Birding at the Airport again

jedirunner · May 27, 2013

Went out with 3 of the kids to Provo Airport again to see what we could find.

Today's finds:

Pelicans (very active, flying all over the place, in groups of up to 5 pelicans)
Greg Blue Heron (and *STILL* only able to get a blurry shot! Grrr... still hunting an actual in-focus shot of a GBH)
Caspian Tern
Red-winged and Yellow-headed black birds
Adult and juvenile Black-crowned Night Herons
Caspian Kingbird
Kildeer
Double-crested Cormorant
Snowy Egret (liked putting on a show for us today ... most of the shots are blurry ... hard to expose for this bright white bird )
Geese with goslings
White-faced Ibis (I think ... it's #3 below)
Coot
Cinnamon Teal
Clark's Grebe
1 little song-bird I haven't yet identified

Here are some of the better shots today:

1. Kildeer (I would have liked for him to turn his head for me to get some light on his eyes. I mostly like the photo as an easy way to see the DoF on the ground. Educational for me and the kids just how shallow DoF can be in some cases)

2. Snowy Egret (put on a great show for us as we kept encountering it, as it'd fly away, pose a bit, and then hide for us to discover again. Unfortunately, most are so far away that they had to be cropped down a lot. I'm also learning that they are so white and brilliant in the sun that it's hard to shoot them without blowing the whites. Would love advice to deal with this.)

3. I think this is a White-faced Ibis. This is a crop out of a flock of over 15 of them all flying together. I just liked this set of 5 best.

4. Adult Black-crowned Night Heron. I love his "mullet". There were a couple juveniles we spotted as well. I'll always have a soft spot for these guys, as it was the first bird (several weeks ago) that my daughter and I actually intentionally looked up and researched to identify. You'll always "remember your first", I suppose.

5. End with a couple of shots of a Yellow-headed Black Bird

6.

Thanks

Kevin

WesternGuy · May 28, 2013

Kevin, great shots. As far as shooting the egrets (this one looks pretty good), brilliant white birds on a darker background, have you tried an exposure compensation to get your histogram into the right side of the graph. A lot of how you use exposure compensation will depend on the type of metering that you use as well. I find when I have been photographing these birds, a lot depends on the background as the meter in your camera is trying to make everything 18% grey. Sometime I try a +ve exposure compensation and sometime I try a -ve one. I will have a look through a bunch of the images I shot in February while I was in Florida on a bird photography workshop with Art Morris and see if I can find any of mine that might provide you with some help.

WesternGuy

ryanparker · May 28, 2013

Nice set, I like what you've done.

jaomul · May 28, 2013

Very nice. Especially like the crop on 3

sm4him · May 28, 2013

You have quite the airport out there in Utah! I suspect the only thing I'd find at our airport are geese, mourning doves, starlings and perhaps the occasional GBH flying between rivers. Although, after seeing all these, you can bet, I'll be checking at least a couple of our smaller airports. In fact, there's a small airport just about three miles from me called Island Home Airport, mostly private charters and such, and so named because it's situated right next to the river, with a bunch of little islands nearby.

Nice photos; I like #2,3 and 4 the best. Just got some pictures of black-crowned herons myself this weekend, which was a first for me. Cool little birds! I wish #3 was more coming towards us than going away, but I do like the formation, and sometimes, you just take what you can get.

jedirunner · May 28, 2013

WesternGuy said:
Kevin, great shots. As far as shooting the egrets (this one looks pretty good), brilliant white birds on a darker background, have you tried an exposure compensation to get your histogram into the right side of the graph. A lot of how you use exposure compensation will depend on the type of metering that you use as well. I find when I have been photographing these birds, a lot depends on the background as the meter in your camera is trying to make everything 18% grey. Sometime I try a +ve exposure compensation and sometime I try a -ve one. I will have a look through a bunch of the images I shot in February while I was in Florida on a bird photography workshop with Art Morris and see if I can find any of mine that might provide you with some help.

WesternGuy

Thanks for the suggestions. I haven't done almost anything with exposure compensation. I shoot all manual mode, so I'll need to be more conscientious when firing off shots on the egret. So far, our trips have involved walking and scaring up (or otherwise finding) birds to shoot, so I haven't had much time to think about most of the shots. As we get more settled down (which I hope we will) and find spots to sit for a while and actually *watch* the birds, I think I'll have more time to be intentional like this.

ryanparker said:
Nice set, I like what you've done.

thx.

jaomul said:
Very nice. Especially like the crop on 3

thx. Yeah, before the crop it showed a very large flock of them, but was messy.

sm4him said:
You have quite the airport out there in Utah! I suspect the only thing I'd find at our airport are geese, mourning doves, starlings and perhaps the occasional GBH flying between rivers. Although, after seeing all these, you can bet, I'll be checking at least a couple of our smaller airports. In fact, there's a small airport just about three miles from me called Island Home Airport, mostly private charters and such, and so named because it's situated right next to the river, with a bunch of little islands nearby.

