for the birds

By curiousillusion ( January 2, 2010 at 5:29 pm) · Filed under photography, , ,

Decided to get out of the house today and take Lola on a field trip.  Near my house there’s an area, kind of set aside and undeveloped – there’s a few parks (for people and one for dogs), ponds, fields where we used to fly kites…  It’s really nice. And I think it’ll be nice to shoot when there are leaves on the trees again.

Anyway, I serendipitously stumbled upon this pond with some ducks and other birds and decided to take a few pictures. Okay 175 pictures.   Most of which sucked. Here’s a few that did not get deleted:

birds in flight While I was shooting a bird, some people arrived and started feeding the birds on the other side of the pond.  So all the birds flew to get some food.  I became obsessed with trying to capture a shot of the birds in flight.  And let me just say, with manual focus, it’s really hard to do!

coming in for landing Another bird-in-flight action shot.

swimming along swimming along…

lone duck lone duck

2.365 And this is my picture for my project 365.   This duck was obsessively cleaning himself, ducking his head under water, and then flapping his wings.  I kept taking shots but they were slightly fuzzy. I was complaining to my dad and he said “sometime fuzzy is good”.   So, I was playing around with the shot in Photoshop and was like, hmmm, what does it do if I adjust the clarity setting. Dragged it to the right, didn’t notice much of a change. Dragged it to the left.  Ohhh.  Okay maybe fuzzy can be good.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Print
  • Twitter
  • Digg
  • StumbleUpon
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Google Bookmarks

Related posts:

  1. Under the boardwalk… Okay, not really under the boardwalk.  More like on the...
  2. three sixty five. take two. So here I go again with the project 365. I’m...
  3. three sixty five. third of the way down… So April is now over, and that means I have...
  4. three sixty five. spring arrives. I had a thought the other day, about project 365. ...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

« « “Maybe this year will be better than the last…| On being back at work… and psychic tendencies. » »
  • Quave
    What... you didn't jump in!? :)
    Nice pics, including the blurry one.
  • Wow the last picture is fantastic!
  • ronnica
    Gotta love that dogs have their own park (well, I know it's for their owners as well, but still...).
  • ari_b
    Those are awesome!! Fuzzy is definately good!
  • Again with the LOVE FEST. Obsessive Compulsive Duck looks like she's ascending to heaven. I usually HATE when the subject is dead center, but this works. Don't know if it's the branch, the splash, or what. Guess it's the combo. Just gorgeous. ^_^
  • ItsUnbeweavable
    Hey love! You got some great shots! I like what your dad said about fuzzy being good sometimes. :)

    Yay so glad you found my blog!
  • Those are cool pictures! It's not a bad thing to take 175 shots. It's worth it if a few turn out great.
  • mycognitivedistortion
    Tweet tweet!!!

    I love the pictures. I wish we had some fun places like this to take pictures of. Not too much in the area.

    Plus things are dead here this time of year.

    BORING!
  • I love Texas in the winter - I'm missing Austin so much this year (especially as the snow falls YET again in Boston today).
  • Fabulous Pics! Thanks for stopping by my site!
  • Wow, you got some really amazing shots!! My favourites are both the first one of the flying bird, and the last one which you are using for your project 365..

    By the look of these, I can see that your project 365 is def going to be a group of photos worth looking at!!

    x
  • Wow Ari! These are great! I love the effect in the last one. Your dad is a smart guy! :)
  • writetoreach
    I really love the last one! Something about the way the light hits the duck makes it look almost unreal.
  • justtheashes
    Yay I can comment now! No idea why it wasnt showing up. Hm.

    Anyways, I think the duck pictures look just spectacular! It doesnt really look fuzzy to me, more just a lighting effect.

