{"id":12532,"date":"2013-02-18T06:37:22","date_gmt":"2013-02-18T13:37:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=12532"},"modified":"2013-02-18T06:37:22","modified_gmt":"2013-02-18T13:37:22","slug":"black-billed-magpie-iridescence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/02\/18\/black-billed-magpie-iridescence\/","title":{"rendered":"Black-billed Magpie Iridescence"},"content":{"rendered":"

Black-billed Magpies are loud, flashy and conspicuous black and white birds.\u00a0 And they’re a challenge to photograph well because of the\u00a0exposure difficulty – getting detail in the blacks without “blowing out” the whites.\u00a0 I probably discard a higher proportion of shots of this species than I do any other.\u00a0 But if you work hard at it (with a little luck thrown into the mix) you can get some pretty spectacular shots that have detail in the blacks and whites and <\/em>their showy iridescence.<\/p>\n

The actual\u00a0plumage of these birds is truly black and white, with no other colors.\u00a0 \u00a0But in the right light the feather structure (and other factors) on the tail and wings\u00a0of these birds bends the light much like a prism and produces a variety of colors, predominantly blues and greens.\u00a0 When I’m photographing magpies, one of my goals is usually to capture some of that iridescence.<\/p>\n

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\"black<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 100-400 @ 400mm, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Three days ago I found this magpie perched on a snow-covered boulder on Antelope Island.\u00a0 As you can see the whites are well-exposed but there’s not a lot of detail in the blacks.\u00a0 This is the type of magpie image that I normally wouldn’t do much with except for purposes such as this post (my high shutter speeds were due to the snow and the fact that I was attempting take-off shots).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"black<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 100-400 @ 400mm, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

This is the same bird on the same perch but the image was taken three clicks before the previous one.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The iridescence shows up nicely in the tail because of a miniscule difference in the angle of the tail to the sun.\u00a0 There’s also a little more detail in some of the blacks so I prefer this shot to the previous one, even though the pose isn’t quite as interesting for me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"black<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/4000, f\/7.1, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc,\u00a0natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I believe this is the same bird taking off from a different perch 12 minutes later (I was further away so I’m using a different camera and lens).\u00a0 Here the black detail is acceptable, the whites look good\u00a0and I got some wing iridescence.\u00a0 I wish I had more of it because I like the take-off posture and the eye contact.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"black-billed<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2000, f\/8, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

But when everything comes together the iridescence can be striking.\u00a0 In this image the blues and greens are pretty intense and there’s even hints of reds and yellows in the tail (this is an older shot of a magpie\u00a0taking off with nesting material\u00a0that I’ve posted once before).<\/p>\n

I’ve spent countless hours trying to get images of magpies with nice iridescence and in my experience I have the best chance if I’m shooting just before mid-morning with the sun coming over my right shoulder and the bird at approximately the angle you see here.<\/p>\n

There are also\u00a0other factors invloved\u00a0in showing iridescence.\u00a0\u00a0 Worn feathers subdue the effect and juvenile birds show very little of it.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Black-billed Magpies are loud, flashy and conspicuous black and white birds.\u00a0 And they’re a challenge to photograph well because of the\u00a0exposure difficulty – getting detail in the blacks without “blowing out” the whites.\u00a0 I probably discard a higher proportion of shots of this species than I do any other.\u00a0 But if you work hard at it (with a little luck thrown into the mix) you can get some pretty spectacular shots that have detail in the blacks and whites and their showy iridescence. The actual\u00a0plumage of these birds is truly black and white, with no other colors.\u00a0 \u00a0But in the right light the feather structure (and other factors) on the tail and wings\u00a0of these birds bends the light much like a prism and produces a variety of colors, predominantly blues and greens.\u00a0 When I’m photographing magpies, one of my goals is usually to capture some of that iridescence.   \u00a01\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 100-400 @ 400mm, natural light Three days ago I found this magpie perched on a snow-covered boulder on Antelope Island.\u00a0 As you can see the whites are well-exposed but there’s not a lot of detail in the blacks.\u00a0 This is the type of magpie image that I normally wouldn’t do much with except for purposes such as this post (my high shutter speeds were due to the snow and the fact that I was attempting take-off shots).     \u00a0\u00a01\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 100-400 @ 400mm, natural light This is the same bird on the same perch but the image was taken…<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,334,363],"tags":[31,57,398,186,1250,610,1251,1252],"class_list":["post-12532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-black-billed-magpies","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-black-billed-magpie","tag-exposure","tag-iridescence","tag-iridescent","tag-pica-hudsonia","tag-prism","tag-worn-feathers"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-3g8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12532\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}