Critters

After the morning sunrise spectacle, which starts at 4:30 and ends at 6:00, the biology starts to kick in on this large pond.  If the temps are cool it takes awhile for the insects to start to moving about, then the birds start warming up, especially the swallows. These birds tend to stay perched on power lines observing everything until the bugs start moving.

The next thing you know it, this tree branch becomes the local rookery for the kids, while the parents dart all over collecting the Breaskfast at Brodie’s…..mmm …I’ll have a toasted moth…

Well, I finally have been able to take aim with the new 200-400 V2 on some local flying critters and the results are remarkable.  Last week I was tracking baseball players and old warplanes with the lens, and this is the first real chance to use it on some cooperative wildlife.

I’ve tried using the tc-20e II with the lens in low light and the autofocus does not work that well.  I should have tried it in this early morning sun, but I was getting fairly close up to the critters so I just did not get around to it.  Overall the lens is dynamic, very fast on acquisitions, and locks on quickly.  I’ll work may way to a review after I have some more field experience.  First impressions are superb though…as this little guy can attest to..

For the past three days, nights and evenings this crazy Luna moth (critter) has been based totally motionless, off to the left of my deck porch light.  Each evening, I see this critter and wonder why he has not flown away, and then decide that this is an opportunity at my doorstep, literally, to practice shooting….and with all my stuff, I have given that critter a lot of different looks…

During this same past few days, Thom Hogan, one of the best Outdoor photographers out there has been running a Great Piece on his blog, about photography, getting back to basics, without using all the camera auto features, which admittedly, I on board with.  Getting back to the manual functionality of the camera is getting more important and more meaningful in my photography, almost to the point when I’m 80% manual before I bring the shutter down. It seems to me all the auto stuff is taking away from how I want to expose, predetermining my DOF, lulling me into thinking that a crisp focus is 100% inevitable, with zoom lens allowing me to stay flat footed, and in the end I’m a partner not the master of the creating processes…

I got this ‘manual bug’ after a few classes with Moose, he’s not a manual guy….but because of 30+ years he knows the cameras output before he shoots in Aperture priority (w-1/2 stop EV). So it dawned on me, if I go back to some basics, I should start to see what the camera is doing and then I can adapt upwards to the auto stuff…Aperture priority, matrix metering…

But by following Thom’s daily workshop  articles, had me thinking on a different slant, because I sense that when you get beyond the all auto functions, you start treading away from taking Pictures & Snapshot and move towards making Images.  Well at least it is for me……..anyway…

This critter helped my journey, as he stoically stayed for three days enduring my photo shoot of him, until I finally found my non technical – back to basics Image,  on a unique subject…..thanks Thom..

For the record:

D3s/ with 105mm, gitzo 3541xls w/arc-swiss cube ball head, manual mode, spot-metering, live-view focus on moth ‘wing eye’, use D3s lower shutter release, VR off, Picture control:Standard;,WB:Auto, feet motionless (deck wobble), DD workflow : PhotoMechanic Ingest, NX2,Black/White  Point,NIK plugins,ACR, CS5 Xtnd, Nik Define,Nik Foliage, Nik tonal contrast, Nik Output Sharpening..

As I was laying flat on the sand with my panning plate setup capturing images of 3-5″ shorebirds, I saw this beautiful ,Egretta caerulea, fly in the bay and it began to stalk the small fish just offshore. I had to scramble a bit, reset my exposure for the strong backlight and waited for the peak of action, then took my shot. Even at 1/500 sec, I wasn’t able to nail the sharpness I wanted, for  ’the claw” is a bit soft.

While putting this Image up in the DD, I noticed that the background was almost Neutral grey and the bird has some  wonderful hues of whites, that I thought of making this Image up in B&W.  I then spent some time making my adjustments for one for color and one for B&W.

Then Prior to posting this Blog, I reviewed yesterdays ‘FritzImages Intelligence’ for comments and noticed that Prez had throw down the gauntlet to me to train up on the Holga 120N camera… As it so happens Nik Silver Effects pro, has the Holga as B&W pre-set, so I am posting my first Holga….. without having to fork over the $27.

A simple click of a feathered critter scampering across the Desoto shoreline backlit in the golden glow of the morning sunrise.  I am sure he is there this Easter Morning looking for his mornings meal..

This little fellow was my Christmas present a few months back while shooting in Florida, Fort DeSoto State Park.  I remember taking off for the park very early and after a great set of sunrise Images, the shorebirds came out in force.

But I was getting skunked, it was my first foray into their world and no book prepares you for trying to shoot these critters darting around. I loaded up my CF cards with a lot of blurs, half hits and bad backgrounds.

I have a new found appreciation for those ‘birders’ that capture those super compelling wildlife images of such small fragile birds living in environments that we can only tolerate for a while.

One such photographer is Debbie Lewinston, who I met briefly during a NYC shoot with Moose Peterson.  After my skunking, I pelted her with email questions for advise, and she graciously filled me in on a few shooting nuances based on her experiences, so I think I’ll be better armed the when I head back to Florida.

