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It’s exciting to get great wildlife pictures in the Kansas outdoors, and winter offers
some of the year’s best opportunities. But watch out around frozen lakes. A poorly understood
air condition over ice and cold water can sometimes tempt you to cuss your camera.
It’s shimmer, or wave distortion formed when light bends while passing through air
of different densities. Nothing is wrong with your gear. But cold air just above the ice,
layered with warmer air above it, cause rays to bend again and again on the way to your
eye or lens. The effect is like watching your subject through clear, running water. And
that makes it impossible to get sharp pictures. Telephoto lenses make it even worse. Compare
a sharp shot taken in stable air to a photo with the same lens disrupted by shimmer. Pull
a small segment from each picture and the difference is striking. Video that relies
on subject movement can tolerate this condition better than still photographs. When shimmer
is bad, you must accept the degraded images or wait for a better day.
Two things help. First, photo quality is better when using shorter lenses or less zoom, since
the overall effect is reduced. Or, with a fixed telephoto lens, try to get closer. That’s
not always possible, but it works by reducing the amount of unstable air affecting the light
rays that make your picture. Probably, only the most serious nature photographers
worry about such things. But the effects shown here are easy to see. Great magazine or video
photography is seldom as easy as snapping a picture. If you have problems on snow or
ice, now you’ll know why. Good shooting!
I’m Mike Blair for Kansas Wildlife and Parks.