KISS, each one is a work of art

No, not that kind of kiss, although I suppose one could argue the point as to whether or not each kiss is a work of art. 😉 What I’m talking about is principle known as Keep It Simple Stupid, something that I have trouble doing when it comes to my Landscape and still life photos.

It’s funny, back in the days when I repaired, designed, and built machines and fixtures, keeping it simple was the motto that I went by. However, when it comes to art, that seems to be a different story.

For example, the types of music that I listen to the most. I thought about putting in links to video clips of some of my all time favorites, such as Genesis “The Musical Box”, Frank Zappa’s “Cruising for Burgers” or something by the Mahavishnu Orchestra like “The Inner Mounting Flame”, but every one of those songs is close to ten minutes long. Maybe if I relate something an ex-girlfriend asked me will help me to explain this. I was overjoyed to have found that one of my favorite albums had been finally released on CD, and was listening to it when the ex asked me “Don’t you ever listen to simple music? Everything that you listen to is always changing so much that it’s hard for me to follow along with it.” The stuff that I listen to often has strange time signatures, or in the case of Frank Zappa, different parts of his band playing in different time signatures at the same time, and he made it work. I suppose that’s why I’m also a fan of classical music as well. BTW, never listen to Cruising for Burgers while trying to type, even worse is hearing the Mike Brecker sax solo from “The Purple Lagoon” in the background while trying to think of what to type here. 😉

Anyway, back to photography. I’m learning to do fairly well when I’m shooting larger scenes, as yet another sunset from Duck Lake shows, although it was an uninspiring sunset that evening.

Sunset at Duck Lake

I did learn something that evening though. I had used the neutral density filter the prior week and was pleased with the results. Then, the clouds and water were moving directly at me when I shot the photos that time. This time, I swung the camera around and came up with this, not so pleasing.

Oops!

I can see that any motion blurred by longer shutter openings has to be in certain directions in relationship to the camera, or the effect isn’t good. I wouldn’t have used the neutral density filter if my shutter times had remained short enough to freeze motion, but when shooting at 5 seconds or longer, you can’t freeze either the water or clouds. Oh well, lesson learned.

You don’t have to worry, I’m not going to be running around with the neutral density filters on my lenses all the time, blurring everything, there are times and places when doing that make sense, but as in so many things, there are people who go overboard with fads.

Since I’ve been trying to shoot more landscapes, most of them are too busy to be pleasing to the eye, even though I’ve been trying to keep it simple. However, this past Sunday, I shot this one as an extreme example of what I do wrong.

Busy, busy, busy

I liked the scene in real life, with the reflections off from the water, but I knew that the photo would have too much going on in it, with no place for your eyes to land, and very little to lead your eyes through the image. I did a little better with this one…

Busy, busy

…it looks even better in black and white to make it less busy.

Busy

As you can see, I still have trouble translating what I see in the three-dimensional world into a good two-dimensional photograph. I’m still prone to shooting photos like this.

A riot of color

When it comes to my photos, I fall victim to the notion that if some is good, then more has to be better.

As you know, I’ve been watching videos of presentations by famous photographers on how to improve one’s skills at photography. One thing that has always struck me is how, for a lack of a better term, simple their photos are. That’s a bit misleading, for great photography isn’t simple, it’s that there are very few objects in the frame. Maybe three seashells, each one beautiful in its own right, but also arranged in a pleasing manner. Seeing how much you can cram into a photo as I often do doesn’t make a good photo, just the opposite is true.

So, that’s one thing that I have been trying to work on. Another is to get more depth in my photos, so that they don’t look so two-dimensional, sometimes striking the right balance can be hard for me.

Depth vs. simplicity

I like the depth that I was able to achieve in that image, by “layering” the different colors and textures of the foliage. However, I think that it’s still a little too busy. So, I have been trying to shoot more photos like these.

Maple green

Not bad…

Yellow

…okay…

Orange?

…love the color…

Barberry?

