US camera trap photographer captures stunning studio quality wildlife images with home-made DSLR set-up

Ryan Pennesi has a favourite spot near a park on Lake Superior’s North Shore, where he hit the jackpot with wildlife sightings – a creek crossing near Tettegouche State Park in Minnesota. Well, not sightings so much as trappings. And not trapping like grab the animal by the leg, but camera traps, a fancy name for a fancier version of the trail camera. In that one spot Pennesi’s camera captured deer, wolves, coyotes, red fox, grey fox, snowshoe hares, ruffed grouse, squirrels and a badger. “It doesn’t always work out that way,” Pennesi says. “It’s a lot of work and a lot of effort and most of the time I don’t get the shot I was hoping for. Some of the time I don’t get anything at all, except maybe a tree branch blowing.” Or maybe part of a bear just before it tries to take the camera down. One of his Pelican camera cases has permanent bear tooth marks in it. Once, a bull moose attacked one of Pennesi’s camera traps. “I didn’t realise it at the time but I had put it on a scrape tree. So I’m not sure if he did it by accident as part of his mating thing or if he smelled human and was going after it on purpose,” he says. But Pennesi still gets a thrill whenever he returns to his camera trap to check: “To me it’s like Christmas morning whenever I open up that camera.” He is part of a growing community of outdoor researchers and photographers who are using camera traps as their eyes in the woods, to be in two or 20 places at once and get definitive evidence of wildlife behaviour, or just wildlife existence in a specific place. The 29-year-old has a degree in wildlife and fisheries conservation from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He and his fiancée live in the woods between Silver Bay and Finland. His day job is a forest restoration specialist for the Superior National Forest’s Tofte District, helping plan and orchestrate tree plantings in logged areas. But his passion is photography, especially using advanced digital single-lens reflex camera (DSLRs) to make high-end camera traps. Pennesi started using trail cameras to monitor wildlife in college. His first set-up was on a deer carcass and he was “astounded” at how many creatures showed up to scavenge – including fisher [a small American carnivore in the weasel family], coyote, barred owl, mink and fox. He’s been hooked on remote cameras ever since. In 2013 and 2014, when he worked at Wolf Ridge Environmental Learning Centre near Finland, Pennesi would ask the students to form a hypothesis about what animal lived in a certain burrow in the ground, or what animal was visiting a specific tree or leaving a track. Then they would put up a trail camera and wait for the visual confirmation. “They make a really good teaching tool,” Pennesi says of trail cameras. “The students like the technology and the photos pull them into the natural world, into wildlife.” Seeing the students’ reactions inspired Pennesi to experiment with trail cameras. He’s also worked to improve his traditional photography skills with help from renowned Twin Cities-based nature photographer Benjamin Olson. About five years ago Pennesi began to dabble in home-made camera traps using high-end digital cameras, remote flashes, a passive infrared motion/heat sensor hard-wired to the camera’s shutter and a hard, waterproof camera case. He uses wide-angle lenses – between 10mm and 35mm – that can take in a wider field of view, a little more forgiving when you don’t know exactly where your subject is going to show up. “Most of the time I’ll think I know how it’s going to happen. But 90 per cent of the time the animal does something that’s not at all how I imagined,” he says. When it works out, the high-end cameras, with more megapixels and higher resolution, offer a much sharper image that can be enlarged and still look good. The DSLR also allows more flexibility in aperture opening and shutter speed. It’s a lot more expense: good trail cameras can be had for US$100 or less. A decent DSLR camera trap set-up can cost nearly US$2,000. “I’m essentially putting a photo studio out in the woods,” Pennesi says, adding that, so far, no humans have stolen any of his camera gear. “People do notice them sometimes … I have found a few images of humans doing poses that I didn’t want to see.” But there’s a pay off for the bigger investment. Most trail cameras are between three megapixels and 10 megapixels (although some newer models have more) while modern DSLRs can have 20, 30 or even more megapixels. The DSLR set-ups also allow better, broader use of flash, and some of the images Pennesi gets are nothing short of dramatic – portrait-quality shots, often at night, that look like studio shots of stuffed animals. Most of the time I’ll think I know how it’s going to happen. But 90 per cent of the time the animal does something that’s not at all how I imagined Ryan Pennesi, trap photographer One of his goals is to sell his most dramatic camera trap photos, either as art or to wildlife magazines. But his primary motivation is using his camera traps to further science, conservation and public outreach. “My goal is to use the images from the camera traps to help conservation efforts. To help bring research to people, to make it more accessible and useful … to help people understand what’s going on in the natural world,” Pennesi says.