Juan Aragonés
05-21-2009, 01:03 PM
Hi all, I apologize for my lack of participation but my computer decided to stop working and I have had a hard time trying to made everything working again.The past weekend I went to photograph bee-eaters with my friend Javier Milla. He is one of the best nature photographers that I know and a really great person (you can enjoy his superb images at www.javiermilla.es (http://www.javiermilla.es)). At this time of the year, bee-eater (Merops apiaster) is, perhaps, the most photographed bird species in the Mediterranean area due to several reasons: they are fairly common, they are very tolerant and cooperative with the photographers and, mostly, because of their outstanding beauty. I am not a big fan of hides (I much enjoy and prefer to photograph from the car) so I haven´t had very good images of this beauties so when Javier invited to me to spend a morning photographing bee-eaters I accepted the offering, on the fly.
This is one of the images that I made that morning. This pair (the female is the bird on the left) is resting in their favorite perch and very soon they will be devoting the time to incubation and all the other parental duties. The light was a bit intense to my taste just right after the sun rising and I would have prefer a bit of overcastting light but, considering that this was my first session with this wonderful species I am quite happy with the results.
The distance between the perch and the hide was perfect for framing the pair with the bare 300mm lens in landscape format but only the male decided to use the perch so I decided to put on the 2X-TC to get more frame filling images in vertical format. Of course, just when the 2X-TC was on the lens the female arrived and perched with the male. Oh my god! Removing the TC seemed a very risky option and the best way to lose the opportunity so I decided to made several pictures and made a composition of the scene in photoshop. They allowed me to made just four frames. I decided to focus in the eye of the male and I had no time to refocus on the female (that was my initial intention). This image is the result, an about 20Mp composition, of two vertical frames and it was possible to made because I was using manual exposure. Should I have used shutter speed or aperture priority and the metering would be different between the frames and, of course, the exposure causing a serious problem in the final assembling of the images in PS.
BTW, the bokeh of this lens is killer instead of the fact that I stopped down to f8 to get the sweetest point of the 2X-TC (a 100% crop of the male´s head is available at my blog).
Hope you like it and I would love to hear your thoughs and comment about my work ;)
Nikon D300 AFS Nikkor 300VR + 2XTC, ISO500, 1/500s, f8, manual exposure (two frames assembled in PS), hide
This is one of the images that I made that morning. This pair (the female is the bird on the left) is resting in their favorite perch and very soon they will be devoting the time to incubation and all the other parental duties. The light was a bit intense to my taste just right after the sun rising and I would have prefer a bit of overcastting light but, considering that this was my first session with this wonderful species I am quite happy with the results.
The distance between the perch and the hide was perfect for framing the pair with the bare 300mm lens in landscape format but only the male decided to use the perch so I decided to put on the 2X-TC to get more frame filling images in vertical format. Of course, just when the 2X-TC was on the lens the female arrived and perched with the male. Oh my god! Removing the TC seemed a very risky option and the best way to lose the opportunity so I decided to made several pictures and made a composition of the scene in photoshop. They allowed me to made just four frames. I decided to focus in the eye of the male and I had no time to refocus on the female (that was my initial intention). This image is the result, an about 20Mp composition, of two vertical frames and it was possible to made because I was using manual exposure. Should I have used shutter speed or aperture priority and the metering would be different between the frames and, of course, the exposure causing a serious problem in the final assembling of the images in PS.
BTW, the bokeh of this lens is killer instead of the fact that I stopped down to f8 to get the sweetest point of the 2X-TC (a 100% crop of the male´s head is available at my blog).
Hope you like it and I would love to hear your thoughs and comment about my work ;)
Nikon D300 AFS Nikkor 300VR + 2XTC, ISO500, 1/500s, f8, manual exposure (two frames assembled in PS), hide