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Florida Safari 2009
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March 10
Tuesday
1983 photos
Bird-photography road trips are (for me, at least) hard work, with little or no leisure time at all.  By the time I get back to the hotel, it’s well after dark and I have only a few hours before my bed-time to clean my equipment, re-charge my dozens of flash-unit batteries, and upload my photos to my computer.  In-between feeding my dog and feeding myself, I try to find time to examine a sample of the images taken that day, to see whether there are any "screw-ups" that I might specifically try to re-take the next day.  Last night as I looked at the Reddish Egret photos I decided that I wasn’t really happy with any of them.  Despite my being fairly unimpressed with Fort Desoto, I decided I needed to return there today to see if I might get another chance to shoot the Reddish Egret.  I wasn’t overly optimistic.

When I got out to the lagoon, there were already a bunch of photographers there, though there were scarcely any birds.  I asked them about the Reddish Egret, but they hadn't seen it.  It looked as though I might not get my Reddish.  I decided to make the best of it and shoot the few "peeps" that were around.  Below is an image of a tiny fellow that had somehow found a worm in the hard-packed sand at the edge of the lagoon, and had to exert considerable effort in extracting it:



Early Bird Catching a Worm at Fort Desoto.
600mm at f/5.  1/2500 sec at ISO 800.
Flash on high-speed sync at full power (+3).


For the image below I was happy both to be getting a bird "shaking out" its plumage and also to be able to completely fill in all the shadows using my huge flash extender, despite using a fast shutter speed (which cuts the effective illumination due to flash):



Plover (?) at Fort Desoto.
600mm at f/9.  1/1600 sec at ISO 800.
Flash on high-speed sync at full power (+3).


I decided to try wandering northward along the inner shore of the lagoon, which I hadn’t explored at all the previous day.  Soon I was forced to turn back by high water and thickets, but not before being ridiculed by some cretins for "lookin’ at the stupid birds", and before shooting this severely back-lit Great Egret with a lizard it had recently procured:



Great Egret with Lizard.
600mm at f/7.1.  1/500 sec at ISO 320.
Flash on high-speed sync at full power (+3).


I decided to try the second, futher lagoon once again, since I had found the oystercatchers there yesterday.  All I found was a lonely White Ibis foraging in the water.  Despite being fairly sick of photographing ibises (I had by now shot thousands of frames of them), I was impressed by the colors of the scene, and the stillness of the water, and was later glad that I took the photo after all:



White Ibis at Fort Desoto.
400mm at f/7.1.  1/800 sec at ISO 160.
Flash on high-speed sync at full power (+3).

As I was returning to the first lagoon, I could see from a distance that the group of photographers that I had left there earlier were still there, and were in fact highly engrossed in photographing some wading bird at extremely close range.  I quickened my pace.  Soon I was fairly sure that the bird in question was my Reddish Egret.

When I arrived at the assemblage I was informed that the Reddish had shown up immediately after I had left to go investigate the second lagoon, and that they had been shooting it at point-blank range the entire time I was gone.  How nice of them to inform me.

Unfortunately, the sun was, by now, getting fairly high, but the bird stuck around for quite a while, and I was able to get a number of images that were at least marginally better than those from yesterday.  Today the bird was more animated than yesterday, often raising its wings to provide stunning poses, like the one shown below.  I wasn’t completely satisfied with the backgrounds (the bird often stayed close to the far shore of the tiny side-arm of the lagoon, where it was flanked close-by with vegetation), but some quick-and-dirty (actually, quite sloppy) processing in Photoshop sufficed to blur the background just enough:



Reddish Egret at Fort Desoto.
600mm at f/9.  1/1250 sec at ISO 640.
Flash on high-speed sync at full power (+3).

Below you can see the bird using its wings to shade the surface of the water.  Note that, just as in yesterday’s images of this bird, the reddish of the neck and head and the blue-gray of the wings appear flat and "bleached out" due to the bright sunlight:



Reddish Egret at Fort Desoto.
840mm at f/7.1.  1/3200 sec at ISO 800.
No flash.


Though I truly live for poses like the one above and the one below, many times they result in poor images because the wings end up shading the bird’s face.  In the image below, I used the Shadows / Highlights tool in Photoshop to lighten up the shadow in the bird’s axillary region (the armpit).  Though this successfully brought out some of the detail that had previously been hidden in there, you can see in this image that it also brought out a lot of noise in that area, which I was too lazy to fix:



Reddish Egret at Fort Desoto.
840mm at f/7.1.  1/3200 sec at ISO 800.
No flash.


Once again the bird kindly did his "spike haircut" pose for me, though just as yesterday I found the postprocessing of this pose very difficult, for some reason
the long, spikey plumes always end up appearing almost white after sharpening and exposure adjustments:



Reddish Egret at Fort Desoto.
840mm at f/7.1.  1/3200 sec at ISO 800.
No flash.


I was very happy to also get some flight shots of this bird, though the backgrounds could have been much better.  In the image below, you’ll again note that much of the under-wing lighting is provided by sunlight reflecting off the water (note the bright patterning reminiscent of waves).  Also note that, had I not been all the way down on my belly (a rather uncomfortable position, usually), the visual separation of the bird from the water would not have been as complete, resulting in a rather less dramatic angle, I think:



Reddish Egret in Flight.
600mm at f/9.  1/1250 sec at ISO 640.
Flash on high-speed sync at full power (+3).


