What’s the solution?  Damned if I know.  Not even sure that there is one.  But if you’re just have to do something, if a partial solution is better than no solution at all, then I suspect you could do a lot worse than a “photo a day” sort of project.

The rules and format for these sort of projects vary because of their personal nature.  Darwin Wiggett, who I mentioned in a previous post, calls his the “Daily Click” and posts them to his blog.  A friend of mine used to do “Photo Fridays.”  Two friends living on opposite coasts would start each morning by both posting a photo, a collaborative effort that led to a neat little book (their current project is 3191 Miles Apart).  And professional photographer Jim Brandenburg challenged himself to take a single photo each day for an entire season, leading to the excellent book Chased by the Light.

Sunset out the back window

I’ve seen photographers do photo a day projects that lasted only a month; 30 days of self-portraits, 30 days out the back door, 30 days of their shoes.  But whatever the length or theme, these self-assigned projects are out there.

For a long time I scoffed at the notion of a photo a day project, mainly because so many of them fail.  Life happens, you get tired or busy or sick, and you miss a photo.  And then you miss another.  Pretty soon the project is dead and you’ve given up altogether.  It’s got failure stamped all over it – especially if you were sharing your progress online.

But lately I’ve been rethinking that.  Trapped mid-winter, getting home just before sunset, my only chance for photography has been the weekends, and even those are subject to scheduling and weather.  I’m longing to do more shooting – it’s an actual need in my life.

Maybe it’s time to go back to basics, to get really simple with this.  Take a page out of the 3191 project’s book and shoot something simple each day.  Look for lighting and patterns, shapes and geometry – all those elements that we try to find together in our compositions.

And don’t kill myself over the rules.  It’s a photo a day, but if you miss a day (or a couple), it isn’t the end of the world.  The project is for me, not anyone else.  If it ends up being a photo a week for a while, oh well.  The goal is twofold: to work the craft and hopefully learn something along the way, and to get myself though the winter without photography withdrawal.

As my project to build a backyard bird studio gets underway, the first step is finding a bird feeder, because they’re not going to just show up on their own and twitter, “Hey, we’re here!”  (Of course, this presupposes that you have a location for the feeder; if not, then you’re SOL.)

My mom had bird feeders out back when I was a kid.  It’s not complicated, you just dump seed in one and that’s it, right?  Unfortunately it’s not quite that simple.  As seems to be the case with just about anything these days, there are more models than you can shake a stick at, each one designed for a different use, ranging from general to specific.

If you don’t believe me, check out the Home Depot site – search “bird feeder” and you get over six pages of results, with prices ranging from cheap to downright insane.  So yeah, it’s not as simple as just buying the $19.95 special and going for it.

Some online research revealed the following:

– Tube Feeders: essentially hollow tubes with multiple feeding ports, these keep seed out of the elements and tend to attract smaller birds, such as finches, nuthatches, and chickadees.  Such a feeder can use small to large or mixed feed, depending on the port sizes.

- Hopper Feeders: your classic bird feeder, often looking like a little house.  The seeds come out from a gap between the walls and floor and spills into a small tray, where the birds can get at it.  Tends to attract a larger range of birds, as well as larger birds like jays & cardinals, although finches and chickadees may still use it as well.

- Tray Feeders: probably the simplest kind, it’s just an open tray filled with feed.  No protection against the elements (although seed isn’t expected to last long before being eaten), and it attracts probably the largest range of bird species, including large and ground-feeding birds.

-Thistle/Suet Feeders: both are built for a specialized food type that attracts a certain type of bird.  Thistle seeds are very small and attract finches and the like; suet blocks attract nuthatches, woodpeckers, chickadees and the like.

So what one is “best?”  Depends on what kind of birds you want to attract.  Personally, I opted for a hopper feeder, since it seems to cater to the largest cross-section of bird species, many of which I know to either live locally or transit through the area.

I ended up buying mine from Wal-Mart, for the whopping price of $10.  It’s a mid-sized feeder in the style I wanted, fairly nice looking, and made out of recycled decking materials, of all things.  I’m a recycling nut to begin with, so that, combined with the great price, settled it for me.

Recycled Gazebo-style Bird Feeder

I also bought a steel pole to mount the feeder on, and I am considering a squirrel baffle.  The baffle is really just a plastic cone that mounts to the pole, beneath the feeder.  It’s size and shape prevent squirrels from climbing up the pole and reaching the feeder – if you’ve ever had a feeder before, then you know how quickly a squirrel can ravage it, eating all the seed and chewing up the feeder itself.

