Planning for January 2010

One thing I've been doing more of this year is reflecting and planning. It can help, and point to things that worked, and has helped me to try new things.

What I look to do in my planning thought process is to:
reflect on past successes
plan for new locations or approaches

A month or two ago I got around to tagging all my images with month tags. Here's my tag for Jan (or January) sorted by interestingness...



A bunch of those are from the Zoo - like the pandas, lions, tigers...

But what matters to me and my wildlife trips are the mating foxes, and foxes in the snow and ice, which were at Bombay Hook NWR in Delaware.



Wildlife at the zoo (ie non-captive animals, visiting to catch a meal) included hawks:


And finally a couple of photos from Blackwater NWR in Maryland:


The wintering white pelicans were an oddity that happened for a few years in a row, and I have seen one there this year, but just one. It is possible the flock of 20 or so are around but I've missed them. In recent years brown pelicans have been captured and rehabed due to winter exposure to the cold, where they had frost bite and damaged their feet (if I recall correctly).

Ok, so mating foxes at BBH. Eagles and white pelicans (if lucky) at Blackwater. And wild hawks at the DC Zoo.

This year (2009) in January I embraced the weather on a number of days. I drove 100 mile to BBH to try to see the foxes mating again, in the snow this time, but struck out. I saw foxes but no mating - the foxes included the momma fox, and both kits I think:



Odds are I will go to Bombay Hook and Blackwater Refuges again. They've worked well in January. When I go somewhere like these places I ALWAYS GET THERE BY SUNRISE, OR BEFORE!. To show up around noon and spend an hour or two there is to waste the trip. Seriously. Sunrise or sunset will have the best light, and I seem to catch the action then when the animals wake up and do stuff, or when they catch their last meal of the day. Usually I'm there in the morning.

The 'get there by sunrise rule' works even better in the summer when it gets hot. The animals don't like the heat either, and will perform their hunting tasks early if possible.


What to plan that's new....

Well I just started to shoot from a blind and I will try that for the first time in January. Given the right setup, that can yield some closer than normal encounters. But as I noted in my blog post, I need to hide from people too, not just the animals.

Last January I found a new spot or two, including my Osprey spot - it's a low traffic area and fairly unknown. I'm going to continue to research and search for new spots to me, which haven't been discovered the way so many spots I go to have been.



While I'm not sharing some of my new spots, I will share this. What I'm looking for are places within a couple hour drive or 100 miles. Places that are public, allow for access via car, and have wildlife like eagles, osprey, foxes, owls, geese, ducks, etc.

I made public so many places that I go to that it is not a rare thing for someone to ask me while out shooting somewhere "are you Jon?"... Seriously, and it has happened in some strange and unexpected places - like hunkered down in the grass at Centennial lake a couple years ago while shooting this. I have to wonder how many people that roughly look like me and shoot nikon get asked "are you Jon?"... Lol. It's happened at the zoo a number of times, at the dam, and I think even at Great Falls.

Anyway, with people watching and following like that, it's hard to go places and share the locations and expect to be left alone and see the wildlife in such a way that doesn't bother the wildlife. I'm not saying I don't like people saying hi, I do, I find that to be great, like my images are reaching people and maybe getting them out. But, to see unbothered wildlife takes a calm and solemn approach, one that has to be done solo.

Maybe that will be one of my plans for 2010 - to only go shooting alone. That's how I do mostly shoot, but I often feel like I *should* go shooting with friends... I don't think that works, so I'm going to make an effort to even more so shoot alone.

And after January, there's February and Eagles at Blackwater will be doing their courtship and I can try to get a good version of their cartwheeeling as compared to this one:



-50-

-Jon

Snow Geese Videos, Bombay Hook Refuge

I've taken a bunch of videos with the D300s, and only read the manual this week after I shot the below clips. I can't wait to get out there and use the camera some more.

Shooting with some huge lenses and stacked converters, should be interesting. You cannot by default stack nikon teleconverters. I have the nikon 1.4x and 1.7x. But I also have the Tamron 1.4x tc and a no name/crappy 2.0x tc, and I can combine the nikon 1.7x, and 1.4 tamron plus the 2.0 crappy one. For video it might not be that bad... Maybe on an eagle's nest, or osprey nest, idk, I plan to test that out with the new info on actually how to operate the d300s for video.






