The One That Got Away

 I have attended many air shows but have never seen any performance to equal the flying demonstration of the Northern Harrier I watched this weekend.  It was flying very low over thick grass and weeds that were about 3 feet tall.  It flew very slow and came to a complete stop at times.  Occasionally it would drop down into the vegetation.  Unfortunately, It was an unsuccessful hunt.

I wasn't totally successful in my attempt to photograph it either.  I parked along the side of the road and photographed from the open window.  The Northern Harrier is a small hawk to start with and it was many yards out in the field.  I was using a Canon 1D Mark IV with an 800mm lens coupled with a 1.4x extender.  The images above and below represent between 1/4 and 1/8 of the original image.

This setting had the potential for a prize winning photograph.  I had a great subject that was exhibiting interesting behavior.   I have years of experience with super telephotos.   I had sufficient light.  The 800mm lens is able to optically shrink the distance between the camera and subject.  The 1D Mark IV  is capable of focusing at f8.  It doesn't get much better than this.  What else could I have wanted?

I had too much hot air between me and the Harrier. The heat causes distortion.  It wasn't possible to achieve the necessary sharpness without moving closer.  I couldn't move closer to it so I needed the Harrier to move in my direction.  It didn't.

The Northern Harrier is an experienced hunter and has mastered flight.  I'm sure that it had captured a meal before the day was over.  I know from experience that if I get this close to a great photo enough times, sooner or later my subject will be in the right place at the right time.  If I'm ready I'll be rewarded with a great image.  In the meantime, I'll enjoy my time with nature and the privilege of watching animals in the wild.

A Beautiful Day

You might look at this sunrise photo and feel that I used too much saturation  in Photoshop.  That isn't true.  Even a mediocre sunrise can look spectacular through a super-telephoto lens.  It allows the photographer to focus on a tiny bit of sky with the best color.

This Bald Eagle wasn't going to take any chances.  He was in a tree near the road.  I had less than a second to stop my vehicle and raise my camera to my eye before he had flown away.

The few Sandhill Cranes I saw today were far from the road.   If I were in the blind on the left side of this photo, I would have a better photo.  The cranes have hundreds of square miles to search for food so you could sit in a blind all day without a crane for miles.  You have a better chance in the evening if you rent a blind near the river.  The few blinds near the river cost hundreds of dollars to rent and the cranes often arrive after dark and leave before sunrise. 

The Crane Migration has Started

I drove over 300 miles yesterday to photograph migrating sand hill cranes.  My trip was at least a week too soon.  The few live cranes I saw were far in the distance.  My final stop was the Crane Trust's Nebraska Nature & Visitor Center near Grand Island  I should have gone there first.  There were cranes everywhere.  There were metal crane sculptures at the entrance.  There were stuffed cranes in glass cases, crane bean bags, crane cups, crane paintings, crane books and crane photos.    

Some of the photos were amazing.   Two of them caught my eye.  One was a crane flying at dusk.   The other was of several cranes silhouetted against the moon.  This second photo made me smile.  It reminded me of a similar photo that I entered in my first photo contest.
 

The time was many years ago and the place was Monterey California.  There was an interesting tree a few blocks from our apartment.   Every time I passed it I knew that it belonged in a photo.    I took a few photos of it silhouetted against the sky and realized that this amazing tree was surrounded by too much clutter.  Successful photography requires patience.  I kept my eye on an interesting tree in Monterey, waiting for the perfect moment.  It never came.   A year later, I photographed the full moon and created an image that looked like nearly every photo of the moon.  Inspiration struck in the darkroom.  I exposed the Alabama moon on my paper, changed the negative and then exposed the California tree. When I entered my very first photo contest, I used this image.  It won Best of Show.

It isn’t easy to photograph an object silhouetted against the moon without resorting to creative darkroom techniques or Photoshop.  The earth rotates so the moon a moving target.    You need a clear field of view in front of the silhouetted object – sometimes a mile or more.  The sky behind the object needs to be clear from the earth to the moon.  While much of of this can be planned in advance, it remains a challenge.

It’s nearly impossible to plan the silhouette of an object in the sky against the moon.  It has to be directly between you and the moon.  The odds of this happening are small so patience and luck is required.  Yesterday was my lucky day!  The sky was clear, the moon was out and geese were flying everywhere.  All I needed to do was to put my camera on a tripod, focus on the moon and wait for the geese to be in the correct position.

 

The results were disappointing.  Both the moon and the geese were sharp to my naked eye.  The camera saw a sharp moon but the geese were out of focus.  I changed my technique to focus on the geese instead of the moon.  I liked the results with sharp geese better than those with out of focus geese.  The scene with an out of focus moon is more believable.  With the moon and focus under control, I could concentrate on the pattern of groups of geese and the position of their wings.  These images were improved but not very exciting.

