Birds on Things
In looking back over photos of the last few months, I’ve noticed that I have quite a few of birds. Primarily from a work trip but I’ll include another for grins. In July of this year, I was sent to Orlando for work. I wasn’t sure if I’d have any time, at all, to take photos but luckily, one of my coworkers is a runner and was interested in finding scenic places to run in the morning. We were able to trip down to the Orlando Wetlands one morning. This turned out to be relatively eventful. I did challenge myself, however, when packing for this trip. I only took a small number of prime lenses so this outing got the 85mm assignment as it was the longest lens I packed.
I’ve decided to experiment with naming my photos in this post. Jim does this and I’ve noticed that when I read his blog, the titles of the photos begin to tell the story of each. It’s not always needed for every photo (or any photo, for that matter) but I thought I’d give it a go and see if I like exercising my creative vocabulary.
Okay, I couldn’t help making the very first photo have one of the driest titles I could think of for a joke. This limpkin seems to be scavenging for breakfast. Just off the boardwalk at the Wetlands, he was slowly wading through the water looking around for the most important meal of the day. I was able to get down low and shoot through the railing. Editing this photo was a bit challenging because the sun is reflecting off the water behind it making the foreground dark. I do like the depth of field in this photo though, as typical for me, it’s probably a bit too restrictive. Stopping down a touch might have been nice for a bit more clarity in the background.
This, and I assume all, swampy areas are interesting because of what all is on the surface of the water or what seems to be growing out of it. What initially caught my eye was the chunks of dead tree all coming out of the water here. However I couldn’t find a composition of just those that I liked (and I had the 85mm lens) so I went for something wider and got these two vultures. They give the illusion of competition for the top spot on the tree. I do like that we can see the reigning champion of another tree in the background. The sky is utterly boring here but I think that draws the attention up to the vultures more vs the chaotic mess below.
This image feels creepy. All but one tree has a vulture perched on top. The only ones that don’t have foliage except for the tree on the far right. An interesting composition might have been something that draws more attention to this fact however I’m not that good of a photographer, I had very limited angles from which to shoot, just a single lens, and I’m not that good of a photographer. Nonetheless, this image is interesting as is.
I rather enjoy this image. The heron and egret in opposing trees seem to be in some kind of argument and each has some reinforcements behind him. I do hope that it’s simply a stare down or a battle of words. While the heron on the right has a different egret on his side, the egret on the left has only managed to recruit the riff-raff of the swamp, a measley crow looking bird - difficult to see due to his size. While this argument is going on, there is a populated peanut gallery in the background with a few more birds watching their daily soap-opera drama.
This is frankly a disappointing final image but I wanted to write about it for myself anyway. I wanted to capture the crooked tree in opposition to the much straighter ones in the background. It’s not really particularly interesting but I think it may have been better if I had ignored the bird on top and simply removed him from the field of view. I remember keeping the aperture closed down some to attempt to keep both the crooked tree and the heron in focus. Now, I say that, but I didn’t do a great job of really getting that right. I only had this one take of this composition vs a few at different apertures. Looking at it now, I’d probably try to open up my aperture to f/3-ish and see if I couldn’t draw a bit more attention to the tree. I’m sure there will always be something I think about during post processing.
Thanks for reading. It’s been a bit of a struggle to get blogs posted this year. However, I’m grateful for the opportunities I have had. We’ll see if I can squeeze one more in before 2026.
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