Trogon Photo Tours

October 2013 Newsletter - This newsletter contains information and photos regarding deciding how and where to photograph based on the weather conditions.  As always it includes info on what I was considering when making the images. 

Northern Harrier photographed February 2013 at Falcon Point Ranch, TX.  Canon 7D, 500F4 lens, 1/5000, F5.6, iso 400.  If I am out at a location doing photography I will almost always photograph regardless of whether the weather is good or poor.  But the weather does often affect exactly where and how I will photograph.  On bright sunny days, I will often opt for an area where flight photography can be good and a place where I will likely get images against a bright blue sky.  I am not a big fan of high key images which is what you will get photographing against a gray, cloudy sky.  In addition you lose shutter speed on those dark days which makes you photograph with a higher iso. 

Northern Pintail photographed March 2013 at Falcon Point Ranch, TX.  Canon 5D Mark III, 500F4, 1.4x teleconverter, 1/1600 at F6.3, iso 800.   This is another shot from the same exact location at Falcon Point.  It's a freshwater pond in a salt marsh environment that is a beacon for wildlife.  Falcon Point Ranch is a 6,000 acre ranch that I had the opportunity to photograph on quite often this spring.  It has a variety of habitats to choose to photograph in.  Each morning I would get up and decide where to go on the ranch based on the weather.  If it was a sunny day I would usually head out and photograph waterbirds on one of these ponds in the salt marshes.  Falcon Point is a hunting and fishing ranch mostly.  When I first started photographing there I tried photographing from the duck hunting blinds which is where I took the harrier image above, but I found the angle poor for shorebird photography and the ducks would always fly away when I stood up to photograph them.  What I soon figured out was that hiding low in the bushes surrounding the pond in full camoflauge including a camo ski mask I was able to get much better results, it got me closer, a better angle and the birds were actually more likely to come in and land.  I guess some of them were smart enough to look into the hunting blind before landing. 

Willet photographed at Falcon Point Ranch, TX, April 2013.  Canon 5D Mark III, 500F4 , 1.4x, 1/3200 at F7.1, iso 640.  This is a shot from inside the dike at Falcon Point where shorebirds congregate in large numbers in the spring.  Again, this was a sunny morning as on cloudy mornings I didn't want to be photographing against bright dull water, it gives you the same problem as photographing against plain gray sky, if you have any good images they are going to be high key shots.  The sun brings some nice colors to not only the birds but the water as well.  I knew from experience that if I slowly approached this species, oftentimes the bird would stretch it's wings, getting ready to take off if I approached any closer.  That knowledge paid off in this image.  

Bobwhite photographed May 2013 at Falcon Point Ranch, Texas.  Canon 5D Mark III, 500F4 1.4x, 1/1600 at F6.3, iso 1000.  So the question is where to photograph on a rainy or cloudy day?  On those types of days I try to photograph in areas where I am generally pointing the camera down either at the ground or at low perches so that I don't have a white sky or white water background.  That way I end up with a pleasing background.  On this particular morning it had just rained fairly hard.  From my experience I thought it would be a good idea to drive along the dirt roads of the ranch and see if there were any birds drying off after the rain.  It paid off as I ran into this Bobwhite which preened and shaked on this fenceline while I fired off several bursts of images.  One thing you might note is that my techs on this shot are almost exactly those as the Pintail that was photographed on a sunny morning.  The iso was a little bit higher as there wasn't as much light on this dreary day.   The reason for the fairly fast shutter speed is that I want to be able to capture the action in every situation.  Here the quail was flapping it's wings.  The reason for the F6.3 F stop is that with a teleconverter I almost always want to stop down a little bit, wide open here would have been F5.6.  I also find with this full frame camera that unless I am pretty close to the bird I don't need more depth of field.  The fairly large aperture allows me to keep my iso where I want it.  While the 5D Mark III can certainly handle much higher isos well, in a perfect world I would keep it around iso 800. 

Scissor-tailed Flycatcher with frog prey photographed May 2013 at Falcon Point Ranch, TX.  Canon 5D Mark III, 500F4, 1.4x 1/2000 at F8, iso 1000.  This was another shot from the same rainy day at Falcon Point.  I was on my way back to the lodge when I had seen a few Scissor-tailed Flycatchers working the fence lines.  This bird came and landed with what I thought at the time was a good sized insect.  It was only after I finished shooting and reviewed it on the back of my camera that I realized it had a small frog.  The bird first landed on the wire and just sat there with the frog but then it started moving some and at that I point I started firing off a lot of bursts, for just a moment it jumped up off of the fenceline and came back down and landed.  I managed to capture that moment here.  This is part of the reason I take a lot of images, particularly when it's a good photo opportunity, you never know when the bird will ever so briefly move creating the most memorable image in the lot.   As far as techs, I stopped down more on this image than the quail and pintail shots because I was trying to catch the birds taking off and  landing and the extra depth of field gave me a bit more margin for error in case I didn't nail the focus on take off or landing.

Osprey photographed May 2011 at Ankeny National Wildlife Refuge, Oregon.  Canon 7D, 500F4, 1/1000 F5, iso 800.  However, there is always the exception to my general rule of not wanting to photograph against bright gray skies or water.  This is an image that was taken on a dreadful, rainy day.  But, it's not every day that you have Osprey hauling good sized fish out of the water right in front of you.  So even though I knew I would have a gray water background I was certainly going to focus on that opportunity despite the poor weather and dull water.

In conclusion, paying attention to the weather and planning according to the conditions at the time can improve your nature photography.  A lot of these images were taken at Falcon Point Ranch and Lodge, a 5 star lodge near Seadrift, Texas on San Antonio Bay.  I will be leading some 3 day workshops based there next spring as it's close to Rockport, TX which has excellent bird photography and there are some good opportunities at the ranch as well.