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Mother and Child by Rob Hanson on 500px

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Early one morning while camping at Dolly Copp Campground near Gorham, NH back in 2010, we were treated to a visit from a mother moose and her young one.

While we were sipping coffee, the pair passed through our campsite only a few feet away from where we were sitting. The two were more interested in browsing on the late season foliage than they were with our presence. We dared not budge until they had moved along, after which we grabbed the cameras and stayed at a respectful distance while grabbing as many shots as we could.

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Yesterday, we learned the first lesson of How To Hide If You’re A Moose. Since our friend’s technique wasn’t very effective, he decided to try a new tactic – hiding behind a big pile of road sand.

I hated to tell the poor guy that it still wasn’t working very well. The antlers were a sure giveaway.

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(Note: In all seriousness, we were just tracking the moose’s activity from a safe distance as he wandered around the location, browsing and looking at these two-legged creatures with idle curiosity. All moose images were taken with a 300mm lens.)

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It’s not a very effective technique, if you were to ask me.

Moose are pretty amazing creatures. They can be huge, gangly, and somewhat threatening when close by, especially during rutting season in autumn. Despite their size, they can turn into the woods and disappear after taking only a few steps. Yeah… they blend.

As we entered the area where we were going to camp for the night, we saw this bull at the side of the road. Two other people had already drawn him out of the woods by making various moose sounds and calls – again, not really recommended during rutting season unless you like surprises. But their efforts gave us the opportunity to shoot a number of frames of this beautiful beast, a rare treat because most bulls stay deep in the woods during the rut.

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Maine's Bold Coast

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Far north from the usual crowds that visit the typical vacation spots in Maine, lies the Bold Coast. Located just south of Lubec, the easternmost town in the U.S., this is a pristine area with very little development.

To get to this place, you park along a little-used road and hike in about a mile and a half, coming to these spectacular cliffs. From here, you can hike south along the rim of the cliffs to a primitive campsite that lies directly on the coastline. Hiking along the trail you can always keep an eye out for seals and whales (on the left), as well as bear and moose (on the right.)

I don’t think I know of a more lovely place on the east coast to spend the day. You might see one other person during the entire day.

Three exposures hand-held from Nikon D90, Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 wide angle lens at 16mm, f/4.5, ISO 160. Merged in HDR Express with followup in Photoshop CS5 with Nik Color Efex Pro.

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News:

Over at OneStopPoetry, the second of a two-part interview went live on Sunday morning. You can find it HERE.

I’ve really enjoyed taking part in the Sunday Photography Interview and Poetry Challenge, both weeks. In the interview, OneStopPoetry puts a few of my images in-line with the interview responses, highlighting one shot in particular as a ‘prompt’ for their weekly poetry challenge. Interested participants use the image as inspiration, and come up with a poem or prose based on what they see or feel about the image. It’s fascinating to see the creatives take off on their path, sometimes revealing their deepest thoughts, flights of fancy, or memories that the picture might have conjured up for them.

As one who values Creativity over Certainty, I appreciate being able to come up with something creative of my own, but then watch it take a new life when someone adds their own interpretation on it. It seems like Creativity doubled.

My thanks to all who took the time to write their thoughts. Some entries have struck me so well that I’ve asked the poets if I could use their poems to go alongside the images someday. Some seem like the perfect pairing of image and words, which is something that I often struggle to achieve by myself, usually falling short of what I’d really like to convey.

 

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All right. So I tonemapped a moose, okay?
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Click on the image above to see him larger in a new window in the Animals Gallery.
We were concerned as we got toward the end of our trip, as we hadn’t seen a single moose in the two weeks we had been out. One morning, as we were having coffee and deciding whether to stay or to go, Susan said, “Look left!”

A mother moose and her yearling calf strolled through our campsite, between the truck and our chairs. They were so close that I didn’t dare get up for the camera until they had moved away a bit. We had heard about them frequenting the campground, but we never expected that they’d pay us such a personal visit.

Mother and baby browsed the trees in our site for a while, then moved out onto a grassy area, where the young one frolicked and then sat down for a bit of rest. We (and by then several other photogs) followed them around the camp at a respectful distance for about an hour, providing plenty of opportunity for images.

This image was taken from a single RAW file, tonemapped in Photomatix Pro 4. Although I did take a handheld bracket set, he moved just enough to cause ghosting, and none of the current HDR programs produced an acceptable result.

After using Imagenomic’s Noiseware to knock back some background noise, I used NIK Color Efex Pro filters to bring the eye toward the yearling, rather than risking getting lost in all the colorful foliage. This was done with the Darken/Lighten Center filter, and then dark Vignette knocked back to about 50% opacity.

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Click on the image to see it larger in a new window on my Animals Gallery.

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Hint: Not what you think.

An amorous bull moose makes advances on a cow near Pinkham Notch, New Hampshire. This is a rather unusual sight, as the autumn rut & breeding usually take place deep in the woods, far away from populated areas.

We actually found this pair in the parking lot of the Pinkham Notch AMC (Appalachian Mountain Club.) I grabbed the camera out of the back of the truck, and followed the pair at a safe distance as they crossed the road into the Lost Pond area. The cow was feeding on the aquatic vegetation, but the bull had other things on his mind. Although he made several attempts, the cow spurned his initial advances, preferring to take him deeper into the woods before mating.  Can’t blame her… by that time, about a dozen vehicles had stopped, which is typical when moose are near the road.

Each of us were willing voyeurs to the event.  What struck me as odd was that right after the bull’s best attempt, a woman dressed in rather garish hiking garb said loudly, “Well! That isn’t the picture I wanted to get!”  Um, lady… If you’re reading this, just what did you expect to happen?

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This image is just about SOOC (straight out of the camera.) While I tried to do some tonemapping on it, nothing was better than the original RAW file. I did a little cropping, sharpening, and then used NIK’s Darken/Lighten Center filter to bring the eye towards the moose, then a bit of NIK’s Vignette Blur filter to knock back some of the foliage on the left.

It was kind of refreshing to stray away from HDR, actually.  I think I’ll try that more often. ;^)