Picture-A-Week 2019 - Week 04

[pierces]

Pictures taken between Monday, January 21 and Sunday, January 27.

 

Rules: See above

That's it. This isn't a contest.

All photos taken this week are welcome (not just cruising).

Prizes will not be awarded. Discovering the joy of photography is the prize.

The idea is to get folks out using their cameras for more than vacations and toddler birthdays.

Post one. Post many. Up to you.

Have fun with your camera and share your fun with others!

[Redrobo]

Hardy Soul out in the cold 7c this morning.

Edited January 26, 2019 by Redrobo

[Krazy Kruizers]

Love the picture -- but that guy is nuts!!

[pierces]

Remember Roy G. Biv? He’s the old mnemonic buddy wandering around in our early memories just waiting for a chance to remind us of the colors of the rainbow. Without Roy, most people wouldn’t know that the seven major colors of a rainbow are Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet. As we sailed into St. Kitts shortly after sunrise, the clouds over the island started pouring rain as the sun broke through elsewhere. The result was the brilliant double rainbow pictured here. I have seen one several times but only under the Hawaii Rainbow Rule that only allows them to appear when you are driving on a freeway or without a camera.

 

Roy G. Biv

 

 

Dave

[zackiedawg]

I have a few from Jan 21 to start out this photo week, and a few from Jan 26 to close out near the end of the same week...all around the local wetlands:

 

A great blue heron flying past the treeline:

 

A young green iguana starting to turn on his orange mating colors:

 

A tricolor heron, puffing up and showing some whites among his other colors, in a light rain:

 

A female red-winged blackbird taking a look around from the top of a pond-apple tree:

 

A green heron, on a rainy day, hanging over the water from a low branch in hunting/fishing mode - ready to uncoil that hidden neck and plunge into the water below after a fish:

 

Rain, overcast, late afternoon - tough conditions!  This anhinga flying low over the water and headed up to her nest required some high ISO (3200) to catch in flight:

[ski ww]

As always great shots.

[cruises42]

10 hours ago, zackiedawg said:

I have a few from Jan 21 to start out this photo week, and a few from Jan 26 to close out near the end of the same week...all around the local wetlands:

 

A great blue heron flying past the treeline:

 

A young green iguana starting to turn on his orange mating colors:

 

A tricolor heron, puffing up and showing some whites among his other colors, in a light rain:

 

A female red-winged blackbird taking a look around from the top of a pond-apple tree:

 

A green heron, on a rainy day, hanging over the water from a low branch in hunting/fishing mode - ready to uncoil that hidden neck and plunge into the water below after a fish:

 

Rain, overcast, late afternoon - tough conditions!  This anhinga flying low over the water and headed up to her nest required some high ISO (3200) to catch in flight:

Did you use a tripod for these pictures?

[zackiedawg]

No tripod - I prefer going handheld when out wildlife shooting.  I suppose the day may come when those big heavy lenses get to be too much - but for as long as I can handle them, I'll stay handheld.  It's gotten a little easier with the mirrorless kit - the camera body barely weighs anything and the 100-400mm lens even with TC attached with camera comes to just over 4lbs total...so it's pretty easy to carry compared to my older DSLR and Tamron 150-600mm which ran around 7.5lbs.

[cruises42]

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2019 at 9:48 AM, zackiedawg said:

No tripod - I prefer going handheld when out wildlife shooting.  I suppose the day may come when those big heavy lenses get to be too much - but for as long as I can handle them, I'll stay handheld.  It's gotten a little easier with the mirrorless kit - the camera body barely weighs anything and the 100-400mm lens even with TC attached with camera comes to just over 4lbs total...so it's pretty easy to carry compared to my older DSLR and Tamron 150-600mm which ran around 7.5lbs.

How close are you to the birds?

[zackiedawg]

Depends on the bird of course, but at my two local wetlands, you can get extremely close to some - as close as 5 feet.  The large wading birds have no fear of people at all, and will hop up on handrails and backs of benches just feet from you.  Anhingas and cormorants will sleep on handrails as a dozen people pass by within a few feet.  Other birds, especially winter migrators from other places, are not as accustomed to people and will tend to stay a little farther.

For the above shots, I'd say the flying GBH was about 50 feet, the iguana about 15 feet, tricolor 20 feet, red-winged blackbird 20 feet, green heron about 10 feet, and flying anhinga about 60 feet.

I only rarely have to push out to shoot something hundreds of feet away - if it's that far, often I'll just skip it and look for one closer, unless it's something rare I may not find again.  The long reach comes most in handy when shooting small forest birds, that even from 20-30 feet require 400-600mm to fill the frame.

[KYBOB]

GREAT BIRD SHOTS! 