…ditto…

Goldenrod

…undecided…

Oriental bittersweet

…okay…

Buttonbush seeds

…but, I think that I’m getting in a rut with these. I don’t think that any of them are too busy, but they all have the same look to them, the subject entering the frame at a diagonal, there must be a more creative way of composing them and still get the desired results. I’ll work on that as I go along.

In the meantime, I went walking at the Pickerel Lake Nature Preserve last Sunday, and over the course of the day, an idea popped into my head, which I’ll get to in a minute. But first, there’s this.

Unidentified fallen object?

I have no idea what that is. I spotted it on a log and thought that it was a new puff-ball since there were some older ones just a short distance away on the same log. I pulled out the macro set-up before I had even given this a close examination, because I knew that I wanted a photo of it, no matter what it turned out to be. I looked through the camera and was ready to shoot a photo, but there were a few dead leaves against it. I reached out to remove the leaves, and the thing rolled off from the log. I never looked to see if there was the remains of a stem or anything else to provide a clue as to what it was, I was so intent on a good photo that it consumed my entire thought process. I picked it up and set it back on the mossy log, and was lining up for a photo, but the shadow it cast would have ruined the photo of it. So, I got out my LED panel light and the Gorillapod to kill the shadow. I got a reasonably good photo of something that I have no clue as to what it is. There were other things on the same log that I ended up shooting, but it never occurred to me to take a closer look at this object to determine what it might be.

Between that, and this single leaf that I found trapped in the thin layer of ice on the surface of Pickerel lake…

Frozen

…I love the color and the texture of that leaf from the ice, but there’s still too many distracting elements to the photo, maybe I should try cropping it?

Anyway, the idea that I finally worked out in my mind that day has been developing for a while this fall. I’ve been walking along and a single leaf will command my attention, and it has dawned on me that each leaf is a work of art. Just as with man’s art, some are better than others, but still…

Nature’s artistry

…some of them seem to say “I deserve a closer look”. In fact, with some dramatic backlighting, some leaves practically scream “Look at me!”.

Backlighting

But, even though I thought that I had found the answer, shoot with fewer leaves in the frame, things haven’t always worked out. These three leaves of a rush almost glowed in the sun, but the camera didn’t capture it well.

Rushes

And then there were the times when I didn’t pay enough attention to the background as I lined up a shot.

Oak leaf, first try

So, I tried again.

Oak leaf, second try

Nope, going with the brighter background didn’t help, maybe a darker one would be better?

Oak leaf, third try

Better, but I never did get exactly the shot that I wanted, which seems to be the story of my photography. 😉 It’s never as easy as the professionals make it look.

It doesn’t help when nature doesn’t always cooperate. I found leaves that I loved the colors of, but couldn’t get close enough to isolate a single leaf, so I had to shoot flock shots.

Cascading green

Going over to yellow

A colorful mess

Another colorful mess

But, I did find a few single leaves with few harsh shadows on them to shoot.

Maple 1

Maple 2

Another yellow

Shadows creeping in

With the storm that’s raging outside today, with rain driven by wind gusts over 50 MPH, the only leaves that I find the next time I’m out will be like these.

Fallen leaves

And not like these.

Hanging in there

I’m approaching my self-imposed quota for photos, so I’d better throw in a bird…

White-throated sparrow

…an insect…

Dragonfly

…something warm and fuzzy…

Fox squirrel enjoying a sunny day

…and to wrap it up, the last sunflower of the year?

The last sunflower?

Well, that’s about all for now, I’ll keep plugging away at improving my photos, hopefully I’ll start getting more of them correct soon.

That’s it for this one, thanks for stopping by!

November 12, 2015 | Categories: Birds, Hiking, Nature, Photography, Photography tips | 26 Comments

I’ve upped my game,

With the purchase of the Canon 7D Mk II, I really upped my game as far as being able to shoot photos of birds in flight, or any situation really. However, it seems as if the birds have retaliated and upped their game in response, as far as how hard that they try to stay hidden to avoid having their picture taken. You may think that this will be another long boring post about camera gear, but it really isn’t, I’m using camera gear as a device to move onto what will be another post on bird behavior, so please bear with me.

