My Saturday morning photo session qualified as “one-of-those-days.” There was a gorgeous sunrise, but both eaglets were sound asleep and neither of the adults were at the nest tree. After photographing a crane sleeping in the marsh, I drove around to the sunny side of the eagle nest. As I pulled up, the larger eaglet was jumping up and down vigorously in the nest for more than a minute. I set up with the ladder and waited patiently (in vain) for more flapping. I kept a very few frames of the adult jumping up to the perfect perch. <\/p>\n
I spent a good part of the day doing a second edit of my JAN 2023 San Diego folder. More on that below. <\/p>\n
Like Bob Eastman, I preferred the wider of the two eagle nest images in yesterday’s blog post. Why? Because the eaglets were not doing anything interesting when the adult jumped out of the nest and landed on the perfect perch just south of the nest. <\/p>\n
As Joel Eade first suggested, I had the two tripods set up right next to each other. I worked in Manual (exposure) mode and manual focus (with focus peaking). The trick to making the images was to have an inexpensive Vello RS-S2II Wired Remote Switch for Select Cameras with Sony Multi-Terminal Connector<\/a> plugged into each camera body. Whenever I saw any action, I pressed and held each remote release button. That was easier to do than I thought it would be. <\/p>\n Take a shot at this one: what recent experience motivated me to shoot tight and wide on the backlit sunrise eagle nest images at the same time?<\/p>\n Today is Sunday 12 February 2023. The forecast for today is for partly to mostly cloudy skies with a brisk wind from the west in the morning swinging around to the northwest in the afternoon with gale warnings. I will head down to the lake for a bit in the morning to check out the baby eagles but would not expect to do much photographically with that forecast. The afternoon might be good for Ospreys flying in with nesting material. This blog post took more than two hours to prepare and makes three hundred twenty days in a row with a new educational post. Wherever you are and whatever you are doing, I hope that you too have a great day.<\/p>\n Oh, and BTW, good luck to Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs in today’s Super Bowl game: Chiefs 38, Eagles 21. <\/p>\n Please, please, pretty please remember to use my B&H or Bedford’s affiliate programs for all your new gear purchases. If you use B&H, please be sure to click on any B&H link in the blog to start your search. Or simply start with this link<\/a>. There is always the option of e-mailing me for gear advice and for the correct links. <\/p>\n The plan is to continue to post every day until the streak reaches one year and one day and then posting every other day. <\/p>\n Please remember to use the B&H and Amazon links that are found on most blog pages and to use the BIRDSASART discount code at checkout when purchasing your new gear from Bedfords to get 3% back on your credit card and enjoy free second-day air FedEx. Please, also, consider joining a BAA IPT<\/a>. You will be amazed at how much you will learn! <\/p>\n You can find some great photo accessories (and necessities, like surf booties!) on Amazon by clicking on the Stuff tab on the orange\/yellow menu bar above. On a related note, it would be extremely helpful if blog-folks who, like me, spend too much money on Amazon, would get in the habit of clicking on the Amazon logo link on the right side of each blog post when they shop online. As you might expect, doing so will not cost you a single penny, but would be appreciated tremendously by yours truly. And doing so, works seamlessly with your Amazon Prime account.<\/p>\n Please remember that if an item \u2014 a Delkin flash card, or a tripod head \u2014 for example, that is available from B&H and\/or Bedfords, is also available in the BAA Online Store, it would be great, and greatly appreciated, if you would opt to purchase from us. We will match any price. Please remember also to use my B&H affiliate links or to earn 3% cash back at Bedfords by using the BIRDSASART discount code at checkout for your major gear purchases. Doing either often earns you free guides and\/or discounts. And always earns my great appreciation.<\/p>\n On January 21, 2023, blog regular David Policansky left a comment asking:<\/p>\n What do you do with all the images you keep? 181 today. if I multiply that even by 100 (instead of 365), that\u2019s 18,100 a year. Even if it\u2019s only 5,000 a year, that still is a lot.<\/em><\/p>\n When I began the second edit of the JAN 2023 San Diego folder, there were 3291 raw files (plus 39 optimized .TIFs.) I deleted 2123 raw files while keeping only 1168 (35.5%). With 23 days of photography, that works out to 50 keepers\/day. Remember that photography in San Diego was especially fantastic this year and that I will probably delete another 20% of those images as I optimize more images for the blog. The current size of the folder is 71.52 GB. With an 8TB hard drive in my Apple 16.2″ MacBook Pro with M1 Max Chip (Late 2021, Space Gray)<\/a>, this folder takes up less than 1% of my storage space. His current laptop is being replaced by the faster Apple 16″ MacBook Pro (M2 Max, Silver)<\/a>.<\/p>\n And whenever I have some free time, I do third and forth edits of older folders to keep the total images well below 3TB. Right now, I have 5.84TB available out of eight. With tight editing, I have three years of images on my laptop that take up only 2.16TB. <\/p>\n As I see it, huge storage problems exist today because many folks do not keep up with their editing. They have many GBs of unedited image folders, and when they do get around to editing a folder, they keep far too many images.<\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n This image was also created on 12 January 2023 at La Jolla, CA. Standing at full height, I used the no-longer available (except from BIRDS AS ART<\/a>) Induro GIT 304L tripod\/Levered-Clamp FlexShooter Pro<\/a>-mounted Sony FE 600mm f\/4 GM OSS lens<\/a> and The One, the Sony Alpha 1 Mirrorless digital camera. <\/a> ISO 640. Exposure was determined via Zebras with ISO on the rear dial: 1\/2500 sec. at f\/4 (wide open). AWB at 7:45:30 on a sunny morning. <\/p>\n Tracking: Expand Spot\/AF-C was active at the moment of exposure and performed perfectly. Be sure to click on the image to enjoy the larger version.<\/p>\nJAN 2023 San Diego Second Edit<\/h3>\n
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\n \n \n \n Brown Pelican Pacific-race head throw