30 May 2010
DCStream
02/06/10 21:27 Filed in: Guest blog
Today we I am pleased to have Dave Stephens as a guest blogger. Dave and I met through flickr. I was drawn to his amazing nature photos. He has some incredible action shots of some of natures most beautiful animals. In his blog he describes how he takes the photos and describes some of his incredible equipment. I have the opinion of my friend Jon Adams that the best camera is the one you have. Through Dave’s blog and flickr photo stream it is very evident that great equipment does help to make a photo that much better. I hope you enjoy the time reading Dave’s blog and that you enjoy his photos as much as I do.
Darrin asked me to contribute guest blogs, focusing on my interest in bird and wildlife photography. Let me briefly introduce myself and then I’ll blog about a recent photography.
I met Darrin on Flickr, where we both post. I live on the Eastern side of the Rockies, near Denver, and he lives on the Western side, so naturally we seem to like similar scenic images and we were drawn to each others’ photographic work.
I’ve been interested in photography for over fifty-years. Starting in junior high, I was lucky enough to take “Graphic Arts” under a teacher that spent a couple of six-week periods showing us how to make our own pen-hole cameras, load our cameras in the dark room, take a photo of our classmates and then process our negatives and produce our own prints in the darkroom.
Ever since that class I’ve been involved, off and on, in photography for fun. After a long “off” period, I decided that digital photography had developed enough for me to give it a serious try, so I bought Canon’s top end point and shoot camera of the time, a G7. That was followed by a G9 and then by my first DSLR in late 2008, the Canon 5D MkII.
In the spring of 2009 I was on vacation at Melbourne Beach, Florida when a chance encounter with an osprey fishing from the top of our hotel rekindled an interest in bird and nature photography. Soon thereafter I’d invested in a 400mm lens. I told myself that if I’d taken more than 1,000 images with the lens over the next four months that I’d keep it. I ended up taking 10,000 images in my “test period.”
Recently I took a deep plunge into wildlife photography by investing in Canon’s EF 500mm f/4L IS USM lens. It’s big, heavy, expensive and so powerful that I felt like I was “cheating” the first few times that I used it. In the few weeks that I’ve owned it I’ve taken close to 5,000 images. (We’ll discuss the need to take multiple images of wild subjects as I blog about specific images).
Click here to view my most “Interesting” images, as determined by some Flickr algorithm.
Click here to leave a comment for Dave.
Click here to view in large size.
Click here to view in original size.
This Roseate Spoonbill image was taken while I was recently in North Florida for my high school reunion. I grew up in Florida on the banks of the St. Johns River between downtown Jacksonville and the Atlantic Ocean, yet I’d never seen a Roseate Spoonbill. I knew they were there, but I’d just never sought them out.
While they are fairly common in Florida, they tend to cluster in rookeries that are deep in the swamp and literally surrounded by alligator infested waters. In fact, two popular locations to photograph them are at Gatorland, near Orlando and The Alligator Farm, in St. Augustine. I chose Guana Park, because it was near to where I’d be staying at Jacksonville Beach.
Like any good expedition I needed to plan ahead. My weekend would be full visiting with family, friends and my old classmates. I only had one morning that I could dedicate to bird photography, so I needed to know where my subjects would most likely be. Fortunately for me, my brother still lives in Jacksonville and knew a birder/photographer that knew where to find the Roseate Spoonbills. One weekend before my arrival, my brother and his friend went to Guana Park to make sure that the birds were in their usual place and for my brother to learn how to get there.
It turns out that the birds were about a 45-minute walk from the park entrance, on a small, island, not too far from shore, but surrounded by swamp and alligators. With my brother as my guide, we arrived before sunrise and walked in to the East side of the birds as the sun rose, giving us great light. The last fifty-feet involved walking through a peat bog while avoiding snakes. When I set up my tripod it sank about 8-inches into the peat.
We spent about an hour photographing the spoonbills and the wood storks that shared the same rookery. The pre-dawn start assured us of good morning light. The park is large, but I could have found the birds myself, without guidance, but it would have taken several hours.
