By Benji Kohn, Freelance Photographer

In this photo the butterfly is backlit so bright sunlight shines through its wings.

Photo technology is moving forward at the speed of light. Gone are the days when you took a picture, dropped your film at the corner store and a few days later got a first glance at your work. Today you can snap endless photos, view them right on the camera, download them to a computer and adjust them in many ways.

Even though technology has changed the process, the principles of photography remain the same. Lighting and composition are what make a great photograph. So let’s go over some tips and ideas you can use even with a basic point and shoot camera to capture great photographs.

Lighting
Lighting is one thing you have little control over. Time of day, cloud cover, trees and pollution can affect the quality of light. Generally, lighting is best in early morning or late afternoon. During these times you can get warmer colors and few dark shadows. Try using light to your advantage. Sidelight, front light, backlight and indirect lighting all give different effects to your photo. Backlighting can be used to highlight a small object and make it stand out from the background like the butterfly photo below. Backlighting can also be used to silhouette people or objects like a tree at sunset. Cloudy days are great for indirect lighting! more…

How Pheasants Hunker Down

by Ken Solormon

Photo by Roger Hill.

If you like hunting pheasants in fall, you need to help them make it through the winter so they can nest in spring. Here’s what pheasants face when the snows fly and the thermometer drops … and how they survive to see another spring. (Also, knowing what a pheasant does on a typical day will help you hunt them):

With the first deep snow or ice storm, people start to worry about pheasants starving. Death due to starvation during inclement weather is extremely rare if pheasants have adequate winter habitat.

A pheasant’s typical winter day goes like this: If available, the pheasant will spend its nights in grassy cover or wetlands (called roosting cover). An hour or so before sunrise, they will leave the grass and head for shrub cover for protection from aerial predators (loafing cover). Here, they will be joined by other pheasants before venturing out to feed. About 30 minutes before sunrise, they will move out to feed in harvested grain fields or, better yet, unharvested food plots (feeding cover). more…

By Christine Dimke

When the alarm goes off in the morning, it is always a struggle of will.

“Do I go pheasant hunting or do I roll over, pull up the covers and go back to sleep?”

As music blares out of the radio, I decide to just get up and see if dad is awake. If not, then I can go back to sleep. Of course, he’s been up for an hour preparing and I’d better get going or we’ll be late.

I fall back into bed and the dream begins………I sigh and think of how cold it is this morning and how warm my bed is. I go get my stuff and remember my hat to cover my ‘disaster zone’ hair since I did not and will not brush it this morning. That is how it all starts.

more…

How Iowa is bringing back the nation’s largest waterfowl

by John Linquist

Photo by Roger Hill.

Everyone loves watching swans swimming on lakes and wetlands, but not that long ago trumpeter swans were almost extinct. Prior to the settlement of the Midwest, trumpeter swans nested throughout the region. However, human settlement and wetland drainage soon wiped them out.

Trumpeter swans were first given nationwide protection in 1918 when the United States, Canada and Mexico signed the International Migratory Bird Treaty. A swan count in the early 1930s showed that only 69 existed in the United States, and all of them lived at the Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in southwest Montana. more…

by Dave Books

A friend and I were hunting pheasants along a marshy lakeshore when my black Lab, Jenny, perked up her ears. We got ready for a rooster to flush as she charged ahead into the mud and shallow water. Suddenly, a small brown bird with a long bill burst out of the reeds, flying low and making a noise like a rusty gate. We watched as the little bird flew rapidly across the marsh, twisting from side to side, uttering Scape! Scape!

The author with Mearns quail.

“Jacksnipe,” I said to my friend Joe. “Why didn’t you shoot? The season’s open.”

“Same reason you didn’t,” he laughed. “I was expecting a rooster pheasant, not a Wilson’s snipe.”

“Wilson’s snipe? I thought they were called jacksnipe,” I said.

Joe is a botanist and an avid bird-watcher. When it comes to plants and birds, he knows his stuff. “The snipe is named for Alexander Wilson,” he said. “Wilson was a naturalist and artist who came to America from Scotland in the late 1700s. He traveled around collecting and painting birds, and eventually wrote a book about them.”

At that point Jenny began to whine and give us her “What are we waiting for?” look.

“Okay, Jenny,” I said. “Find us another bird.”

“Where there’s one snipe, there should be more,” Joe said. “They’re migrating south this time of year.” more…