I photographed this wild bobcat in a snowstorm in the mountains of Colorado. It was here that I learned you should never point a camera into the wind during a severe storm because the wind-blown snow can freeze on the front glass element of the lens. I was using a 500mm lens with a lens hood, but the hood didn't provide any protection at all due to the angle of the wind. Fortunately, I had already taken this picture, but when the bobcat changed locations and I pointed the lens into the wind, instantly the lens became coated with ice making further photography impossible. I had to hike back to my car about a mile and a half away, turn the heater on to melt the ice, and then wipe the lens clean before I could go out and shoot again. This shot was taken in the early 90's with film, and the settings were unrecorded. But I always shot wildlife with Fujichrome Provia 100 because it was one f/stop faster than Velvia 50, and I would have used the largest aperture on the lens, which was f/6, because that in turn enabled me to use the fastest shutter speed on the Mamiya RZ 67 medium format camera, 1/400. In the original shot, there was a distracting branch that rose from beneath the bobcat and came up too close to the small tail. That bothered me ever since I took this picture, so using generative fill I finally removed it.
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