62 Nebraskaland • April 2022
THE LAST STOP
By Jeff Kurrus
LAST STOP
Part of my job at Nebraskaland Magazine is to capture a
variety of photographs to accompany my stories. While I
may never be able to match the technical knowledge of many
photographers I work with, I do know what a good photo
spread — and a bad one — looks like.
So after a day of catching crappies in the spring of 2020,
I started photographing. One might assume after 15 years
with Nebraskaland, I would have run out of ideas. Quite
the opposite. You can almost always come up with a new
composition or a different way to use natural or studio
lighting to illuminate your subject. Especially if you study the
work of others and keep challenging yourself and adapting.
The "cleaning" shot is another in my never-ending attempt
to make game cleaning photographs interesting. The night
and day shots of these fish were taken minutes apart — one
shot properly exposed and the other using off-camera flash
and underexposed two stops to make it look like night.
The problem, and blessing, with photo shoots like these
are the images that completely fail in some way. Who fly-
fishes at night? I'm sure some do, but that wasn't my intent
with this image. The mistake simply didn't occur to me until
I was eating my photo subjects later that evening.
Oh well. There's always next time. As long as I can catch
some more fish.
