SEEKING ITS CHANCE

Sharp-shinned Hawk

Here are two more photos from last weekends’s shooting in the “front yard studio”. Our Sharp-shinned Hawk didn’t care about me standing on the porch at all and gave me 36 minutes to make new pictures while he was waiting for a chance to catch some prey. As already mentioned, the light was perfect that day. The biggest challenge was finding a spot with an unobstructed view. The bird moved several times between different trees at the edge of the woods. It finally tried to hunt down a woodpecker but had to leave hungry this time.

DELAYED START

Female Eastern Bluebird

I hope all friends and readers of my blog had a good start into the new year! I look forward to continue the exchange of thoughts and ideas about photography, nature, and nature conservation together with you in 2019 again. Your emails and messages inspire me and sharing knowledge, photo locations, and helping each other is always fun!

We had a full house during the last few days and serious photography was not on the agenda. I finally made the first few clicks at lunch time today in the “front yard studio”. We have a thin layer of snow on the ground and having some Eastern Bluebirds posing for a photo is not the worst start into a new year…😉

Male Eastern Bluebird

BALTIMORE ORIOLE AND JUST A LITTLE COLOR BOOST

I’m at a conference in Minneapolis and my photo editing capabilities are limited, but this picture of a male Baltimore Oriole didn’t need much work. Beside a little contrast improvement and the usual sharpening process not much has been done to the RAW file. The photo has been made yesterday in our ”yard studio”. All what it took was a cup of coffee for the photographer and some patience until the oriole settled down on a branch. I had the Nikon SB800 speed light with  flash extender mounted on camera. It wasn’t the main light source but just enough to boost the colors of the bird slightly. Despite the overcast I had exposure compensation down to -1EV and flash compensation at -5EV (-3EV at the flash light and -2EV in camera). The tricky thing is not to get one picture right, but not to forget to make changes for exposure or flash compensation if the lens is pointed to a different direction with a totally different brightness and background. And with the birds showing up everywhere they want, the mistakes are made easily… ;-)