Killdeer are a common sight around the dry grassy fields near marshy areas and they are nesting. This morning when Mady, Sue, and I walked in Mahaney Park, this killdeer tried to distract us from the nest and ran to lure us away. Mady doesn’t usually react to most birds, but the killdeer at her home park taunt her so much that whenever she sees one, wherever she is, she is quickly in hot pursuit. Sue had her hands full restraining Mady while I tried to snap a few photos.
I am chagrined to admit that although I had returned my camera to manual settings from Aperture Priority that I used last evening to take photos for my photography class assignment, I forgot to reset exposure compensation to zero. I think exposure compensation has no effect when the shooting mode is manual but still, it irritates me that I made such a stupid mistake. After taking many shots today, and wondering why some seemed to dark, I realized that at some point I had set the ISO to 50. Now I love low ISO but even to me, using an ISO of 50 has to be a deliberate act. So, despite my baby steps forward, I continue to take giant steps backward.
I included two shots today. They are very similar and I couldn’t decide which I preferred so I included both. At least these shots are in focus but I cropped them and used a levels adjustment to brighten them because of the low ISO setting.
Focal Length 300mm
ISO 50
f/8
1/400
Cropped/levels
Focal Length 300m
ISO 50
f/5.6
1/640
Cropped/levels