![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/canada-goosee-8406b-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"canada-goosee-8406b-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\nGetting photos I like at my local pond isn’t easy – not because of a lack of birds but because there’s often\u00a0too many.<\/p>\n
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1\/1600, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n When Canada Geese come in to land on the pond, or take off from it, the opportunities are there but you have to\u00a0be lucky. Getting houses or fences in the background always ruins the shot and the geese in flight are often so packed together that pleasing images are hard to come by.<\/p>\n But two days ago this bird was still low enough after taking off that it was below the houses and I’m learning to pick individual birds out of the flock rather than aiming my lens at a tightly packed group. I have very good detail (the image isn’t cropped much), I like the\u00a0flight pose, the goose is well-lit and f\/7.1 gave me just\u00a0enough depth of field to get almost the entire bird sharp.<\/p>\n But once again this isn’t the image as it came out of my camera.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The pond was littered with coots and Pied-billed Grebes and I\u00a0got four of those little\u00a0buggers in the background. They wouldn’t be quite so bad if it weren’t for\u00a0the bright-white bills of the coots that pull my eye away from the goose like a magnet so I cloned them out in the first version of the image.<\/p>\n Sometimes I just can’t resist seeing what I “almost got”.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/4000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n I suppose this\u00a0juvenile\u00a0Snow Goose was my consolation prize that day on the pond. For some of my readers Snow Geese are common during winter but I seldom get chances with them.\u00a0A single Snow Goose\u00a0has been hanging out with the Canada Geese for some time now but until this day it was always too far away for decent photos. Here I like the alert pose and the silvery reflections on the water.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/4000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n After a while the goose relaxed enough to do a little preening.<\/p>\n Because of clouds and miserable light I haven’t been out on a real photo-shoot for 10 days now. All I’ve been able to do is boogie on down to the nearby pond when we get a brief sucker hole in the clouds and take my chances there. I’m growing weary of clouds and dreary weather.<\/p>\n And then\u00a0the rest of my day (and even my night in the form of dreams\/nightmares)\u00a0is filled with the mindless utterings of my environment-destroying,\u00a0vulgar and racist president. I need some relief on many fronts but I don’t see it coming on any horizon and that’s\u00a0truly depressing, almost clinically so.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n Notes: <\/em><\/p>\n I’ve always tried to keep religion and politics out of my blog as much as possible but like most Americans my life has to some degree become consumed by the present political turmoil and the trickle down effect\u00a0from a childish,\u00a0lying and incompetent president and his minions. If this public stance on my bird photography blog costs me some readers, so be it. Yesterday Trump pushed me over the edge.<\/em><\/p>\n I needed to let off some steam but I’ll try not to let it happen again. We’ll see how that goes…<\/em><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/canada-goosee-8406-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"canada-goosee-8406-ron-dudley\\"")
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