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-Jon

Time Management and Photography

Time management is something we all can benefit from. Circumstances might steer people this way or that, for me, I have lots of options (I'm single, and have a good day job), and have devoted my time to what I think will most benefit my growth as a 'nature and wildlife' photographer.

Here's my list of in focus things:

Locations Scouting

Animal Observation and Wildlife Knowledge

Gear Tech, handling, usage

Approach, techniques, taking risks, trying new, remembering old

Here's my list of out of focus things:

Image Editing Techniques

Printing

Photography Contests

Higher Education / Classes

What? Image Editing is in my 'out of focus' list? But I use Lightroom, Photoshop, Photomatix, selective this, raw processing that... Yeah, it's like that because, a superbly processed image of a boring or common subject is still boring or common. Vincent Versace said something like "I'd rather see a shot of well lit laundry, than
a poorly lit shot of an amazing building" (whatever he did say it was that light matters more than the subject...)

For me and wildlife photography I like to think that there's light and there's also animal behavior and uniqueness.

Back to "Time Management and Photography"! To simply state things, I've focused on what I think matters most. The rest will follow and add to that strongest element. I'd rather shoot for 12 hours and edit for 1 hour, and then go back out the next day and shoot for 12 hours and not have time to edit.



Without taking the risks, devoting the time to new locations, subject observation, exploration, etc, so much would be unknown and unseen to me. If it looks like there's something in my images that can't be nailed down, can't be easily explained - it's a lot things. Risks, visits, failures, observations, and drive to make it all work, for a moment here or there, 1/500th of a second at a time.



--50--


-Jon

More skimmers! Lol

The way I shoot and edit, it has its pluses and its minuses.

I shoot a LOT! I do initial quick edits on much of the images. And then very often I will and look at and pick through the edits. I will see what strikes me, what catches my eye, what I still like, and share from that. Lots of times I will continue to edit or re-edit those images.

Here are a couple of those images:


One of the gotchas with that workflow is that when I shoot a LOT of images, I often overlook entire sections of images, partial days of shooting.

Tonight I found a little spot in a trip's 3000+ images where I'd missed reviewing them a first time. These were near sunset and I got fairly close on my knees in the sand with a couple cameras and a big and small lens in hand.



And I also found a bunch of the images I made from the above spot, I had a great time shooting them. They were playful and not too skittish. I shot them at sunrise and sunset this fall probably a dozen times.



Shoot lots, chimp a little, and then shoot more. :D

--50--

-Jon

Nikon d300s Movie mode and settings

I decided to do something silly, and downloaded the manual for the D300s.

Having read through just the part for Movie starting at page 57, I think I've already learned a few important things.

I'm planning to shoot from a tripod with a long lens, so I have the camera setup in tripod mode for movies... (A couple things are different in handheld mode.)

Here are my the highlight as I see them so far. I will add to this post as I learn new things.

1) play button (hold) plus the up and down on the multiselector to adjust the screen brightness (not the exposure!)

2) play button (hold) plus the left button on the multiselector switches to adjusting the audio level/mode.

3) When in A or M mode, the current value for aperture will be the setting for aperture during movie capture. Shutter values will be set automatically.

4) When in other modes (S or P) the camera selects both aperture and shutter values will be set automatically by the camera.

5) I'm not sure about ISO in movie mode because I didn't find that section for movies in the manual yet, but I suspect it automatically switches to auto-iso, otherwise in low light it could never to 24fps since it would need to be at a minumum of 1/24th shutter speed.

6) To adjust exposure compensation for movies, use the exposure compensation setting, the same one used for still images! Someone told me about adjusting exposure by the method in above #1, but that's just the screen brightness as far as I can tell. Actual adjustment of brightness and darkness of is set the same as for photos. This is much better than what I initially thought, because it makes the exposure adjustment 'sticky' so that it survives clips, and changing modes in and out of live view / movie mode.

7) There is autofocus in movie mode, but you HAVE to use the AF-ON button while in tripod mode. I had been trying to use the shutter button, and didn't have any luck, because that doesn't work. (In handheld mode it appears the shutter button engages autofocus in live view prior to starting to record.) The way I was doing it was to focus in still image mode first, then switch to live view and then start recording.


This new information to me makes a lot of sense. I was shooting snow geese at sunrise and kept mistakenly trying to adjust the exposure but in fact I wasn't. When I got home and reviewed the movies they all seemed too bright, and I thought I had adjusted things properly...

