Well since I've been lucky with all sorts of sparrows this Spring I thought I'd head on down to our local sparrow hotspot. I was not dissapointed as the traditional later arrivals are now on territory. This Grasshopper Sparrow posed nicely with the judiscious use of audio to lure it onto a better perch. This guy is perched about 12" off the ground, with the bright BG being fresh spring grass.
P.S. this individual is the palest one I've seen by far...are there any sub-species of Grasshopper Sparrows?
Canon 40D + 100-400 @400mm, aperture priority, evaluative metering, 1/320s., f/6.3, ISO 400, +1.3 EC, natural light, handheld, about 80% full frame.
Hey Dan, he's in full song with your audio, so a lovely moment captured here. Interesting claws, especially the rear one, pretty long. Just a question, why such a high EC, on a fairly pale subject. The sparrow is not over exposed. I really like the colour of the BG too.
Great singing pose, good perch, excellent light.
I like it very much. I would probably crop out the
fork on the perch on the top and there's a tiny-tiny
white spot at the tail tip that could go too.
There's spider web on the perch which is fine as is IMO.
I'll try to get info on sub-species later today,
I would be interested to find out too.
Stuart, good question and observation:cool: The light was getting harsh and the way it lit the grass way too brightly the camera's meter was fooled into grossly underexposing the image by at least a full stop! (keep in mind I have my camera set to evaluative almost exclusively, so this may vary with other metering modes). I took a few test exposures of the bare branch and was good to go.
Ilija, thanks! I see that spot at the tail...it will go on the re-edit. I left the fork on the branch on purpose as a subtle addition to keep the perch from being too plain...it would work without it too.
Daniel,
I'd keep the fork. I think it does exactly what you said. OOH, if it weren't there, I'd think nothing about it and praise the image anyway. Brilliant job of deciding on exposure. Great detail in the feathers, especially the lighter breast. That creamy background sets everything off nicely. Like others, I love those feet.
Hi Daniel,
Interesting discussion about the fork on the end of the perch; it made me relook at the image and I think if it had been mine I would have eliminated the fork without a second thought...glad you didn't! Lovely pose, beautiful bg, lots of detail.
Regards
You are having too much fun with those sparrows. There are four subspecies of Grasshopper Sparrows in Canada/USA and another 8 to the south. The northern four are pretty similar in appearance and readily separable in the field with the possible exception of the Florida subspecies (which is darker than the widespread form in eastern NAm. So if you have taken up the snowbird lifestyle of migrating between Florida and Ottawa this could appear light to you, otherwise probably just your regular variety of GRSP.
Love the singing pose here Daniel especially the small peek at the bird's tongue in his open mouth. Thanks for sharing your sparrow images as they don't always get nearly as much attention as some of the other more colorful of the small birds out there but I am a big fan.
Beautiful shot Daniel...exposure looks dead on, excellent sharpness throughout, nice perch (I like the fork) and great background. The singing pose puts it over the top.