The Phyllis Haehnle Memorial Sanctuary outside Jackson, Michigan, is one of the top sandhill crane roosts in the Midwest. This fall was a 12-year record crane count with 4,455 cranes roosting a couple weeks ago.
The cranes spend the day feeding in surrounding fields and marshes, and their sense of timing is quite incredible as they flock to the roost within a very tight window of about 10 minutes before the sun sets to about 15-20 minutes after sundown. Most of the birds arrive just as the earth’s shadow becomes very apparent on the eastern horizon.
This makes photography very challenging, as they fly in quite fast while the light rapidly fades. The early birds come in just as the final rays from the sun illuminate them from below, which is dramatic to see. The mass of the birds come in 5-10 minutes later, so all you can get are birds silhouetted against a darkening sky. I wish they came in 15 minutes earlier!
Here are some of my attempts at catching the silhouettes this year. The resulting images remind me of Japanese drawings or prints on paper.
Very nice. My wife pointed this location out while we were in Bosque.
I dealt with much of what you described as far as lighting. My approach was to expose for the subjects and with very high ISO and sometimes letting the sky go. Other times I chose to expose for the sky and background when I liked it and then dug the birds out of the shadows. Noise reduction in multiple passes makes all of this possible.
morris wrote:
Very nice. My wife pointed this location out while we were in Bosque.
I dealt with much of what you described as far as lighting. My approach was to expose for the subjects and with very high ISO and sometimes letting the sky go. Other times I chose to expose for the sky and background when I liked it and then dug the birds out of the shadows. Noise reduction in multiple passes makes all of this possible.
Morris
Thanks Morris! My approach in this series is kind of an "if you're given lemons make lemonade" attempt.
