OPEN YOUR SENSES AND USE YOUR IMAGINATION
Every situation is full of opportunities.
The first chapters described how the foundation for good images is built on a well thought-out idea and patience and perseverance in working toward realizing the idea. This chapter aims to demonstrate that even an ordinary situation can be turned into an interesting image if you give yourself time to see all its potential and use your gray matter to come up with an original solution.
I was photographing a flock of Common Ringed Plovers one early autumn as they were resting on a small rock in shallow water close to the shore. Nothing special was going on. Moving right or left revealed nothing interesting in the background, and the light conditions were not likely to change for some time. It looked like the only thing coming out of this situation was a documentary image of a flock of Common Ringed Plovers resting on a rock, with both young and old birds.
Then I noticed that a rising wind was pushing the waves higher so the surf was breaking against the rock they were resting on. I decided to wait and see how the situation developed. In about 15 minutes the waves started to occasionally hit over the rock, causing the birds to start moving restlessly. I got several frames of waves splashing over the rock, and the best image shows the birds taking off as they apparently decided to go look for a calmer place to rest.
A flock of Common Ringed Plovers with breaking surf (Charadrius hiaticula)
Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III, 800mm f/5.6 plus 1.4x extender, 1/400 second, f/10.0, ISO 500, one-shot focus with a central focusing point, Gitzo tripod, Manfrotto 501 video head, blind. Länsi-Turunmaa, Finland, September 2009.
A Bohemian Waxwing (Bombycilla garrulus)
Canon EOS-1D Mark III, 800mm f/5.6, 1/400 second, f/5.6, ISO 1600, one-shot focus with a central focusing point, beanbag, car as a blind. Porvoo, Finland, October 2008.
Bohemian Waxwings might be the species I have photographed the most. Despite having thousands of Bohemian Waxwing images, I don’t get tired of photographing them, and finding new approaches and styles seems to be relatively easy. Their incredibly beautiful plumage and confident, trusting behavior around people make them an ideal subject.
In 2008 Bohemian Waxwings migrated southward from their northern breeding grounds earlier than normal to feast on a bumper rowanberry harvest. In early October some of the trees were still glowing with autumn colors, but the rowans had already lost all their leaves, and the bright red, juicy berries were left to blaze charmingly.
One day-long session with a long telephoto lens produced images with the glowing yellows and oranges of the autumn foliage blending into an even background for the Bohemian Waxwings. I was also after some less conventional super closeups, so I used a mix of compositions with dark backgrounds, berries, and birds, knowing that I would be selecting the final framing on the computer.
An Osprey with a catch (Pandion haliaetus)
Canon EOS-1D Mark III, 500mm f/4.0, 1/1600 second, f/7.1, ISO 1600, continuous focus with an extended central focusing point, Gitzo tripod, Manfrotto 501 video head, blind. Vaala, Finland, June 2008.
A permanent blind has few disadvantages, but one clear drawback comes from not being able to adjust its position relative to the wind, a fact that I had to accept when I photographed the breeding activity of an Osprey pair from a blind. The male went off to fish in a nearby lake about five times during the day, but because of the direction of the wind, it always approached and landed on the nest with its back toward me. I decided to concentrate on photographing the female because it was dicing the fish for the young.
But then, as the male Osprey was once again coming to the nest with fish and presenting its back to me, it dawned on me that the challenging angle of its arrival was an opportunity to try a novel approach to Osprey flight shots.