Photographing elk in eastern British Columbia
I had been planning for a couple years to photograph the elk that roam around the rural acreages where I grew up.
Whenever I go to visit my parents I can lie in bed a hear the elk bugling. Pretty enticing.
I grew up in Golden BC on a piece of property north of town which my dad still lives on. I was there in October 2021 with the goal of photographing the elk. Since the elk roam throughout the area including on my dads 10 acres I had envisioned some pretty lazy shooting. I have permission to go on all the neighbouring properties so I could roam like the elk.
The area is mostly forested, very dense in place, with open hay fields. I had planned a few nice spots. One just inside the tree line about 5 minutes walk from the house. It had a great background of the western peaks of the Rockies. Since the elk were omnipresent to everyone who lived in the area I was really hoping to sit in my blind near the house and snap away. The elk oblivious to one more human doing their thing.
That wasn't reality
My plan was to stay for two days, shoot then go home
... but I ended up there for five days and trudged around 50km in marsh and forest for one long distance photo and some very low light video.
All night long the elk would be out in the open grazing in the fields but right before sunrise they would disappear into the forest and be lost. I could hear a bugle and try to locate them but the trees and underbrush were to think to see let alone get a photo.
~~Make sure you unmute. It is a bazaar sound.
By day four I was feeling beaten but the sound of the bugling would keep me going out. Up a couple hours before sunrise, trying to put myself in a good spot only to be given the slip. Back out in the afternoon waiting for that 30 minutes when they would come into the open before sundown.
With auto-ISO pushed to 25600, I am quite please with how the Nikon D7200 performed capturing this footage. I was shooting this from the end of the driveway about 20 minutes after sun down and could see the elk much better on the camera display than with my eyes. In the raw clip you can hear my dad yelling "Supper".
Oh rural life.
Finally, on the morning of the fifth day I was able to get in the right place. I snapped the shot above from a long distance about 15 minutes before sun up. The clouds and low light once again pushing my gears limits.
Just a couple minutes later the entire herd went to bed down in the trees and I went home feeling humbled and very lucky to got the bit of video and photo that I did.
~~
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