Thoughts on a Bison in a Snowstorm

[Max]

As many of you know, my photo of a bison in a snow storm won the Black and White category of the 55th annual Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition.

Today I published an article about the past encounters in Yellowstone that inspired the creation of this image, as well as my feelings about it.

Max

[obradallen]

A very well deserved honor and thank you for the article link. Congratulations!
Brad

[RikWriter]

Congratulations Max!

[billandkaren]

I saw this posted elsewhere before I saw it here. I believe it was on weather.com and I recognized your name. I feel privileged that you still post here and let us enjoy in your success. Congrats and thanks for posting.

--Bill

[timv]

Congratulations again Max!

Remember when we were in Patagonia shooting the Puma with two cubs in the light snow with the blackened bush? Did you happen to try any snow streaks during that session? I was busy trying to just get a sharp photo of all three pumas but I remember enjoying the effect of the streaks of snow across our viewfinders.

tv

[Max]

Thanks, everyone.

Tim, I couldn't remember if I tried it during that shoot, so I checked the archives. Sure enough...



This was at about 1/25th of a second, so not quite as slow. There are a couple reasons it doesn't work as well, mainly the busy background and the medium tones. Those don't provide enough contrast for the falling snow pattern to be as effective (compared to a dark bison silhouette). And of course, though we had big flakes the snow fall wasn't nearly as heavily as during my bison shoot.

I was extremely happy with the non-blurred shots from that puma shoot, and I keep hoping the family portrait I got from it will hit the mark in one of these big contests (I did just have it displayed at an exhibition in China). The challenge there, if you recall, was to shoot a lot of photos, because it was too easy for the big snowflakes to obscure important details in the pumas' faces.

Max