Month: January 2016

My panning practice Sunday resulted in what my nephew calls a “Muybridge” moment. He pointed out that the formation of greater white-fronted geese in yesterday’s blog post displayed just about every wing position that they have.   Eadweard Muybridge was a 19th century photographer whose pioneering work showing motion in humans and animals in a succession of photographs,  lead to the creation of motion picture projection.   A little Photoshop magic (my nephew Michael is an accomplished Photoshop user and a student of fine art) shows an edited photograph  with an orderly progression of wing positions.

Since I live in the midst of the Pacific Flyway, it is not difficult to find huge flocks of migrating birds near my home this time of year.  I thought they would make great subjects for panning practice.  Sunday afternoon, I returned to the levee road a couple of miles away and spent time practicing panning and switching between the Auto Area AF and D21 auto focus modes while looking through the view finder.  What I learned from Moose is that the Auto  Area Af mode works best when the camera is moving (i.e., while panning) and the D21 Auto Focus mode works best when the camera is not moving.

Birds were swarming over the rice fields.  Greater white-fronted geese, snow geese, and even northern shovelers where settled in the water.  In one pond I saw some large birds with curved beaks I later identified as white faced ibis, but there was no place to pull over on the narrow, winding, levee road so I’ll have to keep my eye peeled for them elsewhere so I can try to photograph them.

I was a little more successful panning and consistently keeping flying birds in focus on Sunday than I was in Alaska.  It was all hand held panning.  Big Bertha and the tripod will get a work out later in the week.

While winding up my one-on-one session with Moose Peterson last Tuesday afternoon, this white-headed woodpecker suddenly appeared at the balcony suet feeder.  Since my 600mm lens was mounted on the tripod facing the feeder, Moose suggested I try for some shots, telling me that most likely the shots wouldn’t turn out well because the woodpecker was on the far side of the branch obscuring most of the bird’s body.  Despite the possibility that a decent shot was unlikely, Moose suggested I had the best chance at a shot if I turned the camera to frame it vertically .   My subject was mostly obscured, darting behind the branch, then peeking out, then disappearing again.  All shots but this one were out of focus because I didn’t have the ISO set high enough so the shutter speed was very slow.  Yet, despite the slow shutter speed (1/15) the woodpecker’s eye is in sharp focus and I thought its expression was appealing because of the clump of suet on its beak.

Well, four and and a quarter of twenty blackbirds, anyway, Brewer’s Blackbirds to be specific, and none baked in a pie.  I drove out toward the airport to find birds to practice panning.  The thousands of snow geese in the rice fields along the levee road that I saw on Thursday were gone when I drove by New Year’s Day so I continued across Highway 99 toward Garden Highway.  I saw hundreds of blackbirds flying in a huge cloud over the fields so I found a safe place to pull over.

By the way, it was chilly for around here midday, in the low 40’s, and the cool weather gave me a chance to try out the heated steering wheel on my new Lincoln MKZ.  That’s a feature I won’t easily give up.

As soon as I parked, the blackbirds settled onto the overhead wires and didn’t move again so I will have to get my panning practice another time.

 

Happy New Year!    One year ago, I posted a collage of bird photos that I took in 2014 and I predicted that 2015 would be my “Year of the Bird.”    It was.  In 2015 I captured images of birds in Alaska, Arizona, California, New York, and Texas as well as in Costa Rica.   In 2015, the variety of  bird species appearing in my blog far surpassed any other year, from tiny hummers to majestic eagles, from stately shore birds to tiny bushtits, from exotic macaws and parrots to long-toed jacanas and many, many more.  But, since I started this blog, my favorite birds are the Anna’s hummingbirds that live in my yard year round and who sometimes tolerate me when I set up my camera by the fountain or the feeders.  I hoped to capture one of the hummers in flight on this New Year’s Day but that didn’t happen so here is the little male Anna’s perched and fluffed against this chilly New Year’s day.