Photos

Matt Vanderpan

Matt Vanderpan

Active member
How many of you take photos of you hunts? What do you think of hunting photos? I try and take a lot of pics throughout the season. I don’t take them to boast or brag about stacking up birds, I do it because someday it may not be allowed or more limited. I also do so to share them with friends to reminisce. I like to take pics of the harvest but I also take photos of the dog working and setting up.

If you take pics why do you do it? If you don’t why don’t you? Personally I wish I took more.
 
i take "tailgate" photos usually be cause the only time i have to take pictures is when ive got the birds on my tailgate ready to be cleaned. i take photos just to have a visual reminder of the wonderful color of these birds and my experience in the field. someday when i can afford to buy a good camera and a good waterproof bag to put it in i will take more photos while in the field. until then i'll keep with the tailgate shots.

eddie
 
I used to take a lot more than I do now. Mainly to remember good hunts, good scenery & good friends. Now that the boy has started going with me, I will probably start taking more again.
 
Most of the time more of my pictures than any are of the set-up and the people i'm hunting with. We ususally take a "group tailgate" shot because it's just sensible to get all of they guys and the reward of a harvest. I took this one that's my avatar by setting my camera up on my freinds tailgate to get everyone in. Thanks to the genious that invented the delay. Some people think they're atrocious, I just take a picture. Then again i'm no photographer either. I just like to look back and remember the moments.
 
I really didn't start taking pics until I got a digital camera last year. Most pics are of dogs, friends, retreives and "tailgate" shots (more for the logbook than anything else). One of the guys I hunt with collected a bunch of pics from us all and put together a book. Turned out as a really nice hard back coffee table book, ~9x10. Has all our boats, dogs, blinds, bands, some birds, and lots of smiles in the duck blinds, marshes and boats.
 
I just bought one of those Olympus water proof digital cameras so that I can take photos during the hunt no matter what the weather. I used it down in Chico a week ago and it did well, but I need to learn how the settings work so that I don't mess up. My other digital was big and cumbersome to use while hunting so I only took it out when things were slow for scenery shots.
 
I take more photo's of the hunt now than I did before digital, take hundreds of them, delete the bad ones and keep one or two of each hunt.

Its fun to got back though them latter on and remember that retrieve or the loon that came into the decoys, what the kids got.

also when you see that HUGE buck of a life time, its nice to have a picture of it so your buddies will be in awe and then can laugh at you for missing it!!
 
I carry two cameras, one I carry in a water cooler with foam inside to protect from jaring. This also has the advantage of being water proof should the boat sink or other mishap. The smaller camera I carry in one of the older cell phone carriers and then in a zip lock bag. In colder weather inside a inside pocket. The point and shoot camera is more vulnerable to moisture then the SLR which is why I choose Pentax for the SLR It has seals against moisture and dust. The point and shoot is a earlier generation camera. A tip, when they come out with the latest and greatest buy the previousony 27 002 (Small).jpgpentex 28 048 (Medium).jpgs latest and best. You can save a lot of money that way.
 
but I'd sure like to know how the guys who keep little cameras in their pockets to keep the batteries warm ever get a "quick memory shot" doing it that way....any camera resting in a pocket is going to be real close to body temp......take that camera out into even 40 degree temps and the lens will fog immediately rendering the photo blurred either from the condensation on the lens or from the auto-focus feature being unable to get a lock on the target.......

So what good are they? Or am I missing some trick that allows that once a camera reaches body temp that fogging doesn't occur when exposed to drastic temperature changes resulting in the loss of that "photo op of a lifetime"?

Steve
 
duck Nov 06 005em.JPGSteve any thing above freezing Camera stays in outer pocket. Layer clothes never way inside. I agree that for a quick action shot grabbing for that camera is a pain. I missed a good shot of a Bald Eagle twenty feet from the blind this year. One trick is keeping spare batteries in your pocket, change them if you have to.
 
Steve, the new olympus has a Lithium-ion battery so it is good to 14 deg F according to the paperwork. I had it in and out of the pocket at 20 deg F in the hills in OR with no issues. Back in the old days at below zero I took alot of care with winding the film and keeping the battery in a small bag in my shirt pocket. The old K1000 was too hard to get the watch battery back into so that didn't last long.

I think you have the fogging backwards. Physics dictates that condensation occures when moist air comes in contact with something cold. No Wikipedia links, just lots of experience with iced beers on hot afternoons forming "dew" and some experience with hot beers on cold days (YUK) resulting in no "dew". If the camera coming from your pocket under your coat is cold enough to get condensation forming, you are suffering from severe hypothermia and need immediate medical attention.

A warm camera won't fog up until it cools off. I had major trouble with this one winter when going into a cave a Grimes Point, NV. Outside it was about 25 deg F. Once inside the cave it was 45 deg F and my lenses were practically iced over due to the warm air.
 
situation to me.......hot exposed to cold or cold exposed to hot....either way you get condensation and either way you get the blurred photo......

