Month: October 2014

I’ve had one of Bobo’s tiny red head feathers stuck to the sticky part of a sticky note for a while now, intending to photograph it with my macro lens but not knowing what would be the best way to set up a shot of it. Once again, my Flickr challenge group helped me out with this dilemma. The topic a couple of days ago was “in hand,” the challenge to take a photograph of something small enough to fit in a hand and that showed the hand along with the item. And after reading the challenge, I realized that a macro shot of the feather on the tip of my finger would immediately show how tiny the feather is. It is no more than 3 millimeters in diameter and comes from the lore, the space on a bird’s head above its beak and between its eyes, comparable to a human’s forehead. Bobo is a Red-Lored Amazon and this tiny feather is what identifies her species.

105mm, ISO 500, f/14, 1/8s

There is something so powerfully intriguing to me about the moon that I never tire of photographing it. I missed the full Blood Moon early Wednesday morning (I did feature the last one here and here ) but this evening, as I drove home from Sacramento after listening to Sacramento Bee Photographer Randall Benton talk about “secrets” of photography, I thought about his Blood Moon photographs in the morning’s paper and watched the almost full moon low in the night sky. I decided I’d photograph it when I got home. Although it’s not quite full—only 96% visible—I really prefer a less-than-full moon because more of the details and craters on the surface are visible.

Randall also mentioned the Sunny 16 rule, unrelated to photographing the moon, and it is a rule I follow often as a starting point when I’m photographing outdoors in daylight. I know that this rule also applies to moon shots so that’s how I set my camera: f/16, ISO 200, 1/200s

I attached the 1.4X teleconverter to the 80-400mm lens and attached both of those to the D7100. I went out to see exactly where the moon was in the sky and whether I had to wait a while before it rose above the neighbor’s roof top. It was high enough so I steadied the camera and took a few shots hand held before getting the tripod just to make sure I had the settings right. I was astonished at the clarity of the shots. When I attached the tripod, I could hardly tell the difference.

The first shot is the hand held shot. The second is with the tripod. That 80-400mm lens is really an astonishing lens. I made a few minor tweaks in light room and applied the same adjustment to both shots.

Handheld:

Tripod:

I’ve been really slacking off the workout routine that I’ve been so committed to for the past seven years. I’ve cut back on my cardio and I’ve been skipping strength training sessions. That ends now. I’m getting a grip and getting back to the gym, 6 days a week.

Taking this photo was a challenge. I used the self timer instead of the cable release, which I should have used, so I had to hold the 8 pound weight as still as possible while the camera took its time firing. As I look now at how I framed the shot, I could have cheated and balanced the weight on something, but I didn’t. And, focusing was a challenge as well because I set the camera on Live View, then had to crane my neck to see the LCD screen upside down while I held the weight and focused the lens. Then, because of the shallow depth of field, the slightest movement of my hand forward or backward when I triggered the shutter caused the shot to lose focus. To get proper exposure, even though I used natural light coming from a window at the left of the shot, I had to up the ISO and still had a relatively slow 1/80s shutter speed further exacerbating the problem of focus. Because my hand and arm were getting so tired from holding up the weight shot after shot, my hand and arm started to tremble. I guess I’m lucky I managed to get a decent shot at all.

I finally managed to get a shot with my grasping fingers in focus but now that I look at it, I think I need a manicure!

Focal Length 50mm, ISO 800, f/3.5, 1/80s

I went out late morning to try photographing the bees again. I didn’t need flash because of the bright sun and I was able to increase the shutter speed to 1/2000s so I was more successful in stopping motion…at least while the bee stayed in the same focal plane. This bee launched from the edge of the fountain and I was able to maintain focus as he launched but after the second shot, it was just a blur.

Focal Length 400mm, ISO 500, f/5.6, 1/2000

I’ve discovered that my fountain is a lure not only for the birds in my yard but for bees as well. Apparently pollen gathering causes honeybees great thirst. I’ve been watching in fascination as they hover over the fountain then land and drink for minutes at a time as they leisurely slake their thirst. The xylosma shrubs in my yard are covered with tiny flowers that draw honeybees to swarm around them for days this time of year.