    I love taking pictures of birds. I stalked them all over the Thames River and Kew Gardens in London. I only wish Id had my telephoto lens when Id gone. Would have been so much easier! (This happened when I went to Quebec too... My DSLR Nikon hadnt been delivered yet, and I didnt want to use my point and shoot Nikon, so I barely took any pictures)... erm, yea that was off topic. Haha
  • Yay! And thanks. :)

    I need a telephoto lens don't I? And ha that would have been fun... omg I'm going to London, that's what I'll have to do when I go. Lol I just remembered!
  • justtheashes
    I adore mine. I use it even when I'm absolutely pushing the limits of how close I should be zoomed to something.
  • Oh, and I totally heart the last show. Soft focus can be ftw...and I'm a big fan of taking a picture that doesn't quite work the way I intended...and figure out a way to make it look totally intentional. I call it the "I Meant To Do That, Honest!" effect.
  • Lol, I wish I could pull that off. Whenever I'm not sure about a picture (which is pretty much all the time), I always make excuses or defend myself in the picture. I can never be all "yeah I took it... and it's *meant* to look like that so there!"

    I need more cajones. Or maybe just more confidence.
  • Another way to save a pic is to 'shop the hell out of it and pretend
    the "over-processed" look was done for artistic purposes :)
  • Yeah but I know I'd get those "oh I wouldn't have done it that way" people and that just drives me crazy. I don't do well with criticism, lol.
  • I don't deal well with criticism either...but since I don't attract Flickr comments that much, I don't have to :)
  • I'm still trying to figure out why you're so obsessed with manual focus...our cameras have REALLY good autofocus motors and electronics, and especially when you're talking about a shallow focal plane (where you love to play) you're going to have a hard time getting tack-sharp focus manually through the viewfinder like that.

    That's one thing to beware of in the dSLR realm...there's a tendency to think that "manual is better", but I always think "what makes me think I'm smarter than a computer?"

    Don't get me wrong - manual focus has it's place, and so does M mode...but beware the temptation to think that "manual is better" just because some camera nerds on Flickr told you so.

    (also, beware the temptation to think that "autofocus is better" just because some camera nerd on commented that on a blog post of yours...heh)
  • I'm not *obsessed* with manual focus. I just get really frustrated when using auto-focus, because I can never get it to focus where I want it to. Or, in the case of whenever I try a self-portrait, I can never get it to focus at all.

    Don't worry, the next time I see a bunch of birds flying over a pond, I'll shoot with that auto-focus you were telling me about.

    Although... it is a bit more of a challenge to get it on manual. Kind of more fun that way.
  • I had a hard time with that myself, but I've gotten the hang of
    changing focal points in the viewfinder (again, another thing I have
    no idea how to do on Nikon but I'm sure one of your Nikon buds can
    fill you in).

    Autofocus in a selfie is tricky too. What I usually do is out
    something where I am going to be, hold the shutter halfway to get the
    AF, and then flip the lens to Manual focus (which will keep it focus
    locked) and then go back and shoot with the remote.
  • Oh I do know how to change focal points. :) Yay.

    But see, the way you do it (with the manual focus flipping, etc), is basically like how I used to shoot with my point & shoot. And really, what's the point in having a fancy dslr and a nice little remote when you can't get it to focus where you want it to?

    Erm, that's just my 2 cents.
  • Well unless you know where you will be in the frame, how can the camera figure out where you want it to focus? I'm trying to puzzle out why you're having a tough time getting it to focus. The camera should focus, tack-sharp, on the specific focus point you specified. If it's not focusing on that, then possibly the subject is too close to the lens? But manual focus wouldn't help with that either...
  • ah 365 is too ambitious for me right now! i don't know that i could do it. or maybe i could and i'm just making excuses hmmm.. do you plan on sharing everyone on the blog??

    also maybe you can help answer this question for me? i noticed these facebook fan pages popping up on blogs. i currently have the networked blog thing on my site but not a fan page... is fan page better??
  • I'll jump in here, unsolicited...Ari asked me about the Networked Blogs thing that I have on my sons' blog. I kind of think that Networked Blogs predates when Fan pages were useful. In a lot of ways I think Fan pages are possibly better as Facebook users don't have to add another app to their Facebook in order to "follow" your blog that way...I still use Networked Blogs for all of my blogs and haven't set up Fan pages for them yet, but I'm starting to be tempted to do so.
  • These are some superb shots, Ari! The first and last ones look amazing.
blog comments powered by Disqus