For wildlife and bird photography, knowing where to look is half the battle. When I see birders and/or other photographers I ask, “What have you seen and where.” We help each other. I’ve gotten some good results by taking off blindly into the woods and listening for birds and moving quietly toward them, but my odds increase when I have a plan.
For this image I used my Canon EOS 7D with the EF 500mm f/4L IS USM lens attached with an EF 1.4x Extender, all mounted on an Induro C414 carbon fiber tripod, with an Arca-Swiss Z1 ballhead and Wimberley Sidekick gimbal. (I’ll talk more about why I use certain equipment in future blogs). The exposure was at 1/2500-second, at Aperture Preferred f/8, ISO 800 and -2/3EV. The relatively high ISO resulted in a high shutter speed in case I caught a bird in flight. The -2/3EV was used to avoid blowing out the highlights in the very strong, direct morning sunlight. Whites and pinks are particularly prone to blow out in strong light.
Don’t be too daunted by the huge focal length equivalency that I’m using here. The 7D’s crop-sensor gives a 35mm film-equivalent focal factor of 1.6-times, such that a 100mm lens gives an image that looks like a 160mm lens would look like on a 35mm film camera. So my 500mm lens, plus the 1.4x Extender equals 700mm, times 1.6x equals 1120mm equivalency! As you might imagine, I need to crop very little. If you were there beside me with a 400mm lens on something like a Canon Rebel, you could have got a pretty nice image by using a lower ISO, slowing the shutter speed and cropping heavily. Particularly at internet sizes, your results can be pretty pleasing. My equipment increases my “keeper ratio” and results in a higher IQ (image quality), but for purposes of posting on the internet in relatively small images sizes, many people will never know the difference. The fun of the “hunt” is just as good, so long as you have a decent chance to get a pleasing image.
In future blogs I’ll talk more about the “keeper ratio” and how it’s simply a fact of life in wildlife photography.
Click here to view my most “Interesting” images, as determined by some Flickr algorithm.
Dave
Darrin asked me to contribute guest blogs, focusing on my interest in bird and wildlife photography. Let me briefly introduce myself and then I’ll blog about a recent photography.
I met Darrin on Flickr, where we both post. I live on the Eastern side of the Rockies, near Denver, and he lives on the Western side, so naturally we seem to like similar scenic images and we were drawn to each others’ photographic work.
I’ve been interested in photography for over fifty-years. Starting in junior high, I was lucky enough to take “Graphic Arts” under a teacher that spent a couple of six-week periods showing us how to make our own pen-hole cameras, load our cameras in the dark room, take a photo of our classmates and then process our negatives and produce our own prints in the darkroom.
Ever since that class I’ve been involved, off and on, in photography for fun. After a long “off” period, I decided that digital photography had developed enough for me to give it a serious try, so I bought Canon’s top end point and shoot camera of the time, a G7. That was followed by a G9 and then by my first DSLR in late 2008, the Canon 5D MkII.
In the spring of 2009 I was on vacation at Melbourne Beach, Florida when a chance encounter with an osprey fishing from the top of our hotel rekindled an interest in bird and nature photography. Soon thereafter I’d invested in a 400mm lens. I told myself that if I’d taken more than 1,000 images with the lens over the next four months that I’d keep it. I ended up taking 10,000 images in my “test period.”
Recently I took a deep plunge into wildlife photography by investing in Canon’s EF 500mm f/4L IS USM lens. It’s big, heavy, expensive and so powerful that I felt like I was “cheating” the first few times that I used it. In the few weeks that I’ve owned it I’ve taken close to 5,000 images. (We’ll discuss the need to take multiple images of wild subjects as I blog about specific images).
Click here to view my most “Interesting” images, as determined by some Flickr algorithm.
Click here to leave a comment for Dave.
Click here to view in large size.
Click here to view in original size.
This Roseate Spoonbill image was taken while I was recently in North Florida for my high school reunion. I grew up in Florida on the banks of the St. Johns River between downtown Jacksonville and the Atlantic Ocean, yet I’d never seen a Roseate Spoonbill. I knew they were there, but I’d just never sought them out.
