Selling out?
I’ll admit it, the past few weeks I have been ignoring the smaller birds most of the time and spending what time that I have had outside in search of larger species of birds or other subjects that I think that I may be able to sell a print of. I suppose that’s the downside of having sold a few more prints recently, the upside is that the prints I’m selling help to defray the cost of the ink and paper that I’m using to make the prints.
As always, there more to the story than just sales, I’m learning to become a better photographer by printing out more of the images that I shoot.There’s something about seeing the printed version of an image versus what can be seen on a computer screen that brings out both the best and the worst of an image.
In the past, I would wait until a store would run a sale on large prints, then I would have enough of my images printed to allow me to use the discount that the store was offering. Most of the time, I chose images based on testing out pieces of equipment or certain photographic techniques, rather than choosing images based solely on what I think would possibly sell. With my own printer at home, I’m printing both the test images, and prints that I think may sell. The good thing is that I have fewer prints to test all of the time, so I can focus on printing images that may sell.
As I said before, there can be small flaws in an image that don’t detract that much from an image when viewed on a computer screen, but they can stick out like a sore thumb when viewing the same image as a print. So, by printing more of the images that I shoot, I’m better able to judge when to shoot and when not to, or what settings to use when I do shoot an image.
Also as I’ve said before recently, I’m beginning to visualize what both the onscreen and printed image will look like before I press the shutter release. That was everything when I shot this image from my last post.
Misty morning
At the time that I shot that, it was hard for me not to track the heron in flight, but to remember what I was going for in the overall scene. That’s where visualizing what I wanted the final print to look like, rather than tracking the heron as my first inclination was to do, paid dividends. I suppose that you could also say that I’ve learned not only the correct camera settings, but to trust that I’ve got them correct and to shoot based on that.
It’s not as if nature allows you the chance to for do-overs of you get it wrong the first time. The heron only flew through the scene once of course, and it wasn’t long after that when the ducks decided that I was too close to them, and they took off also. So, I had just a few seconds to get the camera set-up as well as I could, and be ready when the heron just happened to fly the path that it did.
I would have liked to have been able to go a little wider, to catch more of the spider webs catching the early morning light at the top of the image, but then, it may have become too busy, as many of my images are. As it was. I shot several images during the time that the heron was in the frame, then chose that one based on how the heron added to the composition of the image, and the wing position of the heron. I don’t want to brag too much, but that image is good when seen on a computer, but it’s stunning when viewed as a large 13 X 19 inch print. Then, you can see the way that the heron and the ducks caught the early morning light, along with being able to see that the spider webs are indeed spider webs catching that same light.
It does help that I’ve been shooting as many scenes with similar light to learn how to do it, and that goes back to something that I learned from one of the Michael Melford videos that I’ve watched, which is, when you see magic light, shoot what’s in the magic light.
Of course I would have shot that scene whether or not I had any intentions of selling my photographs, but for the past month or so, I’ve been ignoring many of the shorebirds and most other small, rather nondescript birds that I used to photograph if I had the chance. Instead, I’ve been spending more time in search of raptors, watching the swans, and looking for other subjects that may produce a print that I could possibly sell.
There are other reasons as well, it’s the time of the year when most birds look rather plain in their fall plumage, not even the mallards have regrown their mating feathers yet, and they pair off in the fall. I shot a few images of various species of ducks in flight last weekend, and while they are good and sharp, the ducks themselves aren’t that interesting. If it wasn’t for the differences in their bills, it would be easy to mistake many species of warblers for sparrows during the fall migration. Not only does it make identifying the species harder, but it seems senseless to fill a post with nothing but small plain brown birds, even though I used to do that.
Also, I’ve gotten past the point where I feel the need to post as many species of birds as I can find in a day or a weekend, any one who reads my blog regularly knows that I do quite well in tracking down many species of birds on any given day. I could do a species count and include it in my blog posts, but I don’t see any point in doing that either. But, that may be because these days, I’m going for the best possible images, not numbers. I’m not into competitive birding, and reporting more species of birds than any one else, there’s enough other people out there doing just that, and many of them are far more skilled than I. They also include species that they are able to identify by song in their counts. I love to hear birds sing, but it would be difficult to record the songs that I hear in a way that would fit into my blog.