[cruises42]

On ‎2‎/‎12‎/‎2019 at 9:18 AM, zackiedawg said:

Depends on the bird of course, but at my two local wetlands, you can get extremely close to some - as close as 5 feet.  The large wading birds have no fear of people at all, and will hop up on handrails and backs of benches just feet from you.  Anhingas and cormorants will sleep on handrails as a dozen people pass by within a few feet.  Other birds, especially winter migrators from other places, are not as accustomed to people and will tend to stay a little farther.

For the above shots, I'd say the flying GBH was about 50 feet, the iguana about 15 feet, tricolor 20 feet, red-winged blackbird 20 feet, green heron about 10 feet, and flying anhinga about 60 feet.

I only rarely have to push out to shoot something hundreds of feet away - if it's that far, often I'll just skip it and look for one closer, unless it's something rare I may not find again.  The long reach comes most in handy when shooting small forest birds, that even from 20-30 feet require 400-600mm to fill the frame.

Thanks! I'm assuming you are not shooting in automatic. Do you have "usual" settings that you use for taking bird photos (flying or not)or are you always changing the settings? I have been using sports mode if they are moving or flying or auto when not moving. I really have no idea where to start if not using sports or auto. I just got the Tamron 18-400mm for my Nikon D3400. A lot of the birds I take pictures of are about 100 feet or so away.

[AL3XCruise]

On 1/28/2019 at 11:44 AM, pierces said:

As we sailed into St. Kitts shortly after sunrise, the clouds over the island started pouring rain as the sun broke through elsewhere. The result was the brilliant double rainbow pictured here

 

What lens and settings did you use?  I recently saw a great full double rainbow in Barbados, but between my inexperience and limited equipment my photos don't come near doing it justice!  

[zackiedawg]

11 hours ago, cruises42 said:

Thanks! I'm assuming you are not shooting in automatic. Do you have "usual" settings that you use for taking bird photos (flying or not)or are you always changing the settings? I have been using sports mode if they are moving or flying or auto when not moving. I really have no idea where to start if not using sports or auto. I just got the Tamron 18-400mm for my Nikon D3400. A lot of the birds I take pictures of are about 100 feet or so away.

 

I generally keep my 'birding' settings on my camera's two Memory Recall banks...if you have those, they're very convenient as all your settings can be saved on a position on the dial - my camera has 2 on the dial, some have even more...but two is enough for my needs.  I keep MR1 set up with my 'non-flying' bird setup: A priority, AF-S focus mode, Flex center spot focus area - medium size, center-weighted metering, 3fps burst mode, stabilization on.  I keep MR2 set for birds-in-flight and other action shooting with movement: S priority, 1/1000 shutter (which I'll adjust as needed), AF-C focus mode, wide focus area, center-weighted metering, -.3EV, 8fps burst mode, stabilization off.  That way, when I'm walking around, I can be in MR1 ready to shoot non-flying birds, and switch the dial to MR2 in less than a second to fire on a bird-in-flight passing by.

[pierces]

8 hours ago, AL3XCruise said:

 

What lens and settings did you use?  I recently saw a great full double rainbow in Barbados, but between my inexperience and limited equipment my photos don't come near doing it justice!  

 

It was shot with a 24-105 f/4 zoom at 37mm, f/8, ISO100 and 1/125s. Basically A-mode set at f/8 with the camera doing the rest.

 

All equipment has limits and light is notoriously sneaky. Sometimes it's just mean. 🙂

 

The rainbow was brilliant but I used Lightroom to adjust it to more closely display what I saw. I prefer to leave the cameras I'm currently using on standard settings for color and contrast and make adjustments if needed from a consistent starting point. If I had the in-camera color set to "Vibrant", it would have come out close to this straight out of the camera, but later photos of my daughter's sunburned face would have ben lobster-esque. In film days you would carry two bodies with different films to control saturation and labor in the darkroom to fix exposures. Digital seems so complicates at first glance but has actually simplified the process for taking good, useable photos.

 

A great time to be a photographer.

 

Dave

Edited February 15, 2019 by pierces

[boeckli]

Need to catch up ...

 

Difficult location and quite heavily cropped

[cruises42]

12 hours ago, zackiedawg said:

 

I generally keep my 'birding' settings on my camera's two Memory Recall banks...if you have those, they're very convenient as all your settings can be saved on a position on the dial - my camera has 2 on the dial, some have even more...but two is enough for my needs.  I keep MR1 set up with my 'non-flying' bird setup: A priority, AF-S focus mode, Flex center spot focus area - medium size, center-weighted metering, 3fps burst mode, stabilization on.  I keep MR2 set for birds-in-flight and other action shooting with movement: S priority, 1/1000 shutter (which I'll adjust as needed), AF-C focus mode, wide focus area, center-weighted metering, -.3EV, 8fps burst mode, stabilization off.  That way, when I'm walking around, I can be in MR1 ready to shoot non-flying birds, and switch the dial to MR2 in less than a second to fire on a bird-in-flight passing by.

Thank you! Those settings give me a good place to start. I'll have to check to see if my camera has Memory recall banks.