Shortly after I built vs3.0 of our water feature at The Ranch, I planted the woodpecker perch. Many looking at it wonder why a ten-foot-tall, dead top of pine is planted in the ground four feet from the water feature basically in the middle of the property. If you’re not a backyard bird photographer, you would simply check it off as odd. But for you folks who follow my blog, it’s pretty much operation as normal for me. I’ve put up dead sticks for a long time for backyard bird photography. Well on New Year’s day with the nice light, I set up on the woodpecker perch to shoot for the first time.
Red-shafted Flicker captured by D6 / 800f5.6 AFS
Why did I wait so long? The woodpeckers, Red & Yellow-shafted Flickers, Hairy and Downy (along with magpies, nuthatches, and Clark Nutcrackers) have been coming to the perch regularly for about 45 days. Before that, it was pretty hit or miss. I really wanted the Downy, that was my target species. So I waited to set up on it once they became totally accustomed to the perch, me, and the activity at The Ranch. I didn’t want any negative responses. You might be asking what is making them land on the perch in the first place? On the other side of the perch is a suet cake, placed there as they will land as you see on the opposite side of the food. It was all planned for shooting in the afternoon light.
And the background so out of focus? I can shoot at f/22 and it will look just as out of focus because the background is over one hundred yards away. The placement of the woodpecker perch was first, close to living trees and shrubs and the water feature to make the birds feel safe. It was placed for the background I wanted. And most importantly, for the afternoon light. It was a really nice first time shooting the woodpecker perch the first day of the year!
That shot of trees covered with snow takes a couple of weather factors, the first is water. It’s the snow with a lot of moisture content that tends to cling onto trees limbs as it falls. The wetter the better but then the key is cold. But if you have cold when the snow is falling, it’s not wet. That’s why often you’ll see the snow cling and then your won’t as once warmth hits, it drops off from its weight (pine boughs are adapted just for this). The moral of the story, you want the photo of the snow covered tress, or this case, a rock in a creek, shoot it ASAP, don’t come back to get it later. It will be gone!
It’s that time of year when falling snow can be incorporated in your background to help tell your story. Capturing it is pretty straight forward if you think about it like you would shooting burred water or a blurred plane prop. It’s all a matter of how fast the snow is falling vs. shutter speed. The faster the snow fall, the faster the shutter speed. The slower the snow fall, the slower the shutter speed. In this case, the snow was blowing pretty hard so my shutter speed was 1/100. You might have tried this photo but didn’t have the results you desired, what to check?
The first thing I would check is the background, is it dark? You need a background that is darker than the snow in order to see the snow. Gray and green are naturals. Next, did you use flash as I did here to bring out the color in your subject? If you did, was the power of the flash could be such that it was freezing the snowfall? In many ways, it’s a balancing act but with digital, if only take a couple of clicks to dial it all in and have a ton of fun!
In 1942, a young congressman, Lyndon B Johnson arranged for the US Army to build one of their new ammunition plants in Texas on the Louisiana border. Shortly, 8493 acre were purchased on Caddo Lake and the plant was built. During WWII, Monsanto Corp produced 393,000,000 pounds of TNT at this location! For fifty-five years, the plant built everything from incendiary devices to rocket motors. Thiokol Corp modernized the plant from making liquid rocket fuel to producing solid rocket fuel after the Korean War, the Cold War era. Then in 1987, the plant was used as part of a treaty as the site where the Pershing I & II missiles were destroyed. And now, it’s a National Wildlife Refuge … dang!
What you see above is what’s left of Production Area #1 for the production of TNT. We were there birding, looking for the Red-cockaded Woodpecker (which we did find) when we literally stumbled upon Production Area #1. As you can see, the forest has reclaimed the area bringing an eerily yet beautiful landscape. It’s completely open to the public with signs that have photos to show you what the buildings once looked like (we only explored one of the many sites). A number of the blockhouses have their doors removed and a big wire in their place. Looking in with our lenses (I shot with the Z 6 / Z24-200) we say paychecks from Thiokol dated from 1984 amongst all the papers just lying there on the shelves.
The most amazing thing is it would seem taggers and souvenir hunters have not found the place. We weren’t there to shoot the haunting structural ghosts but took a few moments from our birding to give it all a gander. It’s a really cool place deserving more of my camera time and I will in the future cause it’s not what you expect at a place called Caddo Lake NWR!
When we look at critters, we often, at least I do, wonder why they have the coloration they do. Some, like the Rhino or elephant, don’t really need to blend so are just gray all over. The Polar Bear can blend when they are lying so they can catch their prey. Others like the Pronghorn especially when young need to totally blend in. But how does one blend in when they are partially orange and white? The answer is not always obvious.
Pronghorn captured by D6 / 180-400VR
In the late fall when winter’s first snows have fallen and the last of the falls grasses are still exposed, you can quickly see why the Pronghorn have adapted to their color scheme. The further away they are, the more they blend, and when your predators have a finite range they can see, then they have a chance at survival. Though we saw one Pronghorn taken down on our latest travels, the rest of the herd was gone like a shot and quickly blending in a mile off with their butts all forming the heart shape of alarm. Want to show this evolution in your photographs, you gotta first think about it and then find the opportunity where it appears. It’s an elegant way of telling their story visually, how they can blend.
Yep, in our landscape photos and in general, red just loves black! We love our reds, we love them saturated, deep, vibrant and if at all possible fire engine red. Its just part of the human condition and as such, let’s just give ourselves what we love.
There are many ways to do this. Saturation is by far the most common method of delivering that gorgeous red. I prefer more subtle methods such as using White Balance and exposure. In this example at Caddo Lake, I set the White Balance manually to 8000k and underexposed by 1 2/3 stops. The underexposure not only saturated the color but made sure the black went truly black. Our mind’s eye sees that black and uses it to determine other colors and by association, we see other colors more vibrant. Or in real simple terms, red loves black!
