Mike Spinak
pro member
Let's do another show and tell thread, about predators with their prey. I'm hoping we can get a thread rolling for displaying and discussing lots of photos that include predators interacting with their prey.
Please, let's try to do the following:
1) Discuss what you show, so that we can all learn from each other's techniques and ideas;
2) Post only one picture per post, or one related series per post, in order to minimize confusion.
Like this:
[Hmmm... the picture doesn't appear to be loading, and I don't know what's wrong. I'll have to try posting it a different way, and that will have to wait until later. This may take a while. Sorry about that.]
Aggregating Anemone Catching and Eating a Red Crab
© Mike Spinak
Taken with a 180 mm f/3.5 lens mounted on a 1Ds Mark II, on a tripod, with a cable release, lit with a handheld flash. The exposure was about f/22, 1/250 of a second, to minimize ambient light, to prevent any reflections from the overcast skies.
This case doesn't have much of a story behind it, really. I went with a friend to the seashore to photograph the intertidal creatures in the low tide. I was working on my sea anemone project in the low intertidal zone, nearby to this anemone. The tide had turned... it was starting to come in, fast. My friend and I had pretty much decided we were done shooting for the day, because we had very little time left until we would be overtaken by the incoming tide, making this type of photography infeasible. And then we came across this scene of an aggregating anemone catching and eating a red crab. We see anemones eating crabs all the time, but it is still fascinating to see, both because it is not common in the general media, and because it seems so unlikely that an animal like an anemone... which appears so static... could successfully hunt crabs. This particular one caught our eye, because the crab was large in comparison to the anemone, and because the crab was colorful. Unfortunately, we had considerably less than 30 seconds left until the tide came in to this channel, but fortunately, I hadn't packed up my rig from the previous shot. I managed to set up and take this shot, tripod mounted, including manually adjusted focus, manual exposure, and handheld off-camera flash, in about 15 seconds. I tend to be a slowpoke, and that was about as fast as I've ever set up a "macro" shot (not true macro, but about 1/4 or 1/3 life size) with a tripod and flash. It worked, but, retrospectively, I should have held the flash above the anemone, rather than below it.
Let's see your predator and prey shots, and hear the stories of how you got them.
Mike
Please, let's try to do the following:
1) Discuss what you show, so that we can all learn from each other's techniques and ideas;
2) Post only one picture per post, or one related series per post, in order to minimize confusion.
Like this:
[Hmmm... the picture doesn't appear to be loading, and I don't know what's wrong. I'll have to try posting it a different way, and that will have to wait until later. This may take a while. Sorry about that.]
Aggregating Anemone Catching and Eating a Red Crab
© Mike Spinak
Taken with a 180 mm f/3.5 lens mounted on a 1Ds Mark II, on a tripod, with a cable release, lit with a handheld flash. The exposure was about f/22, 1/250 of a second, to minimize ambient light, to prevent any reflections from the overcast skies.
This case doesn't have much of a story behind it, really. I went with a friend to the seashore to photograph the intertidal creatures in the low tide. I was working on my sea anemone project in the low intertidal zone, nearby to this anemone. The tide had turned... it was starting to come in, fast. My friend and I had pretty much decided we were done shooting for the day, because we had very little time left until we would be overtaken by the incoming tide, making this type of photography infeasible. And then we came across this scene of an aggregating anemone catching and eating a red crab. We see anemones eating crabs all the time, but it is still fascinating to see, both because it is not common in the general media, and because it seems so unlikely that an animal like an anemone... which appears so static... could successfully hunt crabs. This particular one caught our eye, because the crab was large in comparison to the anemone, and because the crab was colorful. Unfortunately, we had considerably less than 30 seconds left until the tide came in to this channel, but fortunately, I hadn't packed up my rig from the previous shot. I managed to set up and take this shot, tripod mounted, including manually adjusted focus, manual exposure, and handheld off-camera flash, in about 15 seconds. I tend to be a slowpoke, and that was about as fast as I've ever set up a "macro" shot (not true macro, but about 1/4 or 1/3 life size) with a tripod and flash. It worked, but, retrospectively, I should have held the flash above the anemone, rather than below it.
Let's see your predator and prey shots, and hear the stories of how you got them.
Mike
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