UNDER THE CANOPY

Female American Goldfinch, Walnut Woods State Park, Iowa

This is a late post from last weekend. We spent a relaxing holiday weekend in and around Des Moines, Iowa with friends. Not much photography this time but I had a chance to explore briefly Walnut Woods State Park, a nice wooded area along the Raccoon River in West Des Moines. There was a blind for watching birds but I placed my tripod outside of the building and practiced for a while shooting under the canopy of the trees, challenged by constantly changing light conditions.

Gray Catbird, Walnut Woods State Park, Iowa

To maintain some consistence I employed the Nikon SB800 speed light with a little dome diffuser to pull out some shadows and get better results for the colors of the birds feathers. As always, the speed light was mounted with a flash bracket above the long lens, which allows for better direction of the light and prevents unwanted reflections in a bird’s eye.

We saw mostly the same bird species that we have here in our woods and so I looked just for the best ”posers” among them. Nothing spectacular, just pure shooting fun!

Nikon Z6II, Nikon FTZ adapter, Sigma 150-600mm / f5-6.3 DG OS HSM S, Sigma APO Teleconverter 1.4x EX DG, Induro GIT 404XL tripod, Induro GHB2 gimbal head, Nikon SB 800 speed light,

TWO NEW THINGS

A few days ago I told you I was working on a new piece of photography gear and that I was in the process of testing it. So here it is, a flash bracket that mounts to the food of a long lens and elevates the speed light above the lens barrel. It allows to turn the camera quickly by 90 degree with the flash still remaining above the lens. Yes, there are tons of flash brackets out there. Some are very flimsy and some of the better ones are very expensive. I enjoy building stuff out of wood or metal and designing and building this piece of gear was a fun little “winter project”.

There is another addition I like to introduce today and you can find it right here on my website. Since a long time I wanted to add a gear page to this website and if you click on the link in the side bar of this blog, it will direct you right to it. Please feel free to check it out!