Friday, November 4, 2011

Large bull moose, Grand Teton National Park

Photograph of a large bull moose with velvet antlers sniffing the air

This handsome fellow is the largest moose that we saw during our visit to Grand Teton National Park in September. We found him feeding fairly close to the road as we drove along the Gros Ventre River corridor before sunrise.

Since I was shooting in pre-dawn light, I had to jack up the ISO for these shots. To get a reasonable shutter speed of 1/100 of a second (which was still a bit of underexposure), I pushed the camera to ISO 3200. At the time I was thinking, "why am I even bothering trying to shoot under these conditions?" -- since it seemed like it was just too dark to get anything decent. But then I quickly realized that I have no idea when the next time I'll be this close to a large bull moose will be, and of course, pixels are free, so I kept shooting. I'm really glad that I did as well, since I was impressed with the quality of the images when I reviewed them later. I had never really shot at such a high ISO before, and sure, there's a fair amount of noise (especially before any correction in LR3) and they aren't tack sharp, but overall they came out pretty good considering the conditions.

Large bull moose with velvet antlers in Grand Teton National Park

View more photos of moose in my Moose Gallery


11 comments:

  1. Looks like this guy is smiling for the camera, Pat. Made me smile, too.

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  2. Wonderful photos! How great to get to see this big and beautiful moose! Greetings Susanne

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  3. he's amazing. so are your photos. :)

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  4. Working that ISO is something I need to do more I think. Very nice.

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  5. Imagine, shooting at 3200 ISO, thank you technology! Just look at the results; an excellent take. I'll bet this is nearly the whole frame, I suppose you probably couldn't crop to much at that ISO even with great post processing. The thing is, dawn is dawn, and you preserved that wonderful misty eyed, early morning vibe!
    Thanks for sharing Pat

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  6. how amazing to see this in the wild; beautiful photographs Pat.

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  7. lol Pat..... I have to bump up the iso all the time here in the north west of the uk as its always gloomy.

    Super images mate and as you say pixels are free you did very well.

    PS that is one mighty beast.

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  8. Really like that first shot Pat ... and I need to experiment a bit more with my ISO!

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  9. Wow, very impressive! Their are such interesting and big animal! Great shot's ;)

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