When it's Bright; Work Tight - American Oystercatcher

American Oystercatcher PORTRAIT  (Haematopus palliatus, Huîtrier d'Amérique, AMOY)  Fort DeSoto Beach, Tierra Verde, Florida. Image Copyright ©Christopher Dodds All Rights Reserved. Canon 1D MK IV, 500mm F4 L IS, 2X Teleconverter III & Canon 25mm Extension Tube. ISO 400, F10 @1/800s Manual mode. CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE A PRINT or LICENSE IMAGE FOR PUBLICATION

When it's bright; work tight!

Let's face it; as much as we might like it, the light isn't always soft and golden. Those times I find myself out with my camera in bright, harsh light, I always work close with big glass to make the best of what light there is. The American Oystercatcher is a spectacular bird, one that's hard to stay away from when on a beach with my camera. I arrived on the beach early to scout out what was worth my time, and discovered the most co-operative pair of Oystercatchers standing against strong, sand laden winds. I immediately noticed their beaks were covered with sand, but also saw that I could manage to get a nice background by getting down low, and including the out of focus grass covered dune in the background. Sand, like snow, reflects a lot of light back into the shadowed areas of the image, reducing contrast and opening-up details that otherwise would be lost. Rather than passing up the shot, I worked what was there.

Later that same day, I rediscovered the same birds I had worked earlier, this time presenting with the sand rinsed off their beaks, and in spectacular light.

American Oystercatcher SUNSET PORTRAIT  (Haematopus palliatus, Huîtrier d'Amérique, AMOY)  Fort DeSoto Beach, Tierra Verde, Florida. Image Copyright ©Christopher Dodds All Rights Reserved. Canon 1D MK IV, 500mm F4 L IS, 1.4X Extender III & Canon 25mm Extension Tube. ISO 400, F10 @1/500s Manual mode. CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE A PRINT or LICENSE IMAGE FOR PUBLICATION

American Oystercatcher SUNSET SURF  (Haematopus palliatus, Huîtrier d'Amérique, AMOY)  Fort DeSoto Beach, Tierra Verde, Florida. Image Copyright ©Christopher Dodds All Rights Reserved. Canon 1D MK IV, 500mm F4 L IS, 1.4X Extender III . ISO 400, F10 @1/500s Manual mode. CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE A PRINT or LICENSE IMAGE FOR PUBLICATION

The great spring warbler chase road trip

On Monday, April 13, I escaped the lingering cold weather and fluffy snow that fell during my walk with Julie and T-Bone (our best friend) the day before. We were up at 3:30 and Julie dropped me off at the Airport for my flight to Tampa, Florida. I arrived in Tampa, rented a car and picked up my great friend, Arthur Morris at the Toyota dealer where he left his Sequoia for the 90,000 mile tune-up (more on that in my next entry), to be ready for the great spring warbler chase road trip. We are spending the next two weeks driving from Tampa to Dauphin Island, Alabama, then on to Texas. We went straight to Fort DeSoto Beach, realized all of the other photographers were photographing the wind-surfers and that the strong wind was from the East. Not only do birds reliably takeoff and land into the wind, they also sit facing the wind. Not the best conditions for bird photography. We both agreed that the best place to go was a sheltered little mud flat to the right of the footbridge. Photography was fun with co-operative birds and still water until the clouds obscured what would surely have been a great sunset.

Tuesday morning, despite hearing the tornado warnings, we ventured back out and photographed until the dark clouds that had been on the horizon moved-in and the wind kicked-up to some of the strongest I've ever felt. The temperature must have dropped about 30 degrees and we both looked out onto the near horizon to see the most amazing storm clouds, a dark featureless sky on the right, with a diagonal, layered formation that was the closest thing to a tornado shape that I've ever seen. There we were, two seasoned professional nature photographers without a wide angle lens between us. We ran back to the car and grabbed short zoom lenses, ran back to the beach only to find a really dark, featureless sky. I'm leaving out the hail that Artie remembers, simply because I can't for the life of me remember feeling or seeing hail (It might have been the adrenaline that affected my memory). Regardless, we both agree that no photograph could do justice to the image of that sky that will always be imprinted in my memory.