Big Black Bear, Yellowstone National Park
About the only negative to wildlife photography in Yellowstone is having to go through all your photos to separate the chaff from the wheat. I shoot about 1,000 images a day and there is no time to go through them until I get home. Going through 14,000 images is a daunting task. I’ve started with black bears and I still have 1,800 black bear photos to delete or save.
This photo was taken at sunset at Phantom Lake using a 500mm lens and 1.4 tele-extender. When shooting early and late in the day the delete rate goes up because it gets harder to stop subject movement. This image was shot at 125th of a second at ISO 2,000. I don’t like raising the ISO much above 800 but I had to go to 2000 to make sure I at least got some sharp photos of the animal standing still and, hopefully, moving as well.
