I almost did not have time to photograph a bird for this project today. My wife and I spent most of the day hiking out over the Lake Superior ice to the sea caves that are part of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. Luckily when we got home this white breasted nuthatch made himself available in the day’s waning light. I also have given you one photo from the sea caves.
Mr. Nuthatch
Apostle Islands Sea Caves
Today’s experiment was to dramatically play around with different exposure settings to catch “stop action” of small birds in flight. While for larger birds, 1/600 of a second seems to often work to avoid blurred wings in flight, for smaller birds I am finding 1/1000 and 1/1250 of a second work best. I also tried 100% manual settings where I set the exposure, aperture and ISO. It was enlightening to learn how adjusting the ISO affected the light that reaches the camera’s sensor.
Here is today’s photo where a chickadee is hoping to share an afternoon snack with some goldfinches.
Northern Minnesota can be a photographic challenge. Take today for instance, while the sky is a deep, deep blue … the rest of the weather is as follows: -20F + 20mph wind = -48F windchill. Thus, neither the pheasant nor me were very interested in being out in the open. It was cold enough behind this thicket of trees. One aspect of this photo is one may see the pheasant’s foot about to emerge from its puffed up body to take another step.
