There will be nothing earth-shattering to be found in this post – I’m simply trying to maintain a little content while new images are a tad scarce.
Two recent outings with the Itinerant Mr Bugg produced far fewer photos than foretold expected, which is just how it goes sometimes; by no means should anyone attempt to infer that either of us is lacking in skills, and it should be borne in mind that I have a slander attorney on retainer (you know, with all this disposable nature photographer income.) Sometimes, things are just slow. Despite such hardships, we still managed to coax a few useful images out of the days, a few of which you’ve already seen – or have now anyway. A pair of great blue herons (Ardea herodias) were stalking back and forth quite some distance off, reluctant to come any closer and thus necessitating the use of the long lens. Above, my favorite of the frames I captured, while below sits The Girlfriend’s vote.
Both of these, by the way, are cropped tighter from the original frames – the herons really were some distance off, more than a hundred meters away. At least we had a good light angle on them – for the most part, anyway. As one took a short flight across a narrow stretch of deeper water, it showed that there were still some patches of shadow. Really, I have to believe this was on purpose.
Fartistic poses are all well and good, but I’m always after behavior, and so I tracked this one during its short flight and did a sequence of the landing. The wings are pretty dynamic here, but I wish I’d been closer, with less shadow.
And then – wait. How, exactly, did the bird produce such a big splash for what should have been a landing on either a protruding rock (of which there were plenty) or at most a few centimeters of shallow water? I’m inclined to say that it struck the water with one wing, which seems odd because, as large as they are, these are not clumsy birds. Under the surface, the rocks in the areas get covered with a fine layer of silt and algae, which I can attest is an extremely slippery concoction, but I’m sure the birds have a lot more epxerience with this than I do. I never even saw this happen in the viewfinder, but then again, as the sequence was firing off the mirror was only in position to show me the gaps between frames for tiny fractions of a second, so this isn’t surprising.
Still a few drops of water in the air betraying the heron as it tries to pretend that never happened. But notice the contrast of the dark band cutting across the scene, indicating that the heron chose the one rock in the entire river that actually fell into shadow, which of course reduced the detail and clarity of the resulting pics. Naturally. Did either of the two herons that we saw in the same location decide to come closer or make for better pictures? They did not.
Much the same could be said for this dragonfly a couple of days later, still not stirring from its overnight sleeping spot. The undergrowth prevented getting a better sun angle, but it was a largely dark species anyway, so we’ll have to be content with a silhouette and a single bright spot on the compound eye. This wasn’t the best of spots for the dragonfly, because they need a lot of warmth for their wing muscles to work, which is why they perch primarily in bright sunlight. This one was still sluggish while others, smart enough to catch the morning sun early on, were already zooming around.
So now we see the other side of the coin.
This one was flitting away from its perch after prey before returning to the same spot, and clearly it’s getting as much sunlight as it can – and so was my lens. The Mamiya 80mm macro has a deep aftermarket hood that remains attached, and is recessed enough on its own, but there are still conditions where sunlight can make its way to the front glass element, and when it does, it’s noticeable. While pretty well-corrected against ghosts and internal reflections, nonetheless it has a glare problem, which is what produced this horribly washed-out appearance. It’s why I always recommend a lens hood when shooting in sunlight, even when you’re not expecting to be facing into the light, because it’s not hard to find a subject that forces that perspective, and even reflections from water can throw some glare. It was readily visible through the viewfinder, however (which is good – often, ghosts never show until the final image since they’re affected by the aperture,) and so I was able to correct it fairly simply.
World of difference between the two frames, right? And all it took was holding out my hand to shade the lens better. There was a balance point between it blocking the sunlight and actually getting into the frame, but that’s what expert nature photographers can accomplish, donchaknow.
Now if I could only get some photos that were artistic or something…
I have a few other posts lined up, but they’re more philosophical that photographic, and either way my time this week isn’t looking too promising, at least until later. We’ll see what transpires.