An added bonus for me was capturing a few reflections of the bees as they drank. Capturing a bee in flight and in focus, however, continues to elude me.

Focal Length 400mm, ISO 500, f/5.6, 1/250s, flash

As the editor of the California Foundation for Birds of Prey newsletter, I’ve been researching bird feathers to write an article about them. I suggested we do an article about the fact that it is illegal, with few notable exceptions for those with federal permits including Native Americans, to possess, let alone sell, barter, trade, or any other nefarious thing a person might do with any feather of a bird covered by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 and its amendments as well as several subsequent protective laws. There are few species of birds not covered by that act (house sparrows, starlings, pigeons, e.g., are not covered). The law resulted directly from world wide outrage over the destruction of bird populations to provide the millinery industry’s need for showy bird feathers on women’s hats, especially during and following the Victorian era. Ironically, the wanton destruction of birds for millinery use ended, not so much as a result of MBTA and similar laws in Great Britain, but more because feathered hats fell from fashion when women cut their hair into bobs during the Roaring Twenties.

I’m still working on the article but to illustrate it, I took a photograph of what I believe might be a great horned owl feather I picked up on a walk in my neighborhood before I knew I shouldn’t have done it. I only recently discovered that to do so is an illegal act. I guess I am a scofflaw. At least I now know to leave those feathers where they lay and, from now on, I will, as they say, take only pictures and leave only footprints…and sometimes, not even footprints!

I took this shot in natural light by a north facing window using a tripod, the D800 and the 24-70mm lens.

Focal Length 70mm, ISO 100, f/8, 1/5s

I took this collage of window shots as a passenger in a vehicle traveling on I-80 near Berkeley Saturday afternoon. They were all taken from a moving car at freeway speeds so the focus isn’t crisp.

In keeping with my green theme of the past few days, I took some shots of a bunch of asparagus, bathed in olive oil, waiting to sizzle on the grill. The depth of field is so shallow that only a tiny part of one of the asparagus spears is in focus but it created lots of nice bokeh.

In yesterday’s post, I said I never got around to photographing the dill, my original plan for yesterday’s blog. What I should have said is that I never took any macro shots of the dill. I did take a couple of shots with my 24-70mm lens and, after cropping and adding a vignette, I like the results.

Bobo is doing her part to entice rain to California. Hopefully, her rain dance will cause a few drops to fall. She loves to have a spray bath and reacts instantly to any spray bottle that she sees. I had planned to take a macro shot of a bunch of dill that would become dill sauce for the King Salmon I was grilling for dinner. A recent challenge from my Flickr daily challenge group is “green” but I made the mistake of spritzing the dill right in front of Bobo. She came down her ladder and looked a little miffed that I was spritzing the dill and not her. She cooperated nicely when I implored her to stay right where she was so I could get my camera and tripod set up. I never did get the dill shots. But, at least Bobo is green!

“That face, that face, that wonderful face!” With apologies to Alan Bergman and Lew Spence, I can’t resist using their lyrics to caption this shot. And, I have to say, the closing lines are really quite true:

“Oh never will these eyes behold a sight that could replace
That face, That face, That face, That face,
That face, That face, That face.”

I found this roseate spoonbill at Safari West in Santa Rosa. I’ve tried to capture good shots of roseate spoonbills in Port Aransas, Texas as they forage along the water’s edge but we’ve always been too far away for me to see their faces in such detail. They are the most colorful birds I see in Port A, with their stunning pink plumage, their unwieldy blue spoon shaped bills, and their piercing red eyes. I was happy to finally manage a decent closeup of one. At 400mm, I had the lens wide open (f/5.6) and I was able to blur out the netting in front of the spoonbill’s “wonderful face.”

Focal Length 400mm, ISO 500, F/5.6, 1/200

I used Aperture Priority instead of manual settings and I was pleased with the results at Safari West. Just like when I began using higher ISO settings, it’s been hard for me to convert from all manual settings but I must admit I’m finding that my exposure is improving using Aperture and Shutter priority settings in some situations.