UWOL 25- Red River Survivors – Mike Sims

[Dale Guthormsen]

Mike,

What a great story!!! I loved gthe shots and had a pleasent chuckle as thre couboy rode acroos the screen, just a fun watch!! the character of the naration also added hugly to the feel of the story.

Job Well done!!

Not much else to other than THANKS for taking the time!!!



dale

[Finn-Erik Faale]

Mike, I understand that days and weeks of work lies behind these four minutes.
The film is overflowing with surprising ideas and inventions.
I have enjoyed watching several times to perceive and absorb everything. The editing is exemplary.
Thank you for the Wild West story.

[Paul Wood]

Mike,

I should just clarify - when I said I wanted to know more, it was probably my bad english usage! - I meant I enjoyed it so much, I cant wait for part two, to find out more about the ranch around the next bend!

Your explanation was great!

[Mike Sims]

Thanks Bill. That was a very lucky grab shot. I was shooting the turkeys and I barely heard someone about 150 feet behind me say “Oh look, mountain goats!” Mountain goats have never lived in Palo Duro Canyon but historically Big-horned Sheep did. They were all killed for meat by the early settlers. I turned around and saw a man pointing something out to his small daughter. I turned the camera, zoomed in and just caught the two Aoudad (Barbary Sheep) before they disappeared. These are introduced from northern Africa and are widely found in Texas. Unfortunately there is an out of focus tree limb in the shot.

The early recipes were written for people without access to precise measuring tools. Here are the approximate modern equivalents.
A big wallop is about a tablespoon.
A right-smart is a heaping fistful- about a cup.
A pinch is the amount you can comfortably pinch between the thumb and two fingers- about ½ teaspoon.
Two big pinches is about a heaping teaspoon.
A dab is a small piece of something solid, a small dab of sugar would be about ¼ teaspoon.
It will require a little over a cup of milk to make the mixture “soupy”.
If you haven’t got the coals from a good fire handy try a modern oven at 350°F for about 20 minutes.

[Mike Sims]

Thanks, Geir Inge. I’m glad you enjoyed it. In the old days when people were quite spread out communities would regularly all come together at a designated spot and camp out for a few days and visit. We called them Camp Meetings. There are a couple that are still being held but they have become religious retreats. It wasn’t always so. As the meeting was breaking up people would invite each other to visit them at home when possible. The phrase that was used is “Y’all come!” Many of our early settlers (my own family among them) came here from Tennessee and it is a condensation of an old Tennessee saying “Y’all come back now!” (which was made famous at the end of the Beverly Hillbillies). I hope you get the chance to visit Texas. If you do (and this goes for all you UWOLers)- Y’all come!

[Mike Sims]

Thanks Dale. I did that cowboy animation with After Effects.

[Mike Sims]

My pleasure, Finn-Erik. I’m glad you enjoyed it. Thank-you much for the compliment about the editing. I had a lot of fun with it. Shooting the buffalo was quite fun also. Several times they came up within several feet of me to see what I was doing. They seem to be very curious critters.

[Mike Sims]

Thanks again Paul. I think your English is probably better than Mine!

One thing I should have said something about earlier is Adobe Walls. It was a trading post and small walled settlement in the panhandle that catered to outfitting the buffalo hunters. It is the site of the famed “Battle of Adobe Walls”. Several hundred plains Indians attacked trying to stop the slaughter of their livelihood. Unfortunately, they only learned the foolishness of attacking well provisioned and forted-up men that are accustomed to killing at ranges of well over half a mile.

[Oliver Pahlow]

That was a great story Mike. Great shots of the Buffalo and countryside. Your another one who has some great scenery in your backyard. I enjoyed watching it. Thanks.

[Marj Atkins]

Hi Mike. As far as I’m concerned this is your best movie yet – even beats your amazing spelunking film!! I give you 10/10 for originality and entertainment value. You managed to turn a potentially boring story about how the Bison were saved into something quite amazing! I can’t remember a story better told than this in the UWOL Challenge and over and above that you never dropped that accent once – certainly not to my ear anyway – although you say those more knowledgeable would pick up the differences between north and south.

I chuckled at some of your colorful phrases said with such gusto ( ‘..and things was gud’ and ‘..for the sound of orphan cavs bawlin..’) while the corny cowboy cut-out and contrived sound effects throughout added the finishing touches to this very entertaining piece.