Meanwhile, in some select areas some numbers do hold true; the way molecules bond, for instance, which is responsible for much of the symmetry that we can find now. And in most cases, we find the patterns and geometry that they produce remarkable precisely because they are not the norm; snowflakes are cool, but they seem odd because nature doesn’t generally work that way, and I spot a lot of my photographic subjects because animal patterns are usually symmetrical among a background that’s not. We select some trees or plants as subjects because they’re not lopsided or straggly; we manicure our lawns and lay out our landscaping because nature rarely produces what we find attractive. And that’s fine, because if everything was ‘attractive,’ we’d have to have some other standard for something rare, exceptional, or unique. We like the little surprises, but they need that contrast to even be remarkable.
The main image above comes from just barely over nine years ago, taken July 3rd 2010 out over Jordan lake. I’d had some decent success getting 
The first part that I’ll talk about is perhaps the easiest, which is illustration. Just about every photographer ends up tackling such a thing at one time or another; some of us do it routinely. But even product photography requires a certain skill to portray the product in the best manner possible – sometimes this is angle and lighting, sometimes this is the right setting or background, and sometimes this is elaborate staging. When we’re trying to show something in particular, it’s important to give the correct impression to the viewer, and the first step is knowing what this should be in the first place. Following close behind is detaching ourselves from the sense of place that we have, just being there, and recognizing whether or not the viewer can get the same sense (or, even better, an entirely different one that we nonetheless express, falsely as it were.) That might be a bit confusing in the abstract, so let me provide an example. We know, from simply being there, that we’re at the beach, or someplace late at night, or whatever, but the image doesn’t necessarily express this unless we include the necessary details therein. Conversely, many of my macro shots, while done in broad daylight, still look like they were done at night, because the aperture and shutter speed reduce the ambient light so far that it doesn’t expose the image very well, while the flash unit provides the main lighting for the subject, yet fails to reach the background. But even showing someone at their profession or hobby takes having an adequate representation of those within the frame. For an artist, it’s not enough to show them drawing on a canvas; we should have a variety of artistic tools visible as well. If we think of an image illustrating a pilot, we ask, what kind of pilot? Commercial, military, bush, glider? Only the knowledgeable viewer would be able to tell these from a glimpse of controls and gauges, so we need to provide more details to inform all of the viewers of what they need to know. Even the subject’s basic appearance and expression counts for a lot – a portrait of a nurse is likely to require an entirely different expression from a portrait of a judge, to give the impression that we want to give. And of course, knowing how to evoke these from a subject, especially so they look natural and not forced, is a huge skillset all its own.
Much harder is the genre of photojournalism, which is what most people think of when we talk about an image with a story. In most cases, we have no ability to stage any portion of the shot, or even mess with lighting, so we have to take it as it is and still get the message across. This means framing and timing become the most important aspects to control, sometimes the only things we have control over. Many times, it means anticipating some particular aspect – action or expression, mostly – and firing off the shutter the moment it happens. An acute awareness of everything in the photo is often necessary. I often tell my students about my wedding photography days, when I was after the ‘first dance’ of the newlyweds. There is actually a very narrow timeframe when the elements tend to come together, because if the guests are in the shot, you want them all looking at the happy couple with delight or warm expressions – one guest looking away, or bored, or eating, is going to spoil the mood of the shot, and this becomes more likely as the seconds pass. Meanwhile, try to find a shooting angle which shows both faces of a couple that are facing one another. And a decent background. And good lighting. These are the kind of things that beginning wedding photographers rarely realize are the skills they never thought to develop. Which is why I say that you save money on a photographer at your own risk.
We read the expressions of any given animate subject (and some inanimate ones,) and nearly every photo can benefit from having something more expressive, more emotional, than simply a straightforward shot. Sometimes it’s simply a matter of observation, and finding the right angle, but most often it takes timing and anticipation. It’s easier with people of course, because they express the emotions that we’re familiar with and we often know when they’re due to arrive. With animals it’s usually very different – most times it doesn’t occur unless the animal is relaxed and acting normally, which is much trickier for wildlife, but can even be a chore when the family pet knows we’re up to something. But for most species, they don’t actually express the emotions we recognize, and when we get something that appears expressive, this is more often than not simply a mistaken impression – which still works just fine, we just can’t anticipate or even provoke it.