As I have mentioned way too often, the 7D Mk II has one of the best auto-focusing systems of any camera on the market today. Once I started getting it dialed in to be able to get photos like this…

Northern Harrier in flight

…it seemed as if the that hawk put the word out and let other birds know that I could get photos of them in flight, and they’ve been keeping their distance from me. As I’ve gotten even better with the 7D, I’ve been able to catch a few swallows in flight, no easy task.

Barn swallow in flight

Apparently, that swallow put the word out about my new-found ability to catch them in flight, for the large flock of the swallows that formed during the fall of the last two years around here didn’t show up this year.

It isn’t just birds in flight, the same applies to perching birds as well. This juvenile indigo bunting did its best to avoid the camera…

Juvenile indigo bunting

…as it continued to hop from branch to branch…

Juvenile indigo bunting

…until it finally gave up and posed for a few photos, since it knew that it was licked, it couldn’t escape from the 7D once it had locked in on the bunting.

Juvenile indigo bunting

But, that bunting put the word out to the other birds in the area, letting them know that if they let me get a focus lock on them once, that the 7D could track them though widely spaced branches, so the other birds moved into thicker brush, or took off before I could get a good lock on them.

Eastern phoebe in flight

It got so bad that day that I gave up using the 300 mm lens and 1.4 X extender, and resorted to using the Beast (Sigma 150-500 mm lens) as I chased a family of wrens around in the brush. The Beast may not be my best lens overall, but it’s still my best lens for seeing through thick brush and finding the birds as they try to hide. It was a tough fight, but eventually, I managed to outlast a couple of the wrens for these photos.

House wren

House wren

House wren

But, not even the Beast was able to get a clear shot of one of the species of birds that’s the best at hiding, a brown thrasher.

Brown thrasher

Brown thrasher

Brown thrasher

That reminds me, several people have asked how I get so close to the birds, one way is that I get right in the thick brush with them, then, I stand motionless other than following the birds with the camera as they look high…

Nashville warbler

…and low for food.

Nashville warbler

Sometimes as I’m following the birds…

Magnolia warbler

….they become surly, and let me know what they think of me.

Magnolia warbler

Other birds seem to have a sense of humor, they’ll perch where they know that I can’t get a clear photo of them, then laugh at me as I try.

Blue jay

But, every once in a while even an intelligent species like one of the jays will slip up, and I’ll get a reasonably clear photo of one.

Blue jay

I hope that you’ve enjoyed this light-hearted look at the birds so far, because this all leads up to what I read in a recent study into how intelligent birds how, how well they communicate, their ability to recognize individual humans, and how long that they remember individual humans. I could type most of the important parts of the story out, but here’s a link a New York Times story about the study if you’re interested in more than the highlights that I will touch on here.

Anyway, what that study proved was that birds can recognize and remember the faces of individual humans, and do so for years. I’ve often thought that, I had a much easier time getting good, clear photos of birds at the old apartment complex where I lived than anywhere else I go. I think that’s because I was one of only two or three people who walked around the complex daily, it became easy for the birds to recognize me, and to learn that I didn’t pose a threat. Now, when I walk daily in a public park, there are hundreds of people who the birds see over the course of a week, and it’s harder for them to know which human is which. When I go to places farther from home, the birds never get a chance to learn to recognize me, hence, I have more trouble getting a clear look at them.

That’s especially true with migrating birds in the spring and fall, not only do they not get a chance to learn the faces of individual humans, they don’t know the lay of the land very well, and therefore, they tend to be even more wary, as they don’t know the best places to hide as do the birds that live in an area year round.

On the other hand, migrating birds often travel in flocks, and once you find a flock, you can pick a spot and wait out the birds until one or more of them let’s you get a good look (and hopefully photo) at it.

