The Lunge
On Sunday we came across a small group of buffalo walking down the road when an oncoming vehicle passed by without paying much heed or slowing down. The lethargic beasts were a bit spooked by this and one of them launched its 2000-pound body about 8 feet off of the roadway into snow up to my waist. I was able to capture the buffalo mid-flight, and I don’t even mind the one in the foreground blocking half of the view. There’s something about this picture, I just keep looking…
Wonderful shot! I like the way you’ve captured their profiles, one standing still, the other lunging forward. I know that there’s really no way to truly describe the awesome feeling one gets while in the presence of buffalo. Exhilarating and frightening at the same moment. Their huge size next to a humans can be quite intimidating, and as you’ve described, they can lunge at the blink of an eye.
Although I am aware that buffalo roam freely in the park and often cross roadways at close distances to visitors, I’m curious about the approximate distance between you and the buffalo? Since you mentioned that you don’t have lenses to support wildlife photography, I’m also curious about the equipment you do use?
I especially like the use of duotone and the way you filter or soften the edges of the photo. It creates sort of a dream-like effect. It also seems to help tone down the harsh glare that snow cover sometimes creates.
Hi Diane,
Sorry for the delay in my replying. I was probably 30 yards from the buffalo when I took this photo, leaning out of my car window like a looney.
I use all Canon gear, though I’m tempted to test out a Nikon with all of their new releases and technology upgrades (Canon isn’t quite keeping up, despite the fact that they control twice as much of the market share as Nikon). For wide angles I use an EF 17-40MM f/4L and for zoom I have an EF 70-200MM f/4L, sometimes throwing on my Extender EF 2x II. That gives me about 600mm of manual focus zoom with the telephoto and 2X extender, plus the up-conversion because of CMOS sensor size (x1.6). 600mm isn’t that bad, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the HUGE lenses I see all the wildlife guys using…they must be pushing 2000mm+ with extenders and whatnot, maybe even more. Crazy.
Thanks for your comments,
Cody