“I believe photographers should shoot what they want, not shoot what they get.” – Roberto Valenzuela
Easier said than done in wildlife photography 😀. I wish I could get a shot of a bird mating in flight while holding a kill in it's beak (combining all 3 types of important bird activity in one pic!😀😀) but that isn't going to happen easly...
Jokes apart, my focus is always on getting a beautiful portrait shot of a bird in nice surroundings with perfect light so that all the bird's lovely colors, along with intricacies of it's feathers are clearly visible.
In other words, with one look at the picture, we should be able to appreciate the beauty that God has bestowed on that birds and fall in love with it...
For this to happen:
- I must get close to a bird,
- the bird should get used to me and see me as no threat,
- I should have perfect NATURAL light that does not throw up any harsh shadows
- I must be able to handle my camera without fumbling,
- I must also have very steady hands or have firm support,
AND - The bird must strike a nice pose and look me in the eye
This, apart from other concerns like safety and luck, is a tall ask but in this pic, I managed to get all that together.
That is why, I consider this my best bird pic so far and hence, this is my entry for the # SMAP 57 contest
I think all the parameters of my wish list of good picture conditions are met here.
It did not just happen. As I have described in some other posts earlier, I spent days roaming around in the location where this bird was mostly seen.
I can not take all credit of course for making the bird a bit fearless about humans. There were many other bird enthusiasts and photographers who visited the location where the bird used to perch frequently
I also went and took this standard picture where the bird sun-bathed around 9-10 AM - almost like clockwork
This was not an easy picture to get either. It took days before the bird settled down and started allowing me to come close enough for a full frame photo so that I could get all feather details
However, this is not what I wanted. I wanted a much more 'up-close and personal' click that was just mine - sort of unique.
So, one fine afternoon, as described once earlier, I crept up, jogged, crawled, scraped my knees and elbows doing an army crawl and finally achieved all the objective in my bullet list above.
The first pic I took was when the raptor was sitting calmly and watching me...
I felt so funny at times - I was actually BELOW the bird's eye level as you can see from the picture above...
I felt that I had sunk so low that I would have to lift up my head even to speak to a snake!!😀
I was also getting a substantial front 'bokeh' where the foreground was getting too blurred.
I had to have immense patience, push my bean bag camera support forward inch by inch and then ever so slowwwwwwwwwwwly lift my camera on top of it.
I also raised my head higher, to the level of my view-finder. It seemed to take hours! I felt like a faulty hydraulic system which takes for ever to lift up something.
However, I did manage to get myself and my camera in the perfect position, without alarming the bird - in fact, my slow movements actually made the bird very very curious. That worked fine in my favor because I got that eye-to-eye contact that wanted for my picture.
Anyway - So - that is why I think it is my best picture.
Perhaps, unless one is extremely lucky, one can confidently say, in wildlife photography, the quality of picture is directly proportional to cuts, scrapes, thorns, insect-bites and soar muscles 😀
A big thank you for support
Thanks to c/hive-106444 (Feathered friends community) for providing this wonderful opportunity to present my experience and photographs. Thanks to @barbara-orenya and @melinda010100 for all the support and encouragement to this community. Special thanks to @nelinoeva also for starting the Species hunt initiative. My posts are not exactly in that format but have all the necessary info and Good original Photos. Further guidance will be very much welcome.
Thanks to HIVE for this wonderful platform. Thanks also to @adalger and @dna.org for encouraging me by recognizing some of my posts as worthy of Densifying nature project.
Further, thanks to Amazing nature community for welcoming me and showing me their love on some of my posts.
Note: All images and collages in this blog are created by me, based on photos clicked by me personally and/or free vector images from Pixabay. Any other sources, if used, are indicated as image credits below the picture.
Quotes used, if not credited, are either from unknown authors or are proverbial old sayings.
