Category Archives: Background

Day 092: Low Light Bird Photography – Goldeneyes Take Alarm

Background,

Today dawned ugly. In short, the best course of action would be to snuggle up in front on the fireplace. Here in northern Minnesota, we are experiencing a late season snowstorm with upwards of six inches of snow predicted. When you add the snow to the wind, and the remaining snow and ice, why would one want to venture outside in this Lake Superior region?!

Answer: To improve one’s photography skills!

Please understand that birds have this nasty habit of never remaining still, even when you believe they are at rest. While some folks find that aperture priority is the recommended starting point for bird photography, I disagree. Birds are high energy athletes constantly on the move. Thus, I start with the premise that one needs a shutter speed of 1/1000th of a second for fast birds, and 1/640th of a second for slower (big) birds. It is worth getting to know your custom settings. For today’s photographs I was using total manual settings. This meant I was scaling my ISO up to my camera’s top setting (3200) and often using a expsoure setting of 1/1000th of a setting. I then forced the aperture to F4.0 and a white balance of “cloudy”. Did I mention it was dark out, and often snowing hard?! Thus, I needed to increase the sensitivity of my sensor by increasing the ISO speed. After all, regardless of the bad weather, the birds did not sit still!

These two photos of the Goldeneyes were taken at the exact moment they saw me, and were not impressed with the sight!

The other two photographs are of the waterfall across the street from my home. The State of Minnesota was actually out measuring the water flow of Amity Creek in the middle of the snowstorm. You are looking at 432 cubic feet per second! Last week before the spring meltdown really got under way the flowage rate was 160 cubic feet per second.

Sound the Alarm! Goldeneyes Take Flight
092-Birds-365-Low-Light-Goldeneyes-1 092-Birds-365-Low-Light-Goldeneyes-2

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Amity Creek – The Deeps (above and below)
The-Deeps-Snowstorm-Above The-Deeps-Snowstorm-Below

Day 077: Sunset Learning Bird Photography

Background

Although the day started with rain (see earlier post), it ended with a beautiful mostly clear evening. Given Molly and I will head back north where there is still snow on the ground early Friday morning, I took a walk that started just before sundown. After enjoying a beautiful sunset which included some photographs of a red-shouldered hawk on the hunt, I continued my walk into the twilight. It was peaceful, calm and quiet.

As I neared my Dad’s home I saw a great egret intent on an evening fish. As you know, birds do not tend to stand still for having their picture taken. However, given the sky was gorgeous and reflecting into the pond, I wondered …

Thus, I set my camera for an exposure of 1/500th of a second and used the highest manual ISO possible on my camera (3200). Thankfully the egret was so engrossed in its fishing, I was able to take a series of about 15 photographs. I would just position myself in front of the bird, and wait for it to walk to my desired scene. With each picture I played around a bit more with my settings. I hope you like my final photo!

077-Birds-365-Sunset-Great-Egret

365 Days of Birds Index / Contents

Background

Today is my 65th day! Thus I am well started upon this year long effort. Now that there are a reasonable number of photos, it is time to add a index / table of contents organized by bird species. I will update this file often. The index is permanently housed on my other blog, NorthStarNerd.org which more easily permits the uploading of files.