Category Archives: Shooting at Home

Animals, Animals, Collections, Gear, Nature, Outdoors, Shooting at Home, Spring

New Birding Lens

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I recently purchased a new lens for my Lumix GX-8 micro 4/3 camera body. It’s an Olympus 100-400 mm zoom which translates to a 200-800 mm given the crop sensor on my camera. It. Is. Amazing.

The images are sharp, it’s not too heavy to lug around for 2-3 hours and it hangs nicely on my sling so my hands don’t cramp holding it while not in use.

Here are some recent images from my first outing with it. These were all shot at a local wetland near where I live south of Flagstaff, AZ.

I can now officially consider myself a Bird Nerd! It is SO MUCH FUN collecting images then going home and identifying them with the app Seek. I pull up the app and point my phone camera at the image on my computer and it does a great job of identifying the birds. It works with animals, plants, and insects as well.

I wasn’t sure what this little guy was so I posted it on FaceBook and asked the birding community to identify. They were quick! It’s a vesper sparrow.

Catching them in flight is challenging. I set the camera at 400-800 ISO, in full sunlight which gives me a shutter speed between 2,000 and 6,000.

Perched birds are easier but you still have to be quick. They don’t always hang out for a photo! This is a red-winged blackbird.

Coming in for a landing!!

I’ve seen as many as four ospreys hunting the ponds of these wetlands.

This looks like a shorebird to me. It’s a killdeer. On another day I caught one with a worm in its mouth!

They are so dramatic when they sing!

The first goslings of the season!

This one was tough to capture. It didn’t hang out for long so I had to be quick. Luckily, with the length of the lens, I don’t have to get too close and the birds tend to not skitter away quite as quickly as when I tried to capture images of them with my 28-300 mm lens.

Turns out it’s also a reptile lens!

Set your camera to burst mode, hold down the shutter, and expect to trash a LOT of images. In my first two-hour outing I think I took over 800 images. I tossed probably 700 of them.

Every time I’ve been to the wetlands I see a new bird or capture a bird in a different way. Also, as I get better, I find myself giving permission to toss previous images of the same bird. Don’t forget, pixels are free. Load up those memory cards and only keep the exceptional ones. The first ones may not be exceptional but with practice, they will come!

Happy Shooting!

Animals, Nature, Outdoors, Places to Shoot, Shooting at Home

Birds at home

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This is the first in a four-part series about birds. It morphed from a single post about where to shoot them to a series focussing on the many different locations and opportunities there are to capture birds. I’m going to begin with shooting at my home and move out from there.

If you have bird feeders, baths or houses you have sharply increased your chances of getting some nice bird images.  If not perhaps you have some plants that attract our aviary friends.

Canon EOS 7D, 100-400 at 400 mm, ISO 400, 1/80 of a second at F/8

We don’t get these birds (Grosbeaks) at our house very often so to shoot them on this day was a real treat. We were indoors when we noticed them so these images were taken through windows.

Canon EOS 7D, 100-400 at 400 mm, ISO 400, 1/80 of a second at F/8

They began here in the back yard around the handing bird bath.

Canon EOS 7D, 100-400 at 330 mm, ISO 400, 1/125 of a second at F/11

They eventually moved to the front yard, there had to have been twenty of them all moving in a flock together. Getting blur in an image can be kind of cool as it shows motion, especially when you have a stationary subject to give perspective.

Canon EOS 7D, 100 mm macro at 100 mm, ISO 200, 1/80 of a second at F/5.6

This was a great discovery in our back yard that has only happened 3-4 times since I moved into this house in 1991…a NEST! We heard peeps coming out of this birdhouse attached to a pine tree so I set up a tripod, aimed my lens at the opening, plugged in a remote and waited. As the parents came and went I hit the remote button.

