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Chris and I drove to Edinburg, Texas yesterday. We are photographing together on the Cozad Ranch in Linn, TX on Wednesday (today) and on Thursday. I drop Chris off at the McAllen Airport early on Friday morning. My plans after that are indefinite other than knowing that I have three very long driving days ahead so that I can hook up with Chris again in Pelee on the afternoon of May 7th. Below are a few more images from the Ramirez Ranch in Roma, TX.
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| Images of two songbirds interacting are extremely rare and good ones are rarer still. The bird on our right is a male offering a tidbit to his mate, i.e., courtship feeing. Getting both birds in a pleasing position and on relatively the same plane are among the challenges when trying to create images like this. When I was in the blind at Roma, I had both the 800m and the 500mm set up so that I could quickly go wide when need be as I did here: Canon 500mm f/4L IS lens with the EOS-1D MIII. ISO 800. Evaluative metering +1 stop: 1/320 sec. at f/4. Fill flash with Better Beamer at -2 2/3 stops. |
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| Long-billed Thrasher is another Rio Grande Valley specialty bird. They do not often give up perfect poses but there are lots of them on Roel's ranch and once in a while you get one that sits still for a few seconds…. Image created with the Canon 800mm f/5.6L IS lens and the EOS-1D MIII. ISO 500. Evaluative metering +1/3 stop: 1/125 sec. at f/7.1. Fill flash with the Better Beamer at -3 stops. |
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| These birds are almost as large as they are noisy! In order to fit it into the frame, I had to move to the back of the blind with the 500 and photograph over Chris's shoulder. I was still too tight and had to add a bit of canvas left and top. Canon 500mm f/4L IS lens with the EOS-1D MIII body. ISO 500. Evaluative metering +2/3 stop: 1/160 sec. at f/5/6. Fill flash with the Better Beamer at -2 2/3 stops. You can learn to add canvas like a pro from our Digital Basics File: https://store.birdsasart.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=252. |
The absolute key to creating good images at a feeder set-up is the set-up itself. You will do well to study the image below to see what we had in mind. You can find detailed info on selecting perches and creating an effective set-up in the Practicalities Chapter in my CD book, “The Art of Bird Photography II:” https://store.birdsasart.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=19tm. At 916 pages with 900+ images the all-new continuation of the classic ABP reveals everything that I learned about bird photography and about digital between 1998 and 2006 when the CD book was published.
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| Once you have all of your perches selected, it can take as long as an hour to create your set-up. We stayed for three days and every ten minutes or so we would leave the blind to change a perch or to tweak this or that…. |