Changing gears, in my last post, I said that I was mulling over changes to my blog. I was thinking of doing more theme based post, such as saving photos of birds in flight and lumping them into posts with just those photos, whether individual birds…

Lesser scaup in flight

Juvenile bald eagle in flight

Bald eagle in flight

…or flocks of birds in flight.

Gulls flying in formation

I also considered doing posts on birds and what they eat, such as in these photos.

Starling eating sumac drupes

Starling eating sumac drupes

Starling eating sumac drupes

Starling eating sumac drupes

Starling eating red osier dogwood berries

Starling eating red osier dogwood berries

I also considered holding photos that weren’t cropped at all and putting them all into one post, but that would require more self-control than I’m capable of. When I get a photo of a bird when I’m so close to the bird that it more than fills the frame, then that’s most often the first photo to go into a post. I do have these leftovers though.

Black-capped chickadee

Female northern cardinal

I do have a number of flower photos left over from this summer, I’m going to put at least one in my posts over the winter so as to remember that winters don’t last forever, it only seems that way.

Grey cone flowers

Having given it a lot more thought, I think that I’ll just continue to post the same as I always have, with one exception.

If you remember, a few months ago, I was having a debate with myself as to what constitutes a great photo, and whether a photo can be great even if it isn’t in the style that the experts say makes a great photo.  That is, shot using a wide aperture so only the bird, particularly the eyes, are in focus, and everything else in the frame is out of focus completely with the creamy smooth bokeh that’s more important than the subject itself. Well, I have decided to shoot more photos that for lack of a better term, are of birds as scenery, or I should say, part of the scenery.

This sort of goes along with how I began this post, it isn’t always easy to get great photos of birds perched in good light and when you have a clear view of the bird. I hoped that I would never post a photo like this one again, but it represents how hard it can be to get a clear shot of a bird. I tried to get a clear view of this Savannah sparrow for a good ten to fifteen minutes. Every time I moved slightly to avoid the intervening branches, the sparrow moved so as to put a branch between us again, before I could fire off a shot.

Savannah sparrow hiding

But, there are times when seeing a bird, even though it’s too far away for a great photo, it is worth shooting because of the background in this case.

Downy woodpecker in the fall

It would have been even better if there had been more light for this one.

Flying downy woodpecker in the fall

A lot better! 😉

That’s the small-scale version of what I’m talking about, here’s the larger scale version.

Gulls on the beach at sunset

That one is a little too “tight”, but by the time that I removed the extender from behind the 300 mm lens to go wider, the flock of gulls was down to only one gull.

Gull on the beach at sunset

That one would have been much better if the entire flock had hung around, but maybe you’re getting the idea?

I’ll get back to this in a second, but here’s why I’m considering these types of photos. I’ve been going to Muskegon at least once per weekend, and I’m tired of shooting the same birds at the same distance all the time. No one’s said anything, but how many times to you need to see what’s about the same photo of a juvenile ruddy duck…

Juvenile or female ruddy duck

…or even a male that has retained some of its breeding plumage?

Male ruddy duck

I’ve decided to hold off from shooting any more of the ducks in their non-breeding plumage, I’ll at least wait until spring when they’re much more colorful, and so that I’m not shooting more of the same old same old all the time. Besides, sometimes having a bird in the frame can add a bit of interest to an otherwise uninteresting scene.

Gull at sunset

I’ve been including more of those photos lately, since I’m trying to expand my creative horizons. These next two may give you a better idea of what I’m talking about. Yesterday, at Pickerel Lake, I saw a few geese taking life easy on the shallow end of the lake. I’ve got head shots of geese, I hardly needed to shoot a photo of the geese off in the distance. On the other hand, I thought that there may be a photo in the scene itself, so I went ahead and shot this image.

Pickerel Lake geese

How boring can you get? But, by moving the focus point to move the geese to where I wanted them to be in the overall scene, stopping down the aperture, and converting the image to black and white, I came up with this.

