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For years, a good friend has been encouraging me to become more active on Facebook. I haven't really complied, sometimes going for months without even logging in. Well, yesterday he nominated me to be the next photographer for the Nature Photography Challenge, which means that I post a nature photo, and tell the story behind the photo, once a day for the next 5 days. I accepted his nomination, so now I have to get on Facebook. Which is okay - after just two days I am beginning to see where FB can be a good way to connect with others who have similar interests.
Anyway, both my day 1 entry and my day 2 entry have been bird photos, so I thought I would share this with my fellow POTNers by making a thread here in the Bird Talk forum. I'll post the photos and stories behind them here in this thread so that anyone who is interested can enjoy the posts without having to go to FB to do so.
But, if you are interested in seeing the original posts, then here is a link to my Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/tom.reichner.73
Here is the entry for Day 1 of the Challenge:
THIS IS A LOW QUALITY PREVIEW. Please log in to see the good quality stuff.
I was nominated to do a Nature Photography Challenge by Shawn McCully, who is a good friend, as well as an excellent nature photographer. For the Challenge, I will post a nature photo each day for the next 5 days and nominate a new friend to participate at the end of the 5 days.
This image is of a Northern Flicker nest in a cavity in a Ponderosa Pine snag. I was out looking for cavity nests last May, and happened to see an adult Flicker quietly slip away from this snag. I took a closer look and saw the nest hole. I knew that the Flicker pair had selected this hole for their nest, but it would be several weeks before the eggs hatched and the young would be big enough to demand a lot of food (which is the best time to photograph birds at the nest because that results in the most activity).
So, I returned to the site every couple weeks, until mid-June, at which time I saw that the young were eating so much that the adults would have to come in every half hour with more food. So I returned the next day and set up a blind...which actually required that quite a bit of brush be cleared from the site.
I then spent several hours each day for the next week in the blind, patiently awaiting the times when the adults would come in bringing food. The light was often wrong, so even though there was a lot of great activity to photograph, there were only a few opportunities to capture an image that would be aesthetically pleasing.
One image I had especially wanted to capture was a photo which would show the nest tree, an adult, and at least one of the young, but that would also showcase the unique habitat that was present in the surrounding area; a habitat consisting primarily of three plant species - Sagebrush, Bitterbrush (also known as Greasewood), and Ponderosa Pines. In order to capture a fairly decent amount of the habitat, I had to shoot with a relatively wide focal length.......but then the only way to get the birds to be a decent size in the frame would be to have the camera real close to the nest tree.
There was no way to move the blind any closer to the tree, due to really heavy brush, so I set up a tripod as high as I could make it go, and mounted my camera atop the gimbal head, which was flip-flopped upwards so as to gain an extra foot of height. Then I pre-focused on the nest hole, set the aperture all the way out to f32 and zoomed out to 153mm, which seemed to be a good balance between showing enough of the surroundings while still having the birds be big enough in the frame. I plugged my remote shutter release cable into the camera and strung it thru the blind's shooting hole, so that I could trigger the shutter from within the blind.
I didn't have to wait long for the adults to return to the nest with food. They did so every half hour for the next couple of hours, and every time they would come in I would reach for the remote and fire off a bunch of shots, hoping all the while that the camera hadn't been bumped, and that it was still aimed in precisely the right direction.
This photo I am sharing here is one of the frames that I thought turned out the best, and accomplished what I was trying to do. I like to call it an "Environmental Portrait".
Unfortunately, the entire area for miles around burned in last summer's epic wildfires, and this special habitat is now reduced to little more than black, charred remains.
Canon 1D Mark 4, 100-400mm version 2 at f32 and 153mm, 1/250th of a second, ISO 1600. One full stop of added exposure compensation, to ensure a "clean" blue sky that would be free of noise grain.
I will be posting another nature photo tomorrow, and again each day, until the 5 day challenge has run its course.
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