Okay, so another weekend has passed, and although I had only Sunday to get out and shoot any photos. Monday was a busy day getting the final pieces of the new job puzzle in place so I can get started there. More on that in my next post, most likely. I spent most of the day on Sunday at the Muskegon wastewater facility again, shooting what seems to be the same old same old species again. I did stop at a local park on my way home in search of some cackling geese that have been seen there, but I didn’t see any. I did shoot this red-bellied woodpecker…
Red-bellied woodpecker
…and a few of the Canada geese at that park.
Canada goose
Canada goose
Canada goose in flight
If there’s a downside to having improved my photos as much as I have over the past few years, it’s that it becomes harder all the time for me to settle for the types of photos that I used to shoot. I think that the image of the woodpecker is good, but the ones of the geese are just run of the mill photos, hardly worth posting, or even shooting in the first place. Although, geese are difficult to photograph well because they have the white chinstrap on their otherwise black heads and necks, they do force one to get the exposure just right in the camera.
Earlier at the wastewater facility, I shot too many images of great blue herons…
Great blue heron
Great blue heron in flight
Great blue heron
Great blue heron
…because there were so many of them there.
I also sat and watched thee mute swans for a while, hoping to get a great shot of one of them with their wings stretched out as the swan dried them.
Mute swan
Not the greatest lighting, but I was bored, so I shot quite a few images there.
Mute swan
Mute swan
Mute swan
Since I was sitting there waiting, you’d think that I would have been ready for this.
Mute swan
But, I clipped the swan’s wingtip off. Still, that photo shows the very large chest muscles that the swans have to power their wings. I should go back and dig up an image or two of an egret or great blue heron in flight to show the amount of difference between how those species are built as far as muscle mass when compared to the swans. Swans are much faster in flight than herons or egrets, hence the larger muscles to power those huge wings.
Herons are slow in flight, and do a lot of gliding as they move from one place to another, this may not show how large their muscles are, but it does show that their wings are nearly as large as those of the swans. In relationship to their bodies, the heron’s wings are actually larger than the swan’s wings.
Great blue heron in flight at sunrise
I may have missed the chance to get one of the swans with its wings fully stretched, but I did manage a few other interesting poses.
Mute swan
Mute swan
Mute swan
Then, there’s the mallards, one of my favorite species of birds.
Mallards at take off
Some other species of waterfowl may need to run across the water to build up enough speed to take flight, but not mallards. They literally explode out of the water as that photo almost shows. I clipped the male’s wing tip, and the female’s head, but that photo does show how the female used her wings against the water to propel her into the air. It also shows the “hole” that she created in the water as she pushed off with her legs. The male cheated, he was standing on the pipe that you can see, so he had only to jump into the air. But, you can see by the spray in this next photo how much water the female was moving as she took off.
Male mallard at take off
I’m going to brag a little here, I love that I was able to get an image that sharp as quickly as the events in this series happened. That’s one of my best images ever of a male mallard as far as showing the details in the mallard’s feathers. Also, the exposure metering system in the 7D Mk II continues to amaze me, as the mallards were in and out of the shade as I shot this series of photos, and the camera adjusted itself quite well as the amount of light changed from frame to frame at close to 10 frames per second.
Mallards in flight
It took some tweaking in Lightroom, but you can see that the female is in full sun, and the male is in the shade, and I was still able to get a good photo.
Another little side note, the male mallard must have synchronized its wing beats to the camera’s shutter, as every single photo in the series that I shot show the male with his wings up. You’d think that at 10 frames per second that I would have gotten at least one photo of the male with his wings on the downstroke, but I didn’t. The reason I mentioned that is because it gives some idea about how quickly the mallards flap their wings on take off. If my camera was shooting 10 frames per second and the male mallard’s wings were in almost the same exact position in every shot, then he must have been flapping his wings at a rate of 10 beats per second. By the way, the shutter speed was 1/2000 second, and there’s still a bit of motion blur visible towards the tips of both mallards’ wings, which also offers a clue as to how fast they flap their wings. The motion blur shows how much their wings have moved in 1/2000 second.
Another thing that you can see in these images is how the mallards reach forward with their wings to “grab” more air, then how they push down and back to both gain altitude, and propel themselves forward as they fly.
What I find truly amazing is how effortless it seems to be for the mallards as they take flight. Think of trying to splash that much water into the air, or move your arms up and down 10 times per second, then you’ll have some idea of the power that even a mallard has in its flight muscles. It’s no wonder that in straight, level flight, they are one of nature’s fastest flyers. Some raptors, such as peregrine falcons, are faster in a dive, but I’ve seen mallards pull away from a peregrine falcon with ease when the falcon wasn’t in a dive.
