Every year we look forward to spending time in Florida over the March Break. Our typical schedule is to spend three or four days on the Atlantic coast in Melbourne and then a week at our timeshare in Kissimmee. These locations provide easy access to our favourite bird photography sites which include the Viera Wetlands, Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, and Joe Overstreet to name a few. March is a great time for bird photography as many of the birds are in their annual breeding plumage and the winter migrants have not yet left for their flights north. This winter we were able to photograph a number of different birds, and although no new species were captured we did manage to photograph Black Skimmers skimming, something we’d been trying to do for many years. Todays post is a compilation of the birds we saw this March, with the exception of the skimmers which will be part of another post.
Over the years we’ve photographed many Roseate Spoonbills, but always in flight or perched in trees. This was the first time we were able to get close to them on the ground (Blackpoint Trail, Merritt Island).
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Great Blue Heron Family (Viera Wetlands).
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Another Viera favourite is the Limpkin, which is one of two birds that are locally endangered in Florida that eat Apple Snails almost exclusively. This first image catches the Limpkin shaking the rain drops off.
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The other Apple Snail enjoying, locally endangered Florida bird, is the Snail Kite. This one was seen at Joe Overstreet.
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Other Snail Kite images from past years can be found in the Hawks, Falcons & Kites Gallery. While at Joe Overstreet we found this juvenile Yellow-bellied Sapsucker.
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Another common Florida Woodpecker is the Red-bellied Woodpecker (Merritt Island).
The American Bittern is a large bird that is not easily seen as it blends so well into its chosen surroundings where they extend their necks to parallel the grass, which along with their striated coloration makes them almost invisible (Viera Wetlands).
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A bird that is seemingly never inconspicuous is the Anhinga, which because it lacks oil secreting glands to waterproof its feathers, must dry out in the sun after being in the water (Viera Wetlands).
America’s official bird, the Bald Eagle is a regular patroller of the Viera Wetlands airspace.
One of the cutest birds in Viera was this little Pied-billed Grebe.
If the Grebe is a bird everyone likes, perhaps the other end of the spectrum belongs to the gulls, which rarely garner much attention, although when one flies overhead with a big fish, you just have to take the shot (Joe Overstreet).
These Terns were photographed at Viera and Joe Overstreet.
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To close this post, something completely different; the Florida Soft Shelled Turtle (Viera Wetlands). It is the largest soft shelled turtle in North America and is very fast on both land and in the water as evidenced by the webbed feet visible in the picture.
I trust you’ve enjoyed this rather eclectic grouping of some of the birds we enjoyed seeing in Florida this year. In the next post we will feature three birds which provided some memorable photographic opportunities, the Painted Bunting, Little Green Heron and Black Skimmer.
Easter marks the high point of history for the Christian as we celebrate the crucifixion, burial and resurrection of Christ, without doubt establishing his credentials as the Saviour. This year our church, Calvary Baptist Church, performed an Easter Musical entitled “Saviour” on Good Friday Morning which was attended by over one thousand people.
Being devoid of musical talent, my contribution was to photograph the presentation, the results of which are the subject of today’s post.
Event photography always presents challenges, not the least of which are there are no ‘do overs’, you only have one chance to get it right. Secondly, you need to capture the feel of the event, so that the viewer of the images gets a glimpse of what it would have been like to be there, and those who were performing at or attending the event should be able to relive the experience through viewing the photographs. I trust both of those ideals are met with these images.
Event photography presents numerous and significant technical challenges that must be successfully navigated in order to achieve good results. The venues are generally dark, and lighting is typically achieved through multiple point sources (spotlights) that continually move about and change colour as well. We will talk more about dealing with various challenges in a minute using images to provide examples.
Event photography, especially in low light situations, is one of those things that requires a good camera body that functions well at the high ISO’s required to generate shutter speeds fast enough to capture the action without blurring the subjects. The Canon 5D MkIII used for all of today’s images is a terrific high ISO performer and all the images in this post were taken at ISO 4000. I purposely did not perform any noise reduction in the post processing of these images so that you can see how clean the files are right of the camera, even at ISO 4000. Fast glass is also a big help in low light and if you look at the EXIF data you will see many of the images were taken at f/2.8. Four different lenses were used for this photo-shoot; 16-35/2.8L (wide angle zoom), 24-105/4L (short telephoto zoom), 100/2.8L (portraits), and 70-200/2.8L (telephoto zoom).
When covering events, get there early and look for some unique compositions and angles that are all about capturing the feel of the performance.
I aways start with the wide angle and get shots that show the performance on a large scale as well as capturing the venue and the audience. Move around the auditorium (if allowed) and get a number of different views.
Side views of the auditorium are the best vantage point to highlight the audience.
And from the other side of the auditorium.
Event lighting changes quickly but the effects are dramatic and powerfully contribute to the effectiveness of the performance. It’s difficult to capture those rapid changes photographically and retain the ‘feel’ of things. These next two images are from a similar vantage point with the same spot lights visible in both. In the first, the primary spots are yellow (1/160 sec f/4).
