This last little guy makes me laugh – maybe he thinks he’s a rooster.

Out on a scouting mission this morning – I’ve been to Ricketts Glen plenty of times, but this was the first time that I was there for something other than the waterfall trail.  Checked out the lake shore and the Hayfield and got some good ideas of where to find critters in the future.

Found a few today, too, which I’ll be sharing soon!

Tree Swallow in nest hole

The little Tree Swallows are one of the regulars who I always enjoy shooting.  Got a pair of them nesting in the tree right now, in a spot that has good morning light and easy access.  I wanted a shot of mom and dad trading off – one of them comes in while the other flies off, but I wasn’t able to manage it.  One of these days I’ll get an in-flight shot of them that’s worth something, too.

Aside from the Tree Swallows, my other main subject as John the Heron.  (The story behind the name is a bit too long and not really that interesting, so just go with it.)  There are actually somewhere between 3 and 6 herons that hang out at the pond, and they’re all “John the Heron.”  This guy hung around for quite a while, and let me get within decent photo range a couple of times.  They’re skittish critters and don’t care for anyone on land to get too close.  On the other hand, I’ve had great luck approaching them by boat in the past.

John the Heron

This is one of the better near-portraits I’ve gotten.  So naturally he stepped behind a cement curb a moment later and then flapped off to the secluded marshy cove, where I can’t follow.  Sometime after that he had enough with me and the growing fishing crowd, and flew down-pond away from the commotion.  But I got another shot at him as I left, shooting out the passenger window of the car:

I’ve still got to figure out what the wing position here means…maybe it just feels good in the warm sun.

I was able to get several shots of these little Tree Swallows.  Normally it’s very difficult to shoot them – in flight, their small size and high speed make them virtually impossible to catch, and more often than not they sit in branches well out of lens range.  For whatever reason this day, they were feeling sociable, and several times perched right nearby, letting me get close enough for some good shots.

This last guy I got some help identifying as a Starling.  Apparently he felt the need for a bath – never seen that behavior before and wish I’d gotten a photo of it.  But I’m plenty happy of this shot of him and his breakfast.

This isn’t nearly as good a photo as many of the others I got, but I wanted to include it nonetheless; this is only the second time that I’ve ever seen a Baltimore Oriole.  He was just beyond reach at 400mm and even this shot is a heavy crop – as much crop as I dare.  That’s the catch, I’ve found – it seems that no matter how long a lens you have, you always wish it was just a little longer.

Damn good thing that I did.

Caught a few of this male House Fince on the feeder – not my favorite setting, but that’s where the birds go, so I make the best of it.  The BG there is actually the back wall of the garage, thrown well out of focus.

Then there was this guy, who ran around stuffing his fat little cheeks with little fear of me.  A couple of times I actually worried that he’d get too close for the lens to focus on – this is the first time  can remember having to zoom out when shooting wildlife!

Had a pair of Mourning Doves come in and feed as well, then got really luck and captured this House Sparrow before he flew off again.

This last one is the shot that made my day.  I saw the Blue Jay out of the corner of my eye on the fence – he hopped over to the feeder, stole some seed, and went right overhead to perch in the mulberry bush.  I twisted around and fired off a blast of shots, of which only this one was in focus.  Thank the photo gods, as it was the best of the batch anyway.  Yeah, I wish he was looking more directly at me, but oh well – still very cool!

The one thing that keeps frustrating me is that I know the birds are wary of my being there.  I look out the window and see a half-dozen feeding at once, but when I go out and settle in, I only get a couple of brave ones returning.  Yet as soon as I’m back inside, the party resumes.  I don’t want to move father away, since that’ll make all the critters smaller in the frame.  So the only alternative I can think of is disguising myself.  Not sure that I want to setup a full blind in the backyard, but perhaps some of that camo netting stuff – just enough to breakup my shape and fool the birds.  Something to think about…

This was a grab with the big lens – just a little study in lines and light.

I ain’t crazy about flower shots as a general rule, but these wildflowers has the dandelions in the background for some great color contrast, and the light was just perfect on them, so what the hell.

Your fairly typical sunset landscape shot.  What redeems it for me is that last kiss of light still on the top of the tree, and on the hillside.

]]> http://brentpennington.com/2010/04/thursday-april-29th/feed/ 0 http://brentpennington.com/2010/04/promised-land-2/ http://brentpennington.com/2010/04/promised-land-2/#comments Sun, 25 Apr 2010 03:38:41 +0000 Brent Pennington http://brentpennington.com/?p=2217 Out at Promised Land last night to take advantage of the perfect weather before the rain moves in tonight.  It was well worth the drive – the light was perfect.

