Surfing in Buzzards Bay

Riding the wave

An activity that you usually don't see in the waters off of Westport and Dartmouth is surfing. The other day, with the foggy weather, temperature in the 50s and the seas in Buzzards Bay running at least 6 feet high, there were a group of hardy souls surfing off the high point at Allens Pond. You just could make out their shapes in the fog. They were completely outfitted in wetsuits and were just waiting for the right wave to ride it in. I took these series of photographs and did adjust them in Lightroom so that you could observe the action. I spoke with one of the surfers who exclaimed this is a great day. And despite the fog it really was a great day

Screenshot of the original picture showing the histogram without any post-processing

Riding the wave. The above picture post processed. All these pictures were taken handheld utilizing ISO 100, 1/125 second, F/4.8, +1 E V

Riding the wave

Riding the wave

Riding the wave

Riding the wave

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Pictures of the Month, March 2012 and February 2013

It is the first of the month and time for the picture of the month.  As in the previous again, I had a hard time picking out which picture to choose.  After surveying by March 2012 pictures, I selected an action scene: "Double-Crested Cormorant Bathing in the Evening Light," that I took down in Port Aransas at the Leonabelle Turnbull Birding Center.

Double-crested Cormorant Bathing

For February 2013, I decided to keep with the same theme and chose the picture of two Red-Breasted Mergansers in a chase sequence with one merganser chasing another merganser who had a large perch in its mouth.

"The Chase" Red-breasted Mergansers

Red-Breasted Merganser with a Perch Been Chased

The Chase

It is Tuesday, a day of birding with Doug.  In previous blogs, I showed a female, eider eating a crab and a horned grebe eating a flounder fry.  Today the highlight was at Jenney Pond in Plymouth, Massachusetts.  I was able to photograph a male red-breasted merganser that caught a large yellow perch to eat and it was chased by another male red-breasted merganser that want to steal the fish.  The red-breasted merganser, however, escaped and was able to eat the perch.

"It Is All Mine"

"Can I Swallow This?"

Yes, the red-breasted merganser was finally able to swallow the yellow perch

Bird Behavior, Bathing and Photography

The fun of photographing birds at of the animals is capturing the unusual.  Partly it can be luck, but also it is understanding the behavior of the animal that you are observing and trying to photograph.  I have a large number of images of ducks and gulls swimming and walking, so lately I've been observing them in order to capture of the behavior.  One of the events that I have observed is that when birds bathing and preening, they will usually rise and spread their wings, which gives you different action and behavioral photographs.  The idea is to have patience observe and be prepared for that event.  The other day when I was down at Jenney Pond in Plymouth, Massachusetts, both Mallards and Ring-billed Gulls were preening and bathing, which led to some interesting photographs. 
In order to help people with their photography, I am going to provide some technical information on what equipment I used and what settings and further information on post processing.
I utilized a Nikon D7000, with a Sigma 300 mm f 2 .8 lens along with a Sigma 1.4 tele-converter.  Because the Nikon D7000 has a 1.5 crop sensor, my equivalent focal length was 630 mm.  I used a monopod - Monostat-RS, which I love because of its large swivel toe stabilizer that prevents involuntary movements and yet permits smooth motion, and the horizontal for photographing moving objects.

For this photograph, I wanted a partial blur.  So I had set my f-stop to f 13 and my shutter speed was 1/250 sec.  For all my photographs, I had my ISO set at 400.
For this series of pictures my f-stop was f 7 .1 and the shutter speed ranged between 1/1001/250th of a sec. For more infoation about creating blurs check out A GUIDE TO PLEASING BLURS by Arthur Morris and Denise Ippolito at http://deniseippolito.com/prints/


Mallards:

Male Mallard

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ring-bill Gulls   

Post processing was done in Lightroom and with NIK software, Viveza 2 and Color Efex Pro 4, which allowed me to control the contrast, saturation and the detail in the pictures.

As I continue to look at the pictures, what I identified as mallards, except for the male Mallard.  O am thinking that the pictures are more of a Black Duck-Mallard hybrid, because of the bill color and that there is a touch of green on the ducks head