Eastern Screech Owl

This weekend was Birds of Prey Days at Braddock Bay Park in Greece.   The Institute for Environmental Learning once again offered a special photography event. For a small donation to the institute you could photograph their unique collection of owls, hawks and eagles in photographer friendly settings.  I decided to participate this year and I'm glad I did.  This is the final year that Paul Schnell and his wife Anne will be able to provide the event because they moving on to the next chapter of their lives and relocating to Arizona (and yes, the birds are moving with them).

Barn Owl

They presented several of their birds for photo opportunities and I took over 800 pictures in the 2 hour block of time we had with the birds.  I selected at least 1 picture of each bird presented.  When I got home, I quickly scanned through the many pictures to find the best of each bird.   This exercise of filtering out favorite shots is another aspect of being a photographer that I need to practice.  Having pack rat tendencies is also not a good trait when trying to prune out pictures.  Those not selected should be discarded and deleted, never to be seen again.  I know this is the right practice in order to keep my image library clean of so-so shots but I just can't get myself to do it.

Eurasian eagle-owl

The Northern Saw-whet Owl was one of the smaller birds that we photographed but I still selected this close-up of it as my primary shot for this week.  I like the separation of the bird from the background which shows off the incredible bokeh produced by the Nikon 70-200 f2.8 lens.  I also love the yellow eyes on this little guy.  Another small owl presented was the Eastern Screech Owl.  The handlers placed this small bird into the trees, allowing for natural habitat photos.  I think the young buds just breaking out on the branch in the lower right balances the picture nicely.   Sticking with owls but moving up in size we next photographed a barn owl.  I don't know how common these birds are but I have never seen one in its natural habitat (would that be a barn?).  The size and striking white face made this a very interesting bird.  The last owl we took pictures of was the Eurasian eagle-owl, another relatively large bird.  This bird is not native to North America but is quite prominent in most of Eurasia.

Peregrine Falcon

I tried to get a shot of this magnificent bird with it looking into the camera.  The shots that I was able to get unfortunately had the stick coming up behind the left ear.  When I have more time I'm going to see if I can photoshop that out and make this an even better shot.  I wish this picture had a clean background like that on the Northern Saw-whet owl shot.

Red-Tailed Hawk

In addition to the owls, four other magnificent birds of prey were made available to photograph.  The first of these was a peregrine falcon.  The Schnells saved this bird from being put down due to its harassment of a construction crew working near her nest in downstate New York.  We also had the privilege of seeing one of the oldest Red-Tailed hawks in north america.  You can almost sense the "don't mess with me" attitude coming from this great bird as he sits perched on this branch.

African Hawk Eagle

My favorite bird of the day and the one I had the most difficult time picking a favorite picture of was the African Hawk Eagle.  I found this bird to be extremely photogenic and took several nice pictures of it.  Probably the most famous bird in the collection the Paul and Anne manage is Liberty, an American Bald Eagle.

American Bald Eagle

 Liberty was rescued by Paul and Anne many years ago (1989?) from Alaska where the bird was found with a broken wing.  Attempts to repair the wing have failed and Liberty has never flown since his rescue.  This fact, however, does not diminish the regal presence this bird exhibits.  Handicapped or not the American Bald Eagle is an impressive animal to be close to.

The last bird we photographed was a  Harris's Hawk.  For this section of the photo shoot we moved to the other side of the road from the main lodge and Paul demonstrated the bird flying from handler to handler.

Harris's Hawk

They offered the opportunity to hold the bird and allow it to land on your gloved hand.  I tried to capture the bird in flight but did not succeed.  Yet another aspect of photography to practice - capturing birds in flight.  My biggest mistake here was not setting my shutter speed fast enough.  I'm guessing now that a shutter speed of 1/2000 or higher should be used.  I did manage to get a reasonable shot of the bird landing on a perch.

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Setup for the shot - taken with iPhone

We've finally had a stretch of good weather here in Rochester, NY and Amy and I took advantage of it while it lasted.  On Wednesday evening after dinner we drove to downtown Rochester and walked along the riverside for some skyline shots as the sun set.  Rochester's skyline may not be as interesting as the one I shared back in November, but it is our home city.  Several years ago the city rebuilt the bridge over the Genesee River, adding to the landscape of Rochester's skyline.

