Project 8: “The
Decisive Moment”. Assignment Work.
This project calls for the
student to find and capture the most telling moment in a sequence of activity,
using portrait or reportage photography as a starting point.
Nuthatch photographed
at Lynford Arboretum Feeding Station on 15 April 2014
I chose to set up a feeding
station and provide food for one species in particular, the nuthatch (see
above). My aims for this work were as follows:
·
To gain experience and expertise in the two
major genres of photography (natural history photography and documentary /
reportage) that will be of most use for the successful completion of the major
project.
·
To produce a series of attractive photographs of
a charismatic, colourful and relatively confiding species of bird, that comes
readily to feeders in the areas in which it occurs.
·
To produce portraits of the bird, featuring a
range of expressions that bring out some of the character of this species.
·
To illustrate the bird feeding and/or taking
food from the feeding station.
·
To practice and hone my skills for taking shots
of wildlife action.
·
To gain experience of using two recent
acquisitions, a Nikon 300mm F4 lens and a Nikon 1.4x converter, in combination
with my Nikon D7000 camera: the lens combination had been acquired primarily
for the purpose of taking wildlife action shots.
Preparatory Work
I chose to carry out the photography
at Lynford Arboretum in Norfolk’s Thetford Forest. This attractive area hosts a
wide variety of woodland birds, including uncommon species such as common
crossbills and hawfinches. The area is frequented by birdwatchers, particularly
during the winter months, and incorporates several “official” and “unofficial”
feeding stations which are regularly stocked with food. As a consequence birds
such as the nuthatch, which is a confiding species and is readily attracted to
food, have become habituated and relatively fearless. Although feeding the
birds is less common (or necessary) during the spring and summer, birds
continue to check out feeding stations on their regular circuits through the
woodland and will quickly discover free “caches” of food when they appear.
I chose to set up my feeding
station on two parapets on opposite sides of a small bridge over a stream
running from a nearby ornamental pond. The area attracts lots of birds
(including crossbills, which come to drink in nearby pools) and food is left
out on the parapets during the winter. I carried out two “practice runs”, on 10
April and 15 April 2014. A combination of peanuts (a nuthatch “favourite”),
sunflower hearts and wild bird seed was used as “bait” and this attracted seven
species of bird (nuthatch, marsh tit, blue tit, great tit, robin, dunnock and
chaffinch) to the parapets. I stood roughly 4-6 metres from the bait. As well
as taking photographs of birds on the parapets I produced images of them
perched in the branches of surrounding trees and bushes, providing a more
“natural” environment for the portraits. Common crossbills and grey wagtails
were photographed in this manner, although neither species came (or would be
expected to come) to the feeding station. On each occasion I spent 2-3 hours at
the feeding station and I took around 500 photographs of birds in total. The
following issues were highlighted:
·
The feeding station is surrounded by trees and
bushes and stands in partial shade for most of the day. I therefore decided to
use an ISO rating of 500 or more and to choose a bright day in order to freeze
action with a fast shutter speed (1/500s or less) and avoid significant
under-exposure.
·
I tried a number of ways of shielding the bird
food from the camera whilst retaining full views of the birds, but none were
successful: the birds were intent on feeding from the parapets only. I
therefore had to include the nuts and seeds on many of the images taken at the
feeding station.
·
Whilst the other birds (especially tits) were
happy to perch on nearby trees and bushes before coming to the feeding station,
nuthatches preferred a direct approach from distance, so I was unable to get
any good images of nuthatches perched in a natural environment (e.g. on a tree
trunk or branch).
·
Nevertheless, I was able to get a handful of
decent photographs of nuthatches in a “classic” pose, with seeds or nuts in
their mouths.
·
Using the 300mm lens with 1.4x converter and a
relatively wide aperture (f/5.6 to f/7.1) allowed me, after some judicious
pruning of nearby vegetation, to throw the background out of focus giving in
many cases a pleasing “bokeh”. However, during the middle of the day when the
light was brightest it was necessary to increase the shutter speed (I was
shooting using shutter priority) because a large, nearby sign beyond one of the
parapets became distracting at narrower apertures. Because I had opted to shoot
in different directions to cover both parapets I did not want to shoot in
aperture priority mode (the other background was much darker).