All of the things that I’ve written here about how the mallards fly are some of the reasons that I’ve been working so hard to improve my bird in flight images. Mankind has always been fascinated by how birds fly, I hope to explain and show through my photos the wonder of their flight.
This maybe the right time to use up a series of photos of a great blue heron landing that I shot earlier this fall.
Great blue heron landing
Landing gear coming down, ready for final approach.
Great blue heron landing
Landing gear fully extended, putting on the brakes.
Great blue heron landing
Touchdown.
It may not be a sign of intelligence per say, but it must take a lot of brain power to control those huge wings and even the individual feathers its wings and tail as the heron fanned its feathers out to slow down, keeping its balance by changing its center of gravity by moving its head, all the while judging speed and distance, along with compensating for any wind at the time. There’s a lot more to a bird’s flight than just flapping its wings up and down, especially during take-offs and landings.
But, the bad thing is that now I’ve really overloaded this post with great blue heron images when there were too many before this last series. So, I may as well throw this one in as well, which shows very well how long a great blue heron’s wings are in relationship to their body, even though I did shoot yet another butt shot.
Great blue heron in flight
It’s been quite a while since I last posted anything, so I’m going to wrap this one up now, and then continue my thoughts on birds in flight in the next post that I do.
That’s it for this one, thanks for stopping by!
Too hot to be outside
Well now, you can call me a wimp if you like, but this past week, it’s been too hot for me to spend much time outside. We’ve had our longest, hottest stretch of weather of 2017, and have set record high temperatures the past five days. There may be two more record highs after I start this post if the forecast is correct.
So, I’ve spent some time this last week in searching for a better job, without any success so far. But, I don’t really want to go off on a long rant about how the trucking industry treats drivers, so I’ll leave it at this, I’ve spent a lot of my job search time chasing down false leads and dealing with the spam that came from what I thought were valid want ads.
I also managed to goof up my new printer, I downloaded and installed the latest version of the driver for the printer, and also had trouble while replacing one of the ink tanks since I made my last good print. I don’t know if it is the driver, or because of the ink tank, that the colors are coming out all wrong, but they are. After trying a few more settings and prints, I believe that it has to be a software problem. I tried deleting the Canon software and starting from the disk again, but that hasn’t helped. The troubleshooting guide that came with the printer is useless, which is all too typical these days.
Anyway, I did make it out to the Muskegon wastewater facility last Sunday for a few hours before the heat drove me away.
Red-tailed hawk
Unlike the eagle from the last post, this hawk gave me plenty of warning that it was about to fly, giving me time to switch cameras and lenses to my flying bird set-up.
Red-tailed hawk in flight
It was also nice enough to fly the path that it did.
Red-tailed hawk in flight
Those were the last images of the day, here are the first, other than a very poor sunrise that I shot only as practice.
Ring-billed gull in flight
I was trying to capture the gulls against the colors in the sky at sunrise, this was the best that I could do.
Ring-billed gull in flight
I really like the first one as far as the gull, but the sky is better in the second. They were shot in very low light, you can tell that from the way that the gull’s pupils are dilated to let more of the dim light in, that seems to make their eye really pop out at you.
It turns out that the printer problems that I was having were due to a clogged print head, and then the playing around to the settings that I did before I printed a test pattern. Note to self, from now on, always print a test pattern first, before making wholesale changes to the settings which had been working. I probably would have done that, if I hadn’t downloaded and installed the latest driver in between print jobs, or had trouble installing the ink tank. It wasn’t the ink tank that I installed wrong that was the problem though, it was another color that had clogged the print head. I’ve learned my lesson, I hope.
I will say this, Canon software is the pits! What I had to go through to find the printer utility that allowed me to print the test pattern, then to do the print head cleaning was beyond ridiculous. I finally found the utilities menu by clicking the quiet settings icon from their terrible software. By the way, I added that here so that I’ll be able to find the utilities again when I need them. Who goes looking for troubleshooting help by looking at the quiet settings?
Anyway, this is the image that I worked so hard on to get it to print correctly.
Reflections
I’d like to be able to say that the image was shot with my new 16-35 mm lens, but it wasn’t, I used the 70-200 mm lens at 72 mm for that image. I absolutely love that lens on the 7D, I wish that I had more call to use it more often.
I know that the image appears to be overexposed and washed out as I’ve presented it here, but that’s because my printer tends towards the dark side, so I’ve begun to lighten the images that I think that I may print more than I would otherwise. I should go back to making a copy of each image that I may print, one for printing, the other for displaying here. So, as a bit of a test, plus the way that the image looks when turned sideways, here’s the same image again.
