Dancing on the Prairie – Watching the Greater Prairie Chickens Boom
This past weekend I had the opportunity to visit a greater prairie chicken booming ground on Konza Prairie. A booming ground is an area where male prairie chickens do a “dance” and also “boom” to attract the attention of females (a bit like a college bar district on any given weekend for humans).
The day started early, we had to be in the blind well before sunrise. I generally try to avoid being up “well before sunrise” but in this case it was worth it. The behavior of the prairie chickens was fascinating to watch and the sounds the males made while “booming” and strutting their stuff was very interesting (click here for an example of what they sound like).
Booming
A couple of times raptors disrupted the prairie chickens, one by landing on nearby fence. Almost immediately the prairie chickens froze and a few literally disappeared by hunkering down in the grass. And just as fast, the action resumed when the raptor flew off. We had some great views of the birds close to the blind, in fact one walked behind the blind a couple of times. It was a great photographic opportunity.
Sparring
The males also fight with each other (see comment above about the college bar district) and would hop and fly at each other when somebody got to close to someone else’s territory. This was fascinating to watch and made me glad I wasn’t a prairie chicken, it looked exhausting!
Prairie chicken numbers are on the decline and the tall grass prairies of Kansas are important habitat
for the birds. If you get the chance, I would encourage you to watch the prairie chickens some spring while you have the chance. It is very much worth getting up before sunrise.
Technical details: We had changing light conditions to photograph in starting with low light right at sunrise, low contrast when some fog rolled in and then partly sunny as the fog burned off and the clouds parted a bit. I started off shooting at ISO 1600 and lowered as the light levels improved. I probably dropped my ISO a little too much early on though. “Booming” was shot at ISO 400, f/5.6, 1/160th at 400mm.
The Beauty in Agriculture
The Watchers
Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been slowly re-working my photo galleries and added new images. I’ve completed one gallery of Flint Hills photos, “The Flint Hills – The Wide View”and I’ve just completed another gallery “Beauty in Agriculture”
Of course landscape and nature photographs are beautiful and the main reason I head out the door with my camera is to capture landscape photographs. Being from Kansas however, the natural landscapes are often part of, and interwoven with, agricultural land.
Heads of Wheat
You might not think of fields and pastures as providing much material for creating “beautiful” photographs, but that isn’t the case. Several prominent crops in Kansas make for excellent photographic subjects such as the wheat field pictured above. Wheat fields can be very beautiful, especially when they are ready for harvest.
In bloom
Sunflowers are another beautiful crop to photograph – it is really impressive to come across a field of commercial sunflowers in bloom.
Milo
In the fall, the sorghum (milo) fields add a lot of color to the countryside.
I want that one
Agriculture is an important part of Kansas and something that seems to be increasingly overlooked in its importance with many people these days thinking that food “comes from a grocery store”. The beauty that can be found in agriculture can also be easily overlooked.
Baled
The End of the Beginning
I had big plans for photographing the transition from 2012 to 2013 – I was going to photograph the last sunset of 2012, the first sunrise of 2013 and the first sunset of 2013. Thought that might make a nice set of photographs. I’ve been planning to shoot sunset/sunrise/sunset at the change of each year for at least the last 5 years or so, but I haven’t made all three yet and I wimped out again this year and only made it out for the first sunset of 2013.
To start the year off photographically I went out with a friend to explore some new areas in Wabaunsee County. We found some nice areas on the western side of the county that I will definitely be back to explore again during the year.
Snow Covered Bales
(shameless plug – click here to order a print of this photo)
After stopping a few times to photograph some old buildings we came across a field of round bales about the time the sun was setting. The field was situated just right to catch the low evening light and the Flint Hills behind the field made for a nice back drop.
Cold Sunset
(shameless plug – click here to order a print of this photo)
As the sun went down I moved farther east along the field so I could shoot back toward the setting sun. Side light can really bring out some great details and texture in landscape photographs, but I enjoy shooting straight into the sun, I like to capture the landscape with the last bit of sunlight shining across it. By the time I had the photo above I was pretty cold all the way through, the temps drop fast when the sun goes down!
Winter Bales
(shameless plug – click here to order a print of this photo)
In addition to the single frames of the field I was shooting, I also decided to shoot a panorama of the field. I liked the field of view that the pano captured and I was happy with how this one turned out.
I was a bit disappointed with myself that I didn’t get the combo of sunsets and sunrises that I had planned on, but not too much…all in all going out to take the first sunset of the year is not a bad way to start things off…even if it was bloody cold.
Technical Details:
“Snow covered bales” – I used a short telephoto lens (105mm) to isolate a section of the field for this shot. The short telephoto also allowed me to bring in a section of the Flint Hills off in the distance. I used a polarizing filter on this shot was well to bring out the blue sky. Aperture Priority mode, ISO 200, f/11, 1/8th, +2/3 EV
“End of the Beginning” – I used a wider angle lens for this shot, 24mm, to capture a few of the bales along with the setting sun. I shot a few different compositions of this scene but liked this one the best. This frame contained the most sky of the various shots I put more focus on the sun than the others where I included more foreground. Aperture Priority mode, +2EV, ISO 200, f/11, 1/15 sec
“Winter Bales” – This pano was made from 3 shots stitched together. I shoot my panos (usually) in Manual exposure mode so the exposure won’t change as I’m moving my camera across the scene (I also make sure autofocus is turned off). Each frame was shot at 47mm, f/10, 1/13th, ISO 200. I had left my polarizing filter on my lens while shooting the frames for this pano which I normally try not to do. The degree of polarization you get with a polarizing filter changes as your angle to the sun changes so I had some pretty serious blue gradients running through the sky left to right in the finished pano. Fortunately for me, I didn’t like how the pano looked with a lot of sky in the scene, and when I cropped the sky down the blue gradients weren’t as noticeable. It is paying attention to small details like that that I need to get better at.