Birds, Brush, and Setting Sun. Merced National Wildlife Refuge, California. January 28, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Sun sets over Merced National Wildlife Refuge, silhouetting brush and birds.
I’m not usually one to shoot straight into the rising or setting sun, but here you are… straight into the setting sun! While photographing birds and landscape at the Merced National Wildlife Refuge during the last weekend of January, we ended at a bend in the gravel road that loops around the main area of the refuge. We were trying to get close enough to some very big flocks of birds that were settling in on the nearby fields along the ponds, but they were mostly too far away. From time to time flocks would pass overhead, so we were able to photograph them in small groups, but the shots of the larger group – containing thousands of birds – eluded us on this visit.
But when the birds are more difficult to photograph, I end up looking around more at other things. And even in what might seem like a flat and almost featureless landscape, there are elements that contribute to the sense of quiet and space that comes on in the evening in the parts of the Central Valley… and before you know it, I’m shooting landscapes again! We had seen this little clump of trees or brush earlier and used it as an element in some other photographs. We had also noticed that one solitary bird perched motionless on a single tall branch extending above the surrounding thicker brush. Then it occurred to me that if I moved just a few feet to my left that the sun might pass right behind the bird shortly before it set – and a few frames later this photograph resulted.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
Really enjoying this whole series of Central California wetlands! Although this landscape could not be more different than Death Valley the same feelings of vastness, quietude, peace comes through so clearly.
Great point about the “vastness” and how the two locales are similar. Oddly I saw a similar connection between Death Valley and another place that, in many ways, could hardly be more different: The Yukon. The first time I visited Death Valley, the huge scale of the place immediately made me think of the sub-arctic and arctic.
Dan
Why the ISO of 400?
Good shot. I like the reflection of the sun on the water between the brush, the slight high clouds, and the two birds in flying in the frame.
Great question that brings up a number of points – some technical and some mildly embarrassing perhaps. ;-)
I had set the camera to a higher ISO because I was photographing birds in flight with a long lens and because the light wasn’t great as a result of some general atmospheric haze. When we arrived at this spot, we first were looking for a closer vantage point to photograph some birds about 90 degrees to the right of the subject of this photograph, so I automatically set up the camera in what I might call “wildlife mode” – burst mode, higher ISO, and AF with IS engaged.
But a couple of things happened. Being a landscape kinda’ guy, when I do shoot wildlife subjects such as these birds, my attention has a tendency to wander off to the landscape during slow periods in the wildlife shooting, and we soon realized that the birds were really a bit too far away to photograph from this location. So I started looking around – I’m basically always on the lookout for different aspects of my surroundings that might make a photograph. I saw this clump of brush, then noticed the solitary bird at the top of the branch, and suddenly realized that if I moved a few feet to my left I could be in position to photograph the bird against the sun as it passed behind the branch. At this point I quickly moved into a position that worked – where I thought I’d need to be to position the sun correctly. I made some – obviously – radical adjustments to exposure to deal with the very bright disc of the sun. I turned off AF and IS and burst mode, and I set up to focus manually in live view mode – as I always do when shooting landscape- on the branches of the tree. I framed up a composition. It didn’t even occur to me to change ISO! So, the “choice” of ISO 400 wasn’t precisely a choice at all, and if I had it to do over I would probably shoot at ISO 100. (I also would have used a different aperture, but that’s another matter.)
However, it turns out that 400 is really very good on the 5D2. In my view, there is essentially no significant difference between ISO 100 and 200 on this camera, so I’ll shoot at either depending on other factors. There is a tiny bit more noise at 400 – but you would probably only ever notice it at 100% magnification, so I’m more that willing to shoot at that ISO, even for landscape subjects, if necessary. (I shot at 800 and 1600 as well when the subject was flying birds in dusk light.)
Dan