The pole I bought is a 5′, 4-piece unit that assembles without tools; you simple drive the bottom post into the ground, put it all together, and the feeder sits right on the top.  As a bonus, it has two arms that can hold other feeders, perches, etc.  And best of all, it’s a “Pennington Birding Essentials” brand unit.  For obvious reasons, that makes me smile!  Price: $15

Pennington Birding Essentials Feeder Pole Plus

If you’re looking for more information on feeder types, check out the feeder pages at both the Audubon Society and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

Over the past six months I’ve devoted a lot of my photographic energy to tackling bird photography.  It’s a field that I find very rewarding and continue to have a lot of fun with, to the extent that I’ve adjusted some of my equipment to meet its specific conditions.

What hasn’t changed, however, is that I still have to drive out to a park or preserve and tromp around in search of the birds.  Simply finding my subjects continues to be the hardest part of the whole project.  Birds are predictable, but only to a certain extent.  I know where I’m likely to find them, I know what times are best to up the odds, but it still comes down to whether or not they’re actually there when I arrive.  Especially now, in winter, I’m making a number of fruitless outings.

Black-capped Chickadee photographed with DIY flash extender

So in line with the old parable, I’m bringing the subjects to me.  The project of the next two weeks – and next several months in the long-term – is creating a backyard bird studio, an environment that attracts the birds already passing through the area and places them in a controlled environment.

The benefits of this should be immediately apparent, although their full extent may not be.  Certainly it will make the process of photographing them much easier.  One the birds learn that food and water are easily available to them, they’ll return to my yard.  They may even nest nearby in the spring.  Basically they’ll be around more, which means I’ll get to photograph them more.

But I’ll also be working with them in a stable environment.  If, for instance, I go out into the woods, my presence is temporary and often in rough conditions.  In the backyard, however, I am free to setup equipment and I wouldn’t take with me on the hiking trail.  If I grow tired of my background, for instance, I can hang a muslin behind the feeder for a different look.  I can setup Speedlight flashes nearby and go all Strobist on the birds.  I simply have much more creative freedom.

From the bird’s perspective, it’s also beneficial.  They get an easy, stable food source in the neighborhood, which is especially helpful in the winter, or during nesting season.  In either case, it’s likely that their odds for survival will increase.  Not a bad trade off in exchange for a few photos.

The first step is to do some research and see what other people have done, find out what works and what doesn’t.  A feeder and a post will be the first orders of business, and hopefully by mid-February I’ll be able to start showing results.  In the meantime, I’ll share what I learn as I progress through this project.

Song Sparrow

The replies that were posted weren’t quite what I expected. I figured that most photographers would be like me and would respond, “Yes, I do feel limited by my location. I wish I lived in __________!” But instead, there were a lot of people who said No, they were happy where they were – that they found plenty to photograph in their own cities or neighborhoods or backyards. A friend of mine in Philly went so far as to say that he’s lived there his whole life and is still finding new things to shoot. And he really is.

The sentiment “the grass is always greener” always holds true, but I still have to wonder that so many people seem to have gained such wisdom about it. Me, I suffer from wanderlust several times a year, that insatiable urge to just get up and leave, go see something new – lots of things new – and if you like it there, well, no one said you have to come back.

The sad thing is, because of responsibilities and logistics and finances, I never really take off and go roaming. Instead, I try to placate myself with day trips and short excursions that rarely go beyond the state I’m living in. Which is why I come back to the original question and say, “Yes, I feel limited! I feel constrained! I feel – goodness forgive me – bored with where I live!”

I want to travel to Wyoming and shoot the Tetons and the Snake River. I want to go to Glacier, Yosemite, and Olympic National Parks. I want to hike the Great Smokey Mountains and visit the Cumberland Gap and Harpers Ferry. I want to live a little like Moose Peterson, shooting the Reno Air Races one weekend and a workshop in Maine the next.

But then there’s the other side of the fence. My father is a pilot, so I know something about what it’s like to be away from home for extended periods, to always be on the run. I know that the shine would wear away and I’d become exhausted and dream of going home at the end of each day.

Perhaps we just can’t win.

Or perhaps we can. Perhaps winning has more to do with a frame of mind than with long airline trips and exotic locations. Perhaps it has to do with, as others have said, finding new ways to see and experience what you have around you. I may long for mountains and rivers, but I live in one of the most scenic states on the east coast.

