Month: November 2011

Some of the photos I took at Belfair last week reminded me why I’m so fond of photography — pictures remind me how beautiful even the most common things are.

Starlings are an invasive species here in America, and are often killed in the thousands in attempts to keep them from displacing native species. So, it’s far to easy to forget what a beautiful bird they are in breeding plumage.

If I’d realized this was a Starling when I pointed my camera at it, I probably wouldn’t have taken its picture at all.

About the only thing Mallards and Starlings have in common is that they are so common. So common we hardly notice them,

which is really a shame because when in breeding colors the yellow beak and shimmering green head are startling beautiful.

The weather around seems to be trying to make up for our late summer, though it isn’t helping the tomatoes, which perished in frost several weeks ago. Despite forecasts and despite the fact that I need to get some things done around the house and in the yard, I spent most of the last week out taking photos.

After visiting Nisqually for the first time in a while Monday, I went back to Belfair on Tuesday. I was rewarded by seeing John and by a few shots worth showing. I like this shot of a wren whose singing couldn’t be ignored.

I also like this shot of a Marsh Hawk that flew ridiculously close to me, so quickly that I wasn’t able to get a shot until he was quite far away.

It was also nice to see the Great Blue Herons back, oblivious to photographers and apparently everything else.

Good thing this one seemed to be wearing his winter coat because the winter cold finally seems to be settling in.

As much as I love sunshine and appreciate its many advantages in taking pictures, it can also be a real headache, particularly in capturing whites. This shot of Black-Bellied Plovers in non-breeding colors illustrates the problem

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There was not enough color left in the water to pull out the blues. Though digital photography is almost miraculous in its ability to pull colors our of shadows, and CRW allows you to recover slight overexposure, it’s not uncommon to blow all the colors out in bright areas, one of the reasons I often under exposure a full step.

The problem is increased when you’re trying to photography white birds in flight like this Great Egret:

Shooting at 1/1250 second helps to freeze the motion, but it almost insures that your initial exposure, before adjustments, will look like a white silhouette with few feathers showing. I’m not sure this really looks as white as it does in life, but it’s also impossible to see the feathers the way I could.

I was forced to make even more of a trade-off in this shot

because it seems to me that the feathers are the most important feature of the shot. In reality, though, there was no dingy gray in the wings.

Like most good things, sunshine brings it’s own costs, and don’t even get me started on trying to take a good group shot of a soccer team on a sunny day. I’ll take a cloud-covered day every time.