Feeling Sorry for a Goose……..

And laughing a bit about it as well. Sometimes the impact of an image is that it makes you laugh. On this blue sky morning at a local lake I was working during morning rush hour (geese taking off and landing after roosting all night). These are really fun birds. They talk up a storm before taking off and are of various degrees of skill when it comes to landing again. It’s hard not to think of these birds as people commuting to work.

For this type of image, I am working with long glass (500mm with a 1.4X teleconverter) and on a tripod. I keep autofocus on the continuous mode and select a large array of sensors to keep the birds in focus while they are flying towards me. I want an image with little or no overlap of the birds so that each is a distinct form. The one bird on the upper right is just plain having some trouble. Maybe it’s just not comfortable with the whole flying thing, but for some reason Don Knotts comes to mind.

(c) Paul Grecian – http://www.paulgrecianphoto.com

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Winter Visitor

Winter is a stark time of year visually. I think about it in terms of black and white with various shades of gray. In this part of the country (Bucks County, PA), we get a special little visitor that seems to perfectly fit with my vision of the season – the Dark-eyed Junco!

This rather mono-chromatic flier blends in well with the gray-skies and snow-covered landscape. In this image the background and perch mimic the colors of the bird and convey a sense of the season. I like the simplicity of the tonalities in the image and the very limited depth that I was able to achieve with a large-aperture long telephoto lens (Canon EF 500mm f4.0 L IS with Canon TC 1.4X).

Compositionally, I wanted the bird to not overlap with any background elements in which it would merge tonally. Being down low enough to the ground to keep the portrait intimate, that is, at about eye-level with the bird, was also critical.

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First is Last

I was at Artists’ Gallery in Lambertville, NJ this past Sunday (Dec. 30) meeting and greeting visitors. A very nice couple came in sometime during the middle of the day and selected a framed piece of mine to purchase. The sale represented my last sold piece of the year and so that made it a bit more special. The image is of a flock of Cedar Waxwings in a tree against a winter white sky. I titled the piece Birds of a Feather and printed it a bit high key in order to bring out color and details in the birds and limit any texture in the sky.

The image itself was made during my first outing of 2012 (in January) and the last image that sold in 2012. The print itself was the first that I made of this image as I introduced the print late in the year. The sale made me feel like I was completing a circle of sorts.

I used a Canon EOS 1D Mark III camera with a Canon EF 500mm f4.0 L IS lens fitted with a Canon TC1.4X III to make an optic of 700mm. This rather heavy combination is placed on a Gitzo tripod with a Foba Superball tripod head and Wimberly Sidekick.

 

(c) Paul Grecian

 

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Audubon Show – Recapped

The Audubon Art and Craft Festival was well attended and a fun event. I missed having a couple of friends there who had previously participated but was pleased to find other familiar faces I haven’t seen in a while. Such is the nature of these types of shows. The weather could not have been better and the new location for the show worked out well.

The magazine This Week in the Poconos did a cover feature about the show accompanied by my image which I’ve titled simply- Blue Bird. It is an image I made here in Pennsylvania some years back and one which is part of many private home art collections.

 

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Audubon Show – Hawley, PA (July 21-22)

This weekend I will be participating in the Audubon Art and Craft Festival (http://www.audubonfestival.com/)  in Hawley, PA. This is a fun show with a nature oriented theme. There are live animal shows and a variety of some fine craft and artworks. Held around Lake Wallenpaupack, it’s also just a nice day out.

Great Blue Herons are wonderful birds and a favorite subject of mine. These two images are titled after the yoga poses that this bird is “obviously” holding (Warrior III on left and Downward-facing Dog on right). Both images were made at Lake Galena in Bucks County, PA . I used a Canon EOS 1D Mark III camera with Canon EF 500mm f4.0 L IS and Canon TC 1.4 (700mm optic equivalent). To hold this system stable and yet still have mobility, I use a Foba Superball tripod- head and Wimberley Sidekick.

“Warrior III”

Kutztown Folk Festival starts Saturday June 30!

My 9 days at the Kutztown Folk Festival starts this Saturday (http://www.kutztownfestival.com/ ). This summer staple is always a fun time and draws an audience from around the region which can number over 100,000!

There will be a lot of early mornings in my future and 9-days of smelling funnel cake, but the opportunity to meet new customers, and see some previous ones as well, makes it all worth while. 