Nice photos; I like #2,3 and 4 the best. Just got some pictures of black-crowned herons myself this weekend, which was a first for me. Cool little birds! I wish #3 was more coming towards us than going away, but I do like the formation, and sometimes, you just take what you can get.

If you go to maps.google.com and just search for "provo airport", you'll see why this little community airport is so nice for water fowl of all types. Marshy bay to the south. Protected mote (protected by the perimeter road dike) around much of the south, east, and west of the airport. Lake all along the west of the airport. It's just a fabulous airport for this

Kevin

WesternGuy · May 28, 2013

Kevin, I went back and looked at my egret shots form last February in Florida. I found that when I was shooting the egrets against a lighter or white background like a overcast sky, I was using an exposure compensation of +1 to +2 EV, so I guess if you opened up 1 or 2 stops in manual you might get the same thing. When I was shooting them against a darker background such as foliage/trees in the background, then my exposure compensation varied from about -1/3 EV to as much as -2 EV. I would guess that this means for manual, stop down up to 2 stops. I found I had to experiment a bit, as you will probably have to do. Experimenting with digital is cheap and so I don't mind doing it and, it is also a bit of a learning experience for me. :mrgreen:

It really comes down as to whether or not you need to let more light in to capture the detail without blowing out the bird, or whether you need to have less light on your sensor, again to avoid blowing out the bird. I don't mind if the sky is blown out in the case of BIFs or if the shadows are too dark, as I want the fine detail in the feathers of the bird to show up. As well, I want to the detail around the eyes to be very well defined.

I find that, for me, exposure compensation varies depending on which lens I was using. In the case of the egret shots, I was using a 100-400 lens at lengths from 100 to 400. I was also using a 600mm lens for some of the shots. I have also read that the exposure compensation will vary from camera to camera even within the same manufacturer. It will also vary between different brands of cameras. I suspect that all this variation is really a function of the different sensor sizes and manufacturing process. Hope this helps.

WesternGuy

coastalconn · May 28, 2013

Nice Shots Kevin!

jedirunner · May 28, 2013

WesternGuy said:
Kevin, I went back and looked at my egret shots form last February in Florida. I found that when I was shooting the egrets against a lighter or white background like a overcast sky, I was using an exposure compensation of +1 to +2 EV, so I guess if you opened up 1 or 2 stops in manual you might get the same thing. When I was shooting them against a darker background such as foliage/trees in the background, then my exposure compensation varied from about -1/3 EV to as much as -2 EV. I would guess that this means for manual, stop down up to 2 stops. I found I had to experiment a bit, as you will probably have to do. Experimenting with digital is cheap and so I don't mind doing it and, it is also a bit of a learning experience for me. :mrgreen:

It really comes down as to whether or not you need to let more light in to capture the detail without blowing out the bird, or whether you need to have less light on your sensor, again to avoid blowing out the bird. I don't mind if the sky is blown out in the case of BIFs or if the shadows are too dark, as I want the fine detail in the feathers of the bird to show up. As well, I want to the detail around the eyes to be very well defined.

I find that, for me, exposure compensation varies depending on which lens I was using. In the case of the egret shots, I was using a 100-400 lens at lengths from 100 to 400. I was also using a 600mm lens for some of the shots. I have also read that the exposure compensation will vary from camera to camera even within the same manufacturer. It will also vary between different brands of cameras. I suspect that all this variation is really a function of the different sensor sizes and manufacturing process. Hope this helps.

WesternGuy

Yes, that all makes sense, of course. I understand it well enough. I just don't think to actually do it when I'm out shooting. I guess it's just being inexperienced to the point where it doesn't yet occur to me to make use of certain tools at my disposal (under/over expose, in this case). I find every time I go shooting, something else I've read from the forums, or other net or book resources comes to mind, and I start adding gradually with every shoot. Overriding camera exposure will occur to me one day while I'm out shooting. (btw, other things I tend to forget to experiment with are metering variations, and autofocus settings. still need to work on really mastering those as well).

Thanks for the reminder and description of what you did, as this will help reinforce it for me.

coastalconn said:
Nice Shots Kevin!

Thank you sir!

Kevin

Aloicious · May 28, 2013

nice shots! #3 is indeed a group of white faced ibis.

jedirunner · May 28, 2013

Aloicious said:
nice shots! #3 is indeed a group of white faced ibis.

Thanks, and Thanks for the confirmation.

Kevin

flow · May 28, 2013

I like your #4. I'll always remember my first BC heron too ... but in my case it's because shortly after I moved here, the first one I had ever seen leapt out of the bushes to spear a frog less than a foot from my toes!