Handheld

Low light Great Blue Heron with Earth Shadow

By Mia McPherson, on October 23rd, 2011%

Great Blue Heron with Earth Shadow
Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) with Earth Shadow
Fort De Soto County Park, Pinellas County, Florida
Nikon D200, handheld, f5.6, 1/320, ISO 640, Nikkor 80-400mm VR at 340mm, natural light

When I look at this image I can recall the morning that I created this file with a great degree of clarity. The sun had not quite risen above the horizon to the east but there was a touch of pre-dawn light, the Earth’s Shadow was visible to the naked eye. I’ve always been thrilled to see the Earth’s shadow.

The wind was blowing at about 35 knots (40 mph), waves were crashing onto shore behind the dune the heron was on, grasses were bent low and the fine grained sugar sand; hurled by the strong wind, stung my exposed skin. Not the most pleasant circumstances but for some reason I felt especially invigorated that morning. I’m not sure if it was the cool wind, seeing the Earth Shadow, being outdoors immersed in nature or a combination of all of the above.

Low lighting conditions can be a difficult challenge for bird photographers who shoot in aperture priority (I do) because shutter speed drops dramatically when there is little available light.

Not too many months before I photographed this Great Blue Heron I had always hesitated to use ISO’s above 320, I had heard so many other owners of Nikon’s D200 complain a lot about the bad noise issues they had encountered using ISO’s over 320. I had listened to those warnings for awhile after getting the D200 but then decided to do some experimenting on my own. On a morning with very low light I photographed another Great Blue Heron at ISO 1000 and when I looked at the image on my monitor at home I found very little evident noise in those frames and soon became bolder at using higher ISO’s.

Sometimes it pays to experiment, stretch your skills or to push your gear’s limit a bit. I’m glad I had experimented with higher ISO’s in the months prior to the morning I photographed this Great Blue Heron or I may have walked on by the bird thinking I couldn’t get enough shutter speed, so why bother. I am happy that thought didn’t occur to me.

The Great Blue Heron images from the series I created that blustery November morning on Fort De Soto’s north beach are still favorites of mine and likely always will be.

Mia

Another Great Blue Heron image from that morning can be found here.

More Great Blue Heron images

Black Skimmers – Down and dirty

By Mia McPherson, on July 31st, 2011%

Calling adult Black Skimmer (Rynchops niger) in breeding plumage
Fort De Soto County Park, Pinellas County, Florida
Nikon D200, handheld, f8, 1/640, Nikkor 80-400mm VR at 400mm, natural light

Anyone who has photographed birds during the month August in Florida knows it is hot and humid even in the early hours of the morning. And it just gets hotter throughout the day. From mid March until November I was always prepared to sweat. And sweat some more.

Part of being addicted to bird photography I suspect. Dedicated bird photographers will endure heat, hunger, extreme cold, blistered feet, numb fingers and much more to get their shots. I’m sure to outsiders we look crazy.

The day I took the images in this post I arrived before sunrise to a light sea fog which burned off rather quickly and after that the heat was on. I wandered around for a bit taking images of shorebirds, egrets and pink fluffy clouds before I noticed a large mixed flock of gulls, terns and skimmers. As I walked towards them I could see hundreds of birds, some on their way out to go get food and some resting on the sand.

According to my EXIF information It was 7:15 am when I first started photographing where the flock of birds were that morning.

Many yards away from the birds I dropped down to my knees then laid on my belly and slowly sand-crawled within range. Sand-crawling is not just a way to get closer to your subject it is also low cost dermabrasion for your elbows, tummy feet and any other exposed part of your skin. It probably took me over 10 minutes of wiggling my way forward in the sand to get into a slight depression where I was close enough to the birds and low enough to get the low angle I wanted for my images.

Juvenile Black Skimmer (Rynchops niger) spying on me

Juvenile Black Skimmer (Rynchops niger) spying on me
Fort De Soto County Park, Pinellas County, Florida
Nikon D200, handheld, f7.1, 1/640, ISO 160, Nikkor 80-400mm VR at 340mm, natural light.

I had seen from a distance that there were juveniles in with the adult birds, my plan was to wiggle into that depression and stay put so that I wouldn’t disrupt the young birds or the adults who were flying in to feed them. The safety and well-being of the birds is always uppermost in my mind.

About the only movements I made were to lift my head to the viewfinder, click the shutter button, reach around to my backpack for my bottle of water to sip and to use my bandana to wipe the sweat from my brow. Long before that day I had learned that if I didn’t move much the birds were likely to come closer to me and they did that day. Dressed in light tans and khaki colors I probably began to look like I was part of the beach. Clearly my sweaty skin had enough sand stuck to it to make me look like something the tide had washed up.

