May 01

I have a thing for canines. I guess it comes from being around dogs most of my life. Ever since I began shooting natural history images, I've taken any opportunity to shoot images of any type of canine in the wild. To date, my successes can totally be accounted by a few fleeting images of coyotes. In moast cases, they're images of animals moving from one place to another. I'd be out in the woods concentrating on another subject--Big Horn Sheep, Wapiti Elk, Landscapes...--when a coyote would trot on by, nose to the ground, looking warily about. By the time I'd see the coyote, my subjects would detected the predator and move to confront it or simply observe its progress through their space. Each of my coyote images were total surprises, with little or no warning of their arrival. Success was only determined by preparation and careful practice. I've never had an opportunity to stalk or approach a coyote location where patience or persistence are the main ingredients of success. Unlike my experience of shooting hoofed animals, coyotes approach at times of their choosing.

This image was made during my only "non-fleeting" experience with a coyote. The morning started by being surprised by a morning, traveling loner. I had just finished a dawn session shooting the landscape near Jasper Townsite when the coyote trotted down the road without seemingly a care in the world. Did he care about me? He didn't even look in my direction. Wow, I thought. He came within 30 feet of me totally unconcerned. Where's my camera? No where to be seen, it's packed away in the car. No loss, half the point of nature photography is just the experiences. Not everything has to be recorded. At least that's how I consoled myself. I jumped into the car confident I'd seen my last coyote for the morning. I'd never had two encounters in a single day with them despite dozens of trips to Jasper NP. As I made my way towards town, there was another coyote trotting across a field. He was fast approaching a road that I had immediate access to. I quickly turned down the road where I thought his progress would pass and grabed my gear. I fully expected him to see my position and make a detour away. He continued without changing his direction, no concerns in the world. Must of been something in the water because coyotes this morning seemed to be especially cooperative.

My guy walked by the car within 40 feet with only a glance in my direction. I hadn't quite gotten my gear into postion before he approached a small rise only 100 feet away. I thought I'd be lucky if he paused at the top of the ridge and give me a rearward glance. I fired away hoping to get the image in my mind when we sat down staring into the valley beyond the ridge. Everything was coming together except the background was marred by a power-pole and associated power lines. Moving the car forward about ten feet solved the power-pole problem and fortunately eliminated most of the power line. The lighting was just perfect. The backlite made his coat glow and the angle was just enough to prevent the power line from being annoying. Everything was perfect. I only needed him to do something other than stare into the valley beyond.

As if in answer to my request, he began to howl and yip. He called for several minutes and manuevered his rump around to eventually positioned himself fully abreast of my location. Fortunately, I had just enough film to get this image before he departed across the ridge. Wow!

Backlite subjects can be serious problems for most center weighted metering systems. Usually there's enough light coming off the fur to fool these systems. Some techniques require spot metering the subject and applying a -1/3 to -1 1/3EV compensation. This situation probably would've needed about a -2/3 EV off his fur. The F5 does an outstanding job with backlit subjects. Essentially, the F5's Matrix Metering throws out the very bright highlights and uses the rest of the scene to come to an exposure solution. Fortunately it works like a champ for normal toned backlite subjects but tends to overexpose highlights for white or lightly colored subjects like gulls. As you can see, I didn't need any compensation for this situation.

When I got my film back, I was agast at how obvious the power lines were. Even though in realtime I didn't preceive them as being distracting, in the slide they were terribly obvious. The only solution to save this image was to digitally eliminate the power lines. It can be a simple process in Photoshop but digitally altering anything for an all natural image has serious philosophical implications. My only concession to this issue is I try make my images match my vision or what I saw. It's the same reason I use filters on most of my landscapes. In that respect, I make every attempt to inform my viewers the type of image they're seeing. In most cases, my digital tweaking is limited to color adjustments, contrast masks, and applying unsharp masks. These types of adjustments are so common in photography that special annotation isn't required. Anything more, I'll note the alteration as I've done here. The only tool I used to eliminate that power line was the clone tool. This tool is quite powerful and in the right hands can remove any blemish a image could have. Mostly my use of this tool is restricted to deleting dust or scratches that weren't eliminated by my scanner's software. Like it or not, the only thing that saved this image was a touch of digital tweaking.

Cheers,

Tom

6 May 01