{"id":18223,"date":"2013-09-12T04:00:18","date_gmt":"2013-09-12T10:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=18223"},"modified":"2013-09-08T18:49:13","modified_gmt":"2013-09-09T00:49:13","slug":"some-recent-shots-to-break-a-bird-photographers-heart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/09\/12\/some-recent-shots-to-break-a-bird-photographers-heart\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Recent Shots To Break A Bird Photographer’s Heart"},"content":{"rendered":"

Occasionally I just have to vent about\u00a0some of\u00a0my photography frustrations.<\/p>\n

Every nature photographer has them.\u00a0 Landscape photogs spend countless hours waiting for just the right light and dramatic clouds which often never materialize, those specializing in wildlife (especially mammals) often have to travel great distances to even find their subjects, macro nature\u00a0photographers\u00a0have to deal with slight breezes and fickle light\u00a0that can ruin their shots and those who focus\u00a0on flowers have a limited season.<\/p>\n

But bird photographers may have the most challenging subjects of all (perhaps my\u00a0bias is creeping in here, but I doubt it).\u00a0 Birds\u00a0tend to be\u00a0twitchy, unpredictable, shy\u00a0and incredibly fast.\u00a0 Their relatively compact bodies at rest, because of their large wings,\u00a0can double or triple in size instantaneously when they take off which makes it a huge challenge to avoid clipping body parts.\u00a0 And the direction they fly at takeoff or turn while in flight is often impossible to anticipate\u00a0which makes\u00a0maintaining focus lock a huge challenge.<\/p>\n

All\u00a0these factors lead to a very high percentage of garbage shots.\u00a0 I generally save\u00a0significantly less than 10% of my images and I can accept that.\u00a0 But what really\u00a0hurts is when one of those missed shots had the potential to be a pretty special image.\u00a0 It doesn’t happen often but when it does I usually\u00a0keep them to remind me of “what could have been”.\u00a0 The down-side of doing so is the angst it causes me every time I see those images.<\/p>\n

Following are some recent examples:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"sage<\/a><\/p>\n

While shooting hummingbirds from my pickup\u00a010 days ago I had to twist\u00a0to my left to the\u00a0limit of space provided\u00a0by my window opening to even get this Sage Thrasher in my\u00a0viewfinder as it was perched.\u00a0\u00a0 My motive was simply to watch the bird for a few seconds since the setting was so cluttered with branches that I knew I wouldn’t get any pleasing shots\u00a0but when the bird took off I instinctively pressed the shutter button.\u00a0 I loved the resulting\u00a0flight posture of the bird with the splayed tail showing the interesting white tail markings, the light under the bird and the running position of the feet and legs.<\/p>\n

But the image is unsalvageable due to the cluttered setting and the tightness on the left.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"sage<\/a><\/p>\n

My next example is another Sage Thrasher.\u00a0 This bird was singing on the sagebrush when it very unexpectedly took off slightly to my right.\u00a0 Again I fired instinctively and didn’t even know until I got home that it had attempted to snag this large fly (likely a horse fly) that flew by right in front of the bird.\u00a0 I really like the tipped flight position with the\u00a0arced wings, the\u00a0focus of the bird locked onto the fly and the overall action.<\/p>\n

But the list of deficiencies of this shot is a long one.\u00a0 Neither the fly nor the\u00a0thrasher are sharp, I clipped the bird’s wing and the fly looks kind of strange –\u00a0as if\u00a0it’s right side had been cut off by some kind of amateurish processing (all\u00a0I did was attempt to sharpen the insect).\u00a0 All I can do is keep the\u00a0image as a reminder of what could have been so I’m better prepared for “the next time”.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"hummingbird<\/a><\/p>\n

But of the three examples I’m providing here, this one might have hurt the most.\u00a0 One of my primary interests with my photography is bird behaviors.\u00a0\u00a0I only have one image of a hummingbird “urinating” and that one was while the bird was perched.\u00a0 But this one was in flight, there’s an attractive flower to add visual interest, I like the birds posture and wing position and the fact that it’s well isolated from the background so the behavior is highlighted.<\/p>\n

But the bird is soft!\u00a0 Much too soft.\u00a0 It had been feeding on the flower and instantly backed up to “urinate”.\u00a0 When it did my focus stayed locked on the flower’s stamens instead of the bird.\u00a0 Bummer!<\/p>\n

I love bird photography – both the process in the field\u00a0and the resulting images.\u00a0 And naturally there are frustrations – if it were easy it wouldn’t be as much fun.<\/p>\n

But every so often I have to rant about those frustrations.\u00a0 For me, doing so is cathartic…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

Note:\u00a0 I’m delighted to be “on the road” again – it’s been a\u00a0very\u00a0long time between camping trips!\u00a0 As per usual I won’t be able to respond to comments for a few days (extremely spotty phone signal and no computer)\u00a0but I do get your comments via email on my phone and enjoy them very much.\u00a0 Hope to have some interesting shots to share when we get back!\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Occasionally I just have to vent about some of my photography frustrations.<\/p>\n

Every nature photographer has them. Landscape photogs spend countless hours waiting for just the right light and dramatic clouds which often never materialize, those specializing in wildlife (especially mammals) often cannot even find their subjects, macro nature photographers have to deal with slight breezes that can ruin their shots and those who focus on flowers have a limited season.<\/p>\n

But bird photographers may have the most challenging subjects of all (perhaps my bias is creeping in here, but I doubt it).<\/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":[3,6,334],"tags":[1648,1628,226,271],"class_list":["post-18223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","tag-cluttered-setting","tag-hummingbird","tag-nature-photography","tag-sage-thrasher"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-4JV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18223","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=18223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18223\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}