A Few Bird Photos

I like to try my hand at nature or wildlife photography whenever the opportunity arises. Of course, my health needs to be cooperating... the weather needs to cooperate... and my photography gear needs to be ready to go for when these situations arise. 

(Note:  When I say "the weather needs to cooperate", I don't necessarily mean clear, sunny skies. I mean the weather needs to match what I intend to capture. For instance, I often get up early in the morning while we are at the lake house so I can get out on the lake while it is still foggy... the environment is thick with a lot of depth which makes for nice photos. I rarely will want sunny, clear skies... some clouds are much more interesting! So, cooperative weather means different things depending upon my photographic vision.)

Sometimes I'll choose an area of the yard... say, just a small area of only about 50 square feet... and I'll try to find a few things to photograph in that limited area. This forces me to make an effort to look for interesting things to photograph and figure out the most interesting composition. You'd be surprised how much you can find to photograph in even a small area! 

I look for light, shadow, shapes, color, patterns, texture, etc, anything which captures my attention which may look interesting. Before I even put the viewfinder to my eye, I want to have an interesting compositional idea in my head. Once I find something to photograph, I check different angles... figure out how to frame this shot... I check for direction of the light, shadows... and I figure out what makes this an interesting shot. Then I work out the camera settings to capture what I envision in my head.

It really can be challenging to create something interesting in such a limited area! Sometimes, however, interesting things to photograph come to me...

Yesterday, I noticed that there were a few chickadees in our next door neighbor's yard right outside our kitchen window. Unfortunately, I had a few things working against me... first, it was overcast and subsequently rather dark outside (this is a situation when clear, sunny skies are advantageous)... secondly, and perhaps more importantly, I wasn't feeling all that well and was having some difficulty with shaky hands... and lastly, I had no choice in angles to shoot since I was shooting out a small window and the birds aren't all that cooperative when it comes to posing. On the positive side, my photography gear was ready to go.

When it is overcast and rather dark outside like this particular afternoon, this means needing to use higher ISO sensitivities which results in a degradation in image quality. I am using very old gear so this rather dim light was going to be a problem. Adding some shaky hands to this situation would only compound the lighting issue. And... oh, yeah... I was not using a tripod... I was holding the camera and long lens in my shaky hands while trying to stay as still and quiet as possible in our little kitchen window.

I carefully opened our kitchen window... set up a stool just inside the window... and started spotting birds through my viewfinder. I quickly chose some settings which I felt were best for this situation. 

Focusing on a tiny bird through a thicket of branches
can be difficult and frustrating...

Whenever I use my older photography gear (in this case, very old digital gear which isn't worth much in today's market) my biggest struggle is with color balance. This day of shooting would be no different. I struggled with color balance throughout the entire shoot.

I quickly noticed that these chickadees were moving quickly! They would perch on a branch for only a second at a time... then fly off to a new location a few branches away. They were very skittish this day. Eventually, I noticed a pattern to their quirkiness and skittishness which helped me predict where they would perch next. 

A few other types of birds showed up after a while... then the sun started to shine! I wasn't getting much in the way of keepers without the sun so it was a relief to see some sun eventually. Getting some sun to shine on these little birds helped me to use faster shutter speeds and lower my ISO sensitivity. This meant crisper photos than I was getting in the dimmer light.

Unfortunately, by the time the sun started shining, my hands were significantly more shaky and I was losing steam. After shooting only about 20 minutes, I called it a day. I did manage to capture a few decent bird photos though. Managing to capture a keeper every two minutes isn't too bad...

I was already having problems with color balance but my neighbor's
green roofing in the background made this even more difficult by
making these photos appear to have a green tint.

I don't like shooting photos of a bird perched on a bird feeder but
I liked the way the sun was shining on this goldfinch...
the sun is a rare sight around these parts!