Wood ducks

We just returned from a few days with our friends Barbara and Jon in Medford, OR.  We appreciate friends who will open their homes to us and who, when we takc advantage of their hospitality, greet us with open arms and a willingness to go with the flow.  Our main motivation was to spend a some time with Barb and Jon.  Secondary to that was the idea of getting out somewhere to enjoy the great outdoors.  We had talked about going to the Klamath Basin to watch and photograph bald eagles and owls.  Jon had called over and confirmed that the birds were there.  We learned that it was to rain down low and that meant snow on top and a sketchy drive over the Cascades.  Who needs it?   We settled on the idea of going to Ashland to visit another friend who I had not seen in several years.  I also knew that Lithia Pond was likely to have some wood ducks present and I wanted to see if I could get a decent image of one.  A call to our friend Greg in Ashland confirmed lunch details and the fact that wood ducks would be around.

We headed straight to the upper duck pond at Lithia Park on arrival in Ashland.  This was Barbara’s first outing with Bruce as a photographer and I’d encouraged her to be patient with me.  Always agreeable, she complied with a smile.  Leaving our gear in the car we walked down to see if any wood ducks were hanging out with the mallards.  Yup, there they were.  Jon and I headed back to the car and I set up the camera and tripod.  We walked down to the pond only to see the ducks fly off the bank and into the water.  I felt a bit of concern since I had hoped (and expected) that they would be more conditioned to people.  Well, it turns out that they were.  A few families with little kids showed up and the ducks swam toward them.  I didn’t really see them feeding the ducks but I suspect that there may have been some bread offered while I was focusing on duck.  My options were to sit still and hope that the birds would come back to me and accept my presence or to circle the pond with them and try for shots along the way.  I opted for the latter plan initially and ended up the day by sitting in one place to shoot a group of wood ducks that were on the bank.

I wasn’t really interested in having mallards in the images so I tried to restrain myself from shooting unless I had a pretty clear shot of a wood duck.  I’m sure it didn’t appear that I was restraining myself to my friends and Dianne… 5 frames a second will sound like wild abandon.  I’m always amazed at how far away subjects are in the viewfinder.. even with a great lens like the 200-400 on the camera.  I knew I’d be cropping to get final compositions but I was sure hoping that some of the wood ducks would be generous and get close to me.  I put a 1.4 extender on but the images looked soft on the LCD so I removed it.  I need to practice with that combination to maximize sharpness.

I moved around the pond and stopped only long enough to say good bye to the ladies who were walking back to town to visit some quilt and yarn shops.  I’m glad they had the option to do that.  Jon stayed with me and was popping images on his own camera using a “wicked sharp” Nikon lens.  He also took several shots of me at play.

image by Jon Brazier

We continued to follow the ducks from one group of kids to another and shoot as opportunities came up.

Yes, I’d prefere that the bright shape of the mallard weren’t in the background but how was I to know that this male wood duck was going to stretch his wings right there? Finally a group of male and female wood ducks jumped up onto the bank and began preening and relaxing.  I moved around to what seemed like a good vantage and got as close as I could.  I tried shooting at narrower apertures to get more depth of field but that brought the background mallards and other distractions too much into play for my tastes.  I opted to go back to f/4 or f/5.6 and accept that only one bird in the grouping would be in sharp focus…. and it really is amazing the detail you can see when viewed up close on a good monitor.   I love this lens.

And finally, I got a few frames of a single male wood duck posing with a reasonably clean background.  I remembered that I had my iPhone with me and that there is a bird ID application on it that has recorded bird calls.  I dialed up “wood duck” and hit “play”.  The birds certainly reacted.  They became much more alert and stretched out their necks.  They glanced around to see where the source of the sound was.  They didn’t panic.  They didn’t fly or show any real anxiety.  They just looked attentive and curious.  I suppose that I’ll get some comments suggesting that I was harassing the birds… my bad.  I really don’t know that I was or wasn’t but it did cross my mind and if the birds had really seemed upset I would have not done it again.  It’s not like I was playing the call of a bald eagle or other predator.  Comments?  Thoughts?

