First Waterfowl Shots of 2010

This past week I've been at home resting up after yet another concussion so this morning I decided to get some fresh air, and my first waterfowl photos of the new year. It was raining in North Van so I headed to Ladner in hopes of better weather. It was raining there when I first arrived but it stopped shortly after and actually cleared up a bit and presented me with some amazing light...for about 45 seconds. Okay that might be a bit of an exaggeration about how little time I had decent light, but it honestly didn't last very long.

For some reason the ducks weren't flying much today. It could have been weather related but I'm not 100% sure. I mean with the overcast conditions it wasn't optimal for flight shots anyways so I wasn't too disappointed. So without them flying, I decided to just focus on behavioral shots. Preening, fluffing their feathers, diving, stretching...stuff like that. Here are some of the shots.

1/750 @ f/5.6, 400mm, ISO 1000

1/3000 @ f/5.6, 400mm, ISO 640, -0.5ev

1/750 @ f/5.6, 400mm, ISO 640

1/1000 @ f/5.6, 400mm, ISO 640

1/1000 @ f/5.6, 400mm, ISO 640

1/2000 @ f/5.6, 370mm, ISO 640

1/2000 @ f/5.6, 300mm, ISO 640

When the weather did finally clear for a few minutes I did happen to get a flight shot...here it is

1/3000 @ f/5.6, 400mm, ISO 640

The rest of the photos from my day can be found here

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=2916210&id=61927899276

Thanks for reading,

Brandon Broderick

www.brandonbroderick.com

Sunrise, Cranes, and very few Eagles

Early this past week the weatherman was calling for perfect weather this weekend. And I can't be the only one out there that is a little skeptical when I see the weather forecast 5 days in advance. However for some crazy reason, the weatherman was right and today it was beautiful out. It was freezing cold, but just blue skies and sun. With the weather being so rainy/overcast here all winter, I had to take advantage of such a nice day and decided to take pictures from sunrise to sundown.

I'm not sure why, but for sunrise photos I decided to head to a place an hour from North Van...Tsawwassen. This meant getting up extra early, but once I was finally awake, it wasn't so bad. I was originally planning on taking some photos of the sunrise itself, but with no clouds in the sky, it was pretty bland. However the scenes I did capture really illustrate the temperature and the beauty of the sunrise.

1/4 @ f/22, ISO 200, 17mm, -2.0ev

1/250 @ f/11, ISO 400, 60mm, -1.0ev

1/60 @ f/22, ISO 400, 60mm

After the sunrise photo session I headed to Ladner once again to try for some waterfowl shots. I did accomplish my goal and managed a few waterfowl photos, but some Sandhill Cranes caught my attention so I ended up focussing on them. I don't have many shots of the cranes so it was a hard opportunity to pass up.

Here are some of the waterfowl shots. This first one is a female Wigeon on thin ice.

1/1000 @ f/5.6, ISO 500, 400mm, -0.5ev

This one actually came out pretty cool. It's a mallard taking off from the ice.

1/2000 @ f/5.6, ISO 400, 300mm, -0.5ev

This ended up being the only decent flight shot of the day. It's a female Pintail.

1/1000 @ f/5.6, ISO 400, 400mm, -0.5ev

I started off the waterfowl photos with a shot of a female Wigeon on thin ice, so I'll close it off with this shot of a drake Wigeon in the same situation.

1/1500 @ f/8, ISO 400, 400mm, -0.5ev

Alright so now for the Sandhill Crane shots. There's not much to say about them so enjoy.

1/4000 @ f/5.6, ISO 500, 400mm, -0.5ev

1/4000 @ f/5.6, ISO 500, 400mm, -0.5ev

1/4000 @ f/5.6, ISO 500, 400mm, -0.5ev

1/1500 @ f/5.6, ISO 500, 400mm

From Ladner I made the long trip out to Harrison to hopefully find some eagles. Eagles were found, just nowhere near the shoreline. There were some really strong winds and most of the eagles took advantage of them and just soared high above the valley. The ones that weren't in the air were sitting on some sand flats out in the middle of the river, far beyond the reach of my lens.

The photo below is the only decent shot I got in Harrison. It's 2 eagles attempting to lock talons. They didn't end up locking up but if you look closely you can see the one eagle is actually grabbing onto the tail feathers of the other.

1/4000 @ f/5.6, ISO 400, 400mm

Well that does it for my December 5th photo blog. Tomorrow I'm in search of some coyotes to photograph so keep an eye out for that blog...maybe a video too.

www.brandonbroderick.com

Another Trip to Reifel, and then some.

I headed to the Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary in Ladner, BC again this morning to hopefully get some waterfowl flight shots. However just like the last few visits, not too many birds were flying so I had to think of shots to get. After about 15 minutes of just sitting and watching the ducks, I knew what I wanted photos of. The American Coot. Probably one of the least photogenic birds I've ever come across. They're all black, have a white beak, and beady red eyes. They also have these gigantic, almost dinosaur like feet.

1/1500 @ f/5.6, ISO 640, 360mm

With some amazing light today, I decided to take the time and try to show the photo-friendly side of the Coot. This basically meant just trying to take photos of them as they dove for food...

