Aug 16, 2016 | Wildlife Photography
Superb Fairy-Wren
captured by D5 / 800f5.6 AFS
Our first twenty-four hours at O’Reilly’s has been simply brilliant! Now part of the giggle is the top photo is of a male Superb Fairy-Wren which is one of my all time favorite birds! And the first day we had a whole bunch of opportunities with them. Why do I like them? Just look at that head! Seriously and that’s not even using a flash, that’s just how they look. Brilliant, simply brilliant!
Grey Wagtail
captured by D5 / 800f5.6 AFS
The cool thing about the Superb Fairy-Wren is you can be out chasing some other bird and if you are getting skunked, the Wren appears to save the day. I came to Australia with a list of birds I wanted that, well, I didn’t do so well with on my last visit. The Grey Wagtail is one of those. The one thing that has become so overwhelming obvious to me is the amazing improvement of the gear since my last visit. This is a prime example of how the D5 / 800f5.6 AFS grab focus so bloody fast in the lost light situations. That’s not important just for the obvious reason, sharpness, but permitting you to find the subject in the viewfinder and follow it until you want to go click. Both of these birds are about the size of your thumb, incredibly small. Both are real fast little dudes and that along with size makes them a real &%*#)@ to find and follow through the viewfinder. But that’s the fun and makes the reward just that sweeter when you make the click. There are so many stories already, dying to get them all out. The challenge is finding the time and internet to get them out. mtc.
Aug 11, 2016 | Wildlife Photography
You’ve heard me say it many times, backgrounds are everything. In wildlife photography, we should be aware of that background for its pluses and minuses. The background is the stage we create to show off the star, our subject, and use the background to tell its story. That’s a real challenge and a lot to ask from something, show off something and not get in its way in the process. It’s one reason why wildlife photography is so challenging because we can’t control the subject to put it in front of the best background when we want it. This whole issue intensifies when we narrow our subject down to birds. This is when you start hearing, darn that twig!
Just like all wildlife photographers, I run into this same issue. When I started out 40yrs ago the only option was to get it right in the camera. I still rise to that same level of perfection which is why I shoot with the D5 / 800f5.6 AFS. Optics to control the background. That was the solution I found I liked best and still like best for controlling the background. The 800mm and its very narrow angle of view, especially when you add its 1.25x teleconverter and you go out to 1000mm. But guess what at times, I still say, darn that twig.
I’ve put up four photos here that show those times when you might say, darn that twig. So after you get that long lens to control the background and your start understanding that even with that long lens, there are times you’re still going to say, “darn that twig,” you gotta ask yourself, “what’s wrong with that twig anyways?” Seriously, who made the rule that you can’t have a twig(s) in the background? Isn’t that twig part of the subject’s world and if you’re telling the subject’s story, is not having that twig changing its story? Yes, I have made some bad jokes when I see a photo with a twig “skewing” a bird because in that case, the twig is simply not helping the storytelling. But there is a happy medium which is why I posted these four images when it comes to twigs in the background. So what I’m suggesting is that you don’t freak out about twigs, don’t feel you need to resort to Photoshop or peer pressure to remove it, and use it instead to tell your story. Because you might then say in an enthusiastic voice, darn that twig!
Jul 11, 2016 | Wildlife Photography
The silhouette is a dramatic and romantic way to tell a story about your subject. But just like everything else in communicating, the amount you say helps the viewer understand the story. The silhouette is by its very natural a dramatic image because of the character of the light. The most common silhouette comes in the early morning or late evening when we can so easily take advantage with its color. You can suck in everyone to look at your photograph with that red (make sure you’re shooting in Cloudy WB). We all are drawn to red so in using that you’ve done the easy part, grabbed the viewer’s attention. The hard part is telling the story once you’ve got their attention. That’s where knowing how much silhouette you need in the photograph. What we’re competing with are folk’s life experiences and perceived ideas. For example, a palm tree, everyone knows that shape so you don’t have to show that much for all to relate to the shape as being a palm tree. When you use something more obscure like in this photo of Pronghorn, you need to show more so the public can relate. So how much do you need? The answer comes from your understanding how recognizable the subject is in silhouette form. The more recognizable the less your can show, the less recognizable the more you show. Then again, mystery taps the imagination and that is always a good thing too!
Jun 24, 2016 | Wildlife Photography
I was down on the flats shooting the Swallows on a gorgeous morning. Off in the distance is home, the Sierra Mountains, still snow capped and in that filtered light – simply gorgeous. Then up the river I see a White Pelican lift off the water. I throw the D500 / 300PF up to my eye, gently touch the shutter release activating the AF system (in Auto Area AF), the system locked on and I let it rip, and rip, and rip and rip hoping the Pelican’s flight path would put it in front of our home.
There was no way to know if the Pelican’s flight path would take it with the background I wanted when it first lifted off. If I waited to put the camera up to my eye once I saw the background, by the time the camera locked on and I took the photo, there is a good chance that the background would be loss. So shooting the D5 or in this case, the D500 with that basically unlimited buffer, I let ‘er rip! As you can see, there are 102 shots from this series from lift off to the rude butt shot (that’s a lot of sharp images!). Now this kind of photography, of just letting ‘er rip is a luxury, wasn’t that long ago that wasn’t an option. Now while not the greatest photograph, to me, seeing this cool bird over our home makes it special. Having gear that can capture special memories is important since photography is all about memories. Cause it’s not every day you see White Pelicans over snow!
Jun 10, 2016 | Wildlife Photography
Read and Ponder, YOU might be the answer!
May 27, 2016 | Wildlife Photography
Spring has sprung on the property and Sharon’s favorite birds have come back. We have two distinct populations of Evening Grosbeaks, winter and summer. This migratory species ranges over most of North America and Mexico with our winter Grosbeaks coming south from Canada, stopping at our feeders and our summer Grosbeaks coming up from the south to stop at our feeders. Sharon carefully notes their comings and goings over the years and so looks forward to the summer population since they are so active and noisy!
We were in our home for years before we first saw the Evening Grosbeak on the property. We’d seen them in the Sierra but not around our feeders. Then eighteen years ago the first one arrived in May. Couldn’t move one foot in the house without flushing them. They are incredibly shy! Then none over the winter until the following May when we had a couple of Grosbeaks. The summer population slowly grew overs the years and then about seven years ago, the winter population showed up. This past winter, we had a continual flock of about thirty Grosbeaks and this summer, well we can’t count all the Grosbeaks in all the feeders. It’s so much fun to see all the yellow in the trees and darting around the property. That’s a long winded story about the photos you see here taken yesterday.
Last year we saw the Grosbeaks one day go to the tops of our leafing out aspens and start striping it of its new buds. We were horrified cause we thought we’d soon have bare trees! We were totally confused cause these are seed eating birds. We watched and watched and after a short time, they flew from the aspens which as the summer unfolded had the best growth ever. Still don’t understand what’s going on there, interesting biology. Well this morning, we saw the Grosbeaks leave the feeders and head up into the apsens so I grabbed the camera to photograph the action.
What you see here are the males who are watching the females (spring love) and the females who are eating the leaf buds. It was a good day to photograph this biology as we had a good cloud cover – soft, saturated light. The best part was when I stepped out on the deck to shoot. As I stood there, the other Evening Grosbeaks kept coming into the seed feeder five feet in front of me and the bird bath one foot from me as if I didn’t exist. Such a change from decades ago and it’s such fun! It’s one of the greatest benefits of having a shooting gallery in your own backyard (want to get started, here’s a class on backyard bird photography). You can see and photograph so easily all that great biology with ease. I enjoy it this time of year especially as the Evening love cranks up!
