How did it go? Well, it depends on your perspective. If you were me this morning at 0830 just about ready to shoot a bull moose, life was really kind of bad. My D1h frooze up and stopped working. My D100 batteries just died. I was left schelping Chas' 400 f/2.8 AF-S. I was having a bad morning. You know that spare battery you bought when the camera was new but never used it because the original was working so well? And then, you thought the original would work so well that you didn't even pack the spare on the trip of the year? That's me. Totally didn't bring the spare battery on the trip. Totally didn't bring the battery charger in the car because I thought "what could possibly go wrong". Well, it did. Fortunately, the D1h unfroze itself and I finally got my charger and recharged by D100 battery so the afternoon was muuuuuuch better.

Anyway, has anyone thought technology was overtaking photography? Just look at the above picture. It's a two person data entry command post site. Just sitting on that desk were over 300gigs of storage capacity and several gigahertz of processing ability. Shoot, military laboratories didn't have this much computing power just a few years ago. Here we are using it to process pictures. Geez, where are we going? Actually, it's not that bad. All the benefits of digital photography are being used here. I've already edited today's pics. I checked how things look and plan to take the lessons to tomorrow's shooting. I'm posting this travelog only as a result of digital technology. So, imposing as it is, the digital revolution isn't making life more difficult. It isn't making life easier but it sure isn't any harder.

Today's big subjects were Moose and Big Horn Sheep. This morning alone we saw and shot two bulls--actually Chas was doing the shooting, I was lamenting my fortune with my equipment--and four different cows. Quite a morning. Up towards Maligne Lake, I was telling Chas about this one Moose cow that's been bringing her calves to the lake near the parking lot for years. As I was telling Chas this tale and pulling into the parking lot, he responds, "you mean that cow?" as he pointed to a cow and calf bed down just off the parking lot. God I love it when fortune validates your stories! We stayed for a little while gawking with the other tourists and not really shooting anything. Conditions just weren't right but the experience of walking within 10 feet of a 500 lb animal that didn't/wouldn't give you the time of the day is just awesome anyway you shake it.

The afternoon was spent with a large group of Big Horn Sheep rams. Over 18 were in this gang. We got to use lenses ranging from my 14mm f/2.8 to Chas' 400mm f/2.8 AF-S with teleconverters. The subjects were very cooperative. Actually, that's an understatement; they were extremely cooperative. Chas made the observation "what's the difference between this and shooting animals in a captive environment?" I guess nothing. I don't see how anyone could've had subjects more cooperative. The image below was of the last subject of the day. He was definitely a handsome fellow with an outstanding background. It's a neat picture for lots of reasons but I like it because I shot it with my 300mm f/2.8, TC-20e, and D1h. That's 900mm's of lens at work here. It's very sharp--okay, if you're really picky you can see in the original file a small bit of softness but then I doubt anything could pass your muster if you think this image is unacceptable. Still, it was a nice end to a wonderful day even if I was standing around with my hands in my pockets taking care of Chas' 400mm for a short time. See you all tomorrow.

Cheers

Tom