Pickerel Lake geese, take 2

Yes, I did consider the black and white conversion when I shot that, but I should have moved the geese a little more to the left. Still, it’s much better than the first photo as far as the overall scene, which is what I was going for.

No, that doesn’t mean that all my photos from now on are going to be B&W, nor of birds in the distance, but I’ll probably shoot more of those over the winter until spring arrives with more things to photograph again. Expanding one’s horizons is seldom a bad idea. It’s just like the neutral density filters I’ve recently purchased, I’m not going to go crazy looking for moving water to blur, but those filters will come in handy under the right conditions. If I can’t freeze moving water to get a sharp image, then I’m better off blurring the water until it’s smooth. There’s a time and place for every technique, the secret is learning when to use them, and when not to.

So, I’ll continue posting as I have, with the exception that until I get tired of doing separate posts of birds as part of the scenery, I’ll be doing one of them from time to time.

That’s it for this one, thanks for stopping by!

November 9, 2015 | Categories: Birds, Hiking, Nature, Photography, Photography tips | 28 Comments

When it rains all day, it’s time to play

Inside that is. Normally, I don’t mind walking in the rain, but this past week, we had three days when it rained steadily all day, and quite hard as well. In some ways, I feel like it was a wasted week, I stayed home on the two good days waiting to take delivery of the neutral density filter that I mentioned in the last post. By reducing the light coming into the lens, you can hold the shutter open longer, or open the aperture if that’s what you want to do. I put that filter to use on Sunday evening to shoot another sunset at Duck Lake State Park.

Another sunset at Duck Lake

Neutral density filters are supposed to be color neutral, hence the name. However, the B+W brand multi-coated filter that I purchased adds a slightly warm color cast to the images that I’ve shot so far. That isn’t unpleasant, nor is it more than I can easily fix in Lightroom by decreasing the color temperature slightly, as I did in that photo. In fact, many people would be pleased with slightly warmer tones in their sunset photos to increase the colors, but I’m still going for reality, almost. 😉 The neutral density filter did what I intended it to do, smoothing out the water to some degree, making the overall image more pleasing with the blur created by the long shutter openings adding a sense of motion to the image.

I don’t think that the image above is all that bad for my first attempt at using a neutral density filter. I set the focus before attaching the filter, then turned the auto-focus off, as with 6 stops of light lost with the filter, I doubt if the 60D would have gotten the focus correct with the filter on. But then, that’s how I do landscapes anyway, setting the focus to what I judge to be 1/3 of the way into the scene, then shutting the auto-focus off. I hope that I get other chances to play with that filter again soon.

Speaking of playing, Saturday had been one of the three cold, wet, and windy days last week, so I put the day to use spending some quality time with the manual for the Canon 7D Mk II and learning to take advantage of more of the features it has. One of those is in camera multiple exposures, while I doubt that this feature will see much use in my nature photography, you never know, and I can see the creative potential for other types of photography.

Canon 7D in camera double exposure

I had the camera set-up on my good Manfrotto tripod, and as you can see, I shot the two images at different focal lengths, and the camera stacked them on one another.

An evil thought popped into my mind today as I was walking though, the 7D holds two memory cards. I could fill the back-up card with great sky photos on days when there are interesting cloud formations, then call one of those photos up and shoot a landscape over it on days when we have boring blue skies. No, I wouldn’t do that, but some people have libraries of skies and other things saved to insert into photos using Photoshop when the scene that they see isn’t exactly what they would like it to be.

Anyway, in my last post, I raved about how good the good carbon fiber Manfrotto tripod is, here’s an example of how steady it is.

Time in space

To shoot that, I set the camera up for a long exposure, then slowly turned the zoom ring on the lens while the shutter was open. You can see that the camera moved a little while I was zooming, but not much.

