nothing is sexier than women with guns.  The spider was probably more afraid than you were. 

Sometimes when it rains on the Apache Trail going to Canyon lake, you can see the tarantulas migrating across the highway in small herds. 

I used to drive from San Antonio to Mexico during the migration season. Just to catch them. They'd be all over the back roads. I spot 'em, stop 'em and put them in tortilla warmers in the back of my van. Take them home and set up tanks of Brown Mexican tarantulas. They are not the most friendly of tarantulas but every once in a while, I'd put my hand in the tank and let one or two walk up me just to prove I wasn't a panty-waist. :-) I love to watch them dine. Almost as interesting as watching our "pet" diamondbacks in the tank in the living room dine.

That was a great video, one of the basic requirements of nature photography is the equipment to capture the subject and know how to use it to the maximum.  The second is patience and the third as was pointed out is lots and lots of planning.  Even with all of that there is still a degree of good luck which works for you because of the devotion of the previous.

A number of years ago in an attempt to capture a specific fish hatching in the outer Fiji Islands a number of us took shifts underwater waiting on the eggs to hatch, we spent  hours underwater each day for almost a week poised with cameras just waiting, amazing how the cold penetrates a wetsuit when you don't move around.  Lots of planning to be on a remote reef in the Pacific, really great camera equipment with full Nikon support staff, lots of patience, and in the end ... no photo.  That is nature photography! mark

Hi Mark.  It is nice to hear that story, but I am sorry it happened to you like that.

Spiders lovers, a sight I would love to see again but likely will  not is a frog migration. I honestly don't know where they were going but is happened twice at night in driving rain.  The simply were crossing the road in huundreds all going the same direction. This was see in fog lights (I held back saying frog lights) and there was a totally unavoidable softened thumb thumb as I crossed that area.  I wonder if they crossed back later?

Those woods and fields absent of game are faimilar to me and I actually know how to be quiet and unobtrusive in the wild when needed.

 

I live only a very few miles from Davis, California - home of the second largest population of tree huggers in Northern California. Home of UofC's ag college. The town had a secondary population of frogs that did a migration across a busy street, so they voted to spend an amazing amount of money to build tunnels under the road so the frogs could cross without being smushed on the blacktop. Didn't work. The frogs just don't use the tunnels and still get smushed.

The local Boy Scouts should come to the rescue and station tenderfeet there to help the frogs cross the road.