1/2000 @ f/5.6, ISO 640, 400mm

While watching and photographing the Coots, I noticed another specie of duck was capitalizing on the Coot's feeding habits. The American Wigeon would follow the Coots around and wait for them to come out of the water after a dive, then steal their food.

1/1500 @ f/5.6, ISO 640, 400mm

After shooting the Coots for a while, I decided to give some of the other birds some attention and took a few shots of them.

1/3000 @ f/5.6, ISO 640, 220mm

On my way out of Reifel, a Red-tailed Hawk landed in a tree above me. I took a shot of it as it took off.

1/3000 @f/8, ISO 640, 400mm

From Ladner, I drove to Buntzen Lake, just north of Port Moody to see what sort of photos I could get there. It was quite cloudy there so I settled on taking a stream photo.

4.0s @ f/22, ISO 200, 17mm

I find I'm always being asked how I make the water look like it does in the above photo so in the near future I'll be doing a bit of a video lesson on how it's done.

Waterfowl Training Session

With winter being the optimal time to photograph waterfowl, I need to be ready for it when it arrives. Back in my last post I mentioned I was at the Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary in Ladner, BC doing a bit of a scouting run. I did take a few photos while there but I was more or less just testing the waters...bad joke, I know. Anyways yesterday and today I went back for the purpose of actually taking some pictures.

Yesterday I went from 2-4p.m. and was presented with some fairly decent light, but some pretty boring/lazy ducks. They were still doing their typical water based events, however flight was limited. And with no flying taking place, I had to photograph them doing something else. So yesterday was mostly behavioral photos.

1/1500 @ f/8, ISO 640, 400mm

Today I decided to head to Reifel for morning light. However there wasn't much. There was this layer of clouds that seemed to follow the sun across the sky, which is sub-par for photography. But, with it still being early in the waterfowl photography season, and this being a test run (making sure I know what I'm doing before the shots that count present themselves), I still decided to stay and take a few photos...642 to be exact. Now you may be asking yourself, "642 photos!?!? That's going to be a lot of editing!" And if in fact you did just ask yourself that, my answer to you is, No. 642 photos in poor lighting of some pretty lazy birds equals 3 keeper photos. And I'm still not entirely happy with those photos. If you follow my blog, you'll eventually learn that I'm really really picky about photos I decide to keep and not trash. As mentioned above, the birds were lazy again. Not much flying going on so again, I just shot random behavior stuff, such as this one of a pair of American Wigeon.

1/750 @ f/6.7, ISO 640, 350mm

Well that's about it for this post. The rest of the photos can be found here http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=109190&id=61927899276&ref=mf

My First Blog...

Well here it is. My first blog. I'll get to the actual blog in a minute but I'll just take this time to give a bit of an introduction for those who don't know me. I'm a photographer from North Vancouver, BC. My passion lies with wildlife photography but I'm also big on landscape type stuff. My portfolio can be seen here... www.brandonbroderick.com. I'm self taught and have been shooting for just over 2 years now. These blogs will be my way of sharing the details of each shoot with anybody who reads them. I'll try and toss out the odd tip or trick and I'll keep things simple because that's how I learned and hopefully you will learn something too.

Now for today's shoot...

I left my place in North Van around 6am and was off to Tsawwassen to meet Raf, a friend, at McDonalds before the photo session. After the quick meal we headed off to Boundary Bay Park. I often head to Boundary Bay to try and photograph Hawks and Owls but this time the goal was a sunrise shot. I've personally never been a huge fan of yellow sunrises or sunsets but today was a bit different. Rays of sun penetrated the clouds and basically lit up Mt. Baker (located in Washington State). It was a really cool sight and I'm glad I had my camera there to capture it.

1/350 @ f/3.5, ISO 400, 160mm

We had each taken a few photos of the sunrise and headed back to our vehicles. Raf got called into work so I was on my own for the next location, which was The Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary in Ladner, BC.

If you've never been to Reifel, there's this creek that is on the right hand side of the road and runs from the entrance gate to the parking lot. Today this creek was PACKED with ducks. I mean absolutely PACKED. I've never seen it like that before and I realized it was because I've never been to Reifel at this time of year. As soon as I got out of the truck, a familiar sound rang out and right away I knew what all those ducks were there. BOOM BOOM BOOM...shotgun blast after shotgun blast. Hunting season is open and those ducks in that creek, are smart ducks...Reifel is pretty well the only piece of protected land in that area.

With the ridiculous amount of ducks riddle figured out, I grabbed my camera and headed into the sanctuary. It was a pretty slow start. Not many ducks were flying and for the most part they were all just resting in the water. I didn't mind though because the light was still pretty dim. I took a few test shots at f/5.6 ISO 800 and was only getting 1/30 shutter speed... not even close to fast enough for waterfowl photography. I could have bumped my ISO higher but that just means more noise in the photos and there's no need for that.

After some patience, the light finally improved and the birds started to get active. There still weren't many flying so I ended up just taking a few "duck in the water" type shots. I'd prefer to get action shots, such as flight and behavioral type stuff but sometimes it just isn't meant to be. Although today I did get one preening photo...

1/1500 @ f/5.6, ISO 640, 400mm

Anyways that's about it for this morning. The rest of the photos can be found here http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=108597&id=61927899276&ref=mf .

Thanks for reading,

Brandon