I've only had the camera a few weeks, and I think I've only shot in manual mode for still images, and had not adjust the EV comp.

-50-

-Jon

Peak Eagle time is NOW in MD December

I think it is pretty much peak time right now for Eagles in Maryland. They migrate by the 10's and maybe 100's to the Susquehanna River to catch and eat fish at the dam.



I think there are better places to see eagles with pretty landscapes in Maryland, but for the shear action factor, the river now is the best. The eagles catch fish, compete over the fish, and often land in nearby trees to eat their meal.





-50-

-Jon
December 2009

Lots of birds or subjects and good images

Early on when I first started to see and photograph large flocks of birds I realized it is not as easy as you might hope to capture the large groups of subjects...

I remember shooting red-winged black birds and coming close to something I liked here:


And then getting this and feeling like the results were a grade higher:


I'm still trying for an even better one of the RWBBs.

Read on for more.


I was thinking about this topic in relation to the Snow Geese photo I just posted.



The above has light going for it. Light is something that can be its own element for sure. I took 3 trips this fall to places where I stayed over. Getting to wake up and be at the spot 5 minutes later means sunrise and sunset are easy to shoot. And that made me even more than before realize that it is not just about the quality of light, but the time of day and color. Color can be a tough thing to control for wildlife photography I think. Unless you only shoot at sunrise and sunset, because if you did that, then the day would be like 1 or 2 hours worth of shooting time. That might be more true than I'm ready to concede.

Here's another snow geese sunrise photo from about a year ago:


The huge number of birds and sunrise light coming in from so low, that really helps. With white birds too, the softer lower and colored light is a real effective way to make white birds photograph well.

The below was not sunrise but the clouds and stormy look helped this one (taken with Fuji S5):


What I'm getting at is related to what you have to do to make new images once you get something like this:


That's a TON of Snow Geese! But, once I got that and some similar images, I was like, uh, now what? I've been trying to get some slower shutter speed stuff to work, and have made progress and improved but I am not ready to post something from this year and that goal of an image. I got this in January of this year and need to improve on it.



This past weekend when I shot the Snow Geese for an hour or so, I mixed things up. I shot some with slow shutter speed and very stopped down. And some more wide open (f.stop) and faster shutter speeds. And lastly I shot some video with my D300s. This mixing it up can be frustrating to do, because when setup for blur, you might need to get a sharp flight shot (it could be a quick appearance of a new subject) or with a setup for video, and wider field of view, it might be time to shoot blur long lens stuff. I did ok this past weekend. What I would consider to be a failure is not to get any good stuff from at least one of those categories of shooting styles. I got some decent sharp shots, a handful of so so to ok video clips (need to work on that more, and better sound), and the blur shots came out improved I think....



Happy shootin'

-Jon

Some D300s Bald Eagle Videos

I've had the camera a few weeks now, the Nikon D300s, and I think it is very similar to the D300 for still images, and that's fine. I haven't noticed any big differences, and just remembered one thing I want to do is take another custom white balance reading with an expo disc, and then set my normal fine tune to that. I do shoot RAW, but often still set the WB to custom because it looks closer to accurate color on the back of the camera.

The 2nd memory card slot is neat, I've got a 16GB compact flash card, and an 8GB SD card with the video going to the SD card and still images to the CF card.

Read on for more and for the 2 new videos.







One thing I am not immediately happy about is the format (720p AVI) is not recognized properly by my normal (old) fav video edit app (Video Vegas). These are edited in Windows Live Movie Maker.

I'm going to try to convert in movie maker to WMV and then use Video Vegas. So far that appears to be working, but I've yet to view the output video. I suspect it is going to be lower quality/ smaller video.

I do have Nero from my DVD player and will try that, but in the past I've found VV to be the most intuitive app to use, and it has some nice overlay features for text, images, and the transitions are easy to do. Nero has seemed pretty clunky or required multiple isolated areas of work to put something together.

By comparison, the Canon HD video camera I have produces some strange format for the video, and the version of Nero that came with it crashes not just the app, but reboots my computer completely. And the update/uninstall and reinstall process is horrible. If only that camera came with a simple tool to convert the video to something standard, doing just that, I'd be much happier with the camera.

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Back to the D300s's video, I don't see how it can be very useful for moving scenes/subjects without autofocus that works well.

