Once again, after a long session of sorting photos from the past few weeks, I have a collection of images not previously featured, all trivial (because I feature the good ones back when I unload them.) Well, except for this one:
I’m not sure how I missed this one when I did the initial fall colors post, but here it is now. This is a tighter crop than the original, and not too shabby for failing to use the macro lens.
This one’s silly, but I already said that. You’re seeing the full frame to the right as the egret looked straight away from me eliminating the previous profile, and that really was enough to discard it, but I examine all images for critical sharpness at full resolution and automatically clicked on this one to check it. At full res, it revealed a small detail that I thought should be shown, and it only appears here because I’ve already discarded the image. I also didn’t want to take up any more space than necessary (which means that I shouldn’t even be posting this, but there’s necessary and there’s necessary,) so the small, column-right position means I have a bunch of space to take up in column-left. It’s not an exact science because screen resolutions and browser widths are all different, so I can only go on my settings for that and others likely vary. Phones are an entirely different matter, but no one’s reading all this on their phone anyway. I had a lot of images to go through this time, because I hadn’t cleared the Sort folder before my brother visited and we checked out several places to explore while he was here, having more time than originally intended – long story, that I’ll only go into here if I still need to take up even more space, but I’m starting to think that I’ve filibustered enough. How’s our space looking? Good? Then we’ll proceed…
Oh, boy, here we go again…
This is full resolution, and I draw your attention to the sides of the head, where you can see the eyes from here, and yes, for many birds this is enough to give them peripheral vision right around behind them, a full 360° horizontally at least, and knowing the egrets and herons, almost vertically as well – the shape of the skull provides a ridge that helps shield their eyes from the sun above, so there’s probably a blind spot straight up. Meanwhile, think of the shape of a catfish, and ponder how a bird like this manages to swallow one whole, through that beak and down that neck. It’s crazy, right? I’d say it was a freaking clown-car gullet, but almost no one gets such references anymore, for which we can be thankful, so I’ll just use the concept of a TARDIS instead. Oh, not into science fiction? Should I say something about women’s purses, or does that make me sexist in some manner? Whatever – I wouldn’t dream of depriving someone of their pop-psy superiority…
Moving on…
I was tracking this mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) as it came in to land, and still snapped a frame as it flew behind some bushes. Despite the heavy lateral motion blur from the panning, the bird is defined enough to be recognizable under all that. Still, I was taking a chance that I knew was unlikely to come out.
I like this one because even I can take a second looking at the frame to determine what I was trying to capture – and then that eye pops out. Similar conditions to the previous pic only much slower, I was tracking the great blue heron (Ardea herodias) as it passed momentarily in sight through gaps in the foliage, trying to maintain focus on the bird as well as nailing my timing. Got one, not the other.
This was too trippy to pass up. As I was trying to get some photos of the blackberry lily seeds against the sky, the camera, for reasons completely indeterminable, started wandering focus to absolutely nothing just as I tripped the shutter – weird because the frames on either side were just fine. Part of this effect comes from the aspherical nature of the 18-135, which kinda of doubles the image in certain narrow circumstances. But you can understand why I called this one, “FearAndLoathing.”
That’s all for now, until the next big sort reveals even more nonsense. I know you can’t wait.