I photographed Forster’s, Sandwich and Royal Terns along with Laughing and Ring-billed Gulls that morning but my main focus was on the Black Skimmers in the large mixed flock. The juvenile skimmers were either laying down on the sand resting or begging for food when they could see or hear the adults nearby. The image above shows a juvenile moving towards one of its parents to get some food. This pose and image reminds me of an old magazine cartoon, I think it was called “Spy VS Spy”. Mad magazine perhaps? Anyway, the pose makes me laugh.

Resting adult Black Skimmer (Rynchops niger)

Resting adult Black Skimmer (Rynchops niger) going out of breeding plumage
Fort De Soto County Park, Pinellas County, Florida
Nikon D200, handheld, f8, 1/500, ISO 160, Nikkor 80-400mm VR at 310mm, natural light

Because I was laying in a slight depression which was below the birds I was able to get very low angle shots. My friends say when my images have such a low angle that I must have been “Down ‘n dirty”. Well I know for sure I was dirty, I had sand everywhere! And I was laying down.

Black Skimmers are very long birds from the tip of the bill to the end of the tail and it can be quite a challenge to have enough depth of field to get all of the birds in focus, to compose the frame well and then there is the difficulty of properly exposing a black and white bird with orange legs and bill. But they are well worth the troubles to get some nice shots.

Juvenile (L) and adult (R) Black Skimmers (Rynchops niger)

Juvenile (L) and adult (R) Black Skimmers (Rynchops niger)
Fort De Soto County Park, Pinellas County, Florida
Nikon D200, handheld, f7.1, 1/640, ISO 160, Nikkor 80-400mm VR at 230mm, natural light

Because I had been so still I was rewarded a few times by the birds moving closer to me than I would have approached them like the juvenile and adult bird above. It felt like an honor. My patience and laying still for so long paid off. I know I took hundreds of Black Skimmer images that morning, some I still have yet to process.

My EXIF information shows that I took my last skimmer image at 9:33 am which means I laid there in the sand and heat for two hours and eighteen minutes photographing those birds and in my mind it was worth every second, all the sand on my skin and the perspiration that at times had burned my eyes.

Maybe I am crazy to be so addicted to bird photography! A good crazy I hope.

Mia

More Black Skimmer images

Friday Photos – A split second does matter

By Mia McPherson, on July 29th, 2011%

Clipped Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) in flight
Tooele County, Utah
Nikon D200, handheld, f6.3, 1/800, ISO 400, +1.3 EV, Nikkor 200-400mm VR with 1.4x TC at 400mm, natural light, not baited

For the past two days I have been having an amazing time photographing a family of Red-tailed Hawks; including at least 4 juveniles, in Tooele County, Utah which is west of Salt Lake City. Amazing; yes, but also extremely frustrating. The photos are being taken from a road that goes up a canyon, at times the canyon walls are very steep and that can be a problem when the birds are high above you. The hawks were constantly on the move, soaring quickly by or hanging on the currents of air that were warming as the sun rose.

Yesterday a Prairie Falcon joined the family of hawks in aerial manouvers and I truly wish they had been closer because the action was fast, fantastic and utterly mesmerizing. None of the hawk’s seemed aggressive towards the falcon and the falcon wasn’t showing any aggression either.

Because the hawks were very difficult to track when you have a limited range of motion from inside a mobile blind (vehicle) these photos were taken outside the vehicle and they were handheld because there was no time to set up a tripod. None.

Exposure control was also a challenge as the hawks soared in a blue sky with ever increasing clouds or dipped down into the Juniper and grass covered slopes. For shots where the hawks were in the sky some positive exposure compensation was needed and then a split second later I’d have to try and get the exposure back down to avoid blowing out the lights with the trees and grasses in the background.

Trying to track the fast flying birds while handholding my 200-400mm VR lens with a teleconverter while constantly trying to adjust exposure and keep the hawks in focus was hard. Ok, maybe it was more exasperating than hard. Just know that I am kicking my own rearend tonight for the shots I missed today for one reason or another.

Take the image above, nice clean look at the eye, light under the wings plus on the body and head, wonderful wing position, fanned tail and the exposure worked well. But I clipped the tips of both of the wings! I didn’t crop it that way.

Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) in flight

Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) in flight
Tooele County, Utah
Nikon D200, handheld, f6.3, 1/800, ISO 400, +1.3 EV, Nikkor 200-400mm VR with 1.4x TC at 400mm, natural light, not baited

The frame above was the very next frame taken just mere tenths (hundreds) of a second after the image where I clipped the wings of the bird. No clipped wings and this is 94% of the original frame! I could tell I hadn’t clipped anything when I took the shot. Yay!

Again I had light under the wings plus on the body and head, wonderful wing position, fanned tail and the exposure worked well. But… the hawk had already started to turn it’s head and the look at the eye isn’t optimal. Very disappointing.

I wish I had a time machine to go back to this morning and get things exactly right. The exposures, the framing, the tracking and more.

Right now though I think I’ll go find a nice pillow to sit on and give my rearend a break from all the kicking I have been giving it. It deserves a rest.

Mia

I will try working with this Red-tailed Hawk family again soon!

More Red-tailed Hawk images