However, a few images did managed to get pulled out of the DD and here is my first FL shorebird.

What a great day this was at NY John Boyd Thatcher Park.  The park is located on the trail that goes back to early precolonial times. The Mohawk Indians created an ‘Indian Ladder’ trail to traverse over a 1,300ft escarpment, now know as the Helderberg, which has the earliest and one of the best fossil bearing formations in the US, to trade on the Hudson River.

The park has many trails and one which goes to the 120′ Minelot Falls.  The entire area is steeped in history. From one of the limestone caves, a group of Torrie’s, raided the settlers below the escarpment during the Revolutionary War 1777, until one day their smoke fire found them out, and the leader was hanged, later an 18th century poem was written about the event and was famously read at the time.

For me, I loved the hike and adventure going to this lightly traveled spot. Each step was interesting and inspiring. My goal was to get some waterfall shots, and I took quite a few, to try and do an HDR image. So I was well versed in all the parameters to get that perfect HDR image…but….on my way back for the day…I stopped over a lovely bridge and hopped down into a small babbling brook.

As it so happened, I had a very interesting Micro-Nikkor lens on top of my D3.  I had just received it a few days earlier after reading about it on Thom Hogan’s and Moose Peterson’s sites It was an early Nikon AF 70-180 f/4.5-5.6D… This lens does not focus fast and it has a smallish f/4.5 aperture, it’s kind of ‘old school’ like ‘Prez” , but I was looking for an opportunity to check it out.

So I was shooting around, looking for patterns in the brook-stream rocks and lichens, when back between the rocks I spotted this glowing orange Newt,… I dropped to my knees, wallet and cell phone be damned, and got in close, closer and tried to steady myself in the wetness and started to work with this wonderful lens, going on blind faith from the Pro’s reviews about the macro prowess of this lens..

Now every boy or (grown up man), loves newts, turtle and frogs… so I felt like I was 8 again… playing with the critters, looking eye to eye. Anyway, he soon scampered away and I was really encouraged that I had some decent shots by looking at the viewfinder.   I’ll tell you now, just for this shot, I’m glad I purchased the 70-180, the DOF is just wonderful, and it is a great macro lens.

I spent some time with the pelicans, practicing my panning techniques, these birds while fairly large are very nibble, changing and twisting flight patterns at a seconds notice. I was shooting with my D3 w/105mm f/2.8g vr2 at f/6.6, 1/750 sec.

The new 105 lens was purchased as a macro, but I’ve read that it shoots nice images as a mid range fix telephoto lens, and I’m glad I used it in these shots. The background has a nice texture to it while this bird is stopped mid flight and you can almost feel the feather bristles.

Once the sun had barely peaked out from the other side of the world, this gull that had been nodding off about 15 feet away, began to start prancing about on his one good leg, and started to perform like a morning rooster. His voice was more piercing but it was a sight as this activity went on for a few minutes. I was able to swing my 70-200 V2 w/tc-17 at f 4/8 and take a series of shots of this crazy gull.

The smaller shore birds that came around  fifteen minutes later were a challenge, and I could not get settled down to get their eyes sharp. I thought I was doing everything right. It got to the point that i wasn’t even concerned about foreground,background, dof..I just wanted sharp eyes

……later in the DD, I had to rule out the obvious, the camera was smarter than me, the lens was perfect, so it was me..what did I do to program this gear wrong that skunked my morning with those shore birds.  I finally figured it out.  When shooting these small critters, the Custom Setting Menu  setting A5, AF activation was set at my usual setting AF-ON. This meant that I was hitting the AF-ON , then the shutter. I needed to condense the activity to just AF-ON, and try again, tomorrow, same place, but better prepared so I thought…..

I had the chance to see a lot of birds during my stay in Florida. However, this guy stands out because of his focus on his morning fishing.  The shot was taken with the new 70-200vr2, with a TC 17, at f/4.8 and this lense is sharp. The fish story ends with a success for our friend here, but not for me, I wasn’t quick or steady enought to get the catch for the DD, but it was fun trying.

There is no lack of waterbirds here to photograph. They seem to be watching you from everywhere. They are perched on anything that is vertical near the waterways looking for their next meal. The competition for food can be fierce as the gulls are very aggressive.

I’ve been able to work on my bird shooting skills, it’s KEY to get the eyes tack sharp or the photo is scrap. Handholding your lenses makes chasing these birds a heck of lot easier than setting up the Gitzo, but I’m still trying to get my technique down. I’m still amazed at the effort this takes, I really can appreciate the skill that someone like Moose Peterson has to make the ‘critters’ look so well in his Images.

Everything has to be going right, the exposure, the position of the light on the subject feathers and eyes, the motion or character of the bird, your position so that you don’t rattle them, the background color vs the subjects color, the quickness of your camera shutter finger to hit that right moment…but it is Fun when you get it right!