Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Double-crested Cormorant

1/250 | f/2.8 | ISO 640

While doing some photography around Jordan Pond on a foggy evening in Acadia National Park a few weeks ago, I noticed this Double-crested Cormorant resting on a rock about 10 feet from the boat launch. Once again I did not have my 400 5.6 lens with me (a hard lesson was learned on this trip), so I was confined to the reach of the 70-200 f/2.8 for a bird lens. Even though the bird was easily approachable, I went with a wider, bird small in frame look here which I always like. I spent about 20 minutes waiting for it to look up and stretch or do something interesting, but it never did. I really like the peaceful scene here though with the fog and the bird sleeping. 

Thanks for looking.

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Monday, October 22, 2012

Female Mallard in Fall Colors

1/160 | f/5.6 | ISO 400

Here is another image from my 7 days in Acadia National Park last week. This one of a female Mallard (exciting bird, right?) swimming in some orange tinted water provided by the surrounding trees at a pond in Northeast Harbor. I had to deal with some tricky lighting as the sun was just coming up and had hit parts of the water, but not the duck. Photographed with the 7D and 400 5.6 lens. I ran some DeNoise on the image and sharpened the bird only.

Stay tuned for more from Acadia NP! 

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Thursday, October 18, 2012

Female Common Merganser

1/2500 | f/2.8 | ISO 100

I just returned from a fantastic 10 day trip to the East Coast with my family, where we spent 7 days hiking and exploring Acadia National Park. While I was hoping to do more photography than I actually did, I still came away with a few images which I will share in the next few posts. While in Acadia, I concentrated mainly on detailed landscape images as we were a bit early to catch the peak color. On one of our hikes around Eagle Lake, I found this female Common Merganser chilling out on a large rock about 5 yards off shore. I didn't have my new 400 5.6 lens with me or my flash, so I had to make due with the less than ideal light and lack of reach and grabbed the Canon Rebel T2i which had a 70-200 f/2.8 mounted on it and crept as close as I could and thankfully I had just enough reach to get some decent images. Stay tuned for more images from Acadia!

click image to view larger size.