Trogon Photo Tours

October 2012

This newsletter discusses photographing at your local city or county park. While, it's fun and exciting to go to great photography destinations like Ecuador or Namibia  for most people the majority of their time is spent near home.  The good news is that photographing at your local park can be very productive, part of the reason being that you will typically know the area and it's birds very well.  Also, the birds can often be quite habituated to humans, making photography easier. 

Yellow-crowned Night Heron flipping frog photographed July 2012, Kitty Hollow County Park, Missouri City, TX.  Canon 7D, 500F4 1/800 F5, iso 500, evaluative metering -0.3, handheld, full frame.  I took this image soon after we moved to Texas. Angie, Natalie and I headed out to the local park to take Natalie to the playground.  As I usually do when I am visiting local parks, I had my camera in the trunk even though I wasn't necessarily planning to photograph.  When we pulled into the parking lot, I noticed a large number of night herons hunting in a marshy depression on the other side of the road.  I decided to get my camera out and soon after, this night heron caught a frog.  The night heron tossed the frog in the air several times to try and get it into the correct position to swallow it.  Every time he tossed it, I took a burst of images.  Because he was occupied with the frog, I was able to approach quite closely, I got as low as I could to improve the background, shooting this from my knees.  That did bring the one out of focus stalk into play which runs under his chin but overall the improvement in the background more than made up for that one small flaw.  The settings were a bit of a challenge here as the light was fading fast, I managed to get just enough shutter speed and depth of field at iso 500 to pull it off.  With the 7D, I don't like to go above iso 500 if I can avoid it. This image (a cropped version of it) has been quite successful, as it has appeared in several newspapers and on the front page of MSN - as their photo of the day. 

Bufflehead - photographed April 2012, Titlow Park, University Place, WA.  Canon 7D, 500F4, 1/2000 F5.6, iso 400, evaluative metering -1.0, slight crop, handheld.  Photographing waterfowl at city parks can be very productive because the birds are often habituated to humans.  At many parks, for better or worse, some of the people who go there feed the Mallards and park ducks.  Besides Mallards, other waterfowl are often attracted to the food, at Titlow those species include American Wigeon and Bufflehead.  After some people had fed the ducks this Bufflehead came in close and dove to the bottom to pick up scraps of bread that were left.  I normally have a difficult time getting close to this species.  I used -1.0 on the metering to keep detail in the whites in the sunny light.  In RAW conversion, I added a fair bit of light in the curves adjustment to the darks and the shadows to bring up the darks and get the green and purple sheen back on the Bufflehead's crown.  

Osprey - photographed July 2010, Titlow Park, University Place, WA.  Canon 1D Mark III 500mmF4 1/2000 F5.6, iso 640, manual exposure.  I was able to get this image because I knew that this particular Osprey liked to fish for flounder at Titlow.  I had observed it making catches there before.  So every time I visited Titlow I would check the tree that it used to perch on before diving into the water.  If the bird was there I would focus on trying to get this shot.  Luckily, late one afternoon, he landed right in front of me and took off with this good sized Starry Flounder.  I made a fairly signficant exposure mistake on this shot, it was quite dark out of the camera.  The reason is that I had set a manual exposure based on the sky which had sun on it.  As the sun started to set, shadows were thrown on the water while there was still sun on the sky.  The result was that the proper manual exposure for a bird against the shadowed water was much different than a bird against the sky.  This highlights the reason I only use manual exposure when the lighting conditions are consistent in the areas that I'll be shooting.  It was a good lesson learned and luckily with noise reduction and exposure adjustments I was able to rescue the image. 

Mallard - photographed at Titlow Park, October 2007.  Canon 1D MarkIII, 500F4 lens, 1/3200 at F5, iso 800, moderate crop.  Don't ignore the common species, especially when the lighting or setting are uncommon.   This image of a male Mallard photographed against a tree with autumn colors in the evening is one of my best selling prints.  City parks are an excellent place for practicing your flight photography with plenty of ducks and gulls to practice on. 

Western Tanager - photographed June 2011 at Fort Steilacoom County Park, Lakewood, WA.  Canon 7D 500F4 lens, 1.4x teleconverter 1/1250 at F7.1, iso 500 evaluative metering -0.3, Feisol tripod, moderate crop.   Don't ignore the passerines as city parks can often be good places to find them as well.  I "pished" this bird in which is often a helpful technique to attract smaller birds.  I had 2 photography students with me who had smaller lenses, so I had them put their cards into my camera and take photos of this bird, when they had both taken a few, I put my card back in and manged to get this image before the bird flew off.  We appreciated how cooperative he was. 

In conclusion you can do a a lot of great photography at your local city or county park.  I go for a 45 minute exercise walk almost every day and I always pack my camera equipment along in my car.  If I see something good, while I am out on my walk, I'll go back to my car to get the gear.  Learn which birds frequent your park and their behavior and you will be better prepared to photograph them.