The very first morning I caught just a couple of frames and that was it. They were those kind of frames which give you a taste but leave you wanting more. And in this case, the frames were in mixed light of an unique individual so I couldn’t instantly key out the bird. And it wasn’t one we’d seen on our previous trip to O’Reilly’s. A day went by before we saw another individual and this time, had a long look and photographed a typical individual and I knew in the viewfinder was a Grey Shrike-thrush. It’s actually a common species, not that hard to see nor photograph if you know where it hangs out. But I was already hooked so I went into my normal mode, making the common, uncommon.
The quest for the uncommon photo that told its story started with knowing the stage I wanted to set for my star. I wanted to speak to its living in a dark rainforest. With this idea, I started off by selecting the gear, D5 / 800mm / SB-5000 for this reason, the background. The odds were I would be shooting up into the canopy. I wanted just a squeak of light coming through the canopy and that meant a long lens with a very narrow angle of view (didn’t need long lens for subject size, its a big bird that gets real close). Since I was in a dark rainforest and shooting up into the light, flash was a must. Here the D5 / SB-5000 do a beautiful job, just brilliant if, if you dial in the right numbers to meld the light. In this case, those numbers were -0.7 exp comp in the body and -3.0 exp comp in the flash (dialed in via the body). With the stage set and technical out of the way, I just needed the star to perform. What you see is very natural biology as the Grey Shrike-thrush turn their head to listen to the noises of the forest. I just happened to luck out to have all the stars align to make the click while it was doing just that. I had to come home with the shot and I did since it hooked me the first day!