One plus about the size of the D300s's sensor and the resulting video is that teleconverters really don't degrade the video quality as far as I can tell. I've been setting focus in still image mode, turning on live view, then adjusting exposure (play button held down + multi-selector UP or DOWN), and then hitting record (center button of multi-selector).

Also, I use the Azden SMX-10 mic for stereo audio. In windy conditions it still picks up a LOT of wind noise, so I need to add a sock or two or something...

-Jon

Shooting from a Blind

I started to shoot from a blind a month or two ago. It's been an interesting and sometimes funny addition to my shooting style.

The blind I got is the Kwik Blind from naturescapes.net's store. It was not much money, especially when you consider the time and effort and camera gear involved... I've spent twice as much on a single memory card!

The good thing about a blind like the one I got is that it is small and light and comes with pouch on a belt so it is easy to carry around.

read on for more.






The down side to using a blind and setting up while there's light out is that (at least when I did it) the birds saw me and flew off a bit. And then it becomes a waiting game. I waited a bunch and was nearly ready to move on (40 minutes in to waiting one time) but I stuck it out. It turns in to a bet on the odds and I kept doubling down.

I had my ipod and was passing the time, and was beginning to learn the ins and outs of using a blind.

Along with the blind I got a Walkstool, the XXL one, but it turned out to be way too high to be comfortable on non-level ground. I used my LLBean low-chair instead, it has legs that are about 4 inches high and was great for getting low and sitting above the muck.




Eventually the Snowy Egret I was hoping to shoot from close up came back. It took a while, during which time he would look towards me and shake his head like he wasn't believing his eyes because part of him knew I was still there. Lol. Anyway he did come back, and then all that grass was in the way. I learned from that setup that I needed to plan the spot just a little better. Get closer to the grass to shoot through it, not from behind it so much or something like that.

For the shots in this post I was at Chincoteague along the Wildlife Drive. I'd only shot here, well, almost never. It was new to me mostly. I focused on the area where there are pipes that allow water to flow from one pond to another, where the egrets and herons spent a lot of time fishing in that concentrated flow of water.

The funny incident was when an older fella went by on a bike and circled back around to ask me what I saw with my MICROSCOPE, and kept shouting at me to get a response. I pretended, and ignored him, I was HIDING! But I learned I need to hide not just from the birds, but the people too.

And for that matter, people in cars didn't help much either. Often they'd see me or my blind and pull up right behind me or next to me and want to see what I was seeing. Some time people would get out of their car too. That was a learning experience for me no doubt. I later positioned my own car so that it was between me and the road, so there was not a spot for someone to stop DIRECTLY behind me. And with the car angled just a little it would make it harder to see my spot when they approached but easier once they were past me...

At least one time someone said from their car 'oh sorry, didn't see you there' which I believed. They were either paying little attention to my spot or the camo was working or who knows.

I've only posted a few photos to my flickr where I used the blind, since results have not been amazing yet, but I've been encouraged none the less... Here are some shots taken from the new blind:


The above was taken from the setup as seen in the first photo above. It worked pretty well, but that was also the spot where people saw me too easily.



(A person got out of their car to shoot the bird after seeing me I guess, and the bird immediately flew off, before they had the camera and tripod out.......)


(they weren't all that close but I was in the blind)


This fall I've tried a few new things, gone to a few new places, and indeed gotten some new results.

This winter and spring I will be using the blind more, shooting some video with my new D300s (and 1.7x TC), and continuing to try to push myself past my comfort zone. Photography is 'just' my hobby, but I like to take it pretty seriously and work hard to get improving results.

Happy Shooting.
-Jon

My Heron, and Winter Approaching

I guess I just realized that my heron is going to leave at some point.



The pond he's at did freeze over, although it must have been more towards January.

(read on for more)

He's a goofy fella and a blast to photograph.



I'm going to keep visiting him as often as I can. When he does decide to leave that might be it. And he's the most friendly and unique heron I've ever photographed so I don't want to miss my chances.



A couple years ago I did just that. The Yellow Crowned Night Herons were so cool, let me get so close, and I went twice and then they moved on mostly and the following year they didn't repeat their appearance at the same spot. So I got shots over 2 days but it could have been so much more if I had worked the working spot hard while it worked.... Err something.

Juvenile Yellow Crowned Night Herons - 2008




-Jon