bird
I have been waiting a long time to get a photograph of a roadrunner, the New Mexico state bird. In Florida, I regularly photographed birds. There are far fewer birds in easy sight in New Mexico, but in my new neighborhood in central ABQ, I regularly see, I believe, this particular roadrunner when out walking my dog. I do not tote around a 70-200mm lens on those walks usually, so I never get a chance to photograph this roadrunner.
Read MoreIn La Jolla, California I was pleasantly surprised to have the opportunity to do bird photography. I knew there would be a chance for seal photos, but having birds also was great. I miss the bird photography I could do almost anywhere in Florida. Check out this anhinga for example. What makes a good bird photograph (or any photograph) assuming you have a good looking bird as the subject? Then for a bird photo to stand out it is a matter of having good light (it was only so-so in this shot) and having a good background. The latter made up for the former in the above shot with the creamy bokeh created by my Tamron 70-200mm f/2.8 G2 lens. The blue in the bokeh is the Pacific Ocean.
Read MoreThis photo of a red shouldered hawk perched on a dead tree limb was made after doing a rural land shoot in Torrance County, New Mexico. One of my photography philosophies is that a real photographer always makes the effort to get a photo they see. I was tired, had just been outside for 90 minutes in the desert, had another 45 minutes to drive back home, but I pulled over, got out my camera, and made the effort to get this shot of the hawk because as a photographer you just cannot pass up opportunities to get a shot. For me, especially one of a large bird as they are very hard to get in New Mexico. Back when I lived in Florida, photographing large birds was easy, they were all over the place. Birds and animals are rare to see in New Mexico, even in the remote places I often travel too.
Read MoreWhile I was in Cloudcroft, New Mexico on a rural land photography assignment, I took notice of these very unusual flowers that I thought looked like rocket popsicles that a hummingbird was having breakfast at. I had my excellent new Tamron 90mm f/2.8 Macro SP lens on my Nikon D750. There was no way to track this fast moving bird through the air. How to get this shot then? Pre-focus on a flower you hope the hummingbird will land on, and wait. I studied the bird's flying patterns a bit, noticing it kept coming back to this particular flower. I approached slowly, very slowly, and then froze waiting for the hummingbird to return. The focus point is not perfect, and I wish the hummingbird had chosen a prettier flower to drink nectar from, but I like the bokeh enough to share this photo with you.
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This is a composite of two images, with a texture abstract photo blended over a pelican photo.I have a folder of abstract and texture photographs I keep for when I want to make composite images like the one above. It is fun sometimes to spice up an image by combining two (or more) photographs in a complementary way.
A blurry photo of a bookshelf was overlayed onto the photo of the pelican in Photoshop. I just adjusted the opacity of the book case photo down a little and set the blending mode to Overlay. Then I layer masked a little of the bookshelf image off of the pelican to make the pelican look cleaner. Digital Photography School has a good tutorial on how to do this if you would like to try it yourself!
Fill the frame corner to corner to make an impact with composition - brown pelican St. Petersburg Florida Fine Art Photography - Nikon D300 Nikkor 80-200mm @ f/5.6 ISO 200 1/250th
At any given moment, you can find a brown pelican to photograph in downtown St. Petersburg, Florida. Chances are you already have numerous pelican photos in your archives. This can be said for any number of common subject matters. So how to make such a common subject stand out? One way is to use a more creative composition, like having the subject fill the frame corner to corner. Use the shape of the subject to fill the frame in the most complementary way. For the pelican, with it's long narrow head, going diagonal corner to corner allows for filling the frame with the subject. Also, going through the edges of the frame creates a very different impression than fitting everything inside (with any subject it also helps to have a good, clean, complementary background; in the above photo the dark water of Tampa Bay combined with the large aperture I chose creates a smooth, gray bokeh).
When you go out shooting next time look for a subject that you can frame corner to corner.
A goose being silly in Crescent Lake Park in St. Petersburg Florida - Nikon D300 Nikkor 80-200mm @ f/4 ISO 200 1/320This morning I met long time DSLR Photography Lesson student Stacy in Crescent Lake Park, where I knew it was very likely we would be able to photograph a goose or two. I suggested she bring a blanket so that she could lie down comfortably on the grass in order to be able to get at eye level to the birds. I got down low myself for the shot above.
In this lesson I pointed out even more to Stacy that the meter gives just a suggestion, as to get a good exposure of the geese in the deep shade they were standing in, it was necessary to use settings that the meter thought would result in an overexposed shot. That was mostly due to the background being much brighter than the foreground. Also, I recommended that there is no need to change aperture to fix the exposure. The aperture should be set first (when shooting in manual mode) so to set the depth of field, and then the shutter speed should be set as needed to get the desired exposure.
