Trogon Photo Tours

April 2015 - This month's photography article features images of birds small in the frame but photographed with a long lens.  It includes images mostly from Nome, Alaska and Hood Canal, WA.

Pacific Golden Plover photographed June 2013.  Canon 5D3 500F4 lens, 1.4x 1/2500 F8, iso 640, handheld.  Although this bird was not very close I envisioned it being a nice image if I got low and lined it up against the distant hills that were partially covered by snow.  For me there are 2 main reasons for taking an image with the bird small in the frame.  The first reason is because you think it will make an artistic shot.  The second reason is to show some habitat or where the bird lives.  Sometimes both will result from such a shot as is the case here.  While this does show some tundra habitat and tells a bit about where the bird lives the main goal in taking this image was I thought it would make an artistic shot.  The way I cropped it the bird's head ends up at the bottom left "rule of thirds" axis which is ideal for composition in many cases when the bird is small in the frame. 

Black-bellied Plover photographed at Nome, Alaska June 2013.  Canon 5D3 500F4 1.4x 1/1600 F8, iso 800, handheld.  This image was taken just a short time after the Pacific Golden Plover pictured above.  The Nome area is the only spot that I know of where photographers can shoot Black-bellied and both Golden Plover species in the same day.   This shot is almost full frame with just a small crop from the bottom.  While we certainly also got close ups of both of these species when they were a bit farther away I took the opportunity to take some images showing them in their environment.  While I was aiming to make an artistic shot here, I think the end result was that this shot shows the habitat better than the previous image because it includes more of the tundra and the raised area where it is standing is in focus.  One critique I would make of each of these shots is that it would have been nice to stop down more to F11 or even F16 particularly in the top image to try and get the mountains a bit more in focus.  However I was shooting handheld so I needed a fast shutter speed and it's my usual strategy to keep my shutter speed quite high in case of action. 

Water Pipit photographed June 2013, Nome, Alaska.  Canon 5D3 500F4 1.4x 1/2500 F8, iso 800, handheld out vehicle window.  While in the previous 2 shots my objective was to take an artistic type of image my objective here was just to get an image of this pipit in it's environment.  I wasn't close enough for a portrait and by having the bird small in the frame I was able to include the rocky environment with turndra wildflowers where it breeds in the summer.  Compositionally I wanted to include the whole of the rock that it was on so the bird is more centered than I would normally like but I think the composition works better that way in this particular case.  When considering how to compose images it's important to not only look at the subject but all the other elements in the image.  This is particularly the case when the bird is small in the frame. 

Musk Oxen photographed June 2013, Nome, Alaska.  Canon 5D3 500F4 1.4x 1/3200 F8, iso 800, handheld in windy conditions.  We photograph this neat mammal each year during the Nome workshop.  There is a herd which hangs around town which is relatively tame that we photograph each year but they are usually not in very beautiful settings.  We do encounter other herds or small groups of Musk Oxen out along the roads in the tundra.  This was a nice group of mothers with young.  However they were at quite a distance so we were left with taking shots of them in the environment.  They ran off soon after this.  I think this shot shows well where they live.  It also shows an important element of their behavior with the mothers making a ring as they characteristically do to ward off predators.  This shot is cropped a fair bit, it's about 50% of the original frame.  I cropped a fair bit off the top because it had noisy bokeh and I felt it didn't really add anything to the image.  If I had cropped to where there was just snow it would have been too tight on top so I included a bit of the rock hillside above them.  

Bald Eagle photographed June 2012, Hood Canal, Kitsap County, WA.  Canon 7D 500F4 1/1600 F9, iso 400.  Birds small in the frame often work best when they are photographed in a beautiful setting.  This is taken from the East side of Hood Canal looking over to the Olympic Mountains in the west.  I stopped down a bit more here and the bird was farther away closer to the distant mountains.  I like the fact that the mountains are more in focus in this image.

Bald Eagle photographed May 2013 Kitsap County, WA.  Canon 5D3 500F4 1.4x 1/500 F8, iso 800.  This is an example of showing the eagle in it's habitat.  They like to perch high in evergreen forests.  This is full frame except for a small crop from the top, the main reason I chose to crop more at the top is there was more gray sky there that I felt took away from the mostly green tones of the image. 

Elliot's Storm Petrel photographed January 2015 off Isabela Island, Galapagos.  Canon 5D3 500F4 1/2500 F5.6, iso 500, handheld.  Lastly sometimes the bird is small in the frame because, well the bird is a very small bird and difficult to photograph closely.  These 4 inch storm petrels are very difficult to photograph as they fly erratically back and forth over the waves.  I wasn't using a teleconverter and I was using a full frame camera here so I still had to crop this image quite a bit.  The teleconverter slowed down the autofocus too much because these guys fly so erratically.  

In conclusion if you are in a location with a beautiful environment take some images that include the bird or animal smaller in the frame to show off that environment.  Or if you want or need an image that shows a bird or animal's habitat photograph it with the bird small in the frame.    Lastly some birds are small and don't lend themselves to being photographed easily such as the storm petrel, so sometimes a shot with the bird small in the frame is the best you are able to get.