Bosque again

pathfinder

I am looking forward to meeting all the avian shooters in Florida next month.

I took the opportunity to drop by Bosque del Apache last week for a single day of shooting. It was packed with snow geese and sandhill cranes. The loft of snow geese at sunrise blacked out the sky, but I don't have any pictures from sunrise that I liked - wider lenses are better than longer for that event and I did not realize it until after the fact.

It was cloudy and overcast all afternoon until the sun peaked just below the cloud cover as it was setting in the late afternoon and gave a brief few minutes of golden glorious light.

Two snow geese coming in to land...



Sand crane landing gear down



Sandhill crane landing flareout



Landing is imminent!!



And that lovely New Mexico light



All comments and criticisms are welcomed.


:

Trish323

Nice Catch! Looks beautiful there for Avian Shooting!

Sandy

They are all really nice and crisp.

Harryb

Hey PF,

Looking forward to meeting you in a few weeks. Bosque is one of the sites that I want to shoot at in the future. I have seen some sublime lighting in some of the shots i've seen from there. Your captures make me want to gte there even more.

ginger_55

Really good shots, PF. I love the landing sequence, plus the light in the last shot, and those birds, of course.

ginger

(I posted with my eagle, I worked up and posted a shot of the nest. I did not insult the intelligence with arrows or anything................. I hope people can find the nest and the eagle sitting on it alright.)

Osprey Whisperer

Well done. Nice set of shots. Thanks for sharing. Hope the eagles show up for the Florida shoot and the weather cooperates..

Thusie

Wonderful series PF. Love the light.

wxwax

I really like these two. The unlikely suspension in the first, and the action blur in the second are really interesting. Nice job getting some golden light!

pathfinder

Thank you everyone for your nice comments. When the light is great, it can be hard to take a poor picture....

I would really like to hear some critcisms as well.:uhoh

I really appreciate the flowers, but will learn more from the thorns, I suspect.

I almost didn't post the landing shot wxwax commented on due to concerns about sharpness - Harry, and Ben, and Jeff, and others set a very high standard on this thread to follow. But I liked the action too. When I checked the exif I understood a little better also - 20D 600mm f9.0 1/125 ISO 400 - Light was falling fast.
[imgl]http://pathfinder.smugmug.com/photos/52015188-S.jpg[/imgl]

I have one more shot in that sequence - a little busy with too many cranes, but whatcha gonna do??

[imgr]http://pathfinder.smugmug.com/photos/52015299-L.jpg[/imgr]

And a close up of the cranes as well - watching me, watching you!!:D

[imgl]http://pathfinder.smugmug.com/photos/52030748-L.jpg[/imgl]

vandana

Nice shots ! I was just there and I'm missing it already ! The sunrise, I agree- I found it rather anticlimactic..I did manage a wide angle on, but they take off in seconds and then not a single bird to see ! How're the resident bald eagles doing - still on that tree far in the middle of the lake ??!

pathfinder

I have a couple of frames of a pair of eagles on the tree in the middle of the lake in front of the flight deck, but they are so far away that I didn't feel them worthy. I was shooting with a 500mm + 1.4 TC and a 1.3 Mag factor and they still were less that 1/10 the height of a frame - a long ways away. Raptors are hard for me to get close too - even at Bosque.

vandana

I didn't see the new series before ! I really like the middle one with its mouth open! the bright light spots are a little distracting in the closeup shot..

Wow ! 500 + a TC is much more than I had. yeah, i know there're very far - they just sit in that one tree and it's equidistant from all corners !! but, I still like to know that one day i can go back there with a rich 1000 +mm and get some shots !!

pathfinder

To give you and idea how far away they are - this is an uncropped shot with a 500mm+1.4 TC with a 1DMkII - no cropping - ISO 400 f 11 1/30th second No MLU - hence blurry



Here is a little better shot of an eagle ( perhaps a hawk ) This is about 1/4 of a frame from the same 1DMkII at f11 1/250th sec. Note how much sharper due to the faster shutter speed.

[imgl]http://pathfinder.smugmug.com/photos/52118351-L.jpg[/imgl]

Rohirrim

Very nice Path. I really hope to get to that place someday. Nice captures, great backgrounds

wxwax

OK, as you'd like a bit more of a critique, here are some quick thoughts, most of which I'm certain have already occurred to you.

pathfinder wrote:

Neither head feels sharp here, and that's disturbing to my eye. They're both sorta in the middle of the frame, kinda soft, not very interesting pattern. It just leaves me a little cold.




It feels like a missed shot. The bird is soft, but it doesn't feel like motion blur. Nor does the background blur, which feels more like bokeh than motion. The bird itself isn't in a very interesting pose, nor is the framing particularly stimulating.



As I said, I like the suspended look of this. the fact that the action is frozen and sharp, not motion blurred. is what makes it improbable and therefore attention getting for me. I guess the centered composition makes it a bit weak, but I still like it. The light on the belly is very appealing.




I like the motion so much I can forgive the blur of the bird. because the bird and the background both scream motion, it works for me. The background birds really add to the composition. They help emphasize the subject and give it scale, as well as provide a setting that brings it all together for the mind's eye.



The birds are lost against the background. Normally I think flying birds work best against some kind of background. But in this case there's not enough blur and the birds disappear. The three-in-line across the center of the frame leaves lots of space either side that doesn't seem to be pulling its weight in the composition.

pathfinder

I have been pondering Waxy's comments and I think I understand the basis for some of them. I shot most of these shots such that the incoming birds were backlit, or rimlit, from slightly behind. This means that the birds were frequently in the shadow with a sunlit background or rim light. I liked the warm sunlit backgound, but it causes difficulties with exposure and focus.

I set my camera for +1.5 EC to compensate for the shadow and shooting against the sky, but it was not really enough. They still ended up underexposed on their bodies and underwings. Also the light was low enough that, even at ISO 400, I ended up shooting many images at shutter speeds of 1/250 or slower, which is longish for glass longer than 200mm.

I really needed to add fill flash with a Better Beamer or pick a position where I could catch the birds with more direct light - unfortunately the geology did not permit me to get to the other side of the pond they were landing in. Once again I overlooked the benefit of fill flash in sun light!

Here is a couple of sharper shots of the snow geese for ya waxy





And a little buck and a sandhill crane in the frozen water

[imgl]http://pathfinder.smugmug.com/photos/52269252-L.jpg[/imgl] [imgr]http://pathfinder.smugmug.com/photos/52269023-L.jpg[/imgr]

wxwax

You're so right about the light, PF. I remember a remark Any made ages ago, that flying birds will almost always be backlit because you're shooting against the sky.

This one is super. The golden glow is the added element that brings the shot to life and helps me ignore the same issues that affected your first image.