Jon kept telling me that I could continue as long as I wanted but I felt that I’d gotten enough for the time being and I knew that Greg and our wives were waiting for lunch.  We called it morning and headed into town to find the group.  A quiet lunch let us catch up with each other’s lives and laugh over a variety of organic, free range oysters and such.  Gotta love Ashland and all its weirdness.  Portland doesn’t have a lock on that quality.  And let’s not forget Eugene.  We stopped in there today for lunch with Deigh and a visit to the Sam Abell exhibit “Amazonia” at the campus art museum.  The good times just kept coming.

When we arrived home we realized that that the time had just flown by.  It was relaxing.  It was fun.  We enjoyed ourselves  and thank our friends for making time to be available and willing to share their time with us.

Simple theme

As my friend Eric pointed out recently, sometimes a guy just needs to get out and shoot something.   On one recent walk Dianne and I saw a small tree with a horizontal branch lined with symmetric water drops.  No camera but the placement of the drops and the light stamped the image in my mind.  Once the sun rose this morning the clouds started to lift a bit and I saw a similar scene in our neighbor’s maple tree.  I grabbed the camera and headed out to see if I could come home with an image I liked.  I’ve done this a number of times before but if you’ve ever tried to get a crisp focus image of a water drop and keep the background clean you’ll know that it can be a challenge.  I ended up down at Commonwealth Park and paused to watch the blue heron preen itself on a branch near the top of a tree under the path.  My target was a lot smaller and more manageable though so I approached a bunch of shrubs and started looking for light on water drops.  Next time you see a branch that has these little jewels on it take time to get close and wander around to see how the drops light up with different view angles.  Sometimes they just disappear and other times they blast you with specular light.  I wanted a clean background which meant that I’d be looking for no background elements within at least 15 feet of the drops.  I poked around and shot several different groups of drops on different branches.  I learned again that even the slightest wind will create movement and spoil a frame.  I also learned that once you touch one branch the whole darn bush quivers for what seems like forever.  Sometimes that tiny movement of the tripod leg creates enough movement to make the drop you just spent 10 minutes focusing on and waiting for stillness to drop and disappear entirely.  Numerous false starts and impatient shots got deleted upon review both on-site and at home.  After reviewing the shots I kept from the outing this one tops my list.  It isn’t complicated and I seem to prefer things like that.  Quiet, simple, calming…. all good things I think.

Another visit to Ridgefield

It’s Saturday.

I’ve worked all week getting ready to display prints at Sellwood Yoga Studio soon.

Dianne is at yoga until 12:30 today.

It’s not raining…much.

I haven’t pressed the shutter at all this week.

Time to visit Ridgefield to see if the water is up and if new birds are present.  I went out at sunrise and found the water is ponded at high elevation.  Lots of shots from goose hunters to the west of where I parked.  No one else around that looked like they were interested in birds for viewing… just folks who wanted the area to provide dinner or a bit of sport.  They all seemed to drive four wheel drive trucks.  Go figure.

Unfazed I mounted the 200-400 on the camera, grabbed my goofy bag of beans to use as window mount and set off around the loop.  The water was quite high relative to recent visits.  Lots of water where I’m used to see fields.  Canals were full to capacity and water was flowing between ponds and canals everywhere I looked.  I could hear geese and cranes in the distance.  I’m guessing that I was wrong about the cranes since I never saw one.  I’ll have to find out if swans sound similar to cranes.

I found a pair of swans in the first real pond along the loop.  They were quite distant from the road but I waited and they eventually came closer.  Darn challenging to shoot white birds in dim light.  I had the ISO cranked to 1600 and hoped that I’d get a decently sharp frame.  Long distance, slow shutter speeds and flat light gives you this.

Then onward to see what else is waking up.  Herons seemed to be the most common birds of the day.  Some were so close to the road that I was surprised by them and could only get their head and a piece of neck into the viewfinder at 200mm.  Good grief.  I looped around and stopped when ever I saw something that attracted my eye.  I have so many heron pictures that I really should be very discriminating in my shot selection.  Like the sandhill cranes at the Bosque, the herons at Ridgefield just keep drawing me in.  At least I can delete the duplicates and bad frames.  Here are a couple I kept from today’s shoot.

But my favorite image from today surprised me a bit.  Usually I tend toward shooting “tight” and trying to fill the frame with the subject.  If anything, I have a tendency to get too tight.  This shot works for me in that it shows the bird in context with its environment.  I love the intelligence it shows by being on the small mound of vegetation.  The resting pose tends to minimize the size of the bird compared to a stalking or hunting pose when the neck is fully extended.  These are not small birds but I like that it appears small compared to its surroundings.

