Before going on this trip, I did some reading on wildlife photography. The really good wildlife photography is done with a big honkin’ lense, something I neither have nor can afford. One of the tips I read was to make the background blurry by putting more distance between the subject and background using perspective instead of aperture. I got a chance to try that out with this little bird. Since it was standing at the edge of the walkway which dropped off a few feet, it was easy for me to get low enough to get some good separation between the bird and the background. It’s really quite impressive what a difference that makes.
It’s funny going to a place like this. We only found this bobcat because about 20 people were all huddled around the same area on the path with their cameras. It was quite dark by this point and I had to really crank the ISO up since the cat wasn’t staying very still. There were a few moments like this on where it was and I probably could’ve dropped my shutter speed down to 1/100 or less which would’ve improved a lot about this photo. As it bounded over the tall grass, I kept wanting this action shot (that I never got) and I probably should’ve just waited for more shots like this one with more appropriate camera settings. All of the ‘action’ shots I got are terrible.
I think I spent too much time on the bobcat. By the time we were done with that it was very dark and the kids were hungry and getting cold. As we were finishing the loop at the draw, this last pond came into view and I was immediately disappointed that I hadn’t shown up here sooner. I was rushing since the kids were getting upset and it was getting dark. This photo has nice components, in my opinion, but the composition ruins it. This is the hardest area of photography for me and I can’t help but think that if I had arrived earlier, I would’ve been able to find something much more compelling and requiring a faster shutter speed.
Finally this 7-shot pano. This was so early that each shot required many seconds at ISO 100 and I made the terrible error of taking them at different shutter speeds. The dynamic range here is vast and it may have been a good time for an HDR pano. The sky is blown out but in the original raw it’s a much smaller portion and the stitching software had to overexpose to get things to match. Poor implementation but I think the composition is okay. I like that the cranes are on the left (though I wish they were easier to see), and the sunrise on the right. It’s pretty but I wish I had executed better.
This one was shorter than I had expected. It’s been in ‘draft’ status for a couple of weeks. Life is busy right now and I forgot about this one for a few days. I haven’t any plan for the next couple of weeks to take any more photos but we’ll be headed back to the great state of Texas for the eclipse. I don’t plan on taking too many eclipse photos, specifically, but I do have a filter so maybe something interesting will come of it. After Texas I’ll head to Canada for a photo tour, after that, I’ll go to Las Vegas for work and then it’ll be the end of April. It may be a while before another post shows up. Thanks for reading.