Photo of the Day - Wild Wolf

On one of my first jaunts out looking for wolves this fall, I lucked out almost immediately and ran into an entire family walking down a side valley towards the road.

Wild wolf photo

I remained in my vehicle (wolves act much more naturally if you stay in your car than if you get out and try to approach them) and shot this off a window-sill beanbag with my 500mm lens and 1D Mk IV camera body at ISO3200, 1/800th of a second (to freeze the action as she walked towards me) and f4.  This was one of the first shots in the series as I scrambled to get a shot before the wolf crossed the road in front of me.  The entire encounter with all five wolves was over in less than three minutes, yet I managed to snap off 125 images of four of the wolves!  Of those 125, it looks like about 8 are keepers, including at least 1 of each wolf (which make me all warm and fuzzy inside, ha-ha!).

For any of you in the Calgary-Banff-Canmore area in February, you can hear all about some of my most amazing encounters with wild wolves (and grizzlies) and hear how I've managed to buck the trend and make a living at wildlife photography without photographing game farm animals (I still don't get how photographing an animal that lives in a cage and gets led around by a trainer is fun and/or wildlife photography?!!) at my talk, Tall Tales, Long Lenses: Bears, Wolves and a Million Bucks on Friday, February 19th as part of the Exposure Photography Festival.

This should be an evening worth attending (if I do say so myself!) even for those of you that think you've heard all of my stories and all of my business advice.  I'll be showing off a lot of new images and telling stories even my wife hasn't heard before.

Happy shooting!

John

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