Time to get back to work.  I’m thinking a trip to the coast is in order tomorrow since it is supposed to be a bit sunny.  Gotta make hay when you can.

Bosque del Apache

Dianne and I recently visited the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge near San Antonio, New Mexico (yes, NM… not TX).  I posted several entries to this blog during our visit.  Those entries were done from a little netbook PC without any access to picture editing software or color calibration.  At best, the images were a compromise based on circumstance.  I’ve been working my way through the nearly 6,000 image files we brought home.  Friends have had to endure a slide show of some of the images when they came to say Hi over the holidays.  I guess that there is something about birds and deep colors that captures people’s attention.  I’m not done processing the images yet and there will be a lot less images on the disk when I’m done… how many images of 1, 2, 3 or more cranes against a blue sky or clouds do you really need?  We found it almost impossible to NOT press the shutter release when the birds were right on us and I’m glad we did.  It’s relatively easy to edit and delete and not so easy to return to get “the shot”.  I’ll post some more images from the Pueblo Missions we visited and from White Sands National Monument after I get through editing them.   The images below are a good representation of the types of scenes you witness during the course of a day within “the Bosque”.  Amazing landscape and amazing birds.  We highly recommend that you find a way to visit if you’re in the area… especially between November and March when the sandhill cranes and snow geese stop on their annual migration.

One cold heron

Well, I assume that the heron was cold since it was 24 degrees and there is ice on its back.  My fingers were still comfortable in gloves as I set up to photograph this heron at Commonwealth pond this morning just after sunrise.  This was the first time that I’d been this close to this heron at this pond.  I have several shots of the bird when it is in a tree or on the other side of the pond.  This morning it was sitting about 10 yards from the west edge of the viewing platform.  I skidded my way into position on the frost covered platfom.  The heron moved around a bit but basically just ignored me.  I’m sure it was alert to any fast movement on my part so I danced a slow dance to get to a place where the platform railing didn’t obscure my view.  My goal was to be ready for the bird’s flight which I knew would happen sometime… with a heron you just never really know.  My hunch was that as the sun got higher and the number of people increased the bird would take off for the other side of the pond.  I got set up and shot several portraits as I waited.

The heron turned its back to me and started to stretch.   I jumped at the chance to get some shots of the behavior since I don’t have any in my archives.

When the bird jumped out of the water and started walking up to the grass near the platform I thought it might be over for me.  If it flew to the south or east the backgrounds would be unrewarding.  If it flew to the west there was a chance that I’d be able to frame it with a plain background.  I wanted it to fly north… hey, I can hope.  It didnt’ stay on the grass long and then returned to the water where it posed for a moment on top of the rocks you see above.  A few more pictures on the card.  Then I noticed the behavior that spells flight.  I pushed the focus button and got ready.  It flew north.  Granted, this meant that the bird was flying away from me and that some of the photos would be looking at its backside.  For the first few frames though I got enough of the profile to make a pleasing picture.

I hung around awhile longer and then headed for home and a cup of hot coffee.  I suppose that it might be a better shot for some if the wings were totally sharp.  Personally, I like the out-of-focus tips of the wings since it captures the movement of the bird and adds a bit of dynamics to the shot.  I also like the minimal nature of the whole frame and I’m really glad the bird flew north!

On a clear day

Yesterday was the first clear day in the last week and I couldn’t resist getting out to shoot a bit before heading off to help Eric and Traci move their belongings to their new house.  Eric introduced me to the Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge and we’ve both been anxious for the water level in the ponds to rise and bring the birds closer to our lenses.  I’ve gone out a few times to check the progress of the water and, so far, find it negligible in spite of conversations with folks in the visitor center who insist that the water is rising.  These good volunteers are there a lot more than I am and I can’t dispute their observations.  All I know is that the water is still much lower than the “full of water” reports I get from other visitors when I ask how high the levels actually get.

