Winter Eagle Trips

Photograph taken with canon 55 - 250 mm lens

During the wintertime, I did not get out as much as I would have liked.  However, I did take several trips to my favorite bald eagle areas.  In the beginning of February, I took off some days from work for my birthday, which gave me some opportunities to get out and take some photographs.  During my trips in February, the eagle counts were amazing.  I was seeing at least over twenty a day.  Several days there were at least ten or more eagles in view of my camera.   It was remarkable to see.  I had not seen numbers like that in at least two years.

Photograph taken with bower 650 - 1300 mm lens

  

Even with the high numbers, I did not manage many good photos.  At that point, in the winter I was still only using my Bower 650-1300 mm manual focus lens. So, photographing birds in flight was difficult, unless they were close enough where I could use my shorter lenses.  I did manage a shot through a hole in thick brush, of a pair of full mature eagles together on a branch.  The immature eagle photograph atop the post was an old photograph that I found on my memory card when I started the camera up for the first time in a year.

Photograph taken with sigma 150 - 600 mm contemporary lens

Towards the end of March, I purchased my new Sigma 150-600 contemporary lens. I had a few days off from work, and I took a couple of more trips out for eagles. The numbers were drastically lower than the prior month.  I was lucky if I was seeing more than five eagles in a trip.  The one day, I spent almost eight hours out and did not see anything within range.  I did take one photograph of an eagle sitting in a tree with the new lens, but that was about it.  (The photo is above)

Photograph taken with sigma 150 - 600 mm contemporary lens

I did not really get to test the auto focus lens on eagles this year. During the down times when I was not seeing eagles I did try to take some photographs of the smaller birds that were coming to feed at the feeders that are set up.  I did manage some shots of black cap chickadees and nuthatches.  I have included two of those photographs.  I am really looking forward to next winter's eagle season.  Hopefully, I will be able to pull off more action shots, now that I have a long range auto focus lens.

Photograph taken with sigma 150 - 600 mm contemporary lens  

Since my winter outings, I have taken several trips out to the Bashakill Wildlife Management Area, hoping to photograph waterfowl that are migrating through our region this time of year.  It has allowed me to get somewhat used to the new lens, and how it functions.  In the next posts, I will cover those trips, and then I will be caught up thus far.  Until next time.

Finding My Passion Again

It has been over three years since my last post.  I cannot believe it has been so long.  The last three years were probably the toughest years of my life.  I lost my grandfather, my aunt, and my father in less than two years, all which took a toll on me.  None harder than the loss of my father.  It was so sudden and unexpected that it really crushed me.  After his passing, I realized how little time I spent with him doing his true passion, woodworking.  So, I guess to help cope with my father's loss I spent a lot of my free time in his wood shop doing everything that he enjoyed doing.

Looking back at my life, I realized how much influence my father had on me.  Almost everything I enjoyed doing I learned from him, and we always did them together.  Since I was a child I remember getting my first Minolta film camera, and the two of us would go out and photograph wildlife together.  For probably 20 years or so, we were always going together to take photographs.  I guess without him I didn't have the drive to go out alone.  Also, with my new full time job, I didn't have the free time that I had before.  I believe that I had gotten used to staying home, when I was not working, and finding more things to do around the house.

Just before my father passed away, I had started growing some bonsai trees from seeds.  I had also bought some pre bonsai to work on.  I thought it would be something that I would enjoy doing.   Over the last two years, I have learned a lot about bonsai care, but I still have a lot to learn.  I have really enjoyed spending the time outside and enjoyed the process of bonsai.  Now, I have approximately  two dozen different trees, in a large variety of species.  None of which I would consider bonsai at this point, but they are a work in progress.  After some reflection about the past few years of my life, I realized that maybe this was my way of coping with the losses.  Either way, I have enjoyed working on my trees, and I don't see myself stopping anytime soon.  I have started a lot of seeds over this winter, and I am waiting to see if they will sprout.

From spending all the extra time outside caring for my bonsai trees, I realized how much I was missing being out in nature.  So, I charged up my camera batteries for the first time in over a year last fall and finally took a trip out to the local reservoir.  I saw some bald eagle's fishing, some geese, and ducks, and some other small bird species.  However, I did not get any pictures.  I was focusing more on macro photography at the time.  I wanted to photograph insects because I was seeing much more insects than anything else.  I did manage to get a couple of photographs of dragonflies and frogs.  I also photographed a lot of flowers and other subjects just to have something to photograph.  I did get some good shots, but it simply felt good to be back out taking pictures.

Since my trips in the fall, I did take some other trips out during the winter.  I just didn't post anything about them.  I plan on sharing some photographs from those trips soon.  I also recently took a trip out to the Bashakill Wildlife Management Area.  I will post more about that as well.  Soon, I will also be taking a trip to Alaska for the first time.  I am so excited to finally get to visit Alaska.  I have been wanting to go there since I was a child.  I've been preparing for the trip, and I purchased a new camera lens.  The sigma 150–600 mm contemporary lens.  So far, I really like it.  I have not had much time to test it out, but it is a vast improvement over my last lenses.  I look forward to getting more opportunities to use it.  I am also thinking about getting a new camera body for my trip.  I will keep you posted on that once I decide what I am going to purchase.  I am also looking to buy some other accessories.  As I purchase the equipment, I will probably post about it.