So, as I sit here watching the rain come down outside, I think I’m going to give myself a new challenge: as this dismal, depressing weather continues, I’m going to take photos of the same old boring, bland, blah scenes that make me want to leave, and see if amid all that I can’t find something to celebrate.

Now is a good time to slow it all down and get back to the roots of why we got into photography in the first place – for a love of making photos.

Friday night was rodeo night at the 152nd Harford Fair.  I was there, camera in hand, and a goal in mind.  The goal was not to make amazing photos, to capture scenes that nobody had ever captured before, or to get the next hottest selling batch of stock images.  The goal was to have fun.  Yep, that simple.  Just enjoy the fair, and as I went along, to capture some photos that show it as I see it.

That’s the real thing – when nobody else is paying you to make photos, when nobody else has a say in the creative process, that’s when it’s time for your own vision to show.  I love the Harford Fair.  It’s my favorite fair, and rodeo night is my favorite night to go.  I love it because it is still a small county fair, with a small midway tucked back in one corner, easily avoided.  I love it for the animals on display, all of them obviously well cared for and attended to.  I love it for the exhibits, the prize winning cakes and cookies and vegetables and paintings and photographs.  I love the Honey Hut and bee display, the Montrose Band funnel cakes, the antique tractor tent, and the locally-run dunking booth.

There is no shortage of things to love about the Harford Fair, at least not through my eyes.  So it’s not a difficult task to make photos that show that.  I made photos that were fun, that showed the elements of the fair that I want to celebrate.  I took them all with the little G10, so I wasn’t messing with lenses and filters and a big DSLR all night.  And when I got them home on the computer, I didn’t bother trying to edit them for best marketability, or strick editorial presentation.  I ran my “Lomography” action on all of them and tweaked them so that they looked fun.  Remember, I’m not trying to report on what the fair looks like, I’m trying to show you what it looks like to me.  So rich colors and hard vignettes and a ’60s film look is all okay.

I had fun.  I hope my photos show that.

For those of you who might be geographically impaired, Vermont is a state located between New York and New Hampshire.  It borders Massachusetts on the bottom and Canada on the top.  Yes, it is rural and, in places, rustic.  No, everyone doesn’t have cows in the backyard.  Yes, there are cities…er…well…towns, at least.

I grew up in Vermont and since leaving, these are answers to the questions I’m asked, on the rare occasion that I admit to having grown up there.  Not that I’m ashamed of the fact, I just don’t hold a lot of fondness for it, either.  Frankly, Vermont is an excellent place to visit and explore, but a sucky place to live, for reasons that are predominately economic, political, and social.

Enough of that.  I’m on vacation, let’s keep this light.

The list of likely upcoming highlights includes:

* Stream/falls @ Kent Pond                          * Panoramas from Deers Leap

* Many more covered bridges                     * Views from Mt. Mansfield

* Smuggler’s Notch                                           * Downtown Burlington & the waterfront

* Quechee Gorge                                                * Wildlife images (esp. birds)

* Model shoot w/ Allie                                    * Whatever random stuff I end up with

Stay tuned!

In the fog, I was shooting the 50D+Sigma 70-200mm+2x teleconverter, which gave me f/5.6, ISO 1600, and about 1/320.  If you’re aware of the inverse rule for long-lens shooting, then you know that 1/320 is not quite fast enough to even guarantee shake-free shots.  (For those who aren’t aware, the rule states that for the best chance of negating camera shake, shoot at the inverse of your focal length – ie: 200mm requires at least 1/200 sec.)

ISO 1600 is too noisy for my taste in any situation that doesn’t involve lots of strobe power.  For critters with complex color patterns, moving at high speed, it was unacceptable.  Even if I could have pushed the shutter speed high enough and still maintained quality, it’s almost impossible to track a flying bird with a long lens.  The field of view is only a few degrees, and it is very easy to lose track of the subject.  The few in-flight shots I got were a combination of luck, and a method I refer to as “spray and pray” – essentially holding the shutter down in high-speed burst mode.

So Saturday was was a bit of a bust.  Even the few shots of stationary birds that came out suffered from noise and chromatic abberation, compliments of the teleconverter.  A note on these: a teleconverter is a good cheap way to double the range of your lenses, but at a price – in this case a price that made most of the photos worthless.

Sunday morning I was at it again, with better results.  The sun was out, which meant that I was able to shoot f/4, ISO 250, and something like 1/500.  I left the teleconverter off most of the time, instead working to get within 200mm range.  Fortunately, the birds live next to a parking lot and are somewhat used to human activity; on several occasions I was able to stand very close and shoot.