Good gear may not make great photos, but it sure makes it easier to get the great photo when the opportunity arrises, not that the two preceding photos are great, they were just playing around, learning new techniques. However, I’m getting so spoiled by the 7D, that’s the reason that I want to eventually add the EOS 5DS R camera to my arsenal, as I also noted in my last post. However, I neglected to point out the biggest reasons.

I was going to have one of my landscape photos printed out in a large canvas print to see how good it would come out. But, when I uploaded it to the web site of the service that I was going to have  print the print, I got a warning that resolution of my image was too low to print that large of a print. My 60D may be a very good camera, but the images it produces are limited by the small sensor. If your going to print large size prints, then a full frame sensor is the way to go, and if you do have to crop an image, the results will be better.

Another reason to want the EOS 5DS R, it will do in camera time-lapse photography, but so will the 7D.  Here I go shifting topics again, I didn’t use the 7D to create this time-lapse slide show, I did this in Lightroom, something else that I learned to do while it poured outdoors.

That was produced from the series of images that I shot the past weekend. The entire time that I was shooting the sunset this weekend, I was thinking that I should have used the time-lapse feature built into the 7D, but the one I made in Lightroom isn’t bad, and learning how to produce them will come in useful in the future. I did shoot a series of time-lapse photos with the 7D to learn how to do it, but they were also of my alarm clock, and I think that you’ve seen enough of it already. 😉

The video isn’t a true time-lapse either, I didn’t time myself between shots, I pressed the shutter release when I noticed that the light had changed, or at specific positions of the sun in relation to the water of Lake Michigan. You can purchase a device to make any camera shoot at a specific interval of time for a specific number of photos, but then there’s something else to purchase, and something else to remember to lug around with you. It’s so much easier having it built right into the camera.

That goes for the bulb timer feature of both the 7D and the 5DS R. Most cameras will only hold the shutter open for 30 seconds on their own. For photos requiring a longer exposure, you have to hold the shutter release down for the entire exposure, not fun when shooting a 15 minute exposure as I did this summer when shooting the star trail photos. But, since I used the 7D for the star trails, I just set the bulb timer to the length that I wanted. Or, you can purchase (there’s that word again) a device to time the shutter opening for you. Of course, it does you no good if it’s at home, so it’s something else to carry.

Sidenote, the manual for the 7D says that you can combine time-lapse with exposure bracketing, but doesn’t explain how, at least not in the section of the manual dealing with time-lapse photography. It took me a couple of tries, but I learned how to make it work, which means that I can shoot a series of three photos to create HDR images at specific time intervals and blend the HDR images into a time-lapse slide show, just the ticket for sunrises and sunsets!

Another side note, I use what I learn from the 7D to make the photos that I shoot with the 60D better, but conversely, I use what I know from using the 60D to figure out how to make the 7D do what I would like it to. While it was easier when I was using two identical bodies, I’m learning so much more using two different bodies.

Yet another reason to want to upgrade from my 60D is more focus points. I can get by for now by focusing and re-composing my landscape photos, I do it all the time with the 60D now. However, having focus points exactly where I’d like them to be, as with the 7D, makes photos like this possible.

Grey squirrel, up close and not cropped

The depth of field at 420 mm is so short that being able to put the focus point right on the squirrel’s eye is the reason that it’s as sharp as it is. My first two shots of the squirrel weren’t bad, but I had the focus point in the center of the frame, and on the squirrel’s eye. That meant lots of wasted space to the right, and none of the tree or parts of the squirrel from the left of the frame above were in the first two shots. But since the squirrel was in no hurry to leave, I took the second or so that it takes me now to move the focus point, resulting in a better photo. I should have shifted one more increment to the right, but still, this is way better than the first two were as far as composition.

While I can get by with just a bit of playing around when shooting landscape photos, I’d like to shoot macros using the higher resolution 5DS R body as well, that’s when having all those focus points will come in handy. The same applies when shooting bird portraits…

Black-capped chickadee

…when the times are right, I could use the 5DS R for photos like that one, and have the 7D all set for bird in flight photos for images like these.