For this post, I decided to include some photographs taken since my last post.  As a reminder all the images posted on my blog have been reduced in size for storage purposes. I hope you all enjoy them.  Until next time.

Change of Luck

So far this winter’s eagle season for me has been a complete bust.  I have been seeing small numbers of eagles, but nothing within range to photograph.  Due to the warm winter most of the water in the lakes and reservoirs is not frozen.  Which gives the eagle’s free roam of the area, and they mostly stay in areas where people cannot go.  But yesterday and today Mother Nature is throwing a curve ball, and dropping temperatures to zero and below, with wind chills in the -20 to -30's.  I am sure that the ice will form on the lakes, and tomorrow I hope that I will get a chance to spend most of the day out.  Maybe these extremely cold temperatures will be the change of luck that I need to get my first eagle photographs of this year.

Since it has been so bad with the eagle count, I decided that I would fill my bird feeders and see what I could get.  I have had a good amount of species visiting including cardinals, blue jays, chickadees, juncos, tufted titmouse, and nuthatches, but I have not seen the woodpeckers that I have seen in the past.

I also have had a hawk that seems to show up every time I fill my feeders.  I guess he likes easy prey.  I feel bad about the situation, but I don’t think I can do much about it.  If you watch him carefully he normally hides in the trees above my feeder and ambushes the other animals.  Last year he attacked a squirrel on the ground below my feeder and chased him up a tree.  It was crazy too watch.  I had never seen a hawk hop branch to branch up a tree and chase a squirrel.  In the end he managed to kill the squirrel just behind my fence.  Since then I have felt bad about filling the feeders but I guess it is only nature taking its course.  If anyone has ideas about stopping the hawk, please feel free to comment.  The only thing I could find was to not fill the feeders for a while and hope the hawk moves on.

I know that I have not been posting much, but I have not had many photographs to post.  So I think I will be trying to post more helpful hints and other things to fill the time in between my photographs.  If anyone has a topic that they would like me to try and cover, please leave a comment and I will try and cover it.  Until next time.

Bird Photography Tips and Tricks

The last few days have been freezing cold, windy, and snowy.  So I have not been out to do any photography.  I am hoping soon the weather will break and I will get out again.  Tomorrow does not look any better.  The weather man is calling for negative 30 degree wind chills so I will probably not be out much.  So in my down time, I decided to write about tips for photographing birds.  I hope these tips help.  If anyone has any questions or comments, please feel free to leave a comment.  Until next time.      

Bird Photography Tips:

1. Photograph birds in direct sunlight

In my opinion the best lighting for birds is direct sunlight.  Sometimes too much light can be bad, but overall I find bright lighting to be the best.  It also allows you to use faster shutter speeds in order to capture birds in motion.  Normally around 1/500^th of a second or faster. 

2. Get birds to come to you, don’t go chasing after them

For most small birds the trick is to get them to come to you, using either food or calls or both.  Obviously this wont work for all birds but most small birds will come to food.  Also you will want an area with natural perches for them to land before they go to the feeder.  You don’t want to photograph them on a feeder.

3.  Use your car or a blind to get closer to the subjects 

Blinds are great but cars normally work just as good.  Using cars or blinds help cover your presence and the birds are less wary of cars and blinds then people.  I also find that you can sit real still and birds will still come.  But if you move to much they will fly away.

4. Avoid sudden movements

Sudden movements will scare the birds off.  So move with caution and with a steady pace.  If you’re walking and see a bird, you should not change the pace you’re walking at.  Sudden changes will alert the bird and it will fly off.

5. Avoid making loud noises

Noises will also alert birds to your presence and scare them off.  In order to photograph anything you should avoid talking or making any noise.  If you’re in a car I recommend turning the car off if possible. 

6. Don’t wear bright colored clothing

Try not to wear bright colors.  The best thing to wear would be camouflage, but you can also wear dark dull colors like green, brown, or grey.         

7. Try to catch them in action

Catching birds in action is the best way to get good shots.  Try to photograph them when they are landing or taking off, or if they are pruning themselves or other actions.  But remember in order to do this you need fast shutter speeds. 

8. Set your camera to aperture priority mode or shutter priority mode 

Setting your camera to aperture priority allows you to manually set your aperture and will auto adjust shutter speeds to ensure the proper exposure.  You must be careful though, because this can cause your shutter speed to go to slow and won’t be conducive to photographing birds.  Shutter priority mode allows you to set the shutter speed to ensure fast shutter speeds.  You still must be careful though because doing this can cause your images to be dark.  So you may need to raise your ISO or change aperture settings to allow more light in. 

9. Set your camera to continuously shoot

Doing this will allow you to take bursts of photographs, maximizing your chances for great shots.  On Digital SLR cameras you can take as many pictures as you want so take tons of photographs and during post production figure out which are the best.  

10. Consider the background

Having a dark or neutral background is the best.  It causes the subject to be the focus and having a distracting background can draw away from the subject. 

11. Get at eye level with the subject

If it is possible try to get at eye level with the subject.  This makes for more appealing photographs.  However this is not always the case.

12. Focus on the eyes

Focusing on the eyes is important because if the eyes are not in focus it draws away from the face of the subject.  Having eye glint is also important because it gives the subject a sense of life.  In addition focusing on the eyes is the best way to ensure the image of the subject is sharp and in focus.