All I know is that I have tons of what would have been great pictures but that are "blurred" that resulted from a camera taken out of a pocket and exposed to colder air.......

Steve
 
If you take pics why do you do it?
Click to expand...
I think Aldo Leopold said it best: "I have a ticket to the symphony. It was not cheap. The dollars were well spent, but I would forgo the experience for the sight of the big gander that sailed honking into my decoys this morning.... I saw him, I heard the wind whistle through his set wings as he came honking out of the gray west, and I felt him so that even now I tingle at the recollection. I doubt not that this very gander has given ten other men a symphony ticket's worth of thrills.... Is it impious to weigh goose music and art in the same scales? I think not, because the true hunter is merely a noncreative artist. Who painted the first picture on a bone in the caves if France? A hunter. Who alone in our modern life so thrills to the sight of living beauty that he will endure hunger and thirst and cold to feed his eye upon it? The hunter.... Poets sing and hunters scale the mountains primarily for one and the same reason - the thrill to beauty. Critics write and hunters outwit their game primarily for one and the same reason - to reduce that beauty to possession." 010408 048 (600 x 399).jpg
 
You know Bob I am going to talk that book off the shelf and reread it.

Thanks for sharing. My Mother was a school teacher and a real lover of nature.I inherited that book from her. You have to like school teachers, right
 
I started taking pictures when I moved to the UP a camera was one of the first purchases I made after moving. I justified it as needed for the business. The camera was expensive but it turned out to have low quility lenses in it and although I get good pictures to look back on I rarely get anthing that is amazing.

I looked through the pictures I have up on the web to see what I mostly take them of. Its a good mix of scenery, dog work, familly and friends and the birds taken durrning the hunt.

This first was simply a brook trout I caught that made a nice picture.

06-05-31-brookie1.jpg


This second one is a log that I bounced a fly off of and ended up catching my bigest brookie. I liked the scene as its typical of the places I fish.

06-05-31-stream.jpg


This third one I took because of the unique hunt I had that morning. It was November 15th and everyone in the world up here was in the deer blind for the opening day of riffle season. I chose to be on the water and hunted big water over the diver spread. Shooting a wood duck even on a beaver pond in the middle of November would be rare but over a diver spread on big water was even more strange. Then to ad a Golden Eye to the bag. The contrast seemed not worthy to me.

06-11-15-ducking-028.jpg


Finally I was out on the snow shoes and liked the way it looked when looking back at my tracks.

07-02-10-view-of-tracks.jpg

 
Mostly I shoot alot of pictures because my memory sucks. I really like having those records to help bring back the day. I also keep a written log since discovering this site.

I've got a bunch of hunting pics saved at www.yukonmike.com if you ever want to check it out.

Mike
 
Never was much for taking pictures over the years,but these hunting pics have perked my interest in good photography,so I got a small pocket camera,and now I want to learn more and get a SLR.Old dogs can still learn.
 
No i dont take any lol... not​


Steve I never keep my camers in pockets or boxes once we get set up. The minolta also has lithium batteries and I keep the
big camera and lens in a drybox until were ready then it sits out on the shelf the entire hunt infront of me. Never had fogging issues
or cold batteries unless they were not fully charged. I also keep lithiums in my PNS cannon because alkalines arent meant for COLD.


Why i take so many, I dont like to write and its a good way to keep a journal of our dogs progress and the season. You tend to
forget stuff as you go and somethings you see also go by the wayside of our STEEL TRAPS. I love my dog he is my kid and
I tend to take lots of shots of him cause I am proud of what he has become and what we have done together.

Little moments that just come and go so quickly I like to have something to look back on.

ghs20070059.jpg





ghs20070085.jpg



murphy1110200503.jpg


an old murphy finishin up antoher tailgate shot at home...... I love this one

gordywithsumthinohlord.jpg


A 7 week old gordy and he start to being a HULL addict.... anyone that has ever hunted with him
knows that after the birds the environmentaly responsible lab will pick up the hulls if I let him
and keep our river clean :)


Point is if you carry a camera with you often there will be little things that you will have the
opportunitys to get some shots of that you can save for thoes times a few years from then
and reflect back and remember thoes times. I encourage everyone to just pick up a reasonable
PNS digital and take it with you it does add to the hunt I feel.

hunting_2006_090906009sm.jpg


Theres Ed L on gordys 1st hunt in 2006 with his camera!
 
I use a little crappy bushnell sport cam digital, I try to keep it in a pocket along with a handwarmer, seems to work great. Not the greatest photos, and I'm not as interested in the harvest as I am trying to capture memories. When friends and family depart it always seems I have great memories of hunts and events but never photos to go with them, My goal is to keep that from happening again.

Kyle Ritter
 
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