Posts in Category: flight
Flight! Happy Sunday.
Great Egret, St Augustine Alligator Farm wild bird rookery, St A, Florida
“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!” Jesus
I was back at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm wild bird rookery yesterday morning early to have one last crack at flight shots. The birds are so close, and there is a lot of coming and going so there are not many moments when there isn’t at least one bird in the air. Great place to practice…or just to appreciate the beauty of flight. These are mostly big birds. Great Egrets and Wood Storks predominate…and both are great flyers. Graceful, elegant, with beautiful plumage. When you catch one, as I have here, with the light behind it, it is as beautiful a sight as I hope to see in this world.
The persistence of flight dreams in our kind, and our general fascination with flight, when taken with our images of angels, might lead us to think that there are wings in our future. I actually find no indication of that at all in the Bible, and it is certainly not in the Gospels, but that does not stop us from dreaming. Flight, we seem to think, would be the final freedom. Â Personally I would like to be able to love as well, and as naturally, and as beautifully as a bird flies. I think that would be the final freedom! When I look with my generous eye, I do not see you or myself with wings, beautiful as that might be…I see you (and myself) as a unconditionally loving person. That is the generous view. Leave the wings for the birds. I will admire flight, and give it its due as beauty, but give me love any day!
Happy Sunday.
Landing. Great Egret
Great Egret, St Augustine Alligator Farm wild bird rookery
Coming in for a landing, calling all the way. Great Egret, St Augustine Alligator Farm wild bird rookery, on St Augustine Florida. A Great Egret is one of the most graceful of the big birds in flight…not so much in landing. 🙂
Nikon P900 in my custom Birds in Flight mode. Shutter preferred. 1/1250th @ ISO 125 @ f5.6. Processed in Lightroom and assembled in Coolage.
Roseate Spoonbill. Angel unaware
Roseate Spoonbill, St Augustine Alligator Farm, St Augustine Florida
In April, May, and into June, the wild bird rookery at the St Augustine Alligator Farm and Zoological Park in St Augustine, Florida ranks among the top attractions nationwide for wildlife photographers. Hundreds of pairs of nesting birds, Wood Storks; Great, Snowy, and Cattle Egrets; Tricolored and Little Blue Herons;Â and increasing numbers of Roseate Spoonbills, translate to constant action. Birds on the nest, birds building nests, birds feeding young, birds displaying and posing, birds constantly in the air, going off to feed or bringing in nesting materials. And, of course, hundreds of big and small bull Alligators in the waters below the nesting trees. It is, to put it mildly, spectacular. I have the privilege of teaching Point and Shoot Nature Photography workshops at the Florida Birding and Photo Fest each year in April, so I get to visit the Farm at the height of the season. And I often get to introduce new people to the farm. That is really fun!
This is a Roseate Spoonbill on its way in to the nesting area, maybe 40 feet overhead. The lighting was ideal, the camera functioned well, and my timing was close enough to catch this angel unawares.
Nikon P900 at 300mm equivalent field of view. Sports mode. 1/800th @ ISO 100 @ f5. Processed and cropped slightly for scale in Lightroom.
Brown Pelicans in Fligh
Brown Pelicans. The Tide Pools, Cabrillo National Monument, San Diego CA
It was a beautiful day at Point Loma and Cabrillo National Monument yesterday. Relatively clear with enough clouds in the sky for drama. Cabrillo is not a birding hotspot. There is nothing there you can not see elsewhere in San Diego, but I always spend a morning there when I visit. The landscape and the views are simply too compelling to miss. These Brown Pelicans were soaring along the updraft over the loess cliffs above the tide pools at the foot of Point Loma. Glorious!
Nikon P900 at 260mm equivalent field of view. Shutter preferred. 1/400th @ ISO 100 @ f7.1. Processed in Lightroom.
Blue Goose on Top
Snow Geese (one Blue), Bosque del Apache NWR, Socorro NM
I spent a lot of time, relatively speaking, at Bosque del Apache attempting flight shots. It is a lot of fun…a bit of challenge…but with the proper settings on your camera, it is quite possible to have enough success to make it satisfying. I experimented all week with settings, and finally resorted to Target finding Auto Focus and Shutter Preferred Auto Exposure. That seemed to work best. This group of Snow Geese, with one Blue variety at the top of the frame, was taken when a large group of geese were in the process of moving down the refuge a few fields. There were geese in the air continuously for close to an hour. I got lots of practice. 🙂
Nikon P610 at 1440mm equivalent field of view. 1/800th @ ISO 100 @ f8.2. Processed in Lightroom.
Geese Away!
Snow Geese (and a few Ross’), Bosque del Apache NWR, Socorro NM
We return, this morning, to Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge and the Festival of the Cranes. Snow Geese (and a few Ross’ undoubtedly) taking off in mass for another field. It is hard to capture the effect without the sound of hundreds of wings beating and dozens of geese calling. 🙂
Nikon P900 at 800mm equivalent field of view. Shutter preferred. 1/640th @ ISO 100 @ f7.1. Processed in Lightroom.
Sandhill Cranes. Autumn Light.
Sandhill Cranes, Bosque del Apache NWR, Socorro NM
The Festival of the Cranes at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge is wonderful for many reasons. The numbers of Snow Geese and Sandhill Cranes, the possibility of many raptors and dabbling ducks, the song-birds still hanging in there, Mule Deer and Elk…the great variety of wildlife…but it is also wonderful for the light! Autumn in the high desert valley of the Rio Grande has to have some of the cleanest, most flattering light of anywhere, anytime. Especially morning and late afternoon. These three cranes over a field of grain, and in front of the foothills and autumn foliage, are ideally, and beautifully illuminated. Looking at it I am back there in the brisk morning air, hearing the calls of the cranes, feeling the sun warm by back. A wonderful place. A wonderful experience. Wonderful light!
Nikon P900 at 800mm equivalent field of view. Shutter preferred. 1/640th @ ISO 140 @ f5.6. Processed and cropped slightly to eliminate crane parts in Lightroom.
Snow Geese on the Mountain
Snow Geese, Bosque del Apache NWR, Socorro NM
This year’s trip to the Festival of the Cranes at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge was among my most productive trips, photographically. I came back with close to 900 keepers. This is a shot I try for every year. Snow Geese in full flight against the backdrop of the mountains that rim the valley. Clearly it is a “right place at the right time” kind of shot. This year I found a field of Geese in the process of relocating a half mile down the refuge, so small groups of Geese would take off, rise up in front of the mountain, and then a bit higher to clear the hedge line of tall trees between fields. I could get them with mountains like this, clearing the trees, and against blue sky. It was ideal, and I spent a half hour or more there trying different shots. In this shot the strength of the geese comes through. These are not delicate birds. And the rugged mountains behind highlight that strength. What appear as flecks in the upper right corner are, I think, distant Ravens out further over the foothills.
Nikon P900 at 950mm equivalent field of view. Shutter preferred. 1/640th @ ISO 100 @ f7.1 Processed in Lightroom.
Early Cranes in Flight
Sandhill Cranes, Bosque del Apache NWR, Socorro NM
Early light on an overcast day at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge during the Festival of the Cranes lead to show shutter speeds and blurred wings. And I was panning with the cranes in flight, which blurred the background. The cranes were close. This is only a 400mm shot…so I was panning pretty fast. The composition, technically, is all wrong. I should have the cranes leading into the frame not out of it. And yet this is one of my favorite flight shots from the trip. The close view, the blurred wings and background, along with unconventional composition, all create an impression of the speed at which the cranes were moving. Â They provide an energy to the shot that might be missing in more “technically” perfect views. I like it!
Nikon P900 at 400mm equivalent field of view. 1/50th @ ISO 800 @ f5. Processed in Lightroom.
Snow Geese Calling
Snow Geese, Bosque del Apache NWR, Socorro NM
The two sounds that bring Bosque del Apache most vividly to mind are the rattle of the Sandhill Cranes and the constant calling of the Snow Geese. On the ground or in the air…the aggregated sound of so many creatures fills the ear and leaves little room for anything else. (Well, maybe with the exception of the whir and click of hundreds of camera shutters as you stand among the photographers. 🙂 This shot catches a goose calling in the air.
It used to be that shots like this were next to impossible without an investment of several thousands of dollars and considerable practice time. In fact a dozen or more photo gurus make quite a bit of money each Festival of the Cranes at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge (or in the weeks surrounding the Festival) teaching people to capture at least an occasional image like this one, and several of the big-name camera and lens companies, and one camera retailer have gear on display, for loan, and for sale at the Festival. I hear the gurus instructing their students on how to manually set up their expensive automated cameras (over-riding the automation), for the light and motion at different times of day and in different situations…landing birds, soaring birds, gliding birds, rising birds…with background…against the sky…etc.  I teach there too, but I shoot with a Point & Shoot camera with as much automation as possible…and that is what I teach. This shot is in Shutter preferred, since catching the action is the goal, but it is in auto everything else, including focus. It is amazing how well the most recent Point and Shoot superzooms do with birds in flight. It seems to get easier with each generation. (And, of course, with practice…but there is no where better than the Bosque to practice birds in flight!) The investment in gear is less than $600…putting it within the reach of a whole new group of potential photographers. And is it a lot of fun!
Nikon P900 at 2000mm equivalent field of view. 1/640th @ ISO 100 @ f7.1. Processed in Lightroom and one half bird edited out on the right in iPixio.