Last Saturday after my awesome bird photography workshop, I ran home and insisted to dh that we needed to get to Chincoteague NOW so I could put my newly learned skills to practice. And while the egrets were not cooperating, this guy most certainly was! I've only ever seen him at a distance, but Saturday evening he was right in front of me! He flies at quite an impressive speed, skimming his lower beak through the water and comes up with some tasty morsel or another, flies up out of the water, turns around, has already swallowed what he just skimmed up, and comes back for more. He went back and forth countless times, which seems to be their habit when the pickin's are good, and gave me enough of a show to get some really good (for me) photos. While I was shooting him, I was putting into practice some of the things I'd learned earlier in the day, and then was able to use some of the LR and PS techniques I learned on Sunday to process this. It was a definite learning experience at those workshops!
And don't you know, walking back to our car that evening, we saw a beloved 365'er and family! Great fun to meet them!!!
What an amazing bird. For curiosity sake, do you have a way in your camera to see after the fact where the focus point has been? I notice the eye is just a tad soft despite your exposure settings being spot on
@jgpittenger Thanks Jane! Exposure was one of the things we learned about that day, so I'm glad to hear your comment about it! Focus is always my issue, ESPECIALLY when they're in flight. The instructor recommended practicing panning with traffic to build the skill. But beyond that, I never see 20/20 no matter what prescription my glasses are, and I've often wondered how much that is holding me back. However, autofocus should take care of that, so it probably goes back to practice, practice, practice! As for the camera showing me after the fact where my focus point was, I'm not sure - I need to look that up!
holy moly! this is astonishing. If I got a shot like this, I certainly wouldn't be worrying about the focus point on the eye or elsewhere... Though I guess if I got ten pictures like this, I might start thinking about it. I've been trying that setting you told me about...used it indoors at an assembly the other day. The pictures came out VERY noisy because the camera selected a very high iso, but the trade-off was, I think, that I got the people in focus more or less even though it was a dark room and I had no tripod with me.
@francoise Yeah, that ISO gets out of hand in low light. I've used that trick at sunset, and there were definitely some shots that came out well exposed but entirely too grainy. I guess there's a time and a place for it!
August 23rd, 2015
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