Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Spoonbill and Freind

This shot was taken at the Baytown Nature Center this past Sunday. While I was scouting this shot I approached a different pond in the park and saw another photographer there already. He was set up with a tripod and what looked like at least a 600mm lens and looked prepared to do some serious bird work. It looked like there was plenty of room on the other end of the pond so I turned my little car off the road to set up. After I turned I saw there wasn't really enough room to get my car completely off the road. With camera and telephoto in hand I attempted to back up to reposition the car. As I attempted this maneuver my camera strap snagged the shifter causing me to inadvertently lay on the horn! When this happened the pond emptied completely of birds as if it where dynamite instead of a car horn. I'm sure the first photographer was impressed with my professionalism as I drove off to find a new [quieter] place to shoot - someplace that actually had birds...

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Absolutely hilarious! I almost fell out of my chair. The whole story had me in stitches, start to finish.

DHaass

Barry Armer said...

Maybe you should replace your factory horn with one that sounds like a duck quack! :-)

The backlighting has the Spoonbill too dark IMO. You needed it to spread its wings so you could see the individual backlit feathers! Perhaps a horn honk would have got the little guy moving? :-)

Cheers!
Barry

Larry J. Patrick said...

Larry, you need someone to watch your back when you go birding next time--you know those birders take their shooting a little more serious than the rest of us. Nice host. Of course a better shot would have been one of the "bird photographer" jumping out of skin when you hit the horn.

Anonymous said...

I was laughing so hard I forgot to comment on the photo. I agree with Barry on the backlight. Kind of a double edged sword with each bird's facing side in different light. Fix one and blow out the other unless you use some creative LR2 or PS to fix.

He didn't jump...he frowned.

A Bird Photographer
DHaass

CGTTL said...

Larry,

The friend is a Snowy Egret (black bill - yellow feet) as opposed to the other Egret common in this area, the Great American Egret (larger and yellow bill - black feet).

Nice shot of these two Bay Area residents.