Stagecoach Sparrow
StageCoach Sparrow
One of my favorite springtime locations for inspiration is a beaver pond located near a re purposed 1885 stagecoach road. After seven years, I still look forward to that moment of surprise, from nature and wildlife, at this isolated location.
The Technical Layer
To read additional technical and location content please click on the tabs below.
Technical: Camera Settings
Technical: How & Gear
My gear selection for making this image was a bit unique. I was geared to experiment with my 80-400 with a TC2.0 and the Nikon D5. If you are an experienced photographer, this probably caused you to dl blink. Because using a tc2.0 with a racked out f/5.8 creates an effect f/11, which is outside of the Nikon focusing specs for the D5 (which is f/8). I just had to give this a go though. I effectively was shooting at 800mm, and when I put the camera into DX mode, then I was at 800X1.5 or 1200mm.
Conclusion: Nikon 80-400 w/TC2.0
The conclusion of this experiment was that Nikon could not auto focus at all. However, the best focus results ended up using live view and manually setting a single focus point. It was a jittery affair, and the depth of field was also very shallow. Perhaps an inch or less when focusing at 20-30 feet. The other caveat was the subject had to remain stationary. Unfortunately, birds like to twitter about, so using this combination for small birds was troublesome. Overall my keeper rate was about 15%.
Technical: Location & Inspiration
When I first moved to Averill Park I ‘discovered’ the pond by daring myself to traverse up a dead end road with a street sign named, ‘Stage Coach Road’. The pond property was well marked with the typical New Yorker,’do not trespass’, signs posted all over. I recalled being escorted to meet the owners of the property to ask the frail patriarch of the family for permission to make photographs. It was a very positive event. To this day I still enjoy the privilege of returning to this pristine isolated location for inspiration.
Technical: Craft
Post-Processing Wildlife Images
I typically will simply do little in post processing on wildlife images. However, for this image, there was no much I could do to manage my background from all the sticks. Additional, the camera image output based on my settings were very cold at the point of capture. Therefore in the digital darkroom, I removed the twigs, darkened the twiggy hotspots and added a bit of color saturation to bring out the sparrows brown feathers.
I recalled while working on my image, a theme of trying to make the common uncommon. Everyone has a seen sparrow images. The trick is to select a unique image position and background. Then, to ever so slightly tweak the best parts of light and color so they combine to accent the spirit of the moment.
Technical: Before|After
[twentytwenty]
[/twentytwenty]
