If you’re ever annoyed by those highly irritating audible seat belt alarms in your vehicle this little piece of hardware is your ticket to some blessed relief. It’s literally saving this bird photographers ass (explanation to follow). And if you ever haul groceries or pets in your pressure-sensitive passenger seat it may be the perfect solution to a huge annoyance.
I encounter a lot of very nice people through my bird photography but I meet my share of stinkers too.
A comment by Neil Rossmiller on yesterday’s blog post reminded me of my years of active participation in a nature photography critique forum and how much I learned while I was there. Since I often have folks ask me how they can improve their photography I thought the subject was worthy of some discussion.
I seldom get an opportunity to photograph a grebe of any species on a nest so I’ll take the shot even if the bird has its back to me. At least this Western Grebe gave me a partial head turn in compensation.
I’ve said it many times, I’m a bird photographer not a traditional birder. But an incident earlier this year gave me a taste of the excitement birders must feel when they observe a rare species and have that sighting accepted by the birding community.
I tend to photograph meadowlarks taking off fairly often but I shoot the species I encounter and I do like this one.
Knowing behaviors of your subject can be a great help in anticipating raptor take-off and bird photographers need all the help we can get.
Occasionally a situation with low potential can unexpectedly result in a nice flight shot, or even two.
For the past several weeks I’ve been receiving almost daily requests for the current and anticipated Bald Eagle situation at Farmington Bay WMA so this morning I’ve decided to be a little proactive with a blog post that covers most everything I know on the subject.
They say that bad news comes in threes. Maybe sometimes the good stuff happens in triplets too.
I’ve been watching this female Belted Kingfisher from afar for several weeks now but in typical kingfisher fashion she has been unapproachable. But yesterday morning she partially atoned for her bashful ways and performed some interesting behavior for my camera.
The Green-winged Teal is our smallest duck and to my eye the male is strikingly handsome and colorful, especially when you can catch the light just right on the iridescent greens of the crescent above and behind the eye. It’s amazing how that crescent turns black in an instant at differing light angles.
Many raptors are “sit and wait” hunters, which means they often hunt from an elevated perch instead of “on the wing” and Red-tailed Hawks are well-known for this practice. An elevated perch provides good views over a large area and no extra energy need be expended in flight while looking for food. Typically these birds will use the same productive perch repeatedly over long periods of time, which presents a challenge to the photographer – poop (hereafter referred to as “whitewash”). Whitewash consists largely of crystalline uric acid (it’s more complicated than that but I’ll try not to stray into a discussion of the functions of the cloaca), which tends to be bright white. That whitewash can create some aesthetic and ethical conflicts between a “natural shot” and an image that has been “Photoshopped” to death, primarily by use of the clone tool. Many photographers routinely clone out whitewash and/or droppings and I’ll admit that I’ve done it before, but for me it’s an ethical dilemma because I much prefer to leave my images as natural as possible since I consider myself to be a “nature photographer”. In fact, right now I’m struggling with a series of Horned Lark images that I really like, but there’s a large, fresh and very conspicuous dropping right in front of the birds foot that most would find distracting. I could clone it out but every time I looked at that image I would know what I’d done. Canon 7D, 1/4000, f/5.6, ISO 640, 500 f/4, natural light, not baited, set up or called in A couple of days…
