WB Harry and what I learned yesterday

Steve Cavigliano · April 6, 2005

Hello All and welcome back Harry :clap

Reading Dee's thread yesterday, about her troubles shooting birds at my favorite hangout, got me pumped to do a little shooting :flash

So I left work early and headed to the Baylands. I met 4 other photograpers there (2 DRebs, a D60 and a D100). We were all standing around trying to get some egret BIF action between the rookery and the reeds (their prefered nesting material). I thought I was set up pretty well. ISO400, F7.1 and -1 EV Comp were giving me real nice speeds. All of a sudden we heard a commotion behind us. The constant Gwalk, gwalk, gwalk, of the egrets was interupted by a shriek. I figured a raptor was in the rookery, or something like that. I turned around and saw this shrieking snowy flying straight down at the ground. He was in the heavy shadows, cast by the palms. I got my camera to my eye, focused, started firing away and hoped for the best.

No, this shot has not been rotated :wink

I kept firing even though I couldn't figure out what this crazy bird was doing :scratch Then I saw the reason for his dive entering into the bottom of my viewfinder.

Awwwww man :huh A potentially good pic and I was zoomed too tight to get them both in the frame :cry I was still firing away and I wasn't going to miss this by trying to zoom out :dunno Fortunately, they both fit into the frame in the next image :rolleyes

He had driven off the other egret and was feeling pretty good about himself. He was posing like he was thinking "Who's bad? That's right, I'm Bad" :lol

As you can see the lighting changes were tough. I blew some of the highlights in the jpgs, despite the -1 EV of comp :rolleyes So I am glad I used RAW even though the processing takes longer (in cam and in post). It sure helped me save these images :clap

What I learned was that I should probably keep the zoom lower for shots within 40 feet and I need to use a narrower aperture for a better DOF when there are multiple birds, or one large bird filling the frame. Which means I needed to bump the ISO up to 800, so I could use F11 or so. Like Harry, I prefer to use the lowest ISO setting possible. ISO400 is pretty much as low as you can usually go with the Bigma, if you need fast shutter speeds.

I think I will be heading back there with Andy and Ian, in the next few days. You can bet I will apply what I learned on my next shoot. I learn a lot from my failures. Lord knows I have enough of them :lol :lol

Thanks for looking and I can only hope that reading about my failure helps you to have greater success shooting big birds

Steve

ehughes · April 6, 2005

Steve, wow.. that 3rd shot is something I have just never seen before, EXCELLENT

Ed

jwear · April 6, 2005

wow
Steve you do know the rest of us have to posst pic too what about a soft one so we don't feel so bad

what a great capture and shots ---wow --and you still have time to help us

these are fantastic i am looking for a better word oh well -- no luck here a moment and the know how and this is what happens

JEFF

windoze · April 6, 2005

what else can I say!

troy

Steve Cavigliano wrote:

Hello All and welcome back Harry

ginger_55 · April 6, 2005

Yeah, I agree with everyone else. Pretty good shots, Steve.

I don't even know how you managed to stuff the last bird in your viewfinder.

I don't see any faults despite all your whining. I would hope I could someday learn to do what you did...........and buy a Bigma.

That is the problem with my prime. If something happens too close to me, I just have to live with it. My birds seldom fly right into my lens like yours did.

Good shooting!

ginger

Harryb · April 6, 2005

Hey Steve,

Thanks for the welcome back and those are some fine pics

. As good as they are I can see what you are talking about where they could have been better.

Photography is alot like golf, both make you a little bit crazy (I tried golf once and knew that if I continued with it I would become homicidal). No matter how good you do you can always see where you could have done better.