Mallards in flight

Male mallard in flight

And the one final reason that I’d like a 5DS R eventually is that it has the same metering system as my 7D, which lets me shoot photos like this without very much fuss or bother.

Backlit mute swan in the sun’s spotlight

Any camera whose metering system allows you to shoot an all white bird that’s in the sun, but right on the edge of the shadow line across the water with just a 1/3 stop of the exposure compensation is a winner to me!

I didn’t figure it out this past weekend, but it was about a month ago that I learned how to shoot videos with the 7D. It doesn’t have a dedicated video mode, all you have to do is flip it into live view, then press the start button, no matter which mode that I have the camera set to. Too easy. I was sitting, watching an eagle in case it flew off letting me get a few photos of it in flight, which I did eventually.

Juvenile bald eagle in flight

However, I had been shooting stills at 600 mm (300 mm lens and 2 X extender) when I had the great idea of trying to shoot a video. I have to warn you, you may become seasick from the motion in this video, but here’s the first video that I shot with the 7D.

At 600 mm, I should have used the tripod, but I was just playing at the time, seeing how to do it. Later on the same day, I found that same eagle in the eagle tree, where I can get closer to any eagles there for better photos.

Juvenile bald eagle

Juvenile bald eagle

I call that one large pine the eagle tree since I see so many different eagles using it to scout from, but there’s actually several eagle trees in the Muskegon area. There’s a second eagle tree to the south of the large pine, and it can hold two eagles at one time.

Two adult bald eagles

I let myself get sidetracked with the eagles, but that’s okay, it gave me a chance to use up a few of the eagle photos that I have saved to post.

Some time ago, I said that I thought that most of any future improvements in my images was going to be due to doing the small things right, and learning to use accessories such as filters. I think that I was right. Adding a neutral density filter produced that first sunset photo, along with this one.

Duck Lake sunset

Using the polarizing filter produced this photo, which was my best ever of a male mallard, up until today.

Male mallard

Today, with some brightly colored maple leaves on the water, I knelt down to get an even better angle on the mallards for photos like this.

Mallard pair in the fall

I now feel as if the biggest constraint that I have as far as getting better photos is time. It doesn’t matter if it’s a landscape or a mallard, it takes putting a lot of thought into the scene, which takes time. I knew that last photo was pretty good, and I was going to settle for that one. I even started to walk away from the ducks, as I have limited time to get my walk in before work. But, something made me go back , re-adjust the filter, change a couple of settings, and shoot these.

Fall floating with the mallards

You can always click on any photo for a larger view of any photo here, and if you are ever tempted to do so, then the last few photos, along with this one…

A golden day

…would be good ones to see in a larger size. It may sound as if I’m bragging, but those last two are the best images of anything that I’ve ever shot technically, and they are pretty darned good artistically. Still, if there had been more time, I could have done even better.

So, what’s the point of all this so far? I hate to admit it, but I turned 60 this year, and I’m beginning to feel my age. I’m slowing down whether I like it or not, so I’m starting to plan for the future. I’ll be able to retire in a few years, and once I do, I plan to travel extensively, to see the parts of the United States that I never got around to seeing before, such as the Grand Canyon and Yosemite to name two of many. There are places that I want to revisit, like Yellowstone and the Canadian Rockies. Heck, as much as I’ve traveled in Michigan, there are still plenty of places to be explored here.

I would like to have all the camera gear that I’ll need well in advance of when I retire, so I’m familiar with it before I go someplace really special and have to fumble around with stuff that I’m not used to using.

There are other changes taking place that will affect what I post here to my blog. You may have noticed that I’m no longer posting photos of every species of bird that I saw on any one day, I’m going for quality over quantity. I think that on the Birding Big Day in the spring, I will make that an annual event where I go out with a mind to get photos of as many species of birds as I can, but I no longer feel compelled to do that in every post here. I’m not giving up on the My Life List project, the one where I’m trying to get photos of every species of bird seen regularly in Michigan. Far from it, I just recently got photos that confirmed that the shorebirds that I thought were white-rumped sandpipers were indeed that.

