Photography stories

Photography stories

I thought about to write some stories about photography to make things interesting. My idea is to pair one picture with the connected story. I thought about not a long story just a short story. If you have a story with a good picture, you can share here also.

The leaving buzzard

This is a pic I made with a cheap Soligor 100-400mm lens (app 100 EUR). This is an old version of the pics, not properly cropped, little too dark, which would have been adjusted with tools like curves. For such action shots most people use continuous shooting with high frame rate. There are lots of buzzards in Hungary, especially easy to see them in winter, when they sitting on electric poles and trees along main roads waiting for animals hit by cars. Sometimes on a 100km road, it is possible to see 30 buzzards. The point if you want a good photo needs to be quite close (other option is a super-expensive super long, super heavy telephoto lens). Apart from make a photo from a car the only other effective option to make a photo of such a bird is the hide in winter, which needs lots of meat or fish to attract the birds there. Until you in the car the bird stays where it is, but when you come out immediately flies away. So how to execute such a shot? First when I see the bird I drive away, and try to remember where the bird was as accurately as I can. After from a secure distance change the seat, set up the camera and the lens and drove back. It is very dangerous in high traffic roads I only suggest to try it in relatively abandoned places or times. After I come back, I point the camera from the side window, focus and make the photo. If your lens af is slow perhaps some pre-focusing is needed. There are usually only several seconds is available to make the photo, before the bird flies away.
If the bird is not in your side of the road it is more difficult. The above picture was made with this exact technique. The framing is also not proper it would be better if the wings of the bird also would be totally in the frame. When we came back I made several shots, and this was the best. I was quite close, approximately 10-15m from the bird. I not really make such photos anymore, but at that time it was interesting.

How I get more than 43,000 page views on Flickr?

I used Flickr a lot several years before. I still use it but not so often. I post some of my images as well, usually not always the best ones..to confess. One of my picture become very popular. I thought about the write about how I made the picture. I put a facebook link on the bottom of this page. If nobody likes it I stop and don’t write more stories. So if you want more stories give me at least a like or share the article on google plus. It is interesting by the way how other websites collect thousands or millions of likes… So this is the picture below at the top right corner, with some of my other pictures:

What do you think? I don’t write about this because I am very proud of this picture, because there are many much better photos there on the Flickr. On the other hand for my standard this photo is ok. I don’t made it for sale, just I enjoyed my hobby. I even submit this photo to one of the photographic site on the web and they refused because “it is not good quality”, which I guess refers to the high ISO settings I used.” There are some situations, where you simply dead with ISO 400 unless you have a 400mm f/2 lens (doesn’t exist as I know). I made this photo with a Canon 200mm f/2.8 lens with the 1.4x teleconverter attached to the lens (280mm f/4). If I stay at ISO400 I have two or maximum three choices: 1. To Only make photos in Summer in bright sunlight. Don’t make pictures of birds in the shade 2. Use higher ISO settings, 3. Don’t make action shots (moving subject) and use a tripod. I chosed the second option. Let’s go back for the picture. We have a nice holiday time in Lake Ferto region in Hungary which is a World Heritage site, in Balf. It is a very nice place, we had a good bicycle ride along the lake shore. When we returned I quickly realized that there is a well managed bird feeder in the house where we stayed at the back part of the garden. First I just checked the place, after started to make photographs as well, but I quickly realized I am a little bit far for making nice photos. What I’ve done I used my car as a hide. I went little closer to the feeder with the car, them turned down the window of the car and waited. Afterwhile the birds showed up and I made several nice photos. The one I uploaded to Flickr was the most interesting with two different types of tits on the same picture. After uploading it become very popular, what I did afterwards, just I always uploaded in to different groups according the views reached. 2000,5000,10,000, 20,000, 40,000. Sometimes the birds was strange among pretty girls though. So this is the story. The picture was made at ISO 1600, f/5 280mm 1/800s. At f/4 wouldn’t be as sharp, at lower ISO, lower shutter speed wouldn’t work like this, at least not so surely. Canon 30D Canon 200mm f/2.8 L+Kenko 1.4 dgx.