·
Despite the birds allowing me a close approach
they still appeared fairly small in the frame. If I came closer than about 10
feet to the parapets the birds were too close to focus on, so I had to accept
that some judicious cropping of the resultant images would be necessary in
post-production.
·
I concentrated on focussing on the heads
(specifically the eyes) of the birds. However, because I was using a high focal
length lens combination with a generally wide aperture, I was unable to get the
whole bird in focus unless it was standing “side on”. Of course the birds were
moving rapidly, often walking or running towards or away from the camera and
often turning or feeding. Their visits often only lasted one or two seconds, if
that! As a consequence, the vast majority of images taken were flawed, many
being blurred and/or out of focus. The very high failure rate is not unexpected
under these circumstances.
Workflow
The assignment work was carried
out on 21 April 2014. I arrived at the feeding station at 10.00am and photographed
until 1.30pm, with a half hour break in the middle. During this period I took
around 350 photographs of birds on the parapets of the feeding station and in
the surrounding bushes. I photographed all the birds that came to the feeding
station, but concentrated on nuthatches. The weather was bright, with hazy
sunshine which was diffused by the surrounding vegetation, so I did not have to
worry about unwanted shadows or too many bright highlights. The camera/lens
combination worked well on the day. I shot Raw + highest quality jpeg, using
ISO 500 throughout, with the shutter speed set to between 1/500s (mainly) and
1/800s. Under these conditions a tripod would have been of no use. The birds
came to the feeding station regularly and I left knowing that I should have
some decent images.
Post-production
I have a standard procedure for
editing my images, which was followed as described below:
·
The images were viewed on the back of my camera.
Those that were obviously flawed (blurring, out of focus, bird movement, bird
gone etc.) were deleted, leaving me with 85 images.
·
The jpeg images were downloaded on to my
computer and reviewed on the full screen. Those with significant flaws were
deleted, together with others that did not add anything to my image portfolio.
I was left with 32 jpeg images, of which 13 featured nuthatches. The raw files
for these images were downloaded: the remaining raw images were deleted.
·
The 13 nuthatch jpeg images were edited, using
“Photoshop Elements 8”. The images were cropped and minor adjustments were made
to the histogram (“levels”), highlights, shadows, brightness and contrast, with
a little sharpening being carried out where deemed advantageous.
·
These images were reviewed and six were selected
that were deemed to represent aspects of the birds’ behaviour, or “decisive
moments” that occurred during the course of the shoot.
·
The raw images for these six “decisive moments”
were then cropped and edited using Nikon View NX2. The resultant images were
converted to 8 bit Tiff files. Further minor adjustments were made to these
files in “Photoshop Elements 8” and the files were then saved in both Tiff and
jpeg formats to produce Images 1-6.
·
Two additional images, of a marsh tit and a
robin, which were captured on the same shoot, were edited in the same manner as
above to produce Image 7 and Image 8. These images, which are
amongst my favourites from the shoot, illustrate that when photographing
wildlife it is impossible to predict what is going to happen!
“The Decisive Moment”: Sequence of Images
The Images 1-6 are shown below,
in the order in which they were taken, and with a few comments about each
image. It should be stressed that, during the shoot, there were probably
200-300 “events”, where a bird came to the feeding station and left again. In
many cases I was unable to record an event and I rarely managed to take more
than one image of a particular event. Images 1 to 6 therefore represent
decisive moments from four separate events that I managed to capture (images
4-6 came from the same event): hundreds of other potential “decisive moments”
were missed and have been lost forever.
Image 1
ISO 500, 1/640s, f/6.3
The bird has a peanut in its
mouth, producing a classic “nuthatch” pose. Because the bird is side-on to the
camera it is in focus. The dark background has been thrown out of focus,
although a little noise is evident, despite the medium ISO rating. The nuts and
seeds on the table are thrown mainly out of focus: they relate to the bird’s
situation, but could be regarded as being a little distracting. The image was
cropped to “letterbox” shape to emphasise the bird’s posture. As I will show
later, further cropping to produce a “head and shoulders” image of the bird
leads to a much cleaner photograph, but this would be too small for printing at
A4 size.
