The birds and the bees are keeping me occupied whilst I wait patiently for a few clear nights! BBBIF taken with Canon 100mm F2.8 macro and the birds with the 300mm F4L, which is proving to be an excellent lens, provided I respect that the long focal length demands solid handling skills, even with the help of two stops IS.
Locations are either Roma Street Parklands (Bee & Wrens) or Tangalooma (Whistling Kite, Osprey, Cormorant, and Oyster Catcher).
I only managed to shoot three frames of the BBBIF before it zoomed off, and this one was the last of the three, the only one where the bee was centre frame so the autofocus managed to lock on – I just got lucky!
Thank you for those nice comments, I am flattered and they deserve a more detailed response.
I’m not sure that I have any particular talent, other then the practice of putting excellent equipment to use, allied with a powerful set of software tools.
Many of the shots rely on having the camera set up appropriately; the 40D and 7D both have “User Settings”, where you can set up subject-specific shooting parameters and save them (C1, C2 and C3). I have dialled in “Bird In Flight” settings against C1 and “Macro” settings against C3, so just twisting the Mode Dial to these settings immediately sets up the camera for those particular subjects. If I had to set the shutter speed, aperture, ISO, drive mode, auto focus mode and point, etc. manually, I would probably have missed most of the action shots.
Most of my photos are opportunistic – a bee flying through the field of view, a bird gliding by, etc., so just having the gear set up correctly and at hand helps a lot. If the camera and lens were in a bag, I would have missed those fleeting shots.
I use CS5 and the Topaz Labs plug-ins for Photoshop and these really help display the raw data to its best advantage. Whilst the (relatively few) successful Raw files look mostly okay, they can all be improved upon. Using these image-processing tools, I am able to enhance the data that has been collected, making the final image really pop! I tend to like quite bright, vibrant colours with well-defined detail, so I concentrate on those aspects during my processing workflow.
Of course the more I get out and about, the more opportunities I encounter so I guess the main success factor is getting outdoors, followed by having good gear to hand and making sure it is set up correctly. After that, I just wait patiently for nature to weave its magic and then pray that I got the shot!
Hi Dennis,
When I see one of your wildlife posts I know it will be really worthwhile clicking on.
These are amongst the very best photographs ever posted on IceInSpace.
You have become a true master of wildlife photography and I for one are in awe.
Best Regards
Gary
Wow – I’m blushing now!
Thanks Gary, for those generous words of appreciation and encouragement. Although I love recording the lives of these creatures for my own interest and satisfaction, it is always a pleasure to be able to share the good ones with a community of like-minded souls.
Thanks Marc, Ric, and Rolf, I appreciate your comments.
As the Blue Banded Bee has generated the most comments, I thought that I’d post a larger image of this guy going about his daily work. They are quite remarkable insects and it is quite thrilling to observe them as they pop in and out of flower heads, albeit at breakneck speeds!
