Evening Respite-Gulp or Swallow
It was a gathering of the clans. The mosquitoes were out in full force and the birds were very relaxed on the board walk, grouping together maybe to visit,but also to feed.It is hard to shoot swallows in flight although I give due credit to some, like Christopher Martin, who have captured excellent images of swallows catching insects at the surface of the water. I went the easier way, when they were sitting on the handrails. There are two kinds here, the barn swallow with its orange breast and the tree swallow with white. The following were shot in aperture priority mode at 1/320 to 1/500 sec. from f/7 to f/11, ISO 400.
Above is a family with young ones in the foreground, male then female.
Pelicans and Swallows and Ducks, Oh My!
I drove to the Red Deer area in the middle of the province of Alberta and headed to the sloughs and ponds in the conservation areas with a friend. Sometimes we came up with nothing and other times we found a rich supply of nature’s best. Shot everything with my Sigma 70-300 mm zoom lens with a macro feature between 200 and 300 mm but it was very windy so there was a lot of camera shake even using my cable shutter release.Tried a lot of modes just to brush up on my skills: TV,AV,Manual, Sports…yes cheated on that last one. Following are photos of the American White Pelican, Tree Swallow, Cinnamon Teal and Blue-Winged Teal.
©Jane Chesebrough
©Jane Chesebrough
My Heartsong 