You can see why the Snowy Egret is my favorite bird to shoot. He's a hyperactive little bugger with lots of attitude.

bfjr · April 6, 2005

WoW :wow Steve, just a great set. How lucky I know you felt just to be able to be there and capture these images (theres that saying again

)

Also excellent info, I'll take with me next time

Andy · April 7, 2005

:eat :eat :eat :eat

pathfinder · April 7, 2005

Great Captures, Steve!! Was this a territorial beef or about breeding rights or what?

ginger_55 · April 7, 2005

Steve, how long did this "bird fight/fall" go on? I just noticed that you had time to turn from vertical to horizontal.

ginger

Steve Cavigliano · April 7, 2005

ehughes wrote:

Steve, wow.. that 3rd shot is something I have just never seen before, EXCELLENT

Ed

Thanks Ed

I've seen them fighting each other in the palms, but that's usually confined to pecking and hopping on each other, then jumping off. I've never seen two egrets go after each other with claws out, like this either.

Thanks for taking the time to look,
Steve

Steve Cavigliano · April 7, 2005

jwear wrote:

Steve you do know the rest of us have to posst pic too what about a soft one so we don't feel so bad what a great capture and shots ---wow --and you still have time to help us these are fantastic i am looking for a better word oh well -- no luck here a moment and the know how and this is what happens JEFF

Thanks Jeff

I'm glad you enjoyed them. I only had an hour of so to shoot and was fortunate to come back with these. As far as taking time to help, no problem there. If I can help someone avoid the same mistakes I make/made, it makes me feel good

Thanks for taking the time to comment,
Steve

Shakey · April 7, 2005

Great stories great shots and now you set the BIF bar even higher with your Bird in Flight er I mean Fight pictures.
Ginger had some BIFs a while back too but they were Birds in Fornication

.
Which was probably the reason for these Birds in Fight

keep up the great posts Steve

Tim

Kirwin · April 7, 2005

Great series Steve! Thanks for sharing your experience... and the tips I can apply to my next shoot!

Steve Cavigliano · April 7, 2005

windoze wrote:

what else can I say!

troy

Thanks Troy

I love those smilies.....lol Good work

Steve

Dee · April 7, 2005

A cat -- er bird fight, heh?
No, this shot has not been rotated

Straight down flying? I didn't know they could do that! What an incredible moment!

I don't care if these aren't tip top, just to see this series was fascinating and unbelievable!

So I'm glad my post encouraged you to visit again, so we could all see the bird fight!

They are quite territorial, indeed, but I've never seen this, that one egret looked like he was upside down!

Thinking about how quickly this all happened you're lucky to have gotten anything captured and you've given me something else to think about lens wise.

The lighting there is VERY tricky and those snowy white birds don't help.

Love the last one too, such expressive feathers these birds have!

Great series!

Steve Cavigliano · April 7, 2005

ginger_55 wrote:

Yeah, I agree with everyone else. Pretty good shots, Steve.

I don't even know how you managed to stuff the last bird in your viewfinder.

I don't see any faults despite all your whining. I would hope I could someday learn to do what you did...........and buy a Bigma.

That is the problem with my prime. If something happens too close to me, I just have to live with it. My birds seldom fly right into my lens like yours did.

Good shooting!

ginger

Thanks Ginger

You're right, I'm a whiner

All I'm trying to do is improve my shots. Harry's analogy to golf was a good one. When you first start golfing, you are thrilled to break 100. As you practice and get better, you are no longer satisfied breaking 100. Your goal is to break 90, then 80, and eventually to shoot par or under par. Same with pitchas. Let's take bird pics. Initially you are thrilled just to get a decent BIF shot. One that's sort of in focus and shows the whole bird. Then you try for an even sharper capture, with nice underwing exposure. If you are filling most of the frame with big birds, you may see problems with DOF. IOW, because of the large wingspan, one wing and the head may be sharp but the other wing is soft, due to a shallow DOF.

That's what my whining was about. Did you notice, that even in the sharpest shot, all parts of both egrets are not sharp? Using a narrower aperture would have given me a deeper DOF. I didn't mean for this post to come off as whining or complaining. I was pretty happy with these shots. Even though I knew I could have and should have done better. Does this make sense?

