Not the tree....just some Wood ducks and a Redhead duck. And I'll throw in a wigeon just for fun.
This Redhead is a rare bird to my area. He recently moved from his location at a small lake near Victoria BC to the centre of downtown Victoria BC in the large downtown park called Beacon Hill Park. He has adapted to hanging out with the large numbers of mallard and wigeons. It was entertaining to watch him being the only diver in the group amongst the dabblers. He has one of the highest dive arcs I've seen in a duck and on surfacing would often get nipped by a disturbed mallard. If I get a chance to photograph him again I will try for a diving shot...all mine from yesterday were butt shots
I continue to find the flip out screen of my A9 to be one of its biggest assets to getting super low angles. No lying down for me anymore. I'm able to go to the water's edge and rest the camera on the ground or my shoe and shoot. My Nikon's have the flip screen also but they don't have the best LV AF so my attempts with them have been less successful. It really takes getting the camera to less than a foot off the water to get the best look. You can notice in the Redhead swimming shot I wasn't able to get quite as low as the ground was 1.5 feet off the water and holding the camera over the edge still didn't get it as low as the Wood ducks.
These are great Geoff. The first is the best exposure I've seen of a wood duck. I agree with you regarding using the LCD to compose low. Much nicer than twisting into contortions with a SLR. The Live View on my D500 was useless for wildlife work.
Your technique got down to an ideal shooting angel. You not only got low you seem to have gotten pretty close. No room for improvement in these images.
Geez man! I think I might print these as a reminder to myself that I don't need anything longer than 400mm and that I just need to improve my field skills instead.
I hope you plan on printing some of these. I thought #1 was going to be the wall hanger in this set. Then I scrolled down! Wow!
Great shots and that first one is perfectly dead straight on, very nice! I hear you about using mirrorless and being able to compose like that, I've used my G85/G9 in that fashion. Now that I have Z6 for my Nikon kit I'm hoping I'll be able to do the same with that
sum1sgrampa wrote:
Crazy good ! That first shot is absolutely amazing.
Thanks so much.
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morris wrote:
These are great Geoff. The first is the best exposure I've seen of a wood duck. I agree with you regarding using the LCD to compose low. Much nicer than twisting into contortions with a SLR. The Live View on my D500 was useless for wildlife work.
Morris
Thanks Morris....yes the D500 LV just doesn't work to track anything
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birdied wrote:
You never cease to amaze Geoff !! Stunning work.
Wow! 