Early November 2000 found me working for several days in north central Kansas, basing myself out of Manhattan. I’d been hoping for gorgeous fall weather and had (as usual) a long laundry list of places to visit, a mix of wildlife and landscape possibilities.
Mother Nature had other ideas, though, and after a beautifully sunny drive up there on Thursday afternoon, Friday morning dawned foggy with intermittent drizzle. Perfect shooting weather, just not for the subjects I had in mind. Not to be deterred I went out and headed up into the low hills north of the town. As I rounded a corner heading onto the dam of Tuttle Creek Reservoir, I saw through the dense fog a herd of bison (found occasionally in captive herds in that area) a couple hundred meters away up a low rise. There were five or six of them, heads down in the long grass, grazing peacefully. I pulled off the road and unpacked my longest lens and set lens and tripod up on their side of the road and shot most of a roll of the great shaggy beasts feeding in heavy fog. It was an incredible Great Plains misty mood statement and I was ecstatic.
After about an hour I’d had my fill and still had a list of places to explore so I packed up and moved on to other areas. The clouds broke late that afternoon and I happened to find myself near the same place so I detoured to the hill to see if I could get some well-lit shots of the bison. Yep, they were still there, in exactly the same place in exactly the same positions and my heart hit my boots as I realized the “bison” were metal cut-outs.
In the bright sun it was painfully obvious I'd been suckered in by the dense fog and my wish to capture some definitive imagery.In the morning fog they sure looked real and I was sure I had seen steam rising from their nostrils and their tails switching. When I got the images back I looked carefully and yes, one could easily make out their two-dimensional nature and see the eyes painted on! I saved two images as proof of my gullibility and threw the rest in the trash. I was so mad at myself at the time, but can now laugh at the experience.
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