Common Crane
Ok… As far as quality goes, this isn’t the best shot I ever got. No sir. In fact, in terms of quality, I can honestly say I hate it. BUT… this is a truly unusual shot and, for a Brit like me, it’s a near impossible shot. In the UK, cranes are so rare that it’s pretty unusual to see a bird at all, but I’ve had the good fortune to see many of them since I moved to Poland. I’ve even seen huge groups of them gathering prior to their autumnal migration. This summer though, I found something quite exceptional, as you see here. Near my house is a swamp. Cranes love swamps. Early in the summer I heard the cranes crying loudly and frequently and I guessed they were probably defending a nest from the local fox population. Sure enough, a few weeks later, in early June, I was in the right place at the right time and captured mother crane out for an evening stroll with her chicks. There were actually two but this shot only shows one.
I am thrilled every time I look at this. At the time it was taken, I had to stand stock still for several minutes so they wouldn’t be scared away. The almost primordial beauty of the swamp, with the wild irises growing nearby, adds marvellously to the photograph, I think. The emotions involved in shooting that evening are beyond sensible description, so I’m not going to try.
Since this was taken, sadly, I have only seen the parent birds. Though I cannot say for sure, I guess it means the foxes won.
Western Marsh Harrier
This individual caused me some trouble.
I was trying to show my son a pair a cranes in a nearby field when this scary type jumped up and hovered in front of us for a few seconds – no more than 2 or 3 metres from our position. I was screaming “Give me the camera, give me the camera” but to no avail. The raptor flew some 1.5km away and there was no chance to shoot. Still, I persevered and I waited and, true to form, our hunter repeated his cycle. Many times, in fact, and eventually flew close enough to my position to get this shot. I hope you enjoy it.
Red Kite
This is a red kite (Milvus milvus). These birds are actually pretty easy to shoot in flight (as birds of prey go, that is). Kites, like other soaring raptors, spend a lot of time gliding around in slow circles. They don’t flap much as they go so you have plenty of time to get underneath them. This is probably the closest I’ve got to one of these birds as he was pretty low in the sky – another advantage in shooting kites. He was some 10 to 15 metres above me when I took this.
I used the usual colour corrections here. They somehow tend to work out a little too grey or a little too blue when you’re dealing with wide open blue sky so, if anyone knows how to fix this, please let me know.
Blue Tit
It’s winter now in Poland and I’ve started feeding the local birds. Twelve species spotted in 2 days. Here’s one of them. This is a Blue Tit (Cyanistes caeruleus or Parus caeruleus) depending on which classification system you like.
Autumn
I’ve been snowed under with stuff and goings-on for ages now, but at last, about a week ago, I got the chance to pick up my camera and get a few shots off. This is the result of one of those shots – a female red deer.
She was grazing in a field beside the road so I got a few shots from the window of the car. I love cars because animals seem to be very much less scared of them than they do of the people in them. 🙂
Changes here? A crop. Black, white and neutral colour control points. Slightly increased warmth and saturation and an itsy bitsy sharpening. That’s all.
Roe Deer Doe
So… There are various ways of going about nature photography and they all generally fall into 2 basic types:
1. Find a good spot and sit patiently and wait.
2. Keep your camera handy and shoot whenever opportunity arises.
The best method is probably method number 1 as this is likely to turn out good results on at least a semi-regular basis. I don’t have time for that, however, as I’m a husband and a dad and I have other things to attend to. For that reason I am generally a method 2 person and this doe was no exception. In fact, it was my wife who spotted this doe as we drove through the fields and it’s thanks to her careful positioning of the car that I was able to get this shot. The deer was wary of us and moved on a little several times which, as it turned out, was a good thing. The initial images had to be shot through the windscreen of the car, or through a front quarter-light window. The effect was that I couldn’t get a focus lock and all the photos were ruined. Finally, moving forward one last time, we came to a place where it was possible to see the animal through an open window and *click* *click* I got two good shots. This is the better one, in my opinion.
Thanks to whatever higher power it was that made animals curiously unafraid of cars… or mobile hides as I prefer to think of them.
This photo has been subjected to the usual corrections. That is, black, white and neutral colour control points, sharpening around the eyes (unsharp mask) and a delicate general sharpening of the image as a whole (high pass). Aside from that – nothing other than slight tweaks to brightness, contrast, saturation and warmth.
Grey Heron
Until a few weeks ago I’d never seen herons close up. I saw one fly over a few years ago (and that photo is in my flickr photostream) but a couple of weeks ago I spotted four in a tree all at the same time (also on flickr). This weekend I had a great time with wildlife photos and, as you see, one of my “victims” was another heron. I also saw cranes (and got photos), cormorants (and got photos), a white tailed eagle (or sea eagle – which was sadly to high up to photo clearly), a female red deer (too quick, no photo), a hare (got a few photos) and a black woodpecker (which scared the willies out of me by taking off from near my feet – hence the lack of photo).
