Birding Weekend

I had a great weekend doing a bunch of photography. I was out shooting birds on Friday, helping another photographer with an assignment shooting within the city on Saturday, shooting Birds again on Sunday morning, helping out in a Nature Walk at Watershed Park in Delta from 1:00 to 3:00 on Sunday and then shooting birds again on Sunday before the lighting got bad.

Here are some photos I shot but please checkout my Birds Gallery to see about a dozen new photos from the weekend.

A Female Mallard Duck.

There is an abundance of great ducks at the George C. Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary. Always a great place to go shoot. The entry fee is very cheap and well worth every penny. Get a yearly membership for great savings.

A beautiful large Male Ring Necked Pheasant.

The same male Pheasant shot on a different day.

These beautiful birds are not native to North America but were rather introduced from China and and Eastern Asia. This particular Pheasant lives near a farm on Westham Island.

A Peregrine Falcon finishing up dinner.

This great fella (gal?) was just finishing up dinner on the front lawn of a farm on Westham Island. These birds are rather skittish and I only got about a dozen shots in before it took off with the remains. The other images were from further away.

Sleepy Barn Owl

This Owl was in a Barn on Westham Island. I got a tip from Naturalist Tom Bearss on his whereabouts. I then received permission from the landowners to enter the barn and to photograph him.

He posed several particular problems. One, the barn was very dark and two he was about three stories high. Shooting with a 500mm lens with a 1.4x multiplier, a high ISO, Image stabilization on and a sturdy tripod. With some post editing this worked fairly well. This image is fairly sharp even enlarged on paper.

For those of you who have read my blogs you may see a contradiction here. In previous posts I suggest that for ‘tack’ sharp images you should turn off your ‘image stabilization’ when your camera/lens is mounted on a tripod.

When shooting with large heavy lenses like fast 400mm or any 500mm or 600mm lens the tripod will not keep the lens very steady and the stabilization will help.

Hope you enjoyed these images. Again please check out more images i the Galleries and as usual I welcome any comments or questions.

© 2010 François Cleroux

(Version 1.00 - March 2010)

Please feel free to leave comments, corrections, ideas, thoughts or suggestions.

Workshop - Photography 101

MONDAY MARCH 15TH, 7:00 - 9:00 PM - PHOTOGRAPHY 101 - CREATIVE PHOTOSHOP WORKSHOP
 

Learn how to create HDR Images, Panorama Images and Little Planets (Like the Self Portrait pictured above) using Photoshop and some Photography Tips to make these easier to create. Learn some Layer and Masking Basics. Learn how to seamlessly add elements to your images to create composites.

This will be a very fast paced informative session that will include some Photography tips. There should be time for a Q&A session. If time permits, see the disappearing people trick!

Hosted by Francois Cleroux. Meet at McKee Lounge for a 7:00 start.

© 2010 François Cleroux

(Version 1.00 - March 2010)

Please feel free to leave comments, corrections, ideas, thoughts or suggestions.