I guess if pressed, I would classify myself as an ‘outdoor photographer’. I’d be inclined to expand that a bit to specify that my interest focuses mostly on scenic work, with ‘nature’, e.g., live stuff, being sort of an opportunistical second place theme. On a visit to Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in central New Mexico, I was forced to devote my entire attention on the liveliest of live stuff, the birds. I spent the night in Socorro, NM, preparing the gear and working out the strategy for the next day’s shoot – it’s a pleasant town, with a kind of Moab-like positive energy.
Based on some useful hints from Thom Hogan, I had decided to go light – the Nikon D700, the AF-S NIKKOR 14-24mm f/2.8G ED, AF-S NIKKOR 24-70mm f/2.8G ED, and the AF-S VR Zoom-NIKKOR 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G IF-ED as the ‘long lens’. Although this complement of gear might otherwise place me in the advanced amateur or semipro ranks, here at the Bosque, I’m about as far from the top as I would be with a point-and-shoot. And I’m not joking about that – an awful lot of big Canons (pun intended) – 500mm, 600mm, and 800mm lenses, all well represented. A lot of Nikon too of course. The image below was recorded on November 7, at 07:27 MDT, using the D700 and the 70-300mm at 300mm. Exposure was f/5.6 and 1/250s, with an ISO of 6400. Vive the low-noise sensor!!! Noise reduction applied using Neat Image (auto profile mode).
There are two major events at the Bosque. The first occurs just after sunrise; the big ‘fly off’, in which dozens to literally hundreds of birds launch into flight within seconds. It’s pretty spectacular I gotta admit, and of course it’s very challenging to capture the essence of it. I got to the refuge at about 06:30, and found the place already quite crowded. The shore of a medium sized pond was well stocked with nature photogs, all set up and ready to go…big Gitzo bases, Wimberly heads, big lenses mounted on a surprisingly wide array of bodies (?!), and Better Beamers all ready to flicker away.
I stopped just inside the refuge near a pond filled with Sandhill Cranes. The Cranes are the stars of the Bosque – large gray and white birds with a crimson area above the beak . Not only do they look impressive, but they also make an eerie, kind of prehistoric(?), honking sound in flight. On this day, the fly off began at around 07:30 MDT, which meant that there was enough light around to make strategic exposure choices. The image below was recorded at 07:30 MDT using the D700 and the 70-300mm at 300mm. Exposure was f/5.6 at 1/1250s, with ISO at 6400.
The other big event is the return to roost in the evening, near, or just after sunset. The return occurs in a much less organized way, sometimes involving a dozen or so birds, but as often just one or two, or as below, three animals. The image below was recorded at 18:00 MDT, using the 70-300mm at 300mm. Exposure was f/18 at 1/400s, with an ISO of 3200 (shutter priority test, go figure…).
During the day the boyds fly off to God-only-knows-where to feed. Travel around the Bosque is highly regulated (read restricted), so that you most probably couldn’t get close even if you knew where to go. Instead, I decided to spend the middle hours of the day up at the VLA.
