Prairie dogs, falcons and hawks with thanks

Posted on 19. Sep, 2011 by Paul Burwell in Everything, Photography, Wildlife photography, Workshops, Tours and Courses

Black-tailed Prairie Dog

I’d like to thank the students who participated in my recent Fall 2011 Wildlife Intensive Weekend Workshop presented here in Edmonton, Alberta.

Wildlife Intensive student

It is always great to get together with a bunch of like-minded folks where I can share my passion for wildlife photography. We spent a full day in the classroom Saturday and then on Sunday morning we took a field trip to a number of locations to help the student’s practice what they’d learned during Saturday’s lecture. We visited the world’s northern most Prairie Dog Farm (which doesn’t even exist according to most scientists as they list the town in Grasslands National Park in Saskatchewan as the most northern town; ours is about 550KM north of Grassland’s) along with a local falconer who allowed us to photograph some of his birds. My thanks go out to the local land owner with the prairie dog town on his property along with the falconer; it really adds a lot to the workshop for the student’s to get an opportunity to photograph wildlife I know will be there.

Dark morph male Red-tailed Hawk

Unlike a lot of wildlife photography, this workshop doesn’t require a high powered telephoto lens. Rather, a lens with a range of 70-300mm works quite well.

Female Red-tailed Hawk

After returning from the field, the students uploaded their images to their computers and chose a number of them for critique. Overall, I think they were all pleased with their efforts and I was very impressed with what they achieved.

My next similar workshop runs this coming May and is already starting to fill up.