White-necked Jacobin captured by Z 6III / Z600f4TC
Them drops of rain were big! They were so big I was cowering under the deck to shoot. The critters of the rainforest though are more than use to it so it was just another day for them. Many like this White-necked Jacobin were out taking it all in. Simply a marvelous way to spend time, singin in the rain!
Pied-billed Grebe captured by Z 9 / Z600f4TC @840mm
When I first learned that the Pied-billed Grebe can submerge just like a submarine going straight down rather than diving, I wanted that photograph. That was a whole lot easier to dream of than to execute. Pied means multi-colored and if you look at the bill, you can see how it was named Pied-billed Grebe. This truly small water bird tends to be shy keeping its distance specifically from wildlife photographers. Late one evening at Green Cay a couple of weeks back, this individual was highly focused on some food source right next to the boardwalk. It seemed not to notice me, which was lucky as it was frame filling. It was a dark hole so the ISO was cranked up to 3200 just to get 1/60 shutter speed. The grebe was actively going down and chasing its prey. It ignored me and I tried to move to keep up with its chasing. The water was shallow enough to see it darting back and forth under the surface. That would give me a little window into where I should expect it to pop back up and make a possible click. The twenty minutes of entertainment only garnished a dozen sharp images but it just takes one to make me smile. This one made me smile, a pied moment.
Wood Stork captured by Z 9 / Z600f4TC w/Z2x
Wood Storks are a massive bird, much bigger than, say a Great Blue Heron. Starting in the late 1800s, they were shot in mass for their gorgeous breeding plumes for ladies fashions. Nearly wiped off the planet, a few survived. Today, through the efforts of many, they are up for delisting from the endangered species act. It’s quite the success story!
My first bird photography trip to Florida decades ago was specifically for the Wood Stork. They weren’t easy to find back then, and when we finally did, they weren’t in a location that was conducive for photography. But I was hooked and in the years since, have spent many days at their rockeries. My time at Wakadahatchee last week was spectacular, in large part because I could just watch Wook Stork’s antics. This time of year, nest platforms are being built, and pair bonds are being renewed. We’re so lucky we have them to watch and enjoy. You gotta love a happy ending for the prehistoric survivor!
Wood Stork captured by Z 9 / Z600f4TC
Command-Aire-4C3, Lincoln Page OX-3, Long Wing Eaglerock captured by Z 6II / Z70-200f2.8>
Mt. Hood is a very gorgeous, picturesque mountain for sure. The Command-Aire, OX-3 & Eaglerock are spectacular aircraft. The early morning light is sunning. Making the click happen was pretty self-explanatory but when you search my files for “aviation landscapes,” you’ll find just a few. That’s because they are really hard to find and harder to capture. Why?
Your basic landscape photo needs certain elements to be successful. For example, for starters, a foreground, middle ground, and background. Most airports, the background is either flat with no content (great for statics) or busy with buildings (bad for landscapes). Your subject is often in the middle ground. One aircraft typically doesn’t cut it, you need multiple. Stacking up aircraft requires a longer lens, 200mm or more. When you add up all those basic requirements, one can understand the challenge. I’m always on the lookout for them, but my mind wonders, landscape or plane click?
Hayden Valley captured by Z 6III / Z24-70f2.8
A snow-carpeted landscape easily grabs the imagination. Bringing in the cold can be one of the challenges to completing your story. We associate the color blue with cold, but in a B&W photo, you don’t have the color blue to work with. Or do you? Actually, you do but it’s not obvious. When you’re in ACR (Adobe Camera Raw) you have a B&W Mixer. There, you have a blue slider. There is lots of blue in the scene, from the sky to the sky reflected by the snow. By simply moving the Blue slider, you can bring out the cold, or, better said, the texture of the snow. It’s a little thing but it can lower the temperature bringing the cold in B&W.
Great Blue Heron captured by Z 9 / Z600f4TC
Like most beginning wildlife photographers, one of the birds I photographed was the friendly, neighborhood Great Blue Heron. This large bird found around the globe is, for the most part, very forgiving to us newbees. They let us make all sorts of mistakes, which most of the time do no more than make the GBH move off a short distance. Their large size permits us to capture nice images even though we don’t have the longest glass in the store. So it is only right that as we get better, we revisit our early friends and do photographically right by them. How?
Start with making them the star of the photograph, and we do that by being very picky with the background. With that long lens you now have in your bag of confidence, move left or right, up or down just enough to make the GBH pop in the frame. You do that when you have that gorgeous soft light. Light that brings out all the detail yet illuminates the elegance of this magnificent bird. While it might be common, with you since you, we, first started out in wildlife photography, it’s a great subject that teaches new lessons every time we have in the viewfinder. That’s why it’s wildlife photographer’s best friend!
Great Blue Heron captured by Z 9 / Z600f4TC