Your story was well-constructed with a good variety of appropriate images to support it. Wonderful scenery, with cloud time lapses thrown in for good measure. (Spectacular star photo!) I enjoyed getting a good look at another part of our world and was quite intrigued by the red hue of the river canyon.

Sixty million head down to only thirty?!! Wow and I thought that knocking off more than three and a half million penguins was bad enough.

Well done Mike – one of my favourites!

[Mike Sims]

I’m glad you liked it, Marj. Thank-you so much for the encouraging words. I had a lot of fun making this one. I still have a good bit of unreviewed footage and I have this nagging fear that I have some better shots that I didn’t show you. There is one shot that I missed and hope to some day go back and get. The bison visit a small lake everyday to drink. When the herd crests a small rise and can see the water a couple of hundred yards away the younger adults break into a run and race each other to the water. The sight of twenty to thirty bison running shoulder to shoulder in obvious glee is really something to see.

[Mike Sims]

Thanks for the kind words, Oliver. The scenery I showed you isn’t exactly in my backyard. Texas is a large state with many varied habitats. I had to drive a good ways to reach this one. It wasn’t easy. I’m in a sort of predicament. At a time when the insane rate of urban development means I have to go farther and farther away to shoot the subjects I enjoy I find myself less and less able to do so. I am now primary care-giver for my father (he has Parkinson’s). I had to hire a nurse in able to get away and shoot for this round. It will be one of my major expenses for this year but was totally worth it. I needed to get away. I find UWOL therapeutic. I don’t like to think about a coming time when I won’t be able to participate. One incident from UC25 really stands out for me. I was filming the shot with the calves (by the way they are too old for that segment; suckling calves have a bright rusty color). They were across a road from me. I was concentrating on getting the shot when I felt warm breath on my neck and that buffalo sound deep in my chest. I looked up and turned to find a large bull standing right next to me. They can move very quietly when they want to. I could have easily reached out and touched him. He was just checking me out to make sure I meant the calves no harm. We looked each other in the eye- for over three minutes (I know because I had left the camera running!). Finally he seemed to sigh as if to say “These humans sure are foolish but at least this one seems mostly harmless”. He turned very slowly and walked away. I felt elated. Three minutes with that buffalo was worth more than a tropical vacation or any amount of time with a therapist.

[Mike Sims]

I have been asked if a special permit is required to gain access to the bison. The answer is no. After paying a modest ($5) entrance fee, all park visitors can easily see the bison herd. Caprock Canyons State Park has excellent camping facilities and can accommodate everything from primitive camping for backpackers to RVs. The sister park, Palo Duro Canyon SP, has camping as well as luxury cabins on the canyon rim with spectacular views. Reservations for either park can be made online.

Here is a lo-res pano I took at CCSP.

[Lorinda Norton]

Mike, you are full of surprises! Your walk on the corny side took me quite by surprise, allowing me to "have' to watch this entry many times to get the full effect.

As others mentioned, the opening scene with its expanse and perfect music did its job of hooking me and reeling me in. Little did I know what a mixed bag of humor, history, and exceptional images of Texas wildlife you had planned for us!

Forgive me if I missed this in the comments, but was the shot of the night sky at 3:35 static or a photo? About the brucellosis, the definition of which I had to look up, even though you had time to define it I'm glad you didn't. It would have broken the spell of some mighty fine storytelling.

Well done, Mike, and congratulations on a much-deserved win!

[Mike Sims]

Thank-you, ma’am. The shot you asked about is a composite still. The sky is from a shot I took at the same time I was out shooting the comet (March 10). I was feeling pretty rotten at the time. It was shot later in the evening and pointing away from the city lights but at the same location. Canon 550D with Canon 28mm f/1.8- 30 sec exposure @ f/4 ISO 800. It was processed with some standard astrophoto techniques to expand the histogram, darken the background and increase color in the highlights. The foreground of the composite is a frame from video (XL-H1/Samurai). The original shot looked much like the clip at 2:35- it was taken two shots later from roughly the same location. I removed the sky and feathered the edge a few pixels. I then dropped the gamma, lowered the red channel significantly, boosted the blue channel slightly and gave the resulting RGB channel a strong S-curve. After compositing I lowered the saturation with the result you see.