This image was included because
it demonstrates a “decisive moment”, when the bird has picked up a peanut in
its bill and is about to fly away with it. This is characteristic behaviour of
this species, which I wanted to capture.
Image 2
ISO 500, 1/640s, f/8
Co-incidentally, the next
photograph in the time sequence also features a nuthatch with a peanut in its
mouth, although the nut is being held in a different manner. The bird is at an
angle to the camera: most of the body is in focus, but the tail is out of
focus. Most of the food is hidden from view, although another peanut can just
be seen to the bottom right of the frame: I could have cloned this out, but
decided that its presence would give a clue to where the nut had come from. The
out of focus parapet in the background is a little distracting: with care, this
could have been cloned out but I chose not to do this. The diagonals provided
by the bird’s upper body and by the bill mandibles assist in the composition of
the photograph, which is markedly different to that of Image 1. As with Image
1, further cropping to concentrate on the bird’s bill, head and upper body
gives a cleaner picture, but again this would be too small for A4 printing.
This shows another decisive
moment in the bird’s visit to the feeder. Here the bird has an upright posture.
Image 3
ISO 500,
1/640s, f/8
In this image I have captured a
moment when the nuthatch has selected a food item and is picking it up in its
bill: this is another “decisive moment” in the sequence that starts when the
bird arrives at the feeder. The positioning of the bird means that its tail,
rear end and far leg are out of focus, but the “business end” is in focus. The
food in the background is a little distracting and, unlike in the other images,
the bird’s posture means that its breast is not silhouetted against the
background. Nevertheless, this image illustrates an important aspect of the
bird’s behaviour that I wanted to capture.
This photograph illustrates the
“split second” moment when the bird transfers food from the feeding station
into its bill.
Image 4
ISO 500,
1/800s, f/6.3
Co-incidentally, Images 4-6 were
taken over a period of a few seconds during a single visit to the bird feeder.
Here the bird has just arrived and is looking round (as birds always do) for
potential danger. It knows that I am a few feet away, pointing a large object
in its direction, but it has visited many times before and is confident that I
pose no significant threat. The posture is typical of this lively, perky bird
and all the important features of the bird are in focus.
Perhaps this may not be described
as a “decisive moment”, but this portrait shot reveals the character of the
bird.
Image 5
ISO 500,
1/800s, f/6.3
Following its arrival (Image 4),
this bird has hopped forward a few paces and is about to pick up a nut. The
bird is still wary. On this feeding station the nuts are hidden from view. The
rear edge of the parapet (on which the bird was standing for Image 4) is now a
background blur and, because the bird has turned half left, its tail and rear
end are out of focus. I cropped up from the bottom of the image to remove some
distracting, out of focus foreground.
This is another portrait shot of
the bird as it stands poised, ready to grab some food and then fly away.
Image 6
ISO 500,
1/800s, f/6.3
The nuthatch (Images 4 and 5) has
made its decision and picked up part of a nut, which it is holding in its bill.
It will shortly fly away. Close inspection of the upper mandible reveals a
couple of fragments of food that have adhered to the bill whilst it was
choosing the nut. In other respects, the pose is similar to that seen in Image
5. During the course of my work at the feeding station I noted that nuthatches
often eat smaller food items there, before flying away with larger items to consume
in safety, high in the surrounding trees.
This is another “decisive
moment”: the bird has selected a food item and is ready to fly away with it.
Ranking of Images
In selecting Images 1-6 from the
350 that I took on the shoot I have, whilst trying to show “decisive moments”,
also tried to pick images that illustrate a typical visit to the feeding
station, from the moment when the bird arrives to the moment that it leaves (I
was unable to capture any meaningful images of the nuthatches in flight). This
sequence would follow the order:
Image 4 -> Image 5 -> Image
3 -> Image 1 -> Images 2 and 6.
I find it difficult to rank
images in order of preference. Does a flawed image of a bird with a nut in its
mouth rate above a better, but straightforward portrait image? I have had a go:
here is my ranking order.
Favourite: Image 4
Yes, this is a straightforward
portrait shot, but the pose of the bird sums up for me the character of the
nuthatch. Most of the frame is in focus, with the exception of the background,
which is both pleasing to me and suggestive of the bird’s natural environment.