I watched a person judge a photo contest a few years ago.  He was trained by the Photographic Society of America.  He had a system to score each photo based on points awarded for each objective criteria.  The photo of the silhouetted cranes would have scored extremely well using his system.  It was sharp, interesting and well composed.  The photo of the crane flying at dusk would have scored near the bottom.  It was dark, grainy and blurred

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I wasn’t judging a photo contest, but I scored the two images in another way.  I rejected the composite with cranes in front of the moon because I knew that it was impossible.  Its flaws ruined it for me.  I purchased the crane flying at dusk - It was the cover of a book - On Ancient Wings by Michael Forsberg.  The image is dark, grainy and blurred.  I’ve photographed cranes on cold dark mornings.  This photo had all the elements necessary to take me back to the sights and sounds of that place and time.

 

A Million Goose Opportunity

The Omaha World Herald reported that one million Snow Geese were visiting Squaw Creek NWR in Missouri.  Mid-February is usually very cold in the Midwest so the shallow water at Squaw Creek in normally completely frozen.  I didn't want to miss this opportunity.

Photographers cannot get very close to the geese.  The only road open to the public runs around the perimeter.  The geese stay in the middle so they are never very close.  The one way road around the geese is ten miles long.   If you leave your position for a better view, you need to travel all the way around to get back if you were wrong.  

It is extremely difficult to take a photo that captures the noise and chaos when a million geese take flight.  The chaos is three dimensional so it's also impossible to get the entire group in sharp focus with a telephoto lens.  The truth is that they are more fun to watch than to photograph.

It's difficult to fly next to a million panicked  geese.  Occasionally an unfortunate goose tumbles out of the sky.  In the fall, Bald eagles join the migration to enjoy the goose dinners.   There were a few eagles present, but not many compared to the fall.  I did spot a Northern Harrier checking out a carcass.  When I moved my lens to photograph it, it immediately took off.

I was pleased to find Trumpeter Swans much closer to shore than the geese.  They are huge and need a long runway to take off.  I've seen the Snow Geese many times but I've never seen this many swans before.   I spent the majority of my day photographing them. 

While I watched the swans, several American Tree Sparrows were in the weeds between me and the water.  They were a challenge to photograph because they spent most of their time out of the view of my lens.   

A Simple Still Life

I've set up a small photo studio in my basement.  This week I added a brown background that I will use for low key portraiture.  I decided to test it out using some interesting pears that I found in the supermarket.

If I've been successful, the three pears in my image will look like they were randomly placed on a table.  I wanted lighting that looked natural - like the light from a north window.

It's easy to place the pears in a random arrangement.  It is much more difficult to pose them.  They kept falling over and rolling around.  I wanted their red blush to be visible.  I wanted their "pear shape" to be apparent from camera position.  I wanted the stems to show but I didn't want them pointing to the edge of the fame.  I also wanted each pear to be different in pose and in height.

I needed to light the pears so that they had highlights that weren't to specular and shadows that weren't' too dark.  I positioned a 48" Octabox  very close to the fruit and as far to the front it could go before blocking the camera.

I took a few test shots and decided that I also needed a background light.  I used a battery powered speedlight with an umbrella.  I posited it so that it didn't spill any light onto my subject.    I  could have used a third light or reflector to put a little more light onto the pear on the left.  I didn't because I needed the shadow to know it's uneven surface.  

I used Lightroom to complete the process.  I cropped the image a bit.  I added a little negative clarity to make the pears look softer.  I  added a vignette to make the edges slightly darker.

Eat, Drink and be Merry

We have an outdoor Christmas Tree for the first time this year.  It's on the deck behind the house next to the bird feeders.

The tree is decorated with strings of Cranberries and fruit loops.  It also has pine cones filled with peanut butter and dusted with bird seed.   What more could the birds want?

The birds ignored the tree for a week.  Perhaps it frightened them when it was blown over by strong gusts of wind.  We tied it down better.  A raccoon stopped by at night and nibbled on a couple of pine cones.  Too much fiber - he moved on to the next house. 

Last night we had 8 inches of snow.  This morning Starlings and House Sparrows flocked to the Christmas tree like there is not tomorrow.  Actually tomorrow 12/21/2012 is the day the Mayan calendar says the world ends, so today may be the day to Eat, Drink and be Merry.

I used a Canon 5D Mark II with a 400mm lens for these photos.  I shot them at 1/125 of a second with the lens set to f4. Even though it was mid morning,  it was a challenge to use natural light.  I had to set the ISO to 640.  Post processing was done in Lightroom.  Every image required noise reduction and cropping.

Fontenelle Forest - September 1

The Fontenelle Forest Wetlands looked different today.  Summer is turning into fall.  Birds are beginning to flock.  The backgrounds of some of my photos are turning into shades of yellow and orange.  Birds are more difficult to identify as the youngsters mix with the older birds.  Sunrise is arriving later every day.

A Ruby-throated Humming bird visits a flowering Bull Thistle in search of nectar.

A sparrow searches for another bug.

A Raccoon  searches for food along the back of the pond.

A young Cardinal  is learning to live on his own.

A Red-winged blackbird watches from a Maximilian Sunflower plant.

A couple of young Red-winged Black Birds enjoy a September morning.