Image: Great Egret flying at Fort De Soto Park, Florida. Nikon D500, Nikkor 200-500 mm at 270 mm, f/5.6, 1/13 sec, ISO 2500, hand-held.
It has been a busy week with almost no downtime to process photos, let alone post a blog. Last weekend and most of the week were spent at Fort De Soto Park along the western coast of Florida with Artie and two of his clients on his IPT. I then joined my friends Leslie and Albert in Sarasota for some more wildlife and landscape photography for the past couple days.
While at Fort De Soto Park last week, we photographed birds from sunrise into mid-morning and then again in the afternoon until sunset or the arrival of a storm. When we had conditions of low light around sunrise, I practiced photographing birds as a blur.
Image: Great Blue Heron flying at Fort De Soto Park, Florida. Nikon D500, Nikkor 200-500 mm at 410 mm, f/5.6, 1/30 sec, ISO 160, hand-held.
I had learned this artistic technique a couple years ago with landscapes when photographing trees whose leaves had changed in autumn, but I had not tried it with wildlife until recently. It is a hard technique to master and takes a lot of practice to get a feel for it. I practiced one time a month ago on shorebirds in New York with Artie, but I was determined to play with it more at Fort De Soto Park each morning.
Image: Gull flying at Fort De Soto Park, Florida. Nikon D500, Nikkor 200-500 mm at 310 mm, f/5.6, 1/30 sec, ISO 640, hand-held.
During the first couple mornings at the park, there were thousands of birds along the shore enjoying a feeding frenzy of fish dying from the red algae bloom that has been plaguing the Florida coast over the past two months.
Image: Gulls flying at Fort De Soto Park, Florida. Nikon D500, Nikkor 200-500 mm at 200 mm, f/16, 1/40 sec, ISO 2000, hand-held.
We had several blast-offs of flocks of gulls and when I used a slower shutter speed, I was able to capture the movement of the birds through the blur of their wings.
Image: Blast off of gulls flying at Fort De Soto Park, Florida. Nikon D500, Nikkor 200-500 mm at 270 mm, f/5.6, 1/13 sec, ISO 2500, hand-held.
At times I was able to isolate a small flock of the gulls and capture them flying in one direction. I tried to match my panning with the camera to the speed of the bird so I could get the bird’s head and body slightly in focus while the rest of the image was blurred.
Image: Laughing Gulls flying at Fort De Soto Park, Florida. Nikon D500, Nikkor 200-500 mm at 310 mm, f/16, 1/30 sec, ISO 1600, hand-held.
I found it easier to do this with larger birds like the Brown Pelican. They tended to fly parallel to the shore over a sand bar in the sea. I was able to track them easier and caught several images of them.
Image: Brown Pelican flying at Fort De Soto Park, Florida. Nikon D500, Nikkor 200-500 mm at 200 mm, f/5.6, 1/30 sec, ISO 160, hand-held.
They also tended to fly in small flocks so I spent time trying to capture the flock in a image blur.
Image: Brown Pelicans flying at Fort De Soto Park, Florida. Nikon D500, Nikkor 200-500 mm at 380 mm, f/6.3, 1/30 sec, ISO 100, hand-held.
As the light and colors of the sky changed each morning, the background also became an important consideration when composing images. During some moments of the mornings, there was a pink hue on the water due to reflections from the pink clouds so I tried to capture birds flying over this area.
Image: Gull flying at Fort De Soto Park, Florida. Nikon D500, Nikkor 200-500 mm at 350 mm, f/5.6, 1/30 sec, ISO 1250, hand-held.
After the sun rose, the color of the water turned the bright blue which also created a beautiful peaceful background, especially when it contrasted with the white Great Egret.
Image: Great Egret flying at Fort De Soto Park, Florida. Nikon D500, Nikkor 200-500 mm at 270 mm, f/5.6, 1/13 sec, ISO 2500, hand-held.
The sand bar that was a couple hundred yards off shore had a few plants so I tried capturing birds as they flew along it so it added more scenery to some images.
Image: Gull flying at Fort De Soto Park, Florida. Nikon D500, Nikkor 200-500 mm at 290 mm, f/5.6, 1/30 sec, ISO 640, hand-held.
When I exhausted all the possible landscape combinations, I watched for various bird species, especially the bigger birds. The last morning, I was lucky enough to see a Great Blue Heron fly over the sea in front of me and land close by.
Image: Great Blue Heron flying at Fort De Soto Park, Florida. Nikon D500, Nikkor 200-500 mm at 360 mm, f/5.6, 1/30 sec, ISO 400, hand-held.
Many images did not turn out well and were tossed. The ones in which I could discern the bird species and see parts of the head in focus were the most appealing to me. Sometimes I didn’t mind more abstract photos. In the image below, the tern is flying to the left with its wings flapping in front of its head. The angle of the wings makes it harder to view the bird’s head and body, but I enjoyed the lines created by the wings.
Image: Royal Tern flying at Fort De Soto Park, Florida. Nikon D500, Nikkor 200-500 mm at 270 mm, f/22, 1/20 sec, ISO 1600, hand-held.
After practicing this technique for a couple days in a row, I found settings that allowed me to capture images that I enjoyed. Initially, I played around with various shutter speeds, apertures, shooting modes, and ISO. I preferred shooting in manual mode with a shutter speed around 1/30 second. When there was less light, I had to drop the shutter speed to avoid going over an ISO of 2500. With my current camera, I don’t like the amount noise in the image with an ISO higher than 2500. I came to prefer an aperture at the widest opening of f/5.6 to allow in the most light to the sensor.
Image: Gull flying at Fort De Soto Park, Florida. Nikon D500, Nikkor 200-500 mm at 310 mm, f/5.6, 1/30 sec, ISO 500, hand-held.
I am still playing catch-up on image processing and responding to comments and emails. We are getting close to leaving for Argentina and Antarctica on October 15, but I will post as much as I can before then.
To see these images individually and more that were not included here, please visit my gallery here: Amy’s Impressions