Taking a Dim View
" All round the room my silent servants wait, My friends in every season, bright and dim. "
Barry Cornwall
I've got to say, May was a hell of a month for water birds around here. Michigan is experiencing it's second wettest Spring ever, or at least since 1880 when these things began to be recorded. The wetlands are filled to the brim and there's plenty of birds fishing and frogging the road side boarders. A car makes a wonderful blind as I idle ever so slowly along Rangle road deep inside Fish Point Wildlife Refuge. This is a hot spots to be sure, a whole lot can be seen here like this young Black-crowned heron lurking in the reeds plying it's trade in the twilight.
Late in the day is a good time to see Sandhill cranes who seem to get a burst of energy around sunset. The maddening thing is that conditions are continuously worsening as the light dims through evening. The temptation to grab a higher ISO is there every second in the battle to keep the shutter speed up. My 400mm f5.6 lens is stuck there wide open this time of day and not at it's sharpest sweet spot of f8. It's a juggling act between the graininess of raising ISO, the blurriness of lowering shutter speed, and the thin depth of focus from a wide open lens at it's lowest f stop. I usually shoot jpegs and not in RAW format because of the ease of processing the seven hundred to a thousand pictures I generally take in a day out. I know I can shoot underexposed, therefore at faster shutter speeds in RAW format and retain detail that can be restored by lightening the exposure in post processing, maybe it's time to start doing that. If you'd like to read a wonderfully organised tutorial about these issues as they relate to bird photography in-particular click here.
How often does a Sandhill crane fly low and straight over your head? Not often is right! Mucking through this puzzle of light is the game we play. Getting a picture is the prize for guessing right.
Sometimes you know your ability or your equipment is over matched but you take a shot anyway. You shoot because you'll never be here again, it's fun to try, and you might get lucky! These are all the reasons anyone needs to take an unreasonable chance. This is how us dim witted guys wind up with lovely women!
Louis-Ferdinand Celine
Now it's time for World Bird Wednesday
This is the home of World Bird Wednesday. A place for bird photographers from around the world to gather and share their photographs and experiences as they pursue Natures most diverse and beautiful treasurers, the birds.
World Bird Wednesday will be open for posting at 12 noon Tuesday EST North America through midnight on Wednesday.
You are invited to link your blog with other bird photographers in a weekly celebration of these most diverse and intriguing of Earth's residents, the BIRDS.
#1. Simply copy the above picture onto your W.B.W. blog entry. It contains a link for your readers to share in WBW. Or you can copy this link on to your blog page to share W.B.W. http://pineriverreview.blogspot.com/
#2. Come to The Pine River Review on Tuesday Noon EST North America through Wednesday midnight and submit your blog entry with Linky.
#3. Check back in during the course of the next day and explore these excellent photoblogs!
You don't have to be a Bird Watcher or expert photographer to join in--just enjoy sharing what you bring back from your explorations and adventures into nature.The idea of a meme is that you will visit each others blogs and perhaps leave a comment to encourage your compadres!
The thumbnails below are links to our contributors blogs. Click on them and view their beautiful posts.
Come on it's your turn!
