March
10
Tuesday
1983
photos
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Bird-photography
road trips are (for me, at least) hard work, with little or no leisure
time at all. By the time I get back to the hotel, it’s well after
dark and I have only a few hours before my bed-time to clean my
equipment, re-charge my dozens of flash-unit batteries, and upload my
photos to my computer. In-between feeding my dog and feeding
myself, I try to find time to examine a sample of the images taken that
day, to see whether there are any "screw-ups" that I might specifically
try to re-take the next day. Last night as I looked at the
Reddish Egret photos I decided that I wasn’t really happy with any of
them. Despite my being fairly unimpressed with Fort Desoto, I
decided I needed to return there today to see if I might get another
chance to shoot the Reddish Egret. I wasn’t overly optimistic.
When I got out to the lagoon, there were already a bunch of
photographers there, though there were scarcely any birds. I
asked them about the Reddish Egret, but they hadn't seen it. It
looked as though I might not
get my Reddish. I decided to make the best of it and shoot the
few "peeps" that were around. Below is an image of a tiny fellow
that had somehow found a worm in the hard-packed sand at the edge of
the lagoon, and had to exert considerable effort in extracting it:
Early Bird
Catching a Worm at Fort Desoto.
600mm at f/5. 1/2500 sec at ISO 800.
Flash on high-speed sync at full power (+3).
For the image below I was happy both to be getting a bird "shaking out"
its plumage and also to be able to completely fill in all the shadows
using my huge flash extender, despite using a fast shutter speed (which
cuts the effective illumination due to flash):
Plover (?) at
Fort Desoto.
600mm at f/9. 1/1600 sec at ISO 800.
Flash on high-speed sync at full power (+3).
I decided to try wandering northward along the
inner shore of the lagoon, which I hadn’t explored at all the previous
day. Soon I was forced to turn back by high water and thickets,
but not before being ridiculed by some cretins for "lookin’ at the
stupid birds", and before shooting this severely back-lit Great Egret
with a lizard it had recently procured:
Great Egret with
Lizard.
600mm at f/7.1. 1/500 sec at ISO 320.
Flash on high-speed sync at full power (+3).
I decided to try the second, futher lagoon once again, since I had
found the oystercatchers there yesterday. All I found was a
lonely White Ibis foraging in the water. Despite being fairly
sick of photographing ibises (I had by now shot thousands of frames of
them), I was impressed by the colors of the scene, and the stillness of
the water, and was later glad that I took the photo after all:
White Ibis at
Fort Desoto.
400mm at f/7.1. 1/800 sec at ISO 160.
Flash on high-speed sync at full power (+3).
As I was returning to the first lagoon, I could see from a distance
that the group of photographers that I had left there earlier were
still there, and were in fact highly engrossed in photographing some
wading bird at extremely close range. I quickened my pace.
Soon I was fairly sure that the bird in question was my Reddish Egret.
When I arrived at the assemblage I was informed that the Reddish had
shown up immediately after I had left to go investigate the second
lagoon, and that they had been shooting it at point-blank range the
entire time I was gone. How nice of them to inform me.
Unfortunately, the sun was, by now, getting fairly high, but the bird
stuck around for quite a while, and I was able to get a number of
images that were at least marginally better than those from
yesterday. Today the bird was more animated than yesterday, often
raising its wings to provide stunning poses, like the one shown
below. I wasn’t completely satisfied with the backgrounds (the
bird often stayed close to the far shore of the tiny side-arm of the
lagoon, where it was flanked close-by with vegetation), but some
quick-and-dirty (actually, quite sloppy) processing in Photoshop
sufficed to blur the background just
enough:
Reddish Egret at
Fort Desoto.
600mm at f/9. 1/1250 sec at ISO 640.
Flash on high-speed sync at full power (+3).
Below you can see the bird using its wings to shade the surface of the
water. Note that, just as in yesterday’s images of this bird, the
reddish of the neck and head and the blue-gray of the wings appear
flat and "bleached out" due to the bright sunlight:
Reddish Egret at
Fort Desoto.
840mm at f/7.1. 1/3200 sec at ISO 800.
No flash.
Though I truly live for poses
like the one above and the one below, many
times they result in poor images because the wings end up shading the
bird’s face. In the image below, I used the Shadows / Highlights
tool in Photoshop to lighten up the shadow in the bird’s axillary
region (the armpit). Though this successfully brought out some of
the detail that had previously been hidden in there, you can see in
this image that it also brought out a lot of noise in that area, which
I was too lazy to fix:
Reddish Egret at
Fort Desoto.
840mm at f/7.1. 1/3200 sec at ISO 800.
No flash.
Once again the bird kindly did his "spike haircut" pose for me, though
just as yesterday I found the postprocessing of this pose very
difficult, for some reason —
the long, spikey plumes always end up
appearing almost white after sharpening and exposure adjustments:
Reddish Egret at
Fort Desoto.
840mm at f/7.1. 1/3200 sec at ISO 800.
No flash.
I was very happy to also get some flight shots of this bird, though the
backgrounds could have been much better. In
the image below, you’ll again note that much of the under-wing lighting
is provided by sunlight reflecting off the water (note the bright
patterning reminiscent of waves). Also note that, had I not been
all the way down on my belly (a rather uncomfortable position,
usually), the visual separation of the bird from the water would not
have been
as complete, resulting in a rather less dramatic angle, I think:
Reddish Egret in
Flight.
