{"id":20335,"date":"2013-12-01T06:50:00","date_gmt":"2013-12-01T13:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=20335"},"modified":"2013-12-01T07:34:50","modified_gmt":"2013-12-01T14:34:50","slug":"a-blackbird-who-taught-me-a-lesson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/12\/01\/a-blackbird-who-taught-me-a-lesson\/","title":{"rendered":"A Blackbird Who Taught Me A Lesson"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in June of 2008 I still had many lessons to learn about photographing birds.\u00a0 This male Yellow-headed Blackbird was one of my more memorable teachers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"yellow-headed<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/125, f\/8, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Typically I’m shooting from my pickup so I have to pull up on the bird (hoping it doesn’t fly off), turn off the engine to avoid engine vibration, get my gear out the window, focus and shoot.\u00a0 But as soon as I saw this bird through the viewfinder I\u00a0noticed that I had stopped in a position that put a cattail between me and the blackbird.\u00a0 I immediately realized that I\u00a0should have pulled a few feet further forward (or stopped\u00a0several feet earlier)\u00a0to put the offending cattail to the side of the bird.<\/p>\n

However, at this point doing so presented a problem\u00a0– if I started the engine it\u00a0would \u00a0likely flush the bird.\u00a0 But knowing I didn’t really have a choice I started it anyway and moved several feet forward…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"yellow-headed<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/125, f\/8, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

and this time I\u00a0got lucky because the bird was so intent on its displays for the ladies that it stuck.\u00a0 But I had missed the unobstructed pose I wanted most (the first shot) and it didn’t happen again.<\/p>\n

This wasn’t the first time something similar had occurred to me but until this instance those were lessons I usually\u00a0didn’t remember in the excitement of stalking a promising bird.\u00a0 But after the disappointment with\u00a0this first shot I had truly learned\u00a0my lesson.\u00a0 Now, when I’m pulling up on a bird there’s always two things going through my mind as I’m deciding where to stop and turn off my engine –\u00a0\u00a0Where will the light angle be best?\u00a0 Can I\u00a0maneuver into a position that will avoid any obstructions in front of the bird?<\/p>\n

Lesson learned…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

A note to my readers:\u00a0 My computer needs a tune-up and must soon go into the shop for a few days.\u00a0 I have another computer that (due to potential software issues)\u00a0I may or may not be able to use to\u00a0publish\u00a0blog posts during that time.\u00a0 So if I’m mostly off line for a while, that’s what’s happening.\u00a0 Wish me luck…<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in June of 2008 I still had many lessons to learn about photographing birds. This male Yellow-headed Blackbird was one of my more memorable teachers.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20336,"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":[6,334,897],"tags":[77,1766,1765,899,898],"class_list":["post-20335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-yellow-headed-blackbirds","tag-cattail","tag-mobile-blind","tag-photographing-birds-from-a-vehicle","tag-xanthocephalus-xanthocephalus","tag-yellow-headed-blackbird"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/yellow-headed-blackbird-8908-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-5hZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20335","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=20335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20335\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}