Fuji 100 x 400 mm lens and nature photography

Nov 27

Nov 27 Shooting Nature with Fuji Lenses

If you were to have told me that my last trip of the year was going to be the trip to Lisbon back in February, I would have laughed. I had BIG plans to chip away at the short term goal of hitting 100 countries by the time I turned 40 (well, WHILE I was 40 at least) and been planning a big trip to Oceania to check off some more countries. That, of course, didn’t happen, thanks to the swirling, raging shit storm of a year that we have all had. I’m lucky enough to still be employed, and safe, and healthy, so my complaints are truly entitled and I know it…but still, no-one has a monopoly on misery this year. So, to keep my self busy and channel the anxiety that was coursing through my body like storm water through debris-choked drain, I turned to nature photography for a bit of peace.

Shooting (pictures of) critters, birds, bees, is HARD. They move. A lot. They have an uncanny ability to fly/run/crawl/wiggle away at JUST the moment you go to take the shot. It requires a lot of patience, and a lot more time working the scene and shot than I had imagined. It was also a great challenge though, and learning experience, helping me experiment with various shutter speeds and style of shooting I don’t typically do with my routine travel photography. I shoot mainly with Fuji cameras and lenses, which are known to be great for photographing people, but not necessarily for nature photography. I splurged early in the year when quarantine hit and bought the Fuji 100 x 400mm lens, the biggest, heaviest, and zoomiest of the Fuji lenses. So far, it’s great, helping me capture shots in a way I’ve never really gotten the chance to before, while teaching me a good bit about planning and preparing for shots…because you have too with such a unique lens. I also have been shooting with the Fuji XF 90mm f/2 R LM WR lens, which is brilliant and gorgeous portrait lens. I’ll be posting a couple different posts with each lens but here area a couple of my favorite recent shots below.