Second Favourite: Image 6
Ideally the bird would have had a
peanut in its bill, but nevertheless I like the bird’s pose, the glint in its
eye, the uniform background and the fact that a “decisive moment” has been
captured.
Third Favourite: Image 2
I wanted to capture photographs
of nuthatches with peanuts in their bills (another “decisive moment”) and this
is perhaps the best example that I captured on the day. All but one other food
item is hidden from view, which makes the image “cleaner”. However, a higher
proportion of the bird is out of focus than in Image 6 and also the separation
of the bird from its background is less well defined.
Fourth Favourite: Image 1
Here the whole of the bird is in
focus, due to the “side on” view, and it holds a peanut in its bill. However,
the bird’s head is turned very slightly away from the camera, the background is
not as clean and the out of focus bird food is somewhat distracting.
Fifth Favourite: Image 3
A different “decisive moment” in
the bird’s behaviour is shown, and it forms an important part of the story.
However, the distraction of the out of focus seeds in the lower background, the
rather dark upper background and the out of focus rump and tail of the bird are
photographic flaws.
Sixth Favourite: Image 5
I have placed this image last
because it represents a fairly standard nuthatch portrait. The bird doesn’t
have anything in its bill and as a “standalone” image it doesn’t have any special
features that would raise the level of interest. I prefer several of the photos
of other birds taken during the shoot to this one.
Further Editing
I have commented on distracting
backgrounds that are present in some of Images 1-6. Although the original
photographs have all been cropped to produce images that would be suitable for
printing at A4 size, further cropping can produce images that, whilst
consisting of fewer pixels, might be suitable for magazine articles or internet
features, whilst in many cases removing the sources of distraction. I have
cropped all the images further and the smaller images, placed in sequence to
mimic a typical visit to the feeding station, are attached below.
Image 4a
Image 5a
Image 3a
Image 1a
Image 2a
Image 6a
These cropped images reveal the
character of the bird, in (with the exception of the first photograph) a series
of “head and shoulder” images, although they are too small for a large print.
Other Birds Using the Feeding Station
I took photographs of all six
species of bird that used the feeding station during the shoot. I have selected
two of my favourites which, whilst not relevant to the original purpose of the
project, were amongst my favourites of the day.
Marsh Tit (Image 7)
Image 7
The marsh tit is an uncommon bird
associated with areas of wet woodland. They come readily to bird feeders and
feeding stations and Lynford is the best site that I know to both see and
photograph them. This tit is quite a plain little bird, but it is feisty and,
despite its small size, it is far bolder than the much more common blue tits
and great tits that also use the feeding station. I think that Image 7
illustrates the bird’s character quite well and, despite the (typically) untidy
appearance of the bird, this is my favourite image of the whole shoot.
Robin (Image 8)
Image 8
I also like this lively portrait
of a robin. The untidy feathering and somewhat unusual posture add to its
appeal, whilst the all over sharpness of the image and pleasing background add
to its strength.
These two images, which were
processed in the same manner as Images 1-6, are included as jpeg and tiff files
with the other assignment images.
Conclusions
Photographing very active wild
birds feeding at close quarters is an exciting and enjoyable, but very
challenging experience for the wildlife photographer. Even professional
photographers may spend many hours or even days to get perhaps one or two
publishable photographs or a single planned sequence of images of a particular
subject.
A further refinement to the work
that I have described above would have been to provide a natural looking
feeding station, such as a wooden log, and hidden the bird food from view in
order to provide totally natural images of birds such as the nuthatch and marsh
tit: this type of feeding station is commonly used by professional photographers.
This would have been a “high risk, high reward” strategy, as the birds may have
taken weeks to find and become accustomed to the new environment. I also
wanted, for this project, to emphasise the fact that the birds were being
photographed at a feeding station. However, I do intend to investigate the
strategy in my own garden, for potential use in the major project and beyond. I
could also, of course, have used “Photoshop” to replace the parapet surface
with a more natural looking (e.g. wooden) foreground. However, this would have
been both difficult to do and ethically unsound.
I believe that the considerable
amount