Yesterday was an anomaly in my limited experience at the refuge… no birds in the ponds that are nearest to the visitor center.  All the geese were settled onto some mud flats.  No pintails in the ponds.  No mallard pairs.  I hung out for about an hour and waited for something to stir the birds into flight and relocation.  Nada.  A harrier flew overhead and circled a bit but stayed way out of range of my lens.  I finally gave up and headed back toward Eric’s apartment complex.  I headed west and turned north on Roy Rogers Road and stopped at the other Refuge viewing area.  I’d seen a calendar offer at the visitor center that features the refuge buildings and Mt. Hood.  Pretty nice shot and I figured it had to be taken with a long lens from the vantage off Roy Rogers Road.  Indeed it was.  I’m going to go back next time and see if the calendar photo has the power towers taken out… I admit I’d love to clone them out of this view.  I waited until there were some birds in the viewfinder and shot a few frames.  The light isn’t very even on the west side of the buildings but the shot shows the setting pretty nicely.  I laughed a bit when I looked at the image on the screen and wondered if I would have been seen if someone else had taken the shot while I was standing near the bright wall on the north-most building in this view.

When the water finally does get up in elevation I think I’ll go back on a clear afternoon and try to get more light on the buildings and some water in the view as well.  The mountain will be snow covered for a long time now… just waiting for some more clear skies.

Still learning

This morning Dianne and I drove out to Sherwood to deliver some image files to a friend.  We decided to take the D90 camera and get familiar with the movie making capabilities so we don’t have to do that with frozen fingers the first morning at the Bosque del Apache.  I  threw in the other camera with the long lens just in case there was something notable at the Tualatin River NWR.  We set up on the observation deck and played with some movies.  Di spotted a bald eagle sitting on a berm way in the distance.  We soon learned that there were two of them out there.  The first one that took off brought the ducks and geese into a swarm but we both concentrated on the eagle.  This one was good practice for the next one a few minutes later.  The second eagle flew quite a bit closer to us than the first and gave us a good look at it as it passed overhead.  Too bad I didn’t have the flash and Better Beamer on the camera to get some light into the underside of this magnificent bird.  Like I say… still learning.

I’m happy with the clarity of the bird but not thrilled with composition and the background.  I got several shots of the birds as they passed power towers in the distance and more when they were in front of a jungle of buildings and urban debris.  All I can say is that I’m really glad that I’m not shooting film while I’m learning.

Too late? Right on time?

I admit that I was pretty comfortable sitting in the living room drinking a cup of coffee and reading a bit this morning when the local news came on.  I was looking at pretty bright skies and was a bit surprised to see the view from the OHSU “tram-cam” showing the city in pretty deep fog.  My plans for the morning changed rather abruptly.  I packed an assortment of gear, kissed Dianne goodbye and headed for Pittock Mansion.  I kept telling myself that “it will be what it will be” but I was hoping to still find the city fogged in.  A young man was standing by railing at the viewpoint when I approached.  His first words: “it was really spectacular a half hour ago”.  I can only imagine.  The fog was drifting around and was strongly backlit to the south.  I cussed at the foreground bushes again and started shooting a few series of images for panos.  It was what it was.  Not a bad way to start the day all-in-all.  And, yes, the goose really did fly through the viewfinder at just the right time.  Guess I wasn’t too late after all.

Shooting blind

Eric and I met for the first time at Pittock Mansion one night about a month ago.  We have exchanged emails and FaceBook posts since then and discovered that we both enjoy photography and being “out there”.  I enjoy bird photography even if I can’t identify too many species.  I’m learning bird behavior and trying to teach myself some discipline in camera techniques to maximize my chances of getting birds captured in a sharp photoraph.  I was pretty excited when Eric told me that he had reserved the photo blind at the Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge and invited me to go along.

We met up at Eric’s place and headed out for the refuge.  We shouldered packs and walked the 1+ miles into the blind as the sky started to get some light.  I’ve never been in a bird blind before muchless shot from one.  This one is pretty nice but I was a bit dissapointed in the camo webbing they have hung on the roof and how it limited the vertical photo options in what seemed to be an already confined opening.  Little plywood sliders allow photographers to alter the view from 3 sides of the blind while still keeping the interior of the blind fairly inconspicuous to the birds outside.  We settled in and started trying to figure out how to set tripods for use or just use the window sills as supports.  Neither of us had brought any beanbag supports along.  I quickly opted to use the tripod after some really pathetic attempts to shoot using the window sill.  I was also a bit dissapointed in the backgrounds you get from much of the available views.  Power towers, highways, houses, barns…. not what I wanted in my photos.  Luckily there were a few views that excluded the debris and allowed a nice multi-layered background of trees and hills.

