The forecast said the good light was going to be brief, but it was going to be dry, and I didn’t have any too-early commitments, so I decided to go to Green Lakes with the 75-300 and try to capture images of wildlife this morning.
As I was walking up the hill, I could see a silhouette of a deer walking away from me, but they were obscured by some trees in the intermediate distance. When I arrived at the top of the hill, though, I could not see/find them. I stood atop the bench to try to see further, but I was unsuccessful, so I started trying to capture images of some birds.
I tried to capture some tree swallows in flight, but failed miserably and (to be fair) I had no expectations that I would be so lucky. I haven’t the skill to track them in the air much less expect the auto-focus on my camera to maintain a sharp image. Harder still would be trying to manually focus while tracking, so my most realistic chance of capturing birds was to focus on places that might land or fly to/from.
While I was photographing some blackbirds in the brush, I finally found the deer I was looking for. It had moved quite some distance in to the brush with 2 of its mates. I only had a chance to capture the front side of this deer while the other 2 only showed me their backsides as they moved further and further away from me.
The best image of the day was going to come from a bird box, where to swallows were chattering at each other. My first image was a straight on capture, but the background was a bit distracting. I was fortunate that I had enough time to squat down and look up at the bird box, eliminating most of the distant background. I needed to clean it up a little bit more in GIMP, but came away with an image that I was ultimately pleased with.
After 90 minutes on the hill, the clouds started to roll in just as I was planning to leave to take the kids to Taekwondo. I put my camera back in my shoulder bag and started making my way back to the campground and my car.
Like most other days with my camera, I walked away without a spectacular contest-winning portfolio-worthy image. Fortunately, I wasn’t expecting anything of the sort. I had only set out to get some fresh air, enjoy the wildlife, and bring my camera along to document my experience.
#missionaccomplished