600mm at f/9. 1/1250 sec at ISO 640.
Flash on high-speed sync at full power (+3).
Though I was on my belly for the shot below, the extreme width of the
lagoon prevented me from getting the same effect as in the image
above. Also, the red coloration of the neck appears horribly
bleached out, due to the intensely bright sunlight. At least the
background was much better:
Reddish Egret in
Flight.
600mm at f/6.3. 1/2500 sec at ISO 800.
No flash.
Having got my Reddish Egret photos, I decided it was time to move
on. On my way out of the park I was surprised to see a wild
parrot perched on the telephone line —
a Monk Parakeet, as I was
later told. As I
recall, these birds were introduced by pet owners, and have established
themselves as wild or semi-wild birds in Florida. The photo below
is quite poor —
I was hand-holding the big 600mm rig (that means "with no tripod
holding it up") and wasn’t
feeling particularly energetic at the time. Also, the bird flew
off after only a few frames, so I had to make the best with what I had
got:
Monk Parakeet at
Fort Desoto.
600mm hand-held, at f/8. 1/320 sec at ISO 320.
No flash.
I hit the highway around noon and drove with all speed toward the
east. My destination was Merritt
Island, clear across the state
on the east coast. I had been told that it was a decent (though
not the best) place to shoot Scrub Jays. Also, someone had,
within the past two weeks, shot American Avocets there.
I was told to try two particular sites on Merritt Island: Black Point
Drive, and Scrub Ridge.
I sped past the large assemblage of white
pelicans near the entrance in hopes of having time to come back and
shoot them after checking out the two sites I had been specifically
told to seek. I first tried Black Point. This is a long,
one-way loop that winds through open marshland. Though there
were a few ducks in one of the ponds and a few "peeps" on one of the
mud-flats, none of the birds were at all approachable. The only
photo I took on the entire "wildlife loop" was this landscape shot of
the road:
 Black Point
Drive, on Merritt Island.
Canon 30D + Tokina 12-24mm lens.
12mm at f/9. HDR image from three exposures
(1/5000 sec, 1/2000 sec, 1/800 sec) at ISO 500.
Though Merritt looked highly unpromising so far, the afternoon was
wearing on, and I figured it was best to try some of the other sites on
Merritt Island, rather than trying to rush to Viera Wetlands or
Cruickshank and end up getting to either of those locations too late in
the day to do any serious shooting. I decided to try for the
Scrub Jays,
since I hadn’t shot a single Scrub Jay on this trip yet (in fact, I’d
never seen one before at all). I had been told that there were
Scrub Jays at Scrub Ridge.
Before even arriving at Scrub Ridge I saw my first Scrub Jay. It
was perched in the vegetation just off the road. I slammed on my
brakes, backed up, put on my hazard lights, and got out of the car with
the big 600mm lens in hand —
no tripod. Note that I still had
my 1.4x teleconverter on the lens, so I was shooting at an effective
focal length of 840mm, hand-held.
As you can see below, the very first image came out relatively sharp
(except the beak, for some reason):
Florida Scrub Jay
on Merritt Island.
840mm at f/7.1, hand-held. 1/320 sec at ISO 640.
Flash on full power (+3).
For these hand-held shots at 840mm, I relied critically on the Image
Stabilization feature of my Canon lenses. Shooting 840mm
hand-held is highly inadvisable, and I do it only when I have a bird
right in front of me and no time to get out the tripod. For these
shots I was also highly dependent on my flash unit and flash extender,
since the bird was in deep shade. As you can see below, the bird
was lit up extremely well —
almost too well in fact, since I had to
use the Recovery slider in
Adobe Camera Raw to reclaim some of the
blown or nearly-blown highlights:
Florida Scrub Jay
on Merritt Island.
840mm at f/7.1, hand-held. 1/320 sec at ISO 640.
Flash on full power (+3).
In the image below I did blow the highlights in the white region of the
head, though that was done primarly in postprocess; I was in a hurry
and didn’t have time to selectively adjust the brightness of the white
feathers separate from the rest of the body, as I should have:
Florida Scrub Jay
on Merritt Island.
840mm at f/7.1, hand-held. 1/320 sec at ISO 640.
Flash on full power (+3).
I was glad when the bird began foraging in the grass at the side of the
road, because it gave me a chance to rest my arms by placing the lens
on the ground as I lay on my belly shooting the bird at
eye-level. Here the bird was back-lit, so fill flash and the Fill Light slider in Photoshop /
Camera Raw were essential:
Florida Scrub Jay
on Merritt Island.
840mm at f/7.1. 1/400 sec at ISO 640.
Flash on high-speed sync at full power (+3).
When that bird flew off I continued on to Scrub Ridge, where I saw
absolutely nothing. As sunset approached, I drove back toward the
park entrance. In a small pond beside the road I was stunned to
see a Roseate Spoonbill
foraging very close to the road. I
quickly pulled over and grabbed my rig —
once again without any
tripod. The bird was back-lit (as usual, it seems), but the
yellow light reflecting off the water produced a nice, moody effect:
Roseate Spoonbill
at Merritt Island.
840mm at f/7.1, hand-held. 1/250 sec at ISO 640.
Flash on full power (+3).
I was able to get a few more images of this bird, but none of them were
very good. Even the photo above is blurry due to motion blur (my
shutter speed was too low; I had to keep it low to allow more light
from my flash unit to reach the back-lit bird). Soon it was too
dark to shoot at all.
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