Behind Lens Feature Hunt / LJWorld.com

This gallery of images shows some of the outtakes and the eventual published photograph from a search for a feature photograph during a winter nature hike.

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A girl reacts to the smell of a friend's fur coat as they prepare for a hike at the Prairie Park Nature Center. In my search for a feature from this unique situation, I thought this scene was a little too cluttered and didn't emphasize the coats as much as I wanted. .

Photo by Mike Yoder

This scene was less cluttered and separated out as a couple of girls try on their fur coats. But it still lacked visual impact that I believed was possible with this subject matter.

Photo by Mike Yoder

One of my first photographs outside the center captured some of the humor of the scene in a close, wide-angle shot. But I felt that the hikers not wearing fur coats was distracting. My goal was to find a way to isolate the girls wearing fur from the rest of the group.

Photo by Mike Yoder

I decided to back off and use a medium telephoto lens in hopes of isolating the girls in fur coats from the other hikers. This photo shows how close together the group stayed. But this did create a cleaner, simpler backdrop for the group.

Photo by Mike Yoder

When these three girls stepped just a foot away from the blue parka-wearing guide, I quickly took a photograph. But I was so quick and sloppy with my aim that I cut off part of the hiker at the left.

Photo by Mike Yoder

One second after taking the photograph where I cut off some of the girl on the left, I reframed the shot and got a cleaner image with separation between the edges of my frame and the girls. At the far left you can see a slight bit of the blue parka worn by the hiking guide. That part was cropped out in the final version that was published in the paper.

Photo by Mike Yoder

This shows a later photograph in the sequence, taken just seconds after the frame that was published in the newspaper. In my opinion, the fact that all three girls are looking the same direction, and the fact that the one girl does not have her binoculars to her face, distracts from the photograph. I much preferred the earlier image that captures all three using their binoculars and one girl looking in a different direction.

Photo by Mike Yoder