High Island & Low-Light Panning

The Houston Audubon Society owns four bird sanctuaries at High Island, Texas. In March and April each year, the rookery in the Smith Oaks section is a hoppin' place. The nesting areas are cram-packed with Great White Egrets, Roseate Spoonbills, Neotropic Cormorants, and other shore birds. There are frequent squabbles for space and the noise is incredible.

The trails and viewing platforms near the rookery are equally packed. They are infested with photographers, birders, and thick clouds of mosquitos. Finding enough room to shoot is difficult enough, then you have to worry about getting elbowed or knocked in the head by someone's lens. There's always a bit of tension in the air when groups of photographers attempt to co-exist with groups of birders :-)

Anyway, I've made four trips there in the past two years to photograph the birds. I'm just now wrapping up processing my photos from this year.

click for slightly larger pic

Canon 40D, 400mm f/5.6L
f/5.6, 1/250 sec., ISO 400

I've shot different types of bird scenes at High Island, but the ones I like best (and the ones I've strived to get) take a different approch from the normal shots that photographers usually capture here.

When the light gets dim and the nesting area falls into shadow, almost all photographers and birders leave. The mosquitos get thick and the alligators float like dreadnoughts in the waters below.

click for slightly larger pic

Canon 40D, 400mm f/5.6L
f/5.6, 1/200 sec., ISO 400

I like to shoot in-flight shots in relatively low light (and slow shutter speeds). The subdued colors in the quiet light are quite nice. What I'm really after is getting a little wing blur to imply motion.

The resulting photos have a dream-like quality and offer a different view of High Island from the literal direct-light bird-book type photos usually taken here by others.

click for slightly larger pic

Canon 40D, 400mm f/5.6L
f/5.6, 1/250 sec., ISO 400

Using the Canon 400mm f/5.6 lens is well suited for this type of shooting. The lens is relatively small and light, and it's easier to pan along with the birds when shooting.

The slower maximum aperture (f/5.6) is acceptible because it results in slower shutter speeds (required to get wing blur) and also a little more DOF. Shooting in-flight shots like this is hit-or-miss (mostly near-miss) and the added DOF helps to get the bird's head in acceptable focus even if the focus point is a little off.

In a typical bird-book type shot, the 400mm f/5.6 does not produce beautiful, completely blurred backgrounds like a 500 or 600m f/4 lens will. So, this style of shooting (low-light panning) helps to blur the background more due to motion.

Ghost Beach

I'm finally getting around to processing a load of photos I made earlier this year. These images are from the beach at High Island, Texas. They were taken about an hour after sunset the day after a full moon.

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camera/lens: Canon 5D, 17-40mm f/4L
settings: 25mm, f/8, 102 sec., ISO 200

Archetype The photo above shows a specific archetype. I won't tell you what it is, so leave a comment and tell me what you see, please! I showed this to my wife, and she didn't get it. She did, however, see a different archetype, and that was quite interesting because it was something I didn't see. That's why I really like showing my photos to others and hearing their views :-)

click for larger image

camera/lens: Canon 5D, 70-200mm f/4L
settings: 154mm, f/8, 15 sec., ISO 400

I love night shooting. There's something magical and other-worldly about long exposures in the dark. The camera's sensor will keep collecting light and capture details not seen with the naked eye. The resulting photo contains things not seen au naturel.

Of course the negative aspect is that because our human eyes can't see as the camera does, we can't fully appreciate the fine details that show up in the resulting photos as we shoot them. Night shooting often involves a lot of guesswork, trial-and-error, and a lot of time.

Oh, one piece of advice about long exposures taken on a sandy beach: your tripod legs will sink into the wet sand! I took several other exposures (most of them very long, e.g. 3 to 20 min.) very close to the water line and also just into the surf. The photos were a little too blurred to be of any good.