White-rumped and pectoral sandpipers

Of course I wish that the photo that shows the small patch of white above the tail would have been better, I wish that all my photos were better. As I said, I’m finding that it takes time to get better photos. Time to sneak up closer to birds for one thing, then wait until they are in a position to show themselves in a position so that you can tell which species they are. Waiting for better light may help, but I never know how long the birds are going to stick around.

I’m getting better, but I still have to learn how to better balance the time that I spend on each subject. Maybe I could have gotten better shots of the mallards if I hadn’t taken time to shoot this tree from various angles and the like.

Glowing maple

Maybe if I had spent more time working on my photos of the tree, I would have gotten even a better photo. But then, I would have missed this one.

Fall goldenrod

That one was a huge disappointment, again. That’s the third time that I’ve tried to capture the pastel colors of the goldenrod leaves this fall, and every time, the background spoils the photo. I spent ten to fifteen minutes looking for plants that were far enough away from any other vegetation that I thought that this time I would succeed. Oh well, there’s always next year, and I hope to develop my skills by that time. That photo represents a common thing that I do wrong, many of my photos are too busy, as is this one.

Maple leaf

When one leaf stands out in a sea of thousands of similar leaves, it deserves better. I should have done some simple housecleaning, removing the other leaves and the blade of grass that obscures part of the leaf that I wanted before shooting that one, but I was afraid of moving it. I should have used a tripod and dialed the ISO down, but I only had the compact tripod with me, and it won’t support the 300 mm lens. Maybe I should have tried one of the shorter lenses with the camera on the tripod, but I was in too much of a hurry, and I doubted myself. I wasn’t sure how well I could capture the patterns of the veins under the leaf, or that unique color. So I moved on. In a way, it’s just as well, for when I did get to Duck Lake later that afternoon, I didn’t have time to work this scene either.

Patterns in the sand at sundown

I know that there were better photos there, but I was in a hurry to get set-up for the sunset that was already starting as you can see by the color of the reflections in the water at the top of the frame.

That brings up something else, maybe I would have been better of shooting some of the elements in that scene when the light got really good, rather than the sunset itself. Maybe I need six cameras mounted on six tripods. 😉

I did get a somewhat better photo in the other direction as I was setting up for the sunset.

Ripples

But, I blew that one to some degree as well. I had the camera less than a foot above the wet sand, although it doesn’t look like it. My knees and elbows got soaked as I kneeled behind the camera, and it was getting chilly, so I wanted to stay as dry as I could.  If I had moved the camera a foot or so to the left, that photo would have been much better, but to do that, I’d have been laying in the water to compose the shot. With a wide-angle lens, it’s surprising how much difference even a few inches make in the final image. Oh well, there’s always next time, and then, I’ll bring a wetsuit. 😉

Maybe six cameras still wouldn’t be enough, for while I was shooting the sunset at wide-angles, I was also shooting gulls with the sunset as a background, again. This time, they were stationary gulls though.

Too much?

Too much? 2

I’m never sure about those, I think that the vivid color may be too much, so I tried a different angle as well.

Flaming gull

Since this post is getting long on words, I’m going to throw in three landscapes from earlier in the day last Sunday.

A drainage ditch near Muskegon

The marsh at Muskegon Lake Nature Preserve 1

The marsh at Muskegon Lake Nature Preserve 2

And, a few from around home last week.

The duck pond

Creekside Park

A typical west Michigan subdivision

Golden glow

Then, I’m going to call this one done. I’ll explain some of the ideas that I’m mulling for my blog in the next post, but I haven’t decided anything yet.

That’s it for this one, thanks for stopping by!

November 4, 2015 | Categories: Birds, Hiking, Nature, Photography, Photography tips | 19 Comments