I am not a perfectionist

If I was I would have quit this gig long ago....lol
I don't send pics in to POTD sites, nor do I compete in challenges. I compete against myself and I take it pretty seriously (this competition is fixed, lynch the judge

) To me photography is a journey. One which is much more enjoyable if I progress forward. I don't like staying in the comfortable zone, or the same old place, or god forbid backsliding. So I push myself and I figured that by pointing out what I could have done differently, in my post, that it may also be of some benefit to the viewers with their shooting.

Thanks for taking the time to comment,
Steve

Steve Cavigliano · April 7, 2005

Harryb wrote:

Hey Steve,

Thanks for the welcome back and those are some fine pics . As good as they are I can see what you are talking about where they could have been better.

Photography is alot like golf, both make you a little bit crazy (I tried golf once and knew that if I continued with it I would become homicidal). No matter how good you do you can always see where you could have done better.

You can see why the Snowy Egret is my favorite bird to shoot. He's a hyperactive little bugger with lots of attitude.

Thanks Harry and it's good to have you back with us

You are absolutely correct with your golf analogy. See my response to Ginger

You've been golfing, ......er shooting birds long enough to understand where I was coming from. It's all about progress, not perfection

I also agree about the snowys. They are smaller, but so finely detailed and they are defintiely more active than the GBH or the Great Egrets. You're also right that they seem to have that NY 'tude. "Hey, I'm walking here"

Thanks for taking the time to comment,
Steve

PS; It looks like the return to the Baylands has been post phoned. That darn Andy brought us rain from the East Coast again

Steve Cavigliano · April 7, 2005

bfjr wrote:

WoW :wow Steve, just a great set. How lucky I know you felt just to be able to be there and capture these images (theres that saying again )

Also excellent info, I'll take with me next time

Thanks Ben

I agree with your "being in the right place at the right time" comment. It can make up for many other shortcomings. Like the old sports adage, "it's better to be lucky, than to be good"....lol Glad you enjoyed the pics and the info.

Thanks for looking,
Steve

Steve Cavigliano · April 7, 2005

andy wrote:

:eat :eat :eat :eat

Andy,
Food may be all we capture today

Rain, on and off through tomorrow night :cry Oh well, we've made the best of it before and we will do it again

Steve

Dee · April 7, 2005

It's not raining at the coast!

PS; It looks like the return to the Baylands has been post phoned. That darn Andy brought us rain from the East Coast again

It rained last night, but I was pleasantly surprised to see no rain right now! I'm hoping to have a couple of hours shooting after my dentist appointment. Got to have some reward for going to the dentist, right?

Right now I'm after some good California Poppy shots, lots of clumps of flowers due to all the rain we had, but to get the right lighting is tricky, as the light goes down the poppies close up!

Shooting poppies in bright light is also challenging not to blow out highlights, at least with the egrets the entire bird is mostly white,

!

Too late to fight peninsula traffic after the dentist, and we don't have many egrets around here, maybe I'll head for the harbor.

Steve Cavigliano · April 7, 2005

pathfinder wrote:

Great Captures, Steve!! Was this a territorial beef or about breeding rights or what?

Thanks PF

I think that these 2 had some previous bad blood. Maybe the guy he was chasing was a jilted suitor, or a nest squatter. Whatever it was, this one guy wasn't taking any more of it. He did seem very pleased with himself, afterward. Maybe he was just showing off for some female. Isn't that always the way it is?

Thanks for your comments,
Steve

Steve Cavigliano · April 7, 2005

ginger_55 wrote:

Steve, how long did this "bird fight/fall" go on? I just noticed that you had time to turn from vertical to horizontal.

ginger

Ginger,
These are 3 out of 5 sequential shots taken in continuous mode (the other 2 shots were bad

). So I'd say maybe 1-2 seconds. They were all taken in landscape orientation (which is why I lost part of one bird in the second shot. I cropped off about 20% from each side of the image to come up with these. So they are full sized in height, but cropped on the width.

