Official Photography Thread

[imanihonjin]

That first shot with the snake is great. Well done.

[Blueintheface]

Nice shots, SF! I especially like that first one.

[mtnbiker]

Those are some sweet pics. How close were you to the heron?

[swampfrog]

That first shot with the snake is great. Well done.

Nice shots, SF! I especially like that first one.

Those are some sweet pics. How close were you to the heron?

Thanks. The snake and heron were a different day than the fish and heron. With the snake, it was about 50 feet off, the fish was 15-20. The snake is a pretty significant crop (shot at 200mm I believe). The rest of the snake and heron shots can be found here (it was fun to watch):

https://plus.google.com/photos/10663...46762567552945

[clackamascoug]

The Bald Eagle is now gracing my homepage.

Thank you!

[Katy Lied]

I appreciate Swampy's pix and advice. Fabulous.

[swampfrog]

I appreciate Swampy's pix and advice. Fabulous.

The advice is just technicalities gleaned from too much web surfing--the engineer in me first needs to know how things work. Making respectable photographs though, I am still learning and have a long ways to go...but thanks!

[swampfrog]

More birds:

[Pelado]

More birds:

Very nice. How long does it take you to get shots like these once you are in the location of the shoot? Are you in any given setting for minutes, hours, other?

[swampfrog]

Very nice. How long does it take you to get shots like these once you are in the location of the shoot? Are you in any given setting for minutes, hours, other?

Only the last one was hard to get, and it's not a great image. The refuge where I shot it doesn't allow people off the gravel path, so you take what you can get, usually from a long distance. The bittern is shot at 380mm, 1/320, f/8, on a canon crop sensor 50D, and then cropped heavily to get the resulting image, too far away, but the best I could do. The refuge is just 15 minutes from home, so I wander there fairly often for a couple hours at a time. I don't usually sit around and wait, I'm there for the exercise and escape as much as anything. One day I was there, the eagle was sitting in a tree and decided to launch into flight while I was close, on another day the northern harrier was hunting, so I was able to shoot him for about half an hour. The 50D is adequate but not great at tracking birds in flight, so I have a lot of blurry images. I'd love to have a 5D mark III, or if someone wants to gift me a 1DX I won't complain.

The heron shots are from the car, at another refuge that's still close (45 minute drive) and has a driving route through the refuge. So you use the car as a blind. Apparently birds are a lot less spooked by a car than they are by a human. As you drive around the 4.5 mile loop, you usually have several opportunities to shoot at relatively close subjects and you can pull off at any time for longer periods. Forest roads are good for this too, just stay in the car and don't poke your head out and hope something comes close. True birders have camo and portable blinds, I think I'd get too bored.

Any local pond is adequate for getting flying ducks, I practice on them a lot because they are fairly large, are use to having humans around, and are constantly flying in/out of local wetlands. Same for Canadian geese, they are even easier than ducks, bigger and slower and not bothered by humans hardly at all.

The songbirds are me walking around and hoping I don't scare them all away, if they stay still for long enough, I can get a nice image. Catching them in flight is nearly impossible (at least for me). I spooked the doves just walking around, they flew a short ways away and I was able to creep up to them slowly and shoot for 5 to 10 minutes.

I haven't been shooting birds that long, but I like the challenge, they take patience and are technically challenging (get ready to throw the majority away). Though there is significant price of admission, you need long glass. I think the end results are nice in that you rarely get to see the detail in even common small birds, but freezing them in an image allows greater appreciation for God's/Darwin's (whichever you prefer) work. Even very common fowl can be quite stunning.

[swampfrog]

Trying to capture that catalog circa 1950s feeling.

Hope you don't mind, played with this a little in lightroom.

50sCatalogStyle.jpg

[swampfrog]

Business Trip, Novato, CA

[imanihonjin]

The pics of the birds are all very impressive, but the one of just the water and tree....spectacular. Well done.

[swampfrog]

More examples of freezing water in motion, this time at the beach, plus some landscape from a recent vacation. The detail in a frozen wave crashing into something is spectacular.

WaterSplash.jpg

WaterSplash2.jpg

Trees.jpg

Beach.jpg

Pier.jpg

[San Juan Sun]

I really like that one of the peir, swampfrog.