Just Sitting

Eastern Kingbird

Yesterday I revisited Tamarac Park in Lakeville and after walking around, I noticed in the dead tree, high up there were some birds.  Near the tree was a pension table, so I decided to sit down and see what birds were up in the tree.  There were Cedar Waxwings and after they left a tree swallow landed and started preening.  A truck pulled into the parking lot, and a nice gentleman came up and asked if he could get some advice on his photography.  Of course, I said I would be happy to.  So he went back to his truck and brought his camera and lens up and sat down next to me.  The hardest part was he had a Canon camera and lens.  Why this was hard is I do not know all the bells and whistles on using a Canon camera.  Talking about settings, that is easy because the settings for the exposure triangle are the same no matter what camera you are using.  He wanted to know a little bit about manual exposure, so we talked about how I do it.  He learned out how to set manual settings on his camera and then learned how to use the histogram to help them refine the picture.  As we were talking, I found out he is only shooting JPEG, but he wants to learn how to shoot in raw and then process the pictures in Lightroom.  Looking at his camera LCD screen, He had good looking pictures.  He is off to a trip to Canada next week, and when he returns.  We will plan to get together so he can learn how to use Lightroom.  Meanwhile, birds were flying by and in between talking, I was able to photograph the birds in flight.  I must say my Nikon D 500 and Nikon 200-500 lens grabbed focus quickly, enabling me to capture the shots.  All this occurred while sitting on a bench, enjoying good company and a beautiful sunny day with lots of activity and bird songs all around us.

Tree Swallow Preening

Brown-headed Cowbird

Great Blue Heron

When I reviewed my pictures on the computer, I got a surprise, the pictures showed many small insects flying around the birds that were perched at the very top of the tree.

Cedar Waxwing