Steve

Steve Cavigliano · April 7, 2005

Shakey wrote:

Great stories great shots and now you set the BIF bar even higher with your Bird in Flight er I mean Fight pictures.
Ginger had some BIFs a while back too but they were Birds in Fornication .
Which was probably the reason for these Birds in Fight

keep up the great posts Steve

Tim

Tim and Thanks

And here I always thought BIF stood for Bird in Flight :lol I was thinking maybe this was some form of egret foreplay, but one got chased off. So I don't think they were of the opposite gender. Either that, or this egret had better do more work on his foreplay technique........lol

Thanks for the humorous comments and glad you enjoyed the pics,
Steve

Steve Cavigliano · April 7, 2005

Kirwin wrote:

Great series Steve! Thanks for sharing your experience... and the tips I can apply to my next shoot!

Thanks Kirwin

If my post helps you get better results, then it was a success

Thanks for looking,
Steve

Steve Cavigliano · April 7, 2005

Dee wrote:

No, this shot has not been rotated

Straight down flying? I didn't know they could do that! What an incredible moment!

I don't care if these aren't tip top, just to see this series was fascinating and unbelievable!

So I'm glad my post encouraged you to visit again, so we could all see the bird fight!

They are quite territorial, indeed, but I've never seen this, that one egret looked like he was upside down!

Thinking about how quickly this all happened you're lucky to have gotten anything captured and you've given me something else to think about lens wise.

The lighting there is VERY tricky and those snowy white birds don't help.

Love the last one too, such expressive feathers these birds have!

Great series!

Thanks Dee

Yep, it's all your fault.....lol Although, I have to admit, I have very little willpower when it comes to doing what I should be doing versus taking off early and shooting pics

The lighting was tough. If you think of the diagram pic you posted, this action occured in the area behind the palm trees to the shooter's left. So the shadows were even darker than normal. One of the images in this series, that I didn't post, wound up down at 1/500 cuz the BG was so dark

Hey, but that's what makes it so challenging

Give me a call next time you're thinking of doing the Baylands. Maybe we can hook up and compare notes

:

Thanks for taking the time to comment,
Steve

Steve Cavigliano · April 7, 2005

Dee wrote:

It rained last night, but I was pleasantly surprised to see no rain right now! I'm hoping to have a couple of hours shooting after my dentist appointment. Got to have some reward for going to the dentist, right?

Right now I'm after some good California Poppy shots, lots of clumps of flowers due to all the rain we had, but to get the right lighting is tricky, as the light goes down the poppies close up!

Shooting poppies in bright light is also challenging not to blow out highlights, at least with the egrets the entire bird is mostly white, !

Too late to fight peninsula traffic after the dentist, and we don't have many egrets around here, maybe I'll head for the harbor.

Good luck Dee,
It's been Sunny/Cloudy down here all day with bouts of showers and hail

I think we're going to have muddy tennies again this afternoon and not much else to show for it......lol

I agree about poppies. They are extremely tough to shoot, because they are so saturated already, they are really easy to blow highlights on. Sorta like egrets in mixed lighting.....lol

If Andy wasn't getting off so late, we probably would have tried the coast. We really love the food at Mezza Luna's

Lots of clouds might make for a nice Sunset at HMB. Or then again, it could make for an ugly gray Sunset too.....

Steve

David_S85 · April 8, 2005

Steve, an amazing sequence of shots that you pulled off without planning for anything of the sort. As the pics downloaded slowly, after the first one, I was expecting the final shot to be an egret with beak plunged and stuck straight down into the ground. Glad the bird made it out of the tumble with only feathers ruffled. And glad that you could get and share the event with us.

Cool stuff.

WB Harry and what I learned yesterday

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