Shooting the Birds – Delaware
My wife says the great blue herons all run for the hills when they see our car pull up as I have been stalking them on this property for years. I love those big birds.
Was visiting my mother-in-law this past week with my wife on our annual visit the family trip. It’s a great time to work on my wildlife skills. I thought I’d try pairing the Lumix GX8 with the 100-300mm Lumix Vario G f4.0-5.6 lens and boy I was happy. The GX8 has a fast capture rate which was great for sequences. I enjoy capturing birds with different behavior rather than just beauty portraits. As my MIL’s home is on the point with surrounding marsh there’s lots of wildlife on display for my camera.
The birds that gave me the most opportunity to study during this trip were snowy egrets. Most of the time it was raining and blustery winds coming from the northeast.
I enjoy how this egret appears to be dancing in this image. ISO 800 1/3200 sec. +1 exposure compensation Aperture Proiity f5.6 300mm (600mm 35mm equivalent)
This combination of lens, ISO and camera lend itself to a slightly grainy (aka noise) look. Because this is a small piece of the overall image I’ve pushed it here to emulate tri-x push process. The processors have given the noise in an image more of a film grain feel. ISO 800 1/1600 sec. Aperture Priority f5.6 300mm (600mm 35mm equivalent) Processed in NIK Silver FX Pro 2 (which you can now download fro free if you hadn’t heard the news!)
Geese are another ever-present bird on the marsh. ISO 800 1/3200 sec. +1 exposure compensation Aperture Priority f5.6 246mm (492mm 35mm equivalent)
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
PS – You’ll notice that there are no great blue herons among my captures. That has nothing to do with me but a hawk family moved into the neighborhood and chased all the nesting herons from the area a couple weeks before my arrival.
