Happy Friday. I hope you are enjoying the great weather we’re having this week and it looks to continue into next week as well.
Tuesday Jeanne and I went to the 16th Street detention basin. This was the slowest activity at the basin I’ve seen this year. Ring Billed Gulls were about the only wildlife around with the exception of a half-dozen geese.
It wasn’t a great time of day to be shooting but I decided to practice trying to capture birds in flight. The Sigma 50 – 500 mm lens is 8 pounds heavy and fully racked out it’s long as well. Additionally it is slow to focus and sometimes as I have reported earlier it won’t focus at all. So it’s a real challenge trying to capture a small gull in flight.
Anyway this series of images captures a gull fishing at the basin. I was trying to capture him when he shot straight up, rolled over and dove straight down (first shot) and then reappeared, got airborne, and flew off to continue the process.
I just finished watching an hour-long presentation by Scott Kelby critiquing images from other photographers. He would point out what makes an image suck, what makes one good and what makes one WOW!
After looking at 30 or more images and listening to what was wrong with each I then went though some of my library. Damn I’m depressed. So many times in photography as in many aspects of life itself one doesn’t know what one doesn’t know.
The only way I can look at it though, (since I’ve got too much invested in equipment to quit) is that I have much room for improvement. Additionally I learned somethings today that I continuously do wrong. I knew I wasn’t happy with the results but I didn’t really understand what I was doing wrong. So I won’t make those mistakes again.
It is a journey not a destination. Enjoy the great weather and your Friday. Make it a great day. Thanks for stopping by and be careful.