Right Time, Right Place + Luck
Posted on | February 18, 2010 | 1 Comment
In early February, Linda and I escaped to Naples, Florida to visit my sister and brother-in-law. Our plan was to spend a week visitng family in the area and do some exploring. A few days before departing, my sister called and asked if we would like to visit Corkscrew Swamp. Yes, yes, yes, yes ,yes! My original intention to only bring the G9 for snapshots went out the window. Instead I packed one DSLR Canon body, a 28-70 2.8 zoom , a 70-200 2.8 IS zoom, spare batteries, a polarizing filter and a few flash cards in a backpack along with the G9. The tripod, extra camera body, wide angle lens, macro lens, and telephotos lenses stayed home.
We arrived about 3PM at the Corkscrew Swamp entrance gate. I hadn’t been to Corkscrew in over thirty years. The parking lot was now paved with a nice reception building and display area. The 2.5 mile boardwalk that makes a loop through the swamp was the same as I remembered. It was a busy afternoon with plenty of company on the boardwalk as we meandered along. A little more than half way around, a photographer with a long lens (I guess about 500mm) was photographing a Little Blue Heron. He had the motor drive going like a machine gun. I moved on a bit and found a nice spot for a few captures. Not special lighting but still great fun. From here on, it seemed that I would do the bunny hop with the other shooter. At one point I was taking a picture of a nursery log and he continued on ahead. The next time I saw him he was set up to shoot a hawk eating an apple snail. The hawk had its back to us, so I moved on. Most of the crowd stayed to watch the hawk feeding. As I came around a bend, I saw the Great Egret sitting on the boardwalk railing basking in the late afternoon sun. I found a clear shot through two tree trunks and managed twelve captures before the light and the egret disappeared.
I could have spent a week shooting at the Corkscrew Swamp. It reminded me of the photography I did when just starting out. Even though I only had a couple of hours, I came away with twelve or so images I really liked and the thrill of the egret in the setting sunlight. The right time, the right place and plenty of luck. What a day!
For those interested in the technical details, the image was shot at f 5.6 @ 160 of a second at the 200mm setting with image stabilizing on and the polarizer filter attached. I chose to meter on the light shadow area of the bird’s head. I still did some bracketing but selected this capture with no exposure compensation. My histogram showed some highlight clipping in the white breast feathers. In Lightroom, I lowered the exposure on the raw file one half stop and added some highlight recovery. Then I selectively lightened the light shadow on the bird’s head area and slightly darkened the bright area on the bird’s chest. The highlight clipping indications on the histogram disappeared.
By the Way – Timber Press has put up part one of six parts of my podcast on macro photography. Go to www.timberpress.com to listen.
Next week I talk about photographing the Naples Pier at sunset.
Next week I’ll tell you about shooting the setting sun at the Naples Pier.
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February 22nd, 2010 @ 10:35 am
Another quiet and primitive place to photograph birds and wildlife is the Mt. Dora Canal, an hour west of Winterpark Fla.