Anyhow, this photo mostly suffers from what I call “range sickness”. It is spotty as it has been cropped somewhat, and the noise reduction gadgets didn’t successfully treat the patient. The bird itself has been treated to unsharp mask, increased contrast and reduced brightness, while the photo as a whole has been mildly sharpened by high pass (which doesn’t help spottiness), brightened, colour adjusted (black, white and neutral control points, saturation and colour temperature. The bushes in the background were blurred slightly more than was already the case, by Gaussian blur at 2,94 px. Most of this work was done in NX2 though I’m still going to try to treat the “sickness” in Paint Shop Pro.
Song Thrush
I’ve got thrush … es in my garden.
I actually didn’t intend to post this here. Ho hum…. it seems technology is moving faster than my brain which isn’t difficult at my advancing age. Anyroadup… it seems that my flickr, twitter, facebook and wordpress accounts are so tightly mingled that posting to any one of them produces a cascade of posts, cross-posts and reposts across web-world for which I can only apologise and I’m sorry if anyone found themselves here (wherever you’re looking at it) looking at a picture that they expected to find elsewhere. I’ll try and un-pick the knots in my cyber-situation as quickly as I can, but please bear with me in case things don’t work out. My chum here, Mr. Turdus philomelos will entertain you with a cheery whistled tune while I’m occupied. 😉
What am I supposed to do with this?
A fly lands on a leaf and looks a little lost. I, of course, helped it get back on its way… to wherever it happened to be going. I gave it directions and a packed lunch in exchange for the chance to take a couple of photos.
This photo isn’t true macro. It isn’t at the 1:1 scale needed for that. This is what is properly known as “close up” photography. I used my trusty, but slow and noisy, Tamron zoom lens (70 – 300 mm) in its macro mode. This gives a scale of about 1:3. I’m not sure if this is sharp enough and certainly, this is the sort of image where I should be practice focus stacking but I didn’t have time for a lot of photos before the subject flew off.
What do you do in similar situations? Do you always use a tripod? Do you use flash? I used neither here.
Aren’t bugs cool?
Dad, it’s the natural history photographer again!
This just made me laugh. These are models (obviously) in the Zaurolandia dinosaur park in Rogowo, Poland. There’s nothing special been done to this photograph. I set the black and white levels, tweaked the sharpness and, well, that’s all.
I like weird and wonderful photos that make you stop and think, even if it’s only for half a second. If you have something like that, please do let me know, I’d love to see.
Reed Warbler
This, folks, is a Reed Warbler, or maybe even a Great Reed Warbler. More likely than not, it’s not *so* great, but it’ll do to be going on with.
Sometimes, you’re just lucky, right? Sometimes a photo that you might have waited years for just happens. These things are not planned, arranged, measured and shot and re-shot until they’re just right…. they are, in short, snaps. This was a snap. I was on a family visit to a historical site at Biskupin in Poland when I heard the bird singing. I didn’t recognise the call and also there was an older couple watching him (or her – warblers don’t vary plumage according to sex). Soooo, as he seemed comfortable, I changed to a longer objective than the one I had fitted at the time (from a Nikkor 18 – 135 mm to a Tamron 70 – 300 mm) and just shot away. I only got 3 shots in before he (or she – did I mention the sexes are similar among warblers?) flew away.
The light was generally good, though I notice the beak is slightly bluey which is probably a chromatic aberration. I applied a little noise reduction and then tweaked the sharpening around the bird and added a little Gaussian blur on the reeds to the left to draw the eye in the right direction. That’s all.
I’m happy with this because, A – I’d never seen a Warbler before and B – It’s rare I get a snap to come out well. 🙂
I’ve not done too well, so far, with this regular posting thing, which I blame on Easter and the May bank holidays which have kept me away from home a lot in the last couple of weeks. Sorry. I hope to improve.
Got any Reed Warblers or similar in your own photo collection? Please share a link. 🙂
Follow my leader?
These are cranes (Grus grus) in flight. This photo had, in my opinion, rather poor contrast “as shot” and, I think because I was shooting Eastwards in the afternoon, not very well lit in general. Having said that, after using software to reduce the noise, including edge artefacts, and also to reduce the vignette that was very evident on the right of the frame, it started to show promise. A black and white conversion and curves adjustment made it what you see now. I like the softness of the trees and possibly a little Guassian blur would have made that even nicer. What do you think?
I printed this large (30 x 45 cm) and it looks great. 😉
“Deerly” beloved..
I love to shoot wildlife shots and, though I’m not terribly good at it, I am improving, I think. This is a male roe deer (Capreolus capreolus), one of a pair, that we spotted in fields that run alongside a busy road in western Poland. His mate was nearby and I got a shot of her too. This photo, and that of his mate (which I’ll add below) were taken from the open window of our car, at a range of about 30 or 40 metres using a Tamron 300mm zoom lens. The very soft appearance of the rough grass and trees in the background is from using a fairly wide aperture (f 5.6). Although the background looks fairly close by, it was a good way off and the range compression seen here is a known side-effect of using zoom lenses.
The last entry was a very old photo taken on an ageing compact, while this is a very new image, taken on Saturday, using a Nikon D80 dSLR which, I guess – at 4 years, is also starting to show its age.
fotomill 