While they are fairly common in Florida, they tend to cluster in rookeries that are deep in the swamp and literally surrounded by alligator infested waters. In fact, two popular locations to photograph them are at Gatorland, near Orlando and The Alligator Farm, in St. Augustine. I chose Guana Park, because it was near to where I’d be staying at Jacksonville Beach.
Like any good expedition I needed to plan ahead. My weekend would be full visiting with family, friends and my old classmates. I only had one morning that I could dedicate to bird photography, so I needed to know where my subjects would most likely be. Fortunately for me, my brother still lives in Jacksonville and knew a birder/photographer that knew where to find the Roseate Spoonbills. One weekend before my arrival, my brother and his friend went to Guana Park to make sure that the birds were in their usual place and for my brother to learn how to get there.
It turns out that the birds were about a 45-minute walk from the park entrance, on a small, island, not too far from shore, but surrounded by swamp and alligators. With my brother as my guide, we arrived before sunrise and walked in to the East side of the birds as the sun rose, giving us great light. The last fifty-feet involved walking through a peat bog while avoiding snakes. When I set up my tripod it sank about 8-inches into the peat.
We spent about an hour photographing the spoonbills and the wood storks that shared the same rookery. The pre-dawn start assured us of good morning light. The park is large, but I could have found the birds myself, without guidance, but it would have taken several hours.
For wildlife and bird photography, knowing where to look is half the battle. When I see birders and/or other photographers I ask, “What have you seen and where.” We help each other. I’ve gotten some good results by taking off blindly into the woods and listening for birds and moving quietly toward them, but my odds increase when I have a plan.
For this image I used my Canon EOS 7D with the EF 500mm f/4L IS USM lens attached with an EF 1.4x Extender, all mounted on an Induro C414 carbon fiber tripod, with an Arca-Swiss Z1 ballhead and Wimberley Sidekick gimbal. (I’ll talk more about why I use certain equipment in future blogs). The exposure was at 1/2500-second, at Aperture Preferred f/8, ISO 800 and -2/3EV. The relatively high ISO resulted in a high shutter speed in case I caught a bird in flight. The -2/3EV was used to avoid blowing out the highlights in the very strong, direct morning sunlight. Whites and pinks are particularly prone to blow out in strong light.
Don’t be too daunted by the huge focal length equivalency that I’m using here. The 7D’s crop-sensor gives a 35mm film-equivalent focal factor of 1.6-times, such that a 100mm lens gives an image that looks like a 160mm lens would look like on a 35mm film camera. So my 500mm lens, plus the 1.4x Extender equals 700mm, times 1.6x equals 1120mm equivalency! As you might imagine, I need to crop very little. If you were there beside me with a 400mm lens on something like a Canon Rebel, you could have got a pretty nice image by using a lower ISO, slowing the shutter speed and cropping heavily. Particularly at internet sizes, your results can be pretty pleasing. My equipment increases my “keeper ratio” and results in a higher IQ (image quality), but for purposes of posting on the internet in relatively small images sizes, many people will never know the difference. The fun of the “hunt” is just as good, so long as you have a decent chance to get a pleasing image.
In future blogs I’ll talk more about the “keeper ratio” and how it’s simply a fact of life in wildlife photography.
Click here to view my most “Interesting” images, as determined by some Flickr algorithm.
Dave
Bad Hair Day
31/05/10 20:35 Filed in: Bugs
Today was one of those absolutely beautiful spring days. The weather was stunning. Two years ago we went on several bike rides as a family. Last year our baby was to wiggly to want to sit in the carrier and our youngest daughter was too big to sit in the carrier and too scarred to learn to ride. So this year we decided to purchase one of those ride behind bikes for our youngest daughter. She had a blast riding in this one. She was stable and felt in control. Our baby is now big enough that he had fun riding in the carrier.
When I went to got the bikes down this nice looking wolf spider was hiding on one of the bikes. I quickly grabbed my camera and macro lens and started to shoot away. The spider was a little skittish due to all the kids wanting to see. After several tries this shot was the cleanest.
The specs:
Hand held, rapid fire.
Iso 560
105mm
f/16
1/40 sec
Thanks for visiting today.
~wr~