The Drought

I love telling stories with pictures, and increasingly, video. Here in Texas, we've been in the midst of a historic drought and while it's easy to gloss over the subject when looking at the problem from the outside, you need to hear personal stories to get a true feel of what people are going through.

 I've been collecting a few stories of locals who've been affected by the drought and recording their perspectives for posterity's sake. Local history may not make national news but is worth recording.

 As photographers, we have all of the tools we need to collect the history around us.

 

The Coyote Hunter

A few weeks ago I spent some time with my friend Fred Hill from Alaska.  Fred was in Texas for an extended stay around the holidays and we decided the head out to call coyotes one afternoon.  

On our first stand we called a bobcat which we let walk back into the brush.

On a second stand, a coyote promptly came from the brush and with two shots, Fred quickly dispatched a predator that's been causing a local cattle rancher some trouble.

A large male with a thick, rich coat, Fred was proud of his trophy and I was proud of the time we spent together.

Kids and Ducks

Christmas Eve morning was a treat. 

I took the kids duck hunting with my brother Bubba and it was their first time to go duck hunting. 

It's always fun to take my kids hunting. Just to see the the look of them experiencing something new and this is always inspiring to me. 

They were pretty eager to go. We were up early that morning - at 5am - and got dressed in our hunting clothes. When Bubba picked us up we traveled the six or seven miles over to the property and put on our waders to make the walk through the water to where we would hunt. 

If you ever duck hunted before you know there's lots of gear that you have to contend with but the kids were really eager to help with carry stuff in.  

Once we walked through the water without the kids falling over, we set up for the morning hunt.  The duck hunting, however, was slow that morning. 

As soon as sun came up the kids start having fun.  Bailee painted Ryan’s face with some face paint to try to camouflage him. Instead of painting it in a camo pattern, she painted him a beard and mustache instead. The beard and mustache was pretty funny it made for some great photos and Ryan loved as well. 

Because the hunting was kind of slow, we let Ryan practice calling and Bailee practiced shooting at a couple birds but never hit anything. 

In all we only killed a single bird - but’s that's not really the reason why we hunted. 

To get my kids to experience the outdoors and go hunting for something which they'd never hunted before was well worth the time and the effort. When we finished hunting, the kids were pretty excited about wading in the water and gathering up the decoys and getting all the gear stored.  Both Bailee and Ryan were excited to help.

I think in the end, the chance to wade in the water and do something that they had never done before was about as exciting as going duck hunting.   

We'll be going again.

The Shotgunner

Needing to photograph a deer hunting shotgun, I called on my friend Roy McCraw to stand in as a model.

All shot using natural light and lenses ranging from 15mm fisheye, 85mm f1.2, a 16-35mm f2.8 zoom, and a 300mm f2.8

The January 2012 Newsletter

Check out what's going on this month!

Also, the newsletter is now available in PDF format for reading in iBooks on the iPad! Check out http://www.russellgraves.com/newsletter.html to download.

The Bobcat

Calling wildlife is an inexact science. Predators are especially tough... For every animal you call within camera range chances are that you tried several times before, unsuccessfully.

Every now and then, things just click. Two days before Christmas, I sat looking east at the edge where a cutover patch of trees and a tall grass prairie meet. Using a FoxPro electronic caller that mimics the sounds of an imperiled bluejay, it took only five minutes to attract every bluejay within earshot and a couple of more minutes to get the attention of a passing hawk.

At the twenty-two minute mark, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and noticed this beautiful female bobcat inching towards the sound.

Photographically, the setup was perfect: an overcast sky made the light soft and a crossing wind that drifted from north to south made sure that the bobcat wouldn't smell me. She was only 17 yards away and with the tripod mounted 500mm lens, my distance to the cat was ideal.

Despite the blaring sound of the call, the bobcat heard the shutter click on the first picture I took.  She hung around and stared curiously for about a minute until she finally ran back into the brush.

Thirty minutes of walking in and set up, and twenty two minutes of listening to the call for a single minute of photographic frenzy.

It was worth the wait.