In honor of Veterans giving the ultimate sacrifice on this Memorial Day, F-18 nearing the speed of sound at 2007 Wings Over Houston airshow. It was fun to go back in time and reprocess this photo using some gained skill and software since then. Went with B&W to better show off the vapor cloud.
Canon 30D and 100-400 lens @ 100mm
One of my pelican photos made the inside cover of the 2019 Audubon Annual Report recently. The Photography Director from Audubon contacted me in Feb about using this photo that they found on my website. Was very pleased that they reached out to me but also someone concerned that I did not recognize this photo. Had to dig through my website to find it. Next problem was to find the RAW file to reprocess a high resolution photo as it was taken back in 2011. Started digging through my current attached hard drives with no luck. Had to search the house for all of my external hard drives and finally found it on nearly the last hard drive.
This experience led me to revamp my storage and back-up method for all of my photos. Now have all of my photos on a centralized device and backed up in multiple ways/locations. More on that later.
May 6, 2020 was a very special day with the Blue Angels doing a fly-over of the Houston area in celebration of healthcare workers on National Nurses Day. Major thank you to all of the healthcare workers out there fighting the good fight.
They published the flight pattern for the Blue Angels so knew that they would be in my area around 1:00 p.m. as they headed to Ellington Field to land. Got into position in my driveway with my camera and 500mm lens with 1.4X teleconverter to see what I could grab.
Got to get a few test shots off with a redtailed hawk flying by very high in the air. Set my camera for birds in flight with positive exposure compensation. Would normally use +1 but with the dark planes, cranked it up to + 1 2/3. Set the aperture to F8 but should have used F11 in hindsight. Had my back-up 1DX with my 100-400 lens but would have not had time to grab it if I wanted to.
Had no idea that they would come in so low and so close to my house. My wife and just asked if we would hear them coming and I said no, they travel so fast that the sound follows them. Just after that I spotted them coming in fast over the trees. Had my new camera ready to go and started to focus and shoot. Used all focus points and held the hammer down and got 75 photos in the sequence. Having 16 frames/second came in handy. Had to pause once to reposition as my neighbor’s tree was blocking my view. They were too close to get all 6 planes in the frame so focused on the lead planes.
It was great to see them this close, not in an airshow. Was also glad that they had their smoke on. They likely buzzed NASA’s Johnson Space Center, which is a couple of miles, as FA-18 flies, north of my house.
Both photos are uncropped, 1/1600 sec @ F8, ISO 1600, evaluative metering, + 1 2/3 exposure compensation, 700mm handheld
I always get excited when seeing shorebirds take a bath as they almost always jump up and flap their wings to dry off. Usually a good chance for a great photo op.
Took these shots a couple of weeks ago at Bolivar Flats Audubon shorebird sanctuary along the Texas gulf coast. Cranked the ISO up to 3200 to get a decent shutter speed to freeze the action.
Taken with Canon 1DX III and Canon 500mm F4 IS II with 1.4X III teleconverter mounted on Skimmer ground pod with Wimberley II gimbal head
1/2500 sec @ F8, ISO 3200, evaluative metering, +1 exposure compensation
1/2000 sec @ F8, ISO 3200, evaluative metering, +1 exposure compensation
Hope that everyone out there is well and staying safe. It’s a very strange/surreal world that we are currently living in. I have been working from home for awhile now so nothing new there, just less travel these days. My day job work has actually picked up lately with more projects so that’s a good thing. Have been spending my off-hours backing up my photos and entering some photo contests. I’ll post more later about my updated back-up strategy that I’ve just completed implementing.
Since almost all of my favorite areas for wildlife photography around Houston are shut down, I’ll dig up some of my photos from my newly archived storage unit.
Here is a reddish egret in flight from last year’s July 4.
Taken with Canon 1DX and Canon 500mm F4 IS II with 1.4X III teleconverter mounted on Skimmer ground pod with Wimberley II gimbal head – handheld
Got very excited when planning for my first trip this year to the High Island TX rookery a couple of weeks ago with a weather forecast including high winds. High winds + great egret breeding plumage = some great photo op’s. This photo is close to what I previsualized before getting to the rookery based on past experience.
No real clean shots without branches so had to make the best of a challenging situation. Usually pick out a couple of specific birds and keep my focus on them waiting for some good action. Took a bunch of photos of this lovely lady with several bursts when the wind picked up to get various feather positions.
For white birds, always expose for the highlights, which helps to darken the rest of the scene. Instead of bringing up the shadows in Photoshop, decided to keep the exposure as captured in the camera. Increased color saturation a little and sharpened. Helped to keep the photo a little dark and moody to relay the sense of it being cold and windy, which it was that morning.
1/2500 sec @ F9, ISO 800, evaluative metering, -2/3 exposure compensation, 500mm from tripod
On Saturday morning at Anahuac NWR, was talking photos of black-necked stilts on the back side of Shoveler Pond when a large bird flew overhead with other birds chasing it. Looked like an eagle but couldn’t tell for sure until his white head came into view. He went along the tall grass and grabbed a coot and flew back to the middle of the pond. Not a good time to be a coot at Anahuac these days as they are prime targets for raptors.
Had just backed off from ISO 3200 to 1600 with the stilts and didn’t have time to crank it back up with the eagle so had to work with a slow shutter speed of 1/250 for this flight shot.
1/250 sec @ F5.6, ISO 1600, evaluative metering, +2 exposure compensation, 700mm, handheld out my car window
When the eagle first caught the coot, a northern harrier followed him and kept circling to try to steal a bite. After the eagle was finished eating, the harrier made his move and landed just behind the eagle and stole a piece. Gutsy move.
Spent most of my time tracking the harrier while the eagle fed. Thought that it would be a more interesting photo with the two birds in one shot than just the eagle eating. Paid off in my opinion.
1/2500 sec @ F5.6, ISO 3200, evaluative metering, + 1 1/3 exposure compensation, 700mm, handheld out my car window
