Last week, after our spate of wet weather, the Fill was awash with birds. And birdwatchers. “There's five kinds of warblers in this tree,” one of them told me (Yellow, Yellow-rumped, Black-throated Grey, Orange-crowned and Townsends, if you absolutely must know). I only found a couple of them, plus some Warbling Vireos, which are not warblers actually, but rather are victims of a confusing naming convention that make us birders sound like the obsessed geeks we really are.
I came to take pictures, mostly, with one lens on one camera, a 50mm macro. It's been my primary lens these past few months for my Daily Photo, mostly because it's so easy to find a compelling photo with it in a very small area in a short amount of time. The burn area was loaded with Goldfinches feeding on the burnt chicory stalks, and I really wanted another lens on the camera right about then. Like my 400mm. With an extender.
Living with regret is a personal specialty, so I happily resigned myself to the photographic possibilities I did have before me. I sat by the pond, and started noticing the close-in colors of the wet foliage. Soon I was nuzzling into various and sundry twiggy places and losing myself in that wonderful Zone of entrancement with the details in front of my face.
The next day, I was prepared. With the 400mm. On a windy afternoon where there was not a bird to be found. I couldn't exactly nuzzle the foliage with this thing, but I did figure out to tunnel through it and extract abstractions with the narrow depth of field at hand. The same that I always do, but different.
More on Flickr, here.
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