Reflections, version 2
Now the colors look better, but in the small format here, you still can’t see how sharp the full size image is, you can pick out every leaf on every tree in the large print that I made. I also turned the image ninety degrees because I like the way it appears to be a Rorschach test of sorts in this manner of viewing.
In other big news, I may have a new job soon. I have to go in for a quick driving test, and also a physical for the new employer, but I’ve been tentatively approved as a new hire. This new company has a contract with the post office to transport mail between various post office branches. I’ll get my entire week’s schedule in advance, no more last second phone calls as what happened this morning with the employer that I’ve been with. They must think that their drivers sit around at home all ready to come in at a second’s notice when they call.
The pay is about the same, that’s one of the things about truck driving, different ways of calculating pay. Depending on the employer, you could be paid by the hour, by the mile, or by a percentage of the value of the load. I don’t want to go into detail, but on paper, the new job pays four dollars an hour more than the hourly rate at the company that I have been working at, a sizable increase. However, I usually get runs that pay by the mile, and since I keep the truck moving efficiently, I make much more than the standard hourly rate. However, one of my peeves about my current employer is that they will tack on several hourly stops to the mileage run, meaning I do those stops almost for free.
At the new job, I’ll get paid by the hour no matter what, get time and a half for anything over 40 hours, rather than 50 hours where I currently work, and the insurance is all paid for by the company, I don’t have to pay the insurance out of my check as I do now. In addition, I’ll be unloading and loading the truck myself at the post offices, so the waiting at those stops won’t be as boring as just sitting in the truck waiting for some one else to do that. Plus, it means that I’ll get more exercise, which I could use, since I’ve been gaining weight again while just sitting in the truck at my current employer.
All of that adds to the list of things getting in the way of my getting outside to shoot more photos. I have to renew the lease on my apartment, do everything required to get the new job, fit in doctor and dentist appointments along with prescription refills under my old insurance before I leave the old job, and more.
At least the heat wave that set record high temperatures here for an entire week has ended, and it’s comfortable to be outside again. I should be able to get out to shoot some photos on Sunday, but I think that Monday is booked solid doing the errands that I listed before.
It seems like forever since I shot these, but it’s been less than a week, hard to believe. Also hard to believe is that even more waterfowl have returned to the Muskegon County wastewater facility.
Northern shovelers at sunrise
I’ve been trying to show just how many birds that there are there, with little success. During the summer, there were hundreds of waterfowl there at the wastewater facility, now, it’s thousands of them. That’s part of one flock, and there were several other flocks of northern shovelers as large or larger than that one. I tried for a few photos with the light behind me…
Northern shovelers in flight
…but I’ll have to wait until the males regrow their breeding plumage for a truly good image of one.
Male northern shoveler in flight
One of these days I’ll be in exactly the right position for this type of photo, showing how much water some waterfowl move as the run across the surface of the water to gain speed for take-off. It takes a great deal of effort on the part of the geese to get airborne, they must have very strong legs in addition to their flight muscles to move that much water with each stride.
Canada goose taking off
The only redeeming quality to this one is the fact that I caught the goose with both feet in the air.
Canada goose taking off
I don’t know why I find it humorous to see a goose with its feet in the positions they are, but I do. It’s the same with this one.
Canada goose and great blue heron
I wasn’t going to press the shutter release until the geese behind the heron moved on, but when the one goose spread its wings behind the heron, my mind said shoot. This is the shot that I was going for as waiting for the geese to move from behind the heron for a slightly better background.
Great blue heron at sunrise
The first rays of sunrise were hitting the heron, but it was a dull, lifeless sunrise, so the image isn’t what I hoped it would be.
I also hung around a flock of mute swans for a while, hoping to get the perfect image of one stretching or drying its wings, this was the best that I could do.
Mute swan
I’ve decided that the species of bird isn’t as important as I’ve been making it out to be the last few years, a great image is a great image, even if the subject is a mute swan. Besides, the average person doesn’t know that they are an introduced/invasive species, they think that a swan is a swan, and most people love them even if they are displacing our native trumpeter swans as the trumpeters try to make a come back.
I suppose that you could say that I’m selling out in order to sell a few more prints now and then by going for subjects that are relatively easy to photograph, and that people may purchase prints of. The mute swans fall into that category, as some one is much more likely to want to purchase a print of a swan than even the best image of an American pipit…
American pipit
…or a Lincoln’s sparrow.