That’s the other problem with birds – they are really very small.  Or they’re large, like the heron I found later, but it is impossible to get close to them.  Either way, they represent a small percentage of the frame – too small to crop in tightly and retain any quality.  So either you get physically close, or you invest in a 600mm f/4 like the pros.

At any rate, I’m much more pleased with Sunday’s photos, especially the shots of the tree swallow (which some birdbrain misidentified as a kingfisher in the last post…) and of the heron.  The heron was actually a happy accident; I saw him out in the pond as I was starting home.  I pulled the car to the side of the road and shot through the open rear passenger-side window, both with and without the teleconverter (which does perform better in good sunlight than in fog).

Will I keep working on bird photography?  Absolutely.  It’s rewarding because of the challenges involved.  What are my reccomendations?  Unless you have good light, don’t bother.  Either get a long lens – 300mm at the barest minimum – or setup a blind and be prepared to wait.  An IS telephoto or a monopod will make life much easier.  Be prepared to discard 95% of what you shoot.  And finally, if you’re easily frustrated, stick with shooting flowers.

 But I’m going to give it a try.

 Birds are interesting in general, and as photography subjects I think it would be very rewarding to document their behaviors. They’re also devilishly trick to photograph, and I like the challenge.

 I like wildlife photography; growing up in Vermont I encountered all sorts of critters like porcupine and moose. Now that I’m living in Pennsylvania, I find that most people get excited when they see a deer. Suffice to say, I haven’t done any wildlife photography since I got down here, and now seems like a good time to get back into it.

 This project came into being Sunday morning, when I was out at Ford Pond with a photog friend to shoot the sunrise. It was our first time shooting there, and I was amazed by the bird activity. Within a 30 meter circle I saw nesting kingfishers, several great blue herons, red-winged blackbirds, and Canadian geese with goslings.

 I’d come equiped for landscapes and maxed out at 135mm – far short of the reach needed for birds. Let me qualify that statement: given how close some flew to me, 135mm was long enough, but it put me too close to the birds to track & focus.

 I’ll be back at the pond at sunrise on Saturday – and hopefully one evening this week, if the weather ever clears. This time I’ll be prepared with the Sigma 70-200mm as well as the 2x teleconverter.

 At 200mm, I should be able to back off a bit farther, which should make it easier to track the birds as they fly. Easier tracking will improve autofocus. The distance should also make the birds more comfortable with my being there.

 For the kingfishers and red-winged blackbirds, I expect 200mm will be enough, since they hang close to the parking lot. The herons, on the other hand, stick to the shoreline in a more remote corner. For them, I’ll be using the teleconverter, which turns my Sigma into a 140-400mm lens, at the expense of a constant f/5.6 aperture.

 F/5.6 pretty much rules out low-light shooting, since a decent shutter speed is needed – both to capture the birds, and to overcome any lens-shake. I could boost the ISO, but I prefer to keep the noise down – I’ll simply wait for the sun to rise a bit higher.

 I did manage to grab a few shots the other day, and with any luck I’ll have more to share soon!

 * Wedding in an Orchard – a booking for a wedding gig in late May, to take place outdoors in an orchard.  I’m greatly looking forward to this one, as it ought to provide ample opportunity for great images, as well as a lot of fun.

 * Activity shots for a local college – the client wants shots of the students performing various tasks, and he wants them BIG!  We’re talking 16×20 prints to hang in the reception and admissions areas.  This is the sort of gig I love, where the action is genuine and interesting, but with more room for creativity than straight photojournalism.

 * 3rd Annual DPC Ricketts Glen GTG and BBQ: the local(ish) DPC crowd is gathering for their annual hike of Ricketts Glen State Park in June.  Having learned our lesson the first year, we leave cars at BOTH ends of the trail, so once we’ve hiked down the falls trail and eaten, we don’t have to hike back up!  Always a great time, and who doesn’t like shooting waterfalls, anyway?

 * Vermont in Summer – in July, a week-long trip back to the Green Mountain State (where I grew up) with a definite focus on photography time.  Revisiting some old places and breaking new ground when I head north to Mt. Mansfield and Smuggler’s Notch.  Be sure to check out www.therovingphotographer.com for detailed info on the different locations!

It’s a specialized photography website, so stay tuned!  More details to follow shortly!

In the meantime, I’ll be checking in when I can with some more of the usual, and a few new ideas as well.  And since spring is finally here, with a little luck I’ll be out in the field as well.