One of the newer pieces that I will have at the show is this image – “House Finch”. It has become an image that I particularly like as it has many of the elements that I try to bring to my work. Much of my imagery that is about birds includes a good deal of habitat, some painterly selective focus, and soft light. The bird is  relatively small in the frame but the composition still make it the clear point of interest. The photograph was made with a Canon EOS 1D Mark III camera with a Canon EF 500mm f4.0 L IS lens and a Canon TC1.4X on a Gitzo Tripod with a Foba Superball head and Wimberley Sidekick attached.

“House FInch” available as a 6.75 x 9.75 print matted to 11×14

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Blue Jay in 7×14 Series

I have been putting together a series of images printed at 7″x14″ and will be now offering this new image. The bird of course is a Blue Jay, an image I made here in Bucks County just yesterday. Blue Jays are handsome birds with sharp features and unique coloration. We’ve had one visitng around the house lately, so I’ve become more conscious of them.

The colors in this piece are very complimentary giving it a somewhat peaceful feeling. The branch lines lent themselves well I think to this more panoramic presentation. Importantly, the branchs diverge toward the right of the frame which balances the figure of the Blue Jay on the left. I had nice soft light with which to work, but a long focal length lens (400mm w 2X TC = 800mm) and low light required a higher ISO (1250). I was very conscious of the way the leaves frame the bird and the over framing of the image so that it would be a successful 7×14.

Blue Jay in Spring Foliage

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Spring Cardinal

The blooms are out early so I went to work at one of my favorite trees – a crab apple. The white flowers and cool green leaves offer a great setting for bird imagery, especially cardinals. Male or female, they both provide a vibrant contrast to the simple color palette of the blooming crab apple. The situation is not unlike when I work with cardinals in the winter, except during the spring my source of white is the flowers and not the snow that would otherwise be blanketing the tree.

The light was a bright overcast which is what I wanted when working with a long lens and a small aperture. Still, my shutter speeds were rather slow (1/60th sec. or so) and I was focusing manually. This meant that I needed to know where I wanted my subject to be and pre-focus on that location, lock in my composition, and stabilize the camera-lens combo.

I love the cardinal’s sharp features, warm tones and relatively large size (for a song bird anyway). This image will be made available as a print (7″x10″ and matted to 11×14) for $47.00

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Warrior III – The Yoga Bird Returns

I have selected a new image to accompany Downward-facing Dog, an image of a Great Blue Heron stretching in a posture that reminded me of the famous yoga pose of the same name. This new print, which is of an image made the same morning as Downward-facing Dog, is of the same bird in yet another yoga-like posture – Warrior III. Warrior III is a more difficult position to achieve, at least for me, though this heron seemingly does it with little difficulty.

As you have probably guessed, the new print will be titled – Warrior III. Like Downward-facing Dog, I use the  reflection to create a Zen-like symmetry in the image and the overcast lighting (acting like a huge softbox) to eliminate shadow and harsh reflections. My composition does not reveal any real horizon line so the bird and it’s reflection almost seem to be floating in air. The tree limb that breaks the water’s surface and a few water bubbles are all that “ground” the bird to a terrestrial sphere.

"Warrior III"

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Winter Flock

As soon as I saw the local forecast for Bucks County included snow, camera batteries went into their chargers. I have not acclimated well to cold this winter, the temperatures have been too inconsistent. Warm one day (or 3), cold for a day, then warm again.

I can dress for the cold though, for the most part. My biggest issue is cold toes and fingers. It hadn’t stopped snowing yet when I got out this morning. We only had a few inches, but it was enough to make it finally look like winter. I was thinking winter birds today, so I geared up with that in mind.

After a while outdoors, I was beginning to wish I had been more prepared for landscape imagery. Truth is though that I like to concentrate on one genre of work at a time during the winter, so today was birds. The snow fell heavily at times and began freezing to my camera and lens making it difficult to gain access to all of the controls. I had to scrape away ice from my camera to access the ISO button and even the front control dial.

The image below is of a flock of Cedar Waxwings. I like how I can expose to attain a clean white background by composing against the sky. The yellow tail tips of the waxwings add a bit of dramatic color to an otherwise fairly monochromatic piece. I was also pleased to be able to compose to limit overlap of the birds. For the most part, each bird remains a distinct shape.

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