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Raccoon Caught Prowling Infra-red

Raccoon Caught Prowling Infra-red
Raccoon Caught Prowling Infra-red

Raccoon Caught Prowling Infra-red. This was of course a Game Trail Camera capture.

The secret behind captures like this is placement of the camera. Pure dark midnight captures are a process of putting the “wildlife funnel” at the right focal distance from your game camera. Note that the tree in the foreground is slightly out of focus. It got the raccoons face is right on.

By the nature of the type of light used here (Infra-Red), everything is a bit grainy. This is a result of a highly sensitive chip piking up only reflected IR light from the flash. He was caught by surprise by the sound of this particular 360 degree camera spinning toward his position. It usually freezes the animal such that the slow shutter speed is often enough to catch him. No blur is rare in these kind of shots. A moving animal would be a non-usable photo from the motion. A little noise will get their attention. You don’t want them running the other way lolol.

This location was picked because of many animals that travel here. It had worn away the vegetation on a landing down by a lake. I’ll leave it down there for a few weeks and there will be a host of interesting beasties walking down to this spot. I think I have 5 cameras game cameras placed here. This includes the 360 degree camera. Placed here. I went three weeks between checking the cameras. I’m about to pick them all up as this spot floods in the spring. It goes completely underwater by several feet. Water is scarce once the lake freezes over. The closest place is one of my stock tanks a good 1/3 mile up drainage. Conveniently there are 4 game trail cameras on that stock tank lolo. I’ll get this guy over there this winter I hope.

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands.

Title: Raccoon Caught Prowling Infra-red

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Moon Light Scattered on Clouds (Night Time Lapse)

Moon Light Scattered on Clouds (Night Time Lapse)
Moon Light Scattered on Clouds (Night Time Lapse)

Here is a Time Exposure (8 seconds) of the full Harvest moon lighting up the cloud deck. Moon Light Scattered on Clouds even had stars peaking through the breaks in the cloud the brightest of which is Jupiter still low in the sky.

“Sneaky Pete” the windmill is in this but couldn’t get past our deer resistant fence to photobomb me any closer. From my back yard literally inside our homestead’s compounds.
The light on the ground is ambient light from inside aforementioned compound.


Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands.

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Moon on the Mountain

Moon on the Mountain
Moon on the Mountain

I caught the Hunter’s Moon rising over a mountain top. This “mountain” top was a mile or so out there. When the moon is this low, sometimes the atmospheric lens really distorts the “globe” shape but this night it was pretty clear and non distorting. There is some sculpting of the edges by the roiling atmosphere at such a low angle. Pretty good detail for a horizon moon though. I have literally seen a scrushed blurred blob setting before. It all depends on the air and what it’ doing to the light.

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands.

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Burgler Caught on Game Trail Camera

Burgler Caught on Game Trail Camera
Burgler Caught on Game Trail Camera

I run a network 26 Game Trail Camera (s) and I caught this burglar the other night. You would be amazed at the quality I can tweek out of some of the cameras. This is a 30 megapixel B+W version at midnight during a new moon (no light). Amazing stuff from the technology. Pitch black. Good capture. I have about 15 of this kind of camera up and running. I won’t endorse any of them though as they all do something different. Different tools all.

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands.

I took out the “White eye” effect from the Infra-red light used here in the digital darkroom. I hope that doesn’t offend you. I remove stuff like that because they are artifacts of the technology, not the way the scene would have looked to me . (I probably could see the back of my hand in that light lolol).

Yup, those are stars in the sky. It’s as dark up in this remote part of the borderlands of Wy/Mt as the north Atlantic Ocean according to NOAA published maps.
Seeing stars on game trail cameras? He had to be absolutely frozen still when this shot went off or he would have blurred. This is a fairly long exposure. No question he was a statue frozen by the sound of the camera setting up lolol.

Location: way out in the backcountry, Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands