I jumped at the chance to take photos of birds of prey at the local park but I wasn’t quite sure what lens I should take, my 18-200mm lens or the more difficult 50-500mm. I took into consideration that I wanted to get close-up shots but without a tripod since the bird might be moving. Did I want to get wide shots? maybe not.
Well in the end I plumped for the 50-500mm “bigma” lens but up to the last minute I was still unsure I had made the right choice. I know I could have taken both but since I expected to be doing a lot of walking later I only wanted to select just the one.
To make sure I got the shots, I did something which is quite new for me and went more into the creative modes. Due to the long lens I chose “shutter priority” and picked a nice time that would cut down on shake while allowing me to have the best ISO possible.
I’m very pleased with what I got that day, well the birds at least. Later in the day I went “hunting” squirrels in the woods and forgot to adjust the camera accordingly. I came back with some very underexposed shots!
Unfortunately due to a mind lapse on my part my only photos from the day are the ones I posted to flickr; during a house-keeping exercise I deleted the original photos mistaking them for the exported and corrected photos. Damn! Oh well, I still have some great shots.
4 Comments
I think your bird shots from the day are *great* Damian, particularly this one. What I like in this especially is the expression (if birds have such a thing) and the sense he/she is planing on doing something. I also like the composition and the little catch light in the eyes. The only thing I might have done differently, and it is a small preference thing not a criticism, is I might have tried photoshopping out the green blurred bits so it was all consistent colour? It might create even more focus in the subject. A fine pic though, no doubt about it.
This is totally in camera.
I did the “i feel lucky” think in picasa and it didn’t change anything.
No cropping. But them i took a lot of photos ( now lost ) and tried all the cropping options when i was taking it.
As for the express, once i’d composed the shot, i just took 10s of photos so i could pick the best expression.
btw, i think it was a she, they mainly where.
Cool stuff. Do you get the impression she is about to leap up and to the right? I do, it’s like she is thinking of flying off…
Watching me like a Hawk.