Final Shots from Sacramento NWR

In my last post I shared my favorite shots of our visit to Sacramento NWR. In this post I’ll feature Leslie’s photos.

This shot of a Northern Harrier leaves a lot to be desired, but since Leslie took more pictures of it than any other bird and still couldn’t get the bird or the light to cooperate, it feels like it deserved to be posted.

Other shots seem more post-worthy, though.  I joined the Sacramento NWR Facebook page and noted that the most often shared shots were those of Bald Eagles.

I thought this shot of the mature Bald Eagle was also as good as any I saw shared on their site, as was this shot of the immature Bald Eagle looking particularly regal..

It was quite windy the day we were there, as the feathers testify to, but my favorite shot of this sequence was this one taken a few minutes later.  

Hopefully, the immature Eagle learned why the adult Eagle chose a much bigger branch to rest on.

Leslie didn’t seem as impressed by this shot of a Black Phoebe

as I was, perhaps she doesn’t realize how many shots of a Black Phoebe sitting on a branch or railing I’ve had to settle for. Whenever possible, birds should be seen flying. 

Stop and Look

Like most people, I’m prone to dismiss common birds with, “That’s just a …” without ever really looking at it. If I were just a “birder,” I don’t think I would have taken pictures of the birds that appear in this blog entry.  They are all so common that they hardly get noticed; I suspect that if I hadn’t been looking through my camera I wouldn’t have even noted them.

Luckily, I was carrying my camera because these are probably my favorite shots of the day.  There were a lot of American Coots in the Sacramento NWR when we were there, but this one was extremely close and was too busy feeding to scoot away.

American Widgeons might be the commonest duck in the Pacific Northwest during winter, but I love this shot of a male rising up and displaying his wings.

Northern Pintails aren’t as common as Widgeons, but they’ve always struck me as one of the more elegant ducks.

Red-winged Hawks are everywhere, but this one seemed particularly beautiful in the early morning sunshine.

There’s beauty all around us. Sometimes, we just have to pause long enough to see it.

Let There be Light(room)

I just read an article where purists argue that you should only use what directly comes out of the camera and shouldn’t “Photoshop” it.  Actually, I’m somewhat sympathetic to that view.  I really don’t like when the colors in scenics have been manipulated to make them more colorful than they really were.  

I usually work toward trying to recreate what I “saw,” or “what I wanted to see” when I took the picture.  Unfortunately, all too often the camera sees things I didn’t see when I took the picture.  When I take bird pictures, I focus exclusively on the bird, which is all my brain sees, but the camera often sees more, or less, than what I see.

I taught high school Yearbook/photography for 20+ years and took several college photography courses, not to mention another year or two in art courses.  Those courses have shaped what I want from a picture and how I approach photography. 

My background is just one factor in my photography.  I have spent way too much on camera equipment since I retired 25 years ago, but the equipment has improved so much in that time that I felt compelled to upgrade regularly. I use the best equipment that Canon sells. I used to joke that my camera equipment was worth more than the car that took me cross country, and it was literally true.

Equipment improvement has been accompanied by equally impressive improvements in software.  I regularly use Lightroom, Photoshop, and ON1 on all the pictures I post on my site.  I shoot exclusively in RAW format to take full advantage of that software.

One of my greatest complaints with shots I get is that the highlights are blown out and you can’t see white feathers.  Because of that, I almost always set my camera to one stop below what the camera recommends, because it’s easier to restore details in dark areas than to correct bright areas.  

Here’s a shot from Sacramento NWR right out of the camera. Truthfully, it’s fairly close to what I saw myself because the Snipe was hunting in the shadows and the sky was very bright. 

Obviously I wouldn’t have posted this shot except to make a point. Fortunately we were shooting in RAW format, not JPEG. RAW format actually combines multiple exposures so you can make dark areas lighter and lighter areas darker.

Here’s another shot from the same sequence that was run through Lightroom, Photoshop, ON1 Denoise, and ON1 Effects.  It’s not a great photo, but it’s clearly a Snipe. and you get an idea of its size (if you know how small a Green-winged Teal is).

When you’re taking pictures of birds, light is not your only, or, perhaps greatest, problem.  The hardest thing is getting the bird in focus, particularly when you’re using a telephoto lens.  

Here’s another shot in the sequence where the camera had a hard time focusing and was extremely noisy because it was so dark.  I think the camera focused on the plants to the right of the Snipe, rather than the Snipe itself.  I used denoise and sharpening to try to realistically show the Snipe.

It’s hard to blame the camera, though, since the Snipe is a master of disguise and uses camouflage to stay alive while feeding in the reeds, making focus quite difficult.

The camera did a much better job of focusing on this Snipe because it was in the water and there weren’t any bushes nearby. 

I rarely see Snipes and good shots are even rarer.  So, despite the fact that the light is far from ideal in any of these shots, I was happy to get them. I know what a Snipe looks like in good light, so I attempted to recreate that reality by making adjustments in Lightroom, Photoshop, and ON1.  

They aren’t great pictures, but I’m pretty sure that there will be readers who have never seen a Snipe and, like me until a few years ago, think a Snipe is an imaginary bird meant to distract you so your older brother can have fun without you.

Footnote

I took this shot of a pair of Mallards because I loved the lighting and setting and thought it was a great pose.  Guess who photobombed it?

Greater White-Faced Geese

The Greater White-Fronted Geese at the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge are vastly outnumbered by the Snow Geese, though I suspect they may be the second commonest bird there in the Winter.  They are still a personal favorite, though, because I’ve only seen them once outside Northern California —a stray that got hooked up with a small flock of migrating Snow Geese.  

Usually I am more apt to get shots of them at Colusa NWR, but when we stopped at the Sacramento NWR office, they informed us that flooding had closed the auto tour at Colusa.  Informed of that, we decided to make another trip around the Sacramento auto tour.  

We didn’t see too many different birds on our second round, but it did serve as a reminder of how different lighting affects photos.  Although the light in the early morning run was challenging, to say the least, this photo taken on the far side of the tour on our first go-round might have been my favorite of the day.  The alpen glow was reflected in the rich, golden browns of the geese.

Here’s a shot taken in nearly the same area on our second trip around the refuge when it was brighter than it was in the morning, but the sun was higher in the sky.  The first shot is straight from the camera, but I had to adjust the background in the second photo because the water was almost entirely washed out.  

This final shot was taken even later in the day with the sun shining directly on their white front.  It’s hard to believe these are even the same species.

It’s easy to forget how many variables are in play when taking wildlife pictures. I usually try to get an early start because it seems like you see more birds in the morning than you do in the afternoon — and because I’m used to getting up early to get to our YMCA Tai Chi classes. Perhaps if we didn’t live in the Pacific Northwest where you’re more apt to encounter fog than early-morning sunshine, I would be more conscious of the quality of light at different times of the day. However, looking back at the shots we took on our visit to the Sacrament NWR, it’s clear that my favorite shots were those taken at sunrise.