Birds – Page 6 – Jeanne Hoadley Photography

Mallard

Truth be told I did not shoot one photograph this week. I had to make getting out from under the chaos of moving a priority. Sadly, the job is still not done but significant progress has been made. I reached back to my last trip to North Mountain Park for this Mallard portrait. Sometimes we overlook the beauty of a bird that seems commonplace. I’ve seen the iridescent feathers on a Mallard’s head go purple in the right light.

I did my standard post processing, detail, saturation, highlighting the subject. Then added some sharpening. I’m looking forward to a trip to Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Southeast Oregon next week so hope to have lots more birds to share soon.

Spotted Towhee

So, I decided if I was going to be a bird photographer I needed to learn a little more about birds. Taking a Life Long Learning class on birds has helped me to see that I was even more ignorant than I knew. Take for example the spotted towhee which, it turns out, is a very common bird in these parts and a year round resident. Yet I had never seen one before. Perhaps because I wasn’t looking.

In any case this one was a good poser. One of the challenges of bird photography is that most of them refuse to hold still. In post processing I added detail and sharpness, a little saturation and emphasized the bird with a darken/lighten center filter.

Great Egret with Lunch

Lunch

One of the holy grails of bird photography is catching the bird with lunch in its mouth. I don’t suppose this one will win any prizes because the fish is not sharp. I think it was wiggling around too much. I might get points for breeding plumage though.

In post processing I did the usual with some detail, saturation and darkening the edges. I also added a smart sharpen filter mainly to reduce noise which was needed because I was shooting at 400 ISO in order to help reduce camera shake from hand holding the big lens inside the car.

This ia another one from Tule Lake. I am really falling in love with that place.

Western Scrub Jay

Scrub_Jay

So, having committed to a project shooting in the Klamath Basin every month for a year, I decided I needed a longer telephoto lens. After a lot of research and angst I opted for the Tamron 150-600mm. You can read more about my thought process at http://jeannehoadley.com/Klamath.

I just got the lens yesterday so have only had one chance to take it out for a test drive. I found a few birds to shoot in Ashland’s North Mountain Park, including this Western Scrub Jay who chose to park himself at the very top of a 30 foot tall tree. I was maybe 50-100 feet from the base of the tree. I did crop the image some for a better composition but overall I have to say I am pretty impressed with the performance of this lens, given the cost.

The image was way underexposed out of the camera due to the bright sky but a little work in Photoshop fixed it right up. Detail and saturation were also added in Color Efex Pro. I may take it a step further and add a textured background to give it the look of a classic botanical.

Bald Eagle

Bald_Eagle2

I guess I saw more bald eagles this week than in the rest of my life put together. It turns out that the largest concentration of bald eagles in the lower 48 can be found practically in my backyard, less than two hours from home, in the Klamath Basin. Eagles come from the north for the winter so it’s best to catch them between November and February but a few stick around all year.

This guy was found at Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge. I took the picture from my car on the auto tour route using a 100-400mm zoom handheld. Not the ideal situation but the eye is tack sharp so hey, if it works, it works. I did crop some to get in a little closer. I added a little detail and saturation in post and a slight highlight around the bird.