Lincoln’s sparrow
There’s still a lot of luck involved in the photos that I do shoot, here’s a perfect example.
Misty morning
That was shot just after I arrived at the wastewater facility this morning. I saw the light, mist, and ducks, and I actually put some thought into how to go about getting the image that I wanted. I would have preferred to have used the 100-400 mm lens and zoomed out a tad, but I had the tele-converter behind that lens in case I had seen a bird or other subject that I wanted to get close to. I’m limited to just the single center focus point with that set-up, which I knew wouldn’t give me the image that I had in mind. I didn’t know how long the light would last, or how long the ducks would stay there, so I thought that I should work quickly. So, I grabbed the bird in flight set-up with the 400 mm prime lens on it. That way, I could move the focus point to the bottom of the frame to be sure to get the closest ducks in focus. I used aperture mode at f/16 to get as much of the scene in focus as I could.Then, I began shooting, and just as I did, the heron took flight to add a little more interest to the scene. I think that it all worked out well.
More luck, I saw a bird flying towards me, which is really a full-time thing there at the wastewater facility, between the thousands of gulls and waterfowl, vultures, starlings, and other species of birds, there’s seldom a time when one looks up and doesn’t see a bird in flight. But, this one was flapping its wings in a pattern that didn’t fit a gull or waterfowl, so I got ready with the bird in flight set-up.
Peregrine falcon in flight
I never expected to see a peregrine where I shot that photo, I was actually looking for a golden eagle that I had seen earlier but lost track of. I suppose that everything worked out for the best, I missed the eagle, but got good images of the peregrine in flight.
I know that I’ve been posting too many images of great blue herons lately, but that’s because there are so many of them this year. Over the last two years I didn’t see that many, yesterday at the wastewater facility, I saw at least 10 individuals. With so many of them around, I can use them to practice on, both for portraits…
Great blue heron
Great blue heron
…and bird in flight photos, although the 400 mm prime lens got me too close to this heron as it took off.
Great blue heron in flight
That lens was just right as the heron flew away from me.
Great blue heron in flight
I did crop this next one slightly, not to get closer, but because the heron had lowered its head and I didn’t like the way the image looked, so I rotated the image as much as I could to raise the heron’s head.
Great blue heron in flight
Later in the day, I saw what turned out to be a Cooper’s hawk perched in a tree near me. As I was getting the hawk in focus using the set-up for portraits, the hawk took off. That meant that I had to use the 100-400 mm lens with extender behind it, using just the center focus point, and the lens image stabilization turned on for these three images.
Cooper’s hawk in flight
As you can see, the sharpness of these three photos isn’t up to my new standards for birds in flight.
Cooper’s hawk in flight
Using a slower shutter speed is part of the reason, but I still insist that the image stabilization is the main reason for the loss of sharpness.
Cooper’s hawk in flight
That’s every other image of the series that I shot, the images between those three showed the severe “ghosting” that I see in the images of birds in flight when I use any mode of image stabilization available on any of the lenses that I have that have IS. Both the 70-200 mm and 400 mm prime lens are without IS, and neither of those lenses has ever produced the ghosting that I see in the images that I shoot with lenses that do have IS. I should say, with the IS turned on, as I’ve gotten good, sharp images of birds in flight with the 100-400 mm lens if I have the time to turn the IS off. The same was true of the 300 mm lens and the Beast, if I had the time to turn the IS off, then they were okay for moving subjects, but still not as good as my two non-IS lenses are for some reason. But then, the two non-IS lenses are my sharpest lenses anyway, if I can keep the shutter speed fast enough, or use a tripod as I did with the reflection landscape that I put in this post earlier. I still stay that the extra layers of glass that make up the image stabilization system reduce the sharpness of a lens to some degree. I do turn the IS off when I’m using a lens equipped with it on a tripod, and that seems to work out better than leaving it on.
But, the image stabilization is a life saver when I’m shooting in low light, unless I can use a tripod, as always, there are trade-off to everything in photography.
I’m going to finish this post with a very poor photo of a kestrel…
American kestrel
…because that one wasn’t perched on a wire somewhere as most of the kestrels that I’ve posted have been. There were two kestrels hunting together, and that was the best photo of either of them that I could come up with. They are about the size of a dove, but as wary as any bird that I try to photograph, so getting a good image of one is still something that I’m working on.
That’s it for this one, thanks for stopping by!
Quiet Solo Pursuits 