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editing when I saw kite surfers all over Tampa Bay. I pulled over, turned off the car, and told the group, “We’re going to work on panning this afternoon.” They all looked at me like I was crazy but got out and set up anyway. We spent an enjoyable afternoon working on our panning skills, and the group got quite good by the end of the session (Figure 8.16). When everyone was feeling pretty good about panning, I had each photographer dial down the aperture to slow down the shutter speed and work on blur pans (Figure 8.17).

Figure 8.16 A fast shutter speed stops the action and the spray of water, and the kite surfer’s expression is frozen in time.

Figure 8.17 A slow shutter speed adds to the feeling of motion. It has a soft, dreamy quality to it.

Extension Tubes Are Not Just for Macro

I’ll end this chapter by explaining one last technique for your wildlife photography arsenal. You have the equipment to get tight shots and you have the technique to move in close, yet with all of that you still can’t get as close as you’d like. Enter extension tubes (Figure 8.18). Most people associate extension tubes with macro photography because they allow you to move in closer to a subject. They also offer the same ability when attached to a telephoto lens. When we came upon a Blue Grouse in Grand Tetons National Park, I slowly approached the bird, dropped low to be at eye level, and composed. I wanted the bird to be larger in the frame, so I crawled on my knees to get a bit closer. It still wasn’t close enough, but I was at minimum focus distance on my lens. I reached in my pocket, attached an extension tube between the body and the lens, and crawled another couple of feet closer to get the shot in Figure 8.19.

Figure 8.18 Extension tubes allow you to focus closer than your lens’s normal minimum focus distance.

Figure 8.19 A tolerant Blue Grouse allowed me to move within frame-filling distance to make a shot.

Chapter Assignments

Take time to work through the assignments to perfect your skills at understanding exposure and panning with moving subjects before moving on to the final two chapters.

Exposure Compensation

Using your Highlight warning and Histogram settings on your camera (refer to your instruction manual), make a series of images using exposure compensation. Begin with a base exposure of zero compensation, and then dial in one-half increments; take a series of shots at minus exposure compensation and a series at plus exposure compensation. Notice whether or not you get the blinkies with the overexposed images, and watch your histogram to see where the exposure range falls in each situation. Also, review the images to see which exposure works best for the particular situation. Do this in several different lighting conditions to get a better understanding of exposure and how exposure compensation affects the mood of your image.

Stop-Action Panning

Go to the beach, a racetrack, or a local park—a location where there is some form of action. Work on your panning skills using a variety of fast shutter speeds (to change from one shutter speed to another using Aperture Priority, simply change the aperture and the shutter speed will adjust accordingly). Evaluate your images to see how slow a shutter speed you can comfortably pan with and still capture the stop-action feel. Notice the effect of the different fast speeds on the stop-action effect.

Blur-Motion Panning

You can do this assignment and the previous one at the same location. This time dial down your aperture to a small opening to reduce your shutter speed. If you can’t get a slow-enough shutter speed, consider adding a neutral density filter to achieve an even slower shutter speed in bright light. Work at panning with your subject at various slow speeds to see the different effects. Find your comfort zone of slow speeds so you know where to start when faced with the opportunity to do blur pans.

Share your results with the book’s Flickr group!

Join the group here: flickr.com/groups/wildlifephotographyfromsnapshotstogreatshots.

9. Bear Tales

Take