Frederick Douglas - Susan B. Anthony Memorial Bridge

The Frederick Douglas - Susan B. Anthony Memorial Bridge adds another landmark to the city scape as one looks north from the river near the Ford Street bridge.

We arrived around 6:30 and I had mistaken the time of sunset by 3/4 of an hour so we needed to stay a little longer than expected.  Amy made the best of the time by walking the length of the Genesee Riverway Trail between the memorial bridge and Ford Street.  I started out with my 50mm fixed focal length lens and found the scene to be a bit too wide for the view I was looking for.  I did bring my main camera bag with me, but I did not have all my gear packed.

Nice trail along the Genesee River

My 70-200 f2.8 zoom lens would have been perfect for what I was doing, but it was still at home. Another lesson on always being prepared but in my defense that lens is heavy.  I did, however, have my 105 mm macro lens in the bag and it's focal length was close to what I was looking for and to show that its not just for macro scenes I used it to take this week's main photo.
I took several shots from the same location as the sun set lower and lower.  I had the white balance setting on the camera to daylight (I often use auto white balance) and this allowed the warm glow of the golden hour to show in my chosen photo.  You can compare that photo to the one taken with the 50 mm lens that shows the skyline and the path which has a more traditional daylight look, indicating the golden hour has not yet arrived.  In contrast, notice the cooler (bluer) lighting of the post golden hour shots taken closer to the bridge.

Four frame panoramic of the bridge.

After the sun set and the magic glow of the golden hour was gone, I packed up the camera and we started our walk back to the car.  Before returning to the car, I asked Amy if she wouldn't mind walking up closer to the bridge for a few more shots.  It was a perfect evening to be out for a stroll so she agreed and I took a few more hand held shots of the bridge, including a series to stitch into a small panoramic shot.

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A common use of macro photography is to take close-up pictures of everyday things and then see if people can guess the subject of the picture.  I have been planning to do that for one of my weekly postings and given that I didn't have much else to share this week, now would be the time.

In addition to that, I was interested in trying a unique selfie where all you see is an eye.  Using the R1 flash system featured in my flower power posting, I looked into the lens and snapped the picture, trying all the time not to blink.  The results weren't too bad so I thought the picture would make a good lead in to the blog and it helped me title the posting.  

All pictures in this week's post were taken with the 105mm macro lens on my Nikon D750 camera with the R1 flashes attached to the front of the lens as described in other posts.  There is not much else to say about this week's pictures so now its up to you to guess what each one is.

If you think you know what each picture is you can check the answer page to see if you got it right.  I'll give you a hint; a lot of them are spices from the kitchen.

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When looking for indoor photography ideas, I came across some pictures of thinly sliced fruit and vegetables photographed on a light box.  I decided to give it a try.  I used Amy's light box that she got for Christmas a couple years ago for the job.

Amy was willing to let me do this because she planned to take the remainder of the citrus fruits and make sangria with it.  Can't let the rest of that good fruit go to waste!  I used lemon, lime, orange and a red onion (this last one did not go into the sangria).

The setup consists of the light box on which I placed a piece of tracing paper to reduce the amount of juice that got on the surface of the light box.  I then put my tripod in a configuration that allowed me to hang the camera directly over the light box and pointing straight down.  In order to ensure an even depth of field, the camera lens should be parallel to the surface of the box.  Metering the shot needed to be done with a bit of trial and error because the uniform light box brightness will fool the camera's meter and will tend to underexpose, much like a bright winter scene.   Most shots were taken with the  105mm macro lens.  In order to get a shot with more of the slices in the frame I used my 17-55mm f2.8 zoom at 55mm.  Even though this is a DX lens, from about 24mm and up it will cover the full frame sensor of the Nikon D750.  I've also included a picture of the setup that I took with my iPhone.  Hope you enjoy this week's pictures.

Setup for this week's shots.

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