I know it’s a successful outing when I start forgetting about things; I focus on the light and the scene and stop worrying about how much time I have left, or about what’s on the schedule for tomorrow, or the pile of laundry waiting at home.  It’s a good feeling, and is probably one of the reasons I enjoy photography so much.

There was no plan on this outing.  I just parked the car and started walking.  Found these clumps of grass that caught the light well.  Then a quick capture of a canoe paddling by.

Finished up the evening with a few shots of boats on shore, first shooting into the light and then again later, when the sun was below the trees.  I thought about sticking around to try some astro work, but there wasn’t a decent coffee shop for miles, so I called it a night.

This is what happens when I step into the abstract side of nature photography; so much of the time I (and I suspect most other photogs) strive to portray a scene the way we see it.  Now granted, how we see a scene and choose to reproduce it is definitely subjective, as each of us will experience it differently.  But nobody is going to see the scene like I shot it last night.  Which I guess is why it’s fun.

I’ve been wanting to make some images like this for a while now, ever since seeing a photo in a Jim Brandenburg book.  Jim’s shot was of birch trees at twilight, against a deep green/black background.  It’s definitely more subtle than the ones I made, but in each case it’s the elements of color and motion that I like most.  The trees that form the image don’t matter so much; rather, it’s the notion of tree-shaped light and shadow that mattes.

Making these photos wasn’t hard, although it only worked because the light was right.  I shot them with the 7D +17-35L + Circular Polarizer, in Av mode – ISO 100, f/16, shutter ranging from .3″ to 2″.  My eye wasn’t to the viewfinder; I pointed the camera in a direction that looked promising and panned the lens up during the exposure.

There are two tricks to this that I can share.  First, I find that the images look better when the camera in already in motion before tripping the shutter, and when the motion continues past the end of the exposure.  It’s the follow-through you hear about in sports.  If you trip the shutter and then start moving, you’ll not only get less motion, but also a hard starting point for the motion.

Second is the speed at which you pan the camera.  I can’t give you a concrete figure here, only say that the speed needs to be moderate, somewhere between too slow and too fast.  It will depend a great deal on the length of the exposure.  But too little motion doesn’t blur the scene enough, and the resulting image looks like it suffers from camera shake rather than a deliberate motion, while too fast smears out too much detail in the image.

This is one of those techniques that I’m glad I was finally able to try – and one that I’ll keep in mind to use again later.  Abstract images aren’t for everyone, nor are they something that I’d personally make a habit of. But to shake things up now and then, they are interesting!

This is the isolating power of a fast-apertured wide-angle lens; despite the deeper DOF afforded by a WA, when you crank it wide open to f/2.8 and put your subject close to the lens, it will do a great job softening the background.  The greater the disparity in distance between the lens and subject vs. the subject and BG, the more out-of-focus the BG will become.  In this case, I’m not able to reduce the BG to a bokeh blur, which is fine – I like having the barn still recognizable, but softened so that the eye jumps to the flowers, but the sense of scene is retained.

The barn is one of my favorite places to shoot; the weathered wood, the rusting metal roof – it looks like an old barn should.  And I find myself returning to it again and again.  Especially on a clear day like this, when the warm rust tones contrast so well with the blue sky and cool shadows.

Here’s a view from farther back, so as to include the llamas in the scene.  Sadly, according to what I’ve been told, the llamas won’t be at the park for much longer.  This is a shame, since they’re such a wonderful presence, and draw a great number of folks to come visit.

One last image, the classic “glowing blossoms against dark background.”  Yes it’s a cliche shot of spring, but that doesn’t make it any less lovely.

Lackawanna Sunrise Panorama - click to view full size

Panoramas are a fun way to change things up, sort of like switching lenses, but more difficult to master.  This one certainly isn’t perfect, just a series of about seven images, shot hand-held and stitched together in Photoshop.  Doing panos hand-held like that, you have to crop them down, which means you have to remember to shoot extra wide.  In this one, you can see in the sky the effect of the polarizer – yet another challenge, since polarizers don’t play well with panoramas.

The light was good as it came up over hill, inching down the trees across the lake.  The perfect golden light only stayed for a few minutes before the clouds moved in and dimmed it, but for those few minutes, it was lovely.  Here are a few more: