Trogon Photo Tours

December 2012

This month's newsletter includes images and information about photography at Santa Clara Ranch near McCook, Texas.  As always there is some information about each image shown, the situation and the settings used. 

Santa Clara Ranch is one of the few ranches in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas where they have accommodation on site.  This is a big advantage for photographers meaning they don't have to get up an hour earlier and drive from their hotel in Edinburg or McCallen.  All of the blinds are within a 5 minute drive from the ranch house.  The ranch house consists of 4 bedrooms, each with 2 twin beds.  There is also a trailer which is where I will stay when I have a full workshop.  Meals can be provided for groups but if you are there alone you will need to bring your own food and cook in the kitchen there. I photographed there for 2 days at the end of October, it was a nice way to spend my birthday. 

Harris's Hawk photographed October 2012, Santa Clara Ranch. Nikon D7000, Sigma 150-500 at 290mm 1/1000 F8, iso 500. One of the highlights of Santa Clara Ranch is the elevated raptor blind.  The blind is set at the same level as a snag where food is placed, there are trees in the background which make a nice background rather than the blue sky you see when shooting up from most blinds.  It became apparent to me quickly that my Canon 7D and 500F4 with an effective focal length of 800mm was way too much lens for a flight shot from this blind, so I changed to my Nikon/Sigma zoom setup.  I have to stop down to F8 or more with this lens to get good sharpness which rendered the background more in focus than some would prefer, but I like the sense of habitat it portrays here.  The resident Harris's Hawks have kind of taken over this blind, so they and Green Jays are the main species at this particular blind.  When the is food put out, the hawks will often perch in the trees behind them and swoop in coming straight at the blind.  I tracked the bird from it's perch and fired off a round of shots as it got close to the perch (which has been cropped from the right in this image). 

Eastern Cottontail - photographed October by 2012 at Santa Clara Ranch.  Canon 7D 500F4 1/200 F5, iso 500, Feisol tripod with Wimberley head.  Blind number 2 at Santa Clara is the better of the 2 morning blinds and on the advice of Hector I spent both of my mornings there rather than blind number 1 (the other morning blind which is good for deer and peccary).  Blind number 2 sets up for some beautiful reflection shots as the sun is coming up with green and golden leaves reflecting in the water.  Here I made sure to include the full reflection of the rabbit.  Santa Clara has lots of mammals in addition to the birds including Mexican Ground Squirrel, White-tailed Deer (which I got some nice close up portraits of) and the more elusive Coyote and Bobcat. 

Green Jays photographed at Santa Clara Ranch, TX, Blind number 2 October 2012.  Nikon D7000, Sigma 150-500 at 300mm 1/1250 F8, iso 1000.   The first morning I was photographing at blind number 2 I noticed quite a few squirmishes between Green Jays.  The squabbles happened very fast and typically while the pond was still in shade before the sun had lit it up.  This made trying to capture the fights very difficult.  On the second morning I decided to give it a try with my zoom lens.  I should talk a little about the shooting situation.  They have built 4 sunken blinds at Santa Clara Ranch with waterholes/ponds in front of the blinds.  The front of the waterholes are only about 6 feet from the blinds, while the sides and back where most of the birds show up are 20-25 feet away.  This means that for good sized birds like Green Jays, Long-billed and Curve-billed Thrashers that the 7D with a 500mm at an effective focal length of 800mm is too much lens to capture most flight or action shots of these birds.  So again I went with my Nikon D7000 and Sigma 150-500.  I was kind of maxed out on my techs for this shot.  I don't like to go about iso 1000 with the D7000 and I needed both shutter speed and depth of field to pull off this shot.  This image is about 60% of the original, I cropped out an out of focus part of a jay at the bottom of the frame as well as part of a feeding cup which was attached to this set up perch.  The face of the jay on the right wasn't tack sharp so I added a bit of selective sharpening to the face of that bird in addition to my regular sharpening routine. 

What I decided about photography equipment while shooting at Santa Clara is that ideally you have a full frame sensor camera on a 500F4 lens.  This gives you about the right focal length for these good sized birds and typically means you have a camera that can handle high isos well.  With the 500 fixed lens you can also blur out the background well if it's a single bird or mammal you are photographing.  This was part of the reason I recently purchased the Canon 5D MarkIII, because I knew I would be shooting at locations like this one a fair bit in the future.  The Nikon 200-400 F4 would be a great choice also for a lens for this location.  We are still waiting for the mythical Canon 200-400 with the built in 1.4 teleconverter.  If you are photographing with a 500 fixed, it's also good to have a smaller zoom like a 70-200 or 150-500 handy for any large mammals that come in. 

Black-crested Titmouse photographed October 2012 at Santa Clara Ranch, Blind number 2.  Canon 7D 500F4 lens, 1/1000 at F5, iso 500.  This is my favorite image from my 2 days there.  To make this image I prefocused on the perch which I had setup.  I watched with my head up, not looking through the viewfinder and fired away when I thought a bird was going to land on the perch.  When I do this, I support the lens by draping my left arm on top of it, while I keep my right hand ready to trigger the shutter.  There is a feeding cup set under the perch.   Again with the 7D and not wanting to go above iso 500, I was kind of maxed out on my techs but it worked out well with the bit of wing blur in this image.  The image is full frame except for a crop from the right side. 

Lark Sparrow - Photographed by Nate Chappell, October 2012, Santa Clara Ranch, Blind Number 2. Canon 7D 500F4 1/1250 F4.5, iso 500, Feisol tripod with Wimberley head.  One of the really fun aspects of photographing at Santa Clara is the photography of numerous birds bathing in the waterholes which are close to the blinds.  I photographed several species taking baths.  Keeping them in focus can be tough.  What I do is use the back focus button, place it on the face of the bird and when I think I have acquired good focus release I the focus button and fire away with the shutter button (where I have disabled the focus).  This keeps me from losing focus from the spray of water drops.  If the bird moves from it's position I then have to reacquire focus with the back focus button. 

White-tailed Deer - photographed October 2012 at Santa Clara Ranch, blind number 4.  Canon 7D, 28-135mm lens at 135mm 1/800 F8, iso 400.  It's good to have a small lens in the bag as well as this shot shows sometimes the animals can be very close to the blinds.  When this young buck came into blind number 4 I took the 7D off my 500mm and put it on my small zoom lens.  As far as afternoon shoots, you have a choice between blinds number 3 and 4 with the light at your back.  Hector and Beto recommended blind number 3 which has a lot of cover around it because they thought the activity would be higher there.  I spent about an hour there from 3 to 4 pm and it was quite slow, probably due to the time of day.  The lighting was challenging at this blind due to the amount of shade from the trees.  I decided to head over to blind number 4 and spooked a Caracara out of there as I walked into the blind.  There were quite a few Cardinals and Pyrrhuloxia coming in and out but when this buck came in, he kind of dominated the pool for the last hour of shooting.  I like blind number 4 because it's quite open and you get nice late afternoon sunlight there. 

I would highly recommend Santa Clara Ranch and plan to use it on all my South Texas workshops in the future.  To see more images from Santa Clara see my Texas photo gallery here