Within two minutes of sunset, dozens of sandhill cranes landed on the pond where they spend the night protected from predators like coyotes. Sometimes they would arrive in large groups and sometimes only one or two would come together. When they arrived in a group, it was hard to isolate a bird. It was a visual mess. But sometimes I could frame one or two birds and it worked out great. The other factor, though, was that the birds had to be on the same plane. Otherwise, with a long lens, one crane would be sharp and the other one soft. That wouldn't be acceptable. I had to clone out two out of focus cranes already in the water to make this more artistically pleasing. My settings were 1/2500, f/10, and 8000 ISO, and I used a 500mm focal length along with a 1.4x teleconverter giving me 700mm of focal length.
0 Comments