We shot for about 3 hours and opted to head back to the observation deck by the visitor center.  We stopped to photograph the nesting owl along the way.  I tried flash this time but I think it will work a lot better once I get a Better Beamer.  The photo below typifies the many that I took from the blind.

The birds were really quite distant from the blind since the lakes are still quite low.  Another month or two and the water will be lapping at the blind’s supports and the birds should be a different story all together.  We noticed that there are opening along the floor of the blind as well.  These would allow us to lay on the floor and shoot at a bird’s eye level.  That would solve much of the background issues as well.  If the birds are closer the focus depth of field would also help isolate the birds from the background.  I’m pretty sure that Eric and I will return when the water is up and the forecast is for a clear day.

The photos below illustrate the type of shot one can get from the observation deck near the visitor center.  This deck is on a river terrace about 30 feet above the floodplain.  The lakes are distant so the birds are small and a long lens is a prerequisite unless you just want to shoot some nice grand landscapes.  These images were shot with a 200-400mm lens.  A few had a 1.7x in addition.  I’m looking forward to a time when the birds might be closer.

A casual visit

I’m not feeling terribly guilty about it.  Really.  It seemed like the natural thing to do today.  You see I’m going to hole up for several hours in a bird blind with a relatively new friend, Eric, this coming Saturday.  The blind is at the Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge and I’d never been there before.  Sure, I’ve driven by the turnoff several times but never took the time to go in.  So, motivated to get familiar with the place before sunrise on Saturday and hoping for some practice taking photos of moving birds before our trip to Bosque del Apache next month, I grabbed the gear and headed out while it was still dry.  My goals were simple:  (1)get a feel for the place and the way birds move around during the day and (2) practice wing shooting birds in good light.

I was greeted by a nice lady volunteer as I put my camera pack on and grabbed the tripod for the hike out toward the blind.  She advised that there was a snow goose – “first this year” right down below the visitor center.  She did everything but tell me I was a fool if I didn’t go over there right then to get a look and a picture.  I wandered over to the patio viewing area and gazed out at the mostly drained wetlands.  Lots of geese and ducks.  I suppose that there could have been a snow goose in there but, really, I wasn’t terribly excited by the view or the light.  Off I went on the hike to the north and west.  I ran into a guy walking out and he advised me that there was the “picture of a lifetime” waiting just ahead.  He gave me directions and could barely contain his enthusiasm while sharing the location of an owl sleeping in a tree just across a creek from the trail.  He told me that a volunteer, Ron, had the bird staked out with a spotting scope and that I couldn’t miss it.  Well, I did.  I kept walking past where the bird should have been.  I scanned and looked… no dice.  Pretty soon I ran into Ron and he asked if I’d seen the owl.  He admitted that it really wasn’t all that unexpected to have missed it… I knew I liked this guy.  He took me back and put his scope the bird.  Good grief… even with the longest lens I have the bird was still a very small part of the frame.  And it was like midnight dark in the area.  I jacked the ISO up to 1600 and practiced what I know about “proper long lens technique”.  I’m not really thrilled with the results but it is honestly one of the few owl photos I’ve ever taken.

I walked out to the wetland observation deck and located the trail to the blind I’ll share with Eric this Saturday.  Since I didn’t have any reservation to the blind I turned around and headed back to the car without a vist to see what it offered.  I went back to the visitor center and set up on the patio near the refuge office.  I thought I’d just see if I could get any decent light on birds as they flew in.  Anyone who’s been with me knows that I took a lot of shots with crappy light… just no discipline I guess.  Every once in awhile the light got bright and birds were flying in the best direction to “light up”.  All of the following images were taken using the 200-400 lens with a 1.7x add-on.  None of the images are sharp enough to pass for a print but they are close.  Poor technique.. probably.  OK, most likely.  I’ll try to do more shots without the 1.7x and see if the image sharpness doesn’t improve.

At one point I heard a clamor of geese and ducks in the distance as they all scattered to the skies.  Then another wave of birds left from a pond closer to me.  I scanned the sky for the hawk or eagle that promoted the defensive behavior of the birds.  Here it came… right at me.  I put the focus mark on the eagle and silently hoped that the continuous servo was engaged.  I took a series of shots as the eagle flew right over me.  Was I ready for this?  Nope.  Was I excited?  Yup.  Did I get anything worth showing?  You decide.