'You might not want to zoom that lens out until you've wiped the the neck'
'okay' Spring in Wyoming still feels a lot like
winter. We've traveled to Yellowstone with
wildlife photographer Jake Davis and the Panasonic Lumix DC G9. The G9 is
Panasonic's flagship stills camera. It's very different to Jakes normal DSLR gear
so we're hoping that along with a collection of high performance lenses
the G9's speed and tough build will help us capture some great wildlife
photographs. 'My name is Jake Davis I'm a wildlife photographer I live in Jackson
Hole and most of my work is based on the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.
I'm fortunate enough to spend a ton of time surrounded by apex predators and all
these incredible species most people are not and so there's a real disconnect.
Photography allows people to see the value and wildlife in the natural world.
in late April Yellowstone National Park is relatively quiet. The summer rush
hasn't yet started and large parts of the park are still under heavy snow.
The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is vitally important - it's the largest intact
ecosystem we have left in the lower 48, it's roughly 22 million acres.
As always, when it comes to wildlife photography getting great shots means getting up
very early in the morning. The best times of day for wildlife are definitely first
thing in the morning and then the last couple hours of the day. The reality is
most of the action is between 5 a.m. and 7. We don't want to throw him off. Let's just sit for a second...
When it comes to wildlife photography the ideal situation is where my subject
recognizes or acknowledges my presence but it's also a situation where both day
and I feel safe so they accept me as part of their environment.
we just had a coyote mousing on the the opposite riverbank. When I say
mousing he's looking for rodents so in this case it actually was probably
pocket gophers. He's turning his head and listening for movement
underneath the ground and then once he pinpoints it he'll kind of pounce on it
At 400mm here I had an 800mm equivalent which is just crazy considering this
thing weighs nothing. They're probably one of the most adaptable species that
we have in the ecosystem - in one day I've watched a coyote
scavenging on a carcass catch a fish catch a rodent... 'play chess'
chess yeah - have a cup of tea...
Spring is a really exciting time in the ecosystem. Some days can be sunny and 50 or 60 degrees, the
blue birds are singing and then the next day is a full-on blizzard - a foot of snow.
We've got a bison jam. We have to share the roadway here. Oh he's a
big bull!. The G9 is a professional-grade camera and as such it offers extensive
sealing against dust and moisture. That's nice to have when you're photographing
bison in the driving snow. Six stops of image stabilization is pretty nice when
you're shivering in the cold too. So we've got a nice bison herd over
here along the Gibbon River. We did kind of a wider scene here, we included the
environment which I really like to do. That tells more of a story and in a
fresh dusting of snow which never hurts. So I think we got some pretty nice stuff here.
As the snow turned to rain we continued into the park. If you can't
handle discomfort wildlife photography may not be the career for you. Neither is
it a career for the impatient. 'Let's use this bank to kind of hide us as we
approach'. A lot of wildlife photography is is
simply just time you've spent in the field and eventually it pays off and so
you're just very aware - you keep your head on a swivel and opportunities
present themselves. Ninety-nine percent of the time is just really spent looking
and waiting. Maybe we get the binoculars out, get a scope out and we glass the
hillside. You'd be surprised at how much you will see if you just slow your pace
down a little bit and take some time and just be where you are and be present.
One of the most common mistakes you see in wildlife photographers is
just chasing wildlife. I've had to go in the woods after a lady with her iPad
chasing a grizzly bear - that's actually not that uncommon of an occurrence.
The quick route is to sit here and howl like a wolf or clap your hands at her like a
lot of people like to do, but that's not really rewarding in the end and you're
not proud of that shot. So we just kind of like to sit here quietly - oh she's
getting up on the bank. We headed for Grand Prismatic - the largest
and most famous hot spring in the park. On a chilly day like this the warm water
flowing out of the ground was steaming in the cold air. Even in such miserable
conditions wildlife was still abundant. That was a pretty nice scene you know with
the fog coming off and the blowing snow. I was hoping he'd go in and catch a
trout but evidently that was not a good fishing hole. And even on the coldest,
wettest of days the bacterial mats that give Grand Prismatic its distinctive
coloration are still beautiful.
The next day dawned very cold but clear and bright. With the landscape
transformed by the changing weather we headed back into the park to see what we
could find. We're on the Gibbon River which has some thermal influence and so
whenever we have a really cold morning you get all this fog which is just
beautiful and we have this bison herd. So I first saw this shot the fog was really
thick and there was no way the autofocus system could get to the Bison because I
could hardly really see them, but now the fog is thinning a little bit.
The contrast is still really low but the AF is actually nailing it which is
reassuring, because trying to establish manual focus in a scene with such low contrast
is very difficult because the focus peaking just has nothing to bite onto.
As the sun came up, the mist burned away and the temperature started to rise.
well we've got a pair of sandhill cranes over here behind you, so we've popped
on some teleconverters here - we're gonna attempt not to make them fly.
The G9's powerful image stabilization also means that we don't need to waste time setting
up a tripod. Since we arrived in the park we've been actively looking for wildlife
but sometimes it just comes right for you. 'Coyote!'
Park rules stipulate that visitors must remain at least 100 yards from bears or
wolves and at least 25 yards from all other wildlife including this coyote who
doesn't seem at all bothered by our presence. For the image itself I'm
looking to capture either some unique behavior, kind of a rare window into my
subject's world - you know they tell a story about the habitat that that
the animal makes a living on. 'Oh there's a bald eagle right there - see him in the
cottonwood tree? So he's sitting right there on the bank of the
Lamar River.' The eagle gave us the opportunity for some dramatic still
images but I also wanted to put the G9s video capabilities to the test focusing
on the hawks and ravens circling overhead. Jake's been taking stills and
I've been taking 4K video at 60p on this and I've been tracking these
birds as best I can at the equivalent of 800 millimeters. I think I got a couple
of quite good shots that will look nice when they're slowed down.
With our time in the park almost over we headed to the famous mammoth hot springs.
'Let's use the hi-res shot mode for this since we're going to be on sticks. We can
still shoot raw, two second shutter delay'. Such a detailed subject provided a
great opportunity to try out the G9s high resolution mode. In high resolution
mode the G9 combines eight exposures to create a single 80 megapixel image by
shifting the sensor in half pixel increments eight times. 'Wow, that's a lot
of detail - incredible.' Yellowstone National Park spans millions of acres at
an average elevation of around 8,000 feet. Unlike us, the animals in this
ecosystem are free to come and go as they please.
Leaving the park we broke out into the sunshine and came across a herd of bison
enjoying the warmth at the lower altitude. And with that it was time for us to head
to lower altitudes too. Well it is a very difficult field to make a living in
and I think there's something to be said for that, but I also think that there's a
misconception that to do meaningful or significant wildlife photography you
have to travel and go to these exotic places all over the world. The reality is
there are stories to be told everywhere. There are species that
are in trouble everywhere. And so I would just encourage people to kind of embrace
where they are. Maybe you're on the way to look for bears and there's a bluebird
or there's a meadowlark... 'How many states does this park span?' 'Three - there's a meadowlark! Thats cool'.
If you go out with the mentality that no matter what is presented to me I will,
you know, receive that and figure out how to make a creative shot with it you'll
come home with a good shot every day. To see more of Jake's work visit his
website, revealedinnature.com. For more information on the Panasonic
Lumix DC G9 go to DPReview. Thanks for watching.