The moose is loose

Cow Moose in the woods

Cow and her calf

You looking at me?

Love can be so fickle.  About 72 hours ago I took delivery of my beautiful  500mm lens.  I had totally underestimated the size of the lens.  The box it came in practically took up the entire back seat of the Jeep.  When I got home and took it out and compared it to my 70-200mm it was obvious how large this Canon was – or more appropriately this “Bazooka”.   Yes, I was developing lens envy.  I thought to myself my trip through Yellowstone the next day with a long lens like this was sure to be fruitful.  Well,  after  10 hours in the car, three pb&j sandwiches and eight cups of coffee I’m here to tell you I didn’t see squat.   Sure, a few bison were around, but I was hoping for a bear, a moose or even an elk. But no luck. And to make matters worse the drive was super long due to construction…I was starting to hate this 500mm.  Now, I’m an upbeat kind of guy. It takes a lot…and I mean a lot, to get me down. So I made the best of it and shifted gears and took some wonderful wide-angle shots. So the day wasn’t a waste, but it just wasn’t what I was hoping for either.

Sunday was a different story.  After an afternoon of being lazy by the fire,  I decided to head to Idaho where I had seen several moose earlier this week.   After scouting out several waterways, I decided to do a little “two tracking” that’s what us guys from the sticks of Michigan refer to as taking one’s vehicle off-road….:)     I hadn’t been off road for more than an hour when I saw in the distance a cow and her calf working in and out of the trees.  I spent the next hour watching them, slowly working my way towards them, but always keeping a safe distance because believe it or not a Moose, as sweet as they look, will charge you.  So I kept my distance from Rocky and Bullwinkle and enjoyed the evening photographing them.    It was a good learning experience for me as well because I was able to better understand the pros/cons of a fixed focal lens of this size.   The obvious pro is you get up close and tight and can be at a good distance away. A noted disadvantage with a fixed focal point is it makes framing the subject a difficult task at times since you don’t have the luxury of working a focal range of telephoto zoom, especially as the subject gets closer. So do I love the lens? Do I sound fickle? I guess I’m not ready to marry it yet but overall I enjoyed it’s use.

I’m off to Jackson Hole today via the park, so who knows, maybe I’ll luck into a bear or bull moose…;)

p.s. A side note:  Many of you on occasion will drop me questions  regarding a post on Facebook.  I would  enjoy responding to these questions but  Facebook makes it nearly impossible for guys like me with fan pages to communicate directly with you without sending a comment to everyone.  So, if you have a specific questions regarding one of my posts, please feel free to drop by my blog so I can respond in a more efficient manner.  I enjoy answering them so please feel free to write…thanks again, john

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This entry was posted on Monday, October 19th, 2009 at 9:43 am. It is filed under National Parks and tagged with 500mm lens, calf moose, Cow moose, Idaho, Island Park, moose. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.