Canon EOS 7D, 100mm macro at 100 mm, ISO 200, 1/80 of a second at F/5.6
Canon EOS 7D, 100-400 at 250 mm, ISO 4000, 1/400 of a second at F/6.3

Hummingbirds are notoriously difficult to shoot without creating a set-up complete with feeders and flash units to stop their wing motion. Again this was shot through our front window and again I prefer the wind blur to show motion.

Canon EOS 7D, 28-135mm at 135 mm, ISO 100, 1/250 of a second at F/5.6

No, we don’t have chickens…but lots of people do and in the right light they can be spectacular!

So, if you want to practice with shutter speeds and your quick photographer reflexes shoot some birds at home. It’s a great way to get to know your camera and remember…pixels are free, you can delete the whole card!

Happy Shooting!

Celebrations, Cultural, Family, Photography, Shooting at Home, Spring

Easter Eggs

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Easter is coming up in a couple of weeks and it is a fantastic holiday for shooting, especially if you like color as much as I do.

Apparently my household doesn’t color eggs as often as I think we do because I only have two years of examples. But that doesn’t matter. This is a blog about inspiration so YOU get out there and find those eggs and baskets and colors and YOU get some images. 😉

This bowl of eggs was sitting on our kitchen counter. I set up a tripod so I could shoot in low light without camera shake. You could spend an hour just shooting this bowl and changing around the eggs to find the best lines, forms and color combinations.  Of course changing the  angle is also also an option as I did below.

Seriously, this makes me want to color eggs this year just to have a photo session.

One year we got a hold of a box of egg color that had faces and hair in them. That was a fun shoot!

So, this Easter, get with the kids and/or grandkids and color some eggs! Then get out your camera and have some fun. I did!

Happy Shooting!

Celebrations, Cultural, Shooting at Home, Winter

Holiday Decorations

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I love Christmas tree ornaments. I’m not so much a ball fan as I am the eclectic figures that adorn our fake tree every year. I like to pick them up in my travels throughout the year so, as we hang them on the tree we reminisce about past adventures. There are also several on our tree that are hand-me-downs from my grandmother. And needless to say, shooting them is easy. They don’t move and you can set up a tripod and take your time with long exposures. The images, when put on card stock,  make for great holiday cards.

This is one of the rocking horses I have that reminds me of my grandmother.

Grab your macro lens and get in close.

The glow of the tree in a dark room is lovely. This is our cookie tree, filled with holiday decorated cookies!

Purposely blurring holiday lights can also be a great effect. These are white lights. The ones below are color, duh.

Love this one.

This is one we got from a trip to Catalina Island one year. We saw dolphins on the way over from the ferry.

I grew up with the Curious George books. It’s how I learned to make paper airplanes!

We like to collect Santas doing various activities.

This idea, of course, can be used for any holiday. Any ornament you celebrate will make lovely cards. It is clearly not just for Christmas.

Animals, Shooting at Home

Grosbeaks

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Where I live in Kachina Village, six miles south of Flagstaff on I-17, we have some bird regulars. We get Nuthatches, Chickadees, Stellar Jays, Pine Siskins and Crows on a regular basis. But ONE day, I glanced outside and saw a herd of THESE guys hanging out on the bird bath. So what did I do? I GRABBED MY CAMERA!!!

I love it when “still photos” show motion. This is my favorite of the bunch.

It took me a little while in the National Geographic book of North American Birds to identify them as Grosbeaks. They didn’t stay long, maybe 30 minutes. I refueling stop I guess, and then they were off. I’ve lived in this home for over twenty years and have never seen a flock like this. What a treat.

To show motion with birds is easy. Their wings flap so fast that even at 1/60 you will get a blur. But it’s fast enough to stop the bird on the bath.

Then they moved to the front yard. They stayed there a bit and were gone. I haven’t seem them since. And this was a couple of summers ago.

The lesson? Keep your camera out of it’s bag and ready to shoot. Maybe designate an area for it in the house that is easily accessible. If it’s hard to get to you won’t use it!