{"id":692,"date":"2009-08-30T07:34:36","date_gmt":"2009-08-30T11:34:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/?p=692"},"modified":"2011-02-24T14:26:18","modified_gmt":"2011-02-24T18:26:18","slug":"a-great-morning-at-the-officenickerson-beach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/2009\/08\/30\/a-great-morning-at-the-officenickerson-beach\/","title":{"rendered":"A Great Morning at the Office\/Nickerson Beach"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
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Canon 800mm f\/5.6 L IS lens with the 1.4X II TC and the EOS-1D Mark III. ISO 250. Evaluative metering +1 stop: 1\/250 sec. at f\/8.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

As most of you know I flew from Panama to Orlando and continued on to NY’s JFK that same day (17 AUG).\u00a0 The next morning at 5:55am I met the three IPT participants.\u00a0 As it turned out, the East Pond at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge was on the disappointing side but the Common Tern\/Black Skimmer colony at Nickerson Beach just east of Point Lookout, NY was quite excellent.\u00a0\u00a0 After the IPT I visited my Mom who lives in Holbrook, Long Island.\u00a0\u00a0 On Monday 24 AUG I headed back to the JFK Days Inn for my early morning flight back to Orlando on Tuesday.\u00a0 I left my Mom’s early and headed to Nickerson Beach for one last chance\u00a0at the terns and skimmers.\u00a0\u00a0 There was a nice sunrise but the wind was from the north with just a bit of west in it.\u00a0\u00a0 A northeast wind in the early morning would have been great but with some hard work and good thinking I was able to create many fine images.\u00a0 In fact, with the less than ideal conditions I was sort of amazed at how many good images I created that morning.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So far I have optimized 17 from that single morning.\u00a0 The first of those was created at 6:15 am (see above) and the last at 8:12 am.\u00a0 I will share a bunch of those with you below so that you can get an idea of how productive a top pro can be in less than two hours (he said modestly…)\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Handheld Canon 400mm f\/4 IS DO lens with the EOS-1D Mark III. ISO 200. Evaluative metering +1 stop: 1\/1000 sec. at f\/4.5.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

I knew exactly the\u00a0image that I wanted to make, a skimmer in flight just to the right of the swath of the rising sun but I did not think that I had much chance of creating\u00a0it as the camera was having trouble holding focus when it saw the sun’s bright swath.\u00a0\u00a0 To try for the composition that I wanted I manually chose the focusing sensor just to the right of center (while working in AI Servo AF as I always do with moving subjects).\u00a0\u00a0 I did not look at the images in the field but when I saw them on the computer I was thrilled with this one as it was sharp, it was exactly as I had pre-visualized it, and as a bonus, the bird was barking! (Skimmers sound a bit like dogs when they call.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Canon 800mm f\/5.6L IS lens with the EOS-1D Mark III. ISO 400. Evaluative metering +2 stops: 1\/100 sec. at f\/5.6.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

The young terns stand by themselves on the beach begging to every adult tern that flies by whether they have a fish in their bill or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Canon 800mm f\/5.6L IS lens with the 1.4X II TC and the EOS-1D Mark III. Evaluative metering +2 stops: 1\/125 sec. at f\/8.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

This juvenile skimmer is exhibiting begging posture.\u00a0 I would never have made this image with film as there was another bird in the lower right part of the frame.\u00a0\u00a0 With digital I knew that as long as the two birds did not merge that I would be able to cover the remaining parts of the offending bird with some Quick Masks after cropping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Canon 800mm f\/5.6L IS lens with the 1.4X II TC and the EOS-1D Mark III. Evaluative metering +1 1\/3 stops: 1\/200 sec. at f\/8.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

I was much too close to this bird to fit it into the frame so I made a few photographs of the front end of the bird and then, allowing about a 20%\u00a0overlap, photographed the back end of the bird.\u00a0 The two images were converted and then stitched together using Image\/Automate\/Photomerge in CS-3.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Handheld Canon 400mm f\/4 IS DO lens with the EOS-1D MIII. ISO 400. Evaluative metering + 2 stops off the sky: 1\/800 sec. at f\/5.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

I sat on the beach to prevent having the horizon line cut through the landing birds.\u00a0 Check out my\u00a0BPN post of a similar image of a skimmer with a fish:\u00a0 http:\/\/www.birdphotographers.net\/forums\/showthread.php?p=333594#post333594<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0 It was also created on the morning of 24 AUG and features some good thinking on my part as well as\u00a0some good Photoshop work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Canon 800mm f\/5.6 L IS lens with the 1.4X II TC and the EOS-1D Mark III. ISO 400. Evaluative metering +1 stop" 1\/1250 sec. at f\/6.3.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

Each morning the Great Black-backed Gulls would kill a skimmer fledgling or two for breakfast.\u00a0\u00a0 For more in this series check out the BPN thread here: http:\/\/www.birdphotographers.net\/forums\/showthread.php?t=44544<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Canon 800mm f\/5.6L IS lens with the EOS-1D MIII. Evaluative metering +2\/3 stop: 1\/1250 sec. at f\/8.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

This bird was a bit tight in the frame but I chose to capture the image without attempting to back up knowing that I could add canvas above and right as described in Digital Basics: http:\/\/www.birdphotographers.net\/forums\/showthread.php?t=44544<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Canon 800mm f\/5.6L IS lens with the 1.4X II TC and the EOS-1D Mark III. ISO 400. Evaluative metering +2\/3 stop: 1\/500 sec. at f\/13 set manually.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

This young American Oystercatcher was oblivious to my presence as I approached carefully while crawling behind my flattened tripod.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Canon 800mm f\/5.6L IS lens with the 1.4X II TC and the EOS-1D Mark III. ISO 400. Evaluative metering +2\/3 stop: 1\/800 sec. at f\/9.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

Though I took several hundred images of the predation that morning, I kept only 19.\u00a0 This was the last keeper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Canon 800mm f\/5.6L IS lens with the EOS-1D Mark III. Evaluative metering +2\/3 stop: 1\/2000 sec. at f\/6\/3.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

I created this image just before 8:15 am.\u00a0 Notice that the light is relatively harsh and that the sun is fairly high in the sky.\u00a0\u00a0 After I created this one I headed back to the motel to begin packing.\u00a0\u00a0 See y’all soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ngg_shortcode_11_placeholder Canon 800mm f\/5.6 L IS lens with the 1.4X II TC and the EOS-1D Mark III. ISO 250. Evaluative metering +1 stop: 1\/250 sec. at f\/8. <\/p>\n

As most of you know I flew from Panama to Orlando and continued on to NY’s JFK that same day (17 AUG). The next morning at 5:55am […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[88,37,28,39,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-88","category-400mmdo-f4","category-800mm-f5-6","category-mkiii","category-nickerson-beach","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}