Trogon Photo Tours

September 2021 - In this month's newsletter I discuss various artistic waterbird photos that I took during our spring Galveston, Texas workshops.  While the main focus is on migrant land birds for the Galveston trips we also get out and do some waterbird photography.

Here's a Clapper Rail that we photographed on Galveston Island, Texas.  We have a spot here that has been very reliable the past few years for this species.  While I normally like to get a low angle with waterbirds like this I know in this location it's possible to get beautiful reflection shots so we stood up for this opportunity.  While I normally don't like to center subjects this much, with reflection shots I will often center them both vertically and horizontally.  The water trail from the rail walking through the water helps to balance the image here and the centered look with the reflection gives the image a feeling of symmetry.  The settings for this shot which was taken this May were Canon R5, 100-400 II at 400mm, 1/3200 F8, iso 1000, Av mode, evaluative metering -0.7, handheld. 

We visit a couple of rookeries during the workshops.  Here's a reflection shot of a Cattle Egret photographed at a rookery in Alvin, Texas in May.  The Cattle Egrets were picking nesting material off the top of the water so when one sallied out to do so I would fire off a round of shots.  This was my favorite of those images.  I centered this one vertically but gave the bird more room to the left where it was looking.  The settings for this shot were Canon R5, 100-400 II at 400mm, 1/3200 F8, iso 640, manual exposure, handheld. 

Sometimes the environment will determine whether or not you can make an artistic image.  When I saw Snowy Egrets flying back and forth from the shore in an area where there were a lot of wildflowers growing I positioned myself so that the flowers would show in the foreground.  The egret is actually landing on a manmade concrete walkway here but I was able to position myself so only the flowers showed.  Taken in Pearland, Texas this May.  The settings for this shot were Canon R5, 100-400 II at 400mm 1/4000 F8, Av mode, evaluative metering at 0, handheld. 

During our April workshop when we visited the rookeries we had very overcast conditions.  While this often doesn't lead to beautiful images, in this case it did as the whitish background really highlights the trail of nesting material this Cattle Egret was bringing in. I composed the crop so that the trail of vegetation and the bird filled the image diagonally.  The settings for this shot were Canon R5, 100-400 II at 400mm 1/2000 F7.1, iso 1250, manual exposure, handheld.  To dial in the proper manual exposure here with the bright sky I will add a little more than two stops of light to the exposure when metered against the plain gray sky. This ended up being one of my favorite images from the workshop even though it's a common species. 

I photographed this female Great-tailed Grackle chasing a Little Blue Heron just a little bit after the Cattle Egret from the previous shot.  Again a high key image with that bright sky and I centered it with the birds coming straight at the viewer.  The techs for this shot were the same as the previous shot, Canon R5, 100-400 II at 400mm 1/2000 F7.1, iso 1250, manual exposure, handheld.  

During our April workshop we were blessed with some large flocks of American Avocet on Galveston Island.  After taking some normal fast shutter speed images I told the participants I would be slowing down my shutter speed to try and show the motion of the flying birds.  The goal in this shot was to get the Avocets on the ground reasonably sharp but for the wings of the flying birds to be blurred to show the motion of take off.  Normally I would take this type of shot from a tripod, but I didn't have it handy so I simply pointed the camera and focused on the birds on the ground without panning and took the image at a slower shutter speed.  The techs on the shot were Canon R5, 100-400 II at 400mm 1/160 F16, iso 160, Av mode, evaluative metering at 0, handheld.  I wanted a wide depth of field and enough shutter speed so the birds in the air were still recognizable but slow enough that it showed their motion. 

Here's another group shot of the Avocets, this time some of them were landing as opposed to taking off.  I was hoping to get as many in focus as possible on the ground and then also show the motion of the landing birds.  For this image I focused on one of the birds lowest and in the center as I find if the front birds are out of focus this often ruins the image.    

Photographing groups of different species together is always challenging.  This is a group shot of Black Skimmers, American Avocets and Dunlin also photographed on Galveston Island.  I focused on the flying skimmers but used a wide depth of field to try and get as many birds as possible in focus.  Most of the flying birds are reasonably sharp but there wasn't enough depth of field to also get the avocets sharp.  Since I was trying to get the flying skimmers sharp I used more normal techs on this shot, Canon R5, 100-400 II at 400mm 1/1250 F11, iso 800, Av mode, evaluative metering at 0, handheld.  Because there was out of focus shoreline above where I cropped it, I made this image a panorama as I thought otherwise there was too much empty space at the bottom.  To conclude some techniques for making artistic waterbird images are to look for good reflections, use cloudy days to create high-key images and slow down your shutter speed to show motion in your bird images.