In this shot the spots are white and I’ve over exposed it a bit to highlight the beams of lights diffusing in the smoke. (1/125 sec f/4).
Photographing soloists is perhaps the most challenging as they are virtually always in a bright spotlight against a much darker back ground. This creates big problems for the camera metering system which ‘sees’ the primarily dark scene and tends to ignore the small real-estate occupied by the brightly lit person in the frame. The result is an overexposed person with blown highlights and a result that is destined for the round file. To correct this problem you need to underexpose the meter reading by two to four stops depending on the situation. All of the soloists shown here were underexposed three stops with the exception of the first which was four (the less area in the frame occupied by the light, the greater the compensation required to preserve the highlights). The pleasant result of underexposing to preserve highlights is the creation of even darker back grounds which makes for an uncluttered dramatic image.
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Always be ready to take a good exposure very quickly. The red back lighting in this next shot only lasted for a few seconds but provided an interesting dynamic to the image.
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Most serious DSLR users shoot in RAW format (as opposed to JPEG) and for event photography using RAW is essential because of the great latitude it provides in post processing. RAW files are like digital negatives and contain all the data captured by the sensor at the time of the exposure, which although creating large files, allows for manipulation of that data in post processing, including exposure and white balance. When you shoot in JPEG format, in order to make smaller files, the camera strips out a lot of ‘non-essential’ data before writing the image to the memory card in the camera. Obviously the data removed is not available for modification in post processing and unfortunately exposure and white balance are two of the many things removed when you shoot JPEG’s. The variable and dynamic lighting conditions inherent with event photography demands you take advantage of the insurance provided by shooting in RAW.
I trust you have enjoyed a wonderful Easter weekend and thanks for taking the time to go through this post. As always, your questions and comments are much appreciated.
Although I’ve been fortunate to see Short-eared Owls (SEOW) over the years, a good photograph of one has eluded me. It seems the longer you’ve waited, the more effort you will invest to finally get that desired shot, so perhaps not surprisingly I left home at 5:00 a.m. on a winter morning when the temperature was -25°C to embark on a 600 km round trip looking for Short-eared Owls. Fortunately, to make it an enjoyable day, I met up with my equally dedicated friend Arni and off we went. The plan was to be in the area where the owls had be seen for sunrise and although we did our part, there were no Short-eared Owls in sight. We looked faithfully for a couple of hours until Arni spotted one in a tree not too far off the road. We were relieved to find the owl however the nature of wildlife photography is that you often invest considerable time and expense to see a bird or animal and they simply don’t show up on cue. Seeing what you set out for is never a certainty and some times you must drive away empty, but when you are blessed to see what you set out to find you are elated and a good photograph becomes a bonus.
The Short-eared Owl Arni spotted was a fair distance off the road in the yard of a large farm, so we obtained permission from the owners of the farm to access their property to take some photographs. Here is the owl, nestled deep into the needles of an Eastern White Pine Tree.
Unfortunately the owl flushed when we were about 100′ from the tree and we watched it fly down the road and perch in another tree. You can imagine our surprise when we packed up and drove down to the tree to find that it had joined six other Short-eared Owls! Seven owls in the same tree was quite an unusual sight. Here is a snapshot of two of them.
The Short-eared Owl shares a similar range and habitat as its cousin the Long-eared Owl and they even look somewhat similar with the exception of their short ear tufts and the horizontal black feathers around the orbit. Their small ear tufts are often not displayed however can be seen in the above two images. Short-eared Owls have always been one of my favourite looking owls primarily because of their eyes, which have been referred to as mascara eyes because of the unique black feathering around the eyes. The next few images will demonstrate those alluring mascara eyes.
The Short-eared Owl is a globally common owl and enjoys one of the largest geographic distributions amongst the owls, being found on all continents with the exception of Australia and Antarctica. It is however in Ontario listed as a species at risk and of special concern.
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Capturing in flight images of the Short-eared Owls was a treat as they are largely nocturnal birds that roost through the day.
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After photographing these beautiful birds we headed about 15km further south west to the shores of Lake Erie not too far from the little hamlet of Selkirk in search of some other unusual birds that had been reported in the area, however as it often happens , none of the expected birds made an appearance so we made our way home stopping at Lynde Shores Conservation Area in Whitby to see a resident Red-bellied Woodpecker (RBWO). Although it was very cold, the light was nice and the birds cooperative, so we were able to get a few images.
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It’s always good to have some black sunflower seeds in your pocket as the seemingly ever present Chickadees (BCCH) are usually in need of a snack.
The week after the images in this post were taken Deb & I headed to Florida for a couple of weeks and were fortunate enough to spend a few of those days birding and collecting enough images to put together one or two future blog posts. So the next post will feature some birds of the south where the warmer temperatures were a most welcome respite.
All of the Short-eard Owl and Red-bellied Woodpecker in today’s post were taken with a Canon 5D MkIII and Canon EF 500 L IS lens with a 1.4X TC for a focal length of 700mm. The Chickadee video was via my iPhone 🙂
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