Though I was on my belly for the shot below, the extreme width of the lagoon prevented me from getting the same effect as in the image above.  Also, the red coloration of the neck appears horribly bleached out, due to the intensely bright sunlight.  At least the background was much better:



Reddish Egret in Flight.
600mm at f/6.3.  1/2500 sec at ISO 800.
No flash.


Having got my Reddish Egret photos, I decided it was time to move on.  On my way out of the park I was surprised to see a wild parrot perched on the telephone line
a Monk Parakeet, as I was later told.  As I recall, these birds were introduced by pet owners, and have established themselves as wild or semi-wild birds in Florida.  The photo below is quite poor I was hand-holding the big 600mm rig (that means "with no tripod holding it up") and wasnt feeling particularly energetic at the time.  Also, the bird flew off after only a few frames, so I had to make the best with what I had got:



Monk Parakeet at Fort Desoto.
600mm hand-held, at f/8.  1/320 sec at ISO 320.
No flash.

I hit the highway around noon and drove with all speed toward the east.  My destination was Merritt Island, clear across the state on the east coast.  I had been told that it was a decent (though not the best) place to shoot Scrub Jays.  Also, someone had, within the past two weeks, shot American Avocets there.

I was told to try two particular sites on Merritt Island: Black Point Drive, and Scrub Ridge.  I sped past the large assemblage of white pelicans near the entrance in hopes of having time to come back and shoot them after checking out the two sites I had been specifically told to seek.  I first tried Black Point.  This is a long, one-way loop that winds through open marshland.  Though there were a few ducks in one of the ponds and a few "peeps" on one of the mud-flats, none of the birds were at all approachable.  The only photo I took on the entire "wildlife loop" was this landscape shot of the road:


Black Point Drive, on Merritt Island.
Canon 30D + Tokina 12-24mm lens.
12mm at f/9.  HDR image from three exposures
(1/5000 sec, 1/2000 sec, 1/800 sec) at ISO 500.


Though Merritt looked highly unpromising so far, the afternoon was wearing on, and I figured it was best to try some of the other sites on Merritt Island, rather than trying to rush to Viera Wetlands or Cruickshank and end up getting to either of those locations too late in the day to do any serious shooting.  I decided to try for the Scrub Jays, since I hadn’t shot a single Scrub Jay on this trip yet (in fact, I’d never seen one before at all).  I had been told that there were Scrub Jays at Scrub Ridge.

Before even arriving at Scrub Ridge I saw my first Scrub Jay.  It was perched in the vegetation just off the road.  I slammed on my brakes, backed up, put on my hazard lights, and got out of the car with the big 600mm lens in hand
no tripod.  Note that I still had my 1.4x teleconverter on the lens, so I was shooting at an effective focal length of 840mm, hand-held.  As you can see below, the very first image came out relatively sharp (except the beak, for some reason):



Florida Scrub Jay on Merritt Island.
840mm at f/7.1, hand-held.  1/320 sec at ISO 640.
Flash on full power (+3).


For these hand-held shots at 840mm, I relied critically on the Image Stabilization feature of my Canon lenses.  Shooting 840mm hand-held is highly inadvisable, and I do it only when I have a bird right in front of me and no time to get out the tripod.  For these shots I was also highly dependent on my flash unit and flash extender, since the bird was in deep shade.  As you can see below, the bird was lit up extremely well
almost too well in fact, since I had to use the Recovery slider in Adobe Camera Raw to reclaim some of the blown or nearly-blown highlights:



Florida Scrub Jay on Merritt Island.
840mm at f/7.1, hand-held.  1/320 sec at ISO 640.
Flash on full power (+3).


In the image below I did blow the highlights in the white region of the head, though that was done primarly in postprocess; I was in a hurry and didn’t have time to selectively adjust the brightness of the white feathers separate from the rest of the body, as I should have:



Florida Scrub Jay on Merritt Island.
840mm at f/7.1, hand-held.  1/320 sec at ISO 640.
Flash on full power (+3).

I was glad when the bird began foraging in the grass at the side of the road, because it gave me a chance to rest my arms by placing the lens on the ground as I lay on my belly shooting the bird at eye-level.  Here the bird was back-lit, so fill flash and the Fill Light slider in Photoshop / Camera Raw were essential:



Florida Scrub Jay on Merritt Island.
840mm at f/7.1.  1/400 sec at ISO 640.
Flash on high-speed sync at full power (+3).


When that bird flew off I continued on to Scrub Ridge, where I saw absolutely nothing.  As sunset approached, I drove back toward the park entrance.  In a small pond beside the road I was stunned to see a Roseate Spoonbill foraging very close to the road.  I quickly pulled over and grabbed my rig
once again without any tripod.  The bird was back-lit (as usual, it seems), but the yellow light reflecting off the water produced a nice, moody effect:



Roseate Spoonbill at Merritt Island.
840mm at f/7.1, hand-held.  1/250 sec at ISO 640.
Flash on full power (+3).


I was able to get a few more images of this bird, but none of them were very good.  Even the photo above is blurry due to motion blur (my shutter speed was too low; I had to keep it low to allow more light from my flash unit to reach the back-lit bird).  Soon it was too dark to shoot at all.  








All text and photos (C) Bill Majoros.  All rights reserved.