So, the Cardinal bird I posted earlier was in a singing competition with the Western Meadowlark I posted earlier. While my photos of the Western Meadowlark show him singing, the Cardinal does not. The main reason, is that I think Cardinals are ugly when they sing. However, I did take photos of him singing and wanted to share.
So here’s the first one.
Canon T3i – ISO 400, 1/1600sec, f/8, 300mm
And zoomed way in to show you just how freaky they look while singing.
CRAZY BIRD!
This isn’t a Cardinal Rule, but one of the things you should generally do when shooting birds is stand with the sun behind you. This helps you get the beauty and detail of their feathers and you don’t get harsh shadows cutting across the bird. I did not do that. However, I’m definitely learning how to do this and the whole bird photo thing is very new to me. Regardless, here are a few shots of a quite attractive Cardinal male that was by my house.
Canon T3i – ISO 400, 1/1000 sec, f/8, at 300mm
And one more.
Canon T3i – ISO 400, 1/1600sec, f/8, 300mm
So, my insanely busy schedule isn’t lightening up any, and as a result, I have not gotten much photography in. (And by much, I mean any) But my beautiful wife got me a brand new lens for Valentine’s Day, a Canon 100-300mm f4.5. I had to go out and at least give it a try, because it’s new, and you have to.
So without a tripod, on an overcast day, I took it out in our front yard to see if I could find some local birds to attempt to get photos of. I found 1 bird that I don’t know what it is (I also don’t really know much about birds) and one lady cardinal that I was able to get photos of.
Keep in mind, I did this solely because I wanted to test out my new lens, I didn’t do anything properly, like get a tripod or great bracing, or wait for good weather. I just hand held a shot to birds in trees using spot metering. But I just wanted to see what shots out of my new lens looked like, so here’s my first attempts shared with you, the public.
The first is the bird that I can’t identify.
Canon T3i: ISO 160, 170mm, f/7.1, 1/250 sec
The second is the female cardinal. I saw her male friend briefly, but he was on his way gone by the time I got even remotely close, so no pictures of him.
Canon T3i: ISO 125, 195mm, f/7.1, 1/320 sec
So I know there is a lack of crispness from hand shake, but overall, I’m happy with the performance of the lens, so that’s what I wanted to get out of it.
I haven’t had a lot of opportunity to do any bird photography. To begin with the season just isn’t right for there to be a lot of birds around, and I don’t really have a zoom lens (except when I borrowed my friend’s 75-300) for a weekend. This was taken with that lens at 300mm.
I only got one shot then it flew off, and I was using evaluative metering, so it exposed for the sky and I ended up with a silhouette instead of a visible cardinal bird, but I kind of liked how the silhouette turned out, so I thought I’d share.
Canon T3i: ISO 100, 300mm, f/5.6, 1/1000 sec
Here’s the original:
I wasn’t a fan of the chromatic aberration of the out of focus branches, so I tried it in black and white.
I thought this was a neat view, but overall I wanted that nice orange sky I had before, so I asked a friend who’s a graphic designer if he had any ideas on how to get rid of it. He suggested that I just do a highlight split tone on the black and white of the original sky color. It seemed like a solid idea, so here’s that result.
So the million dollar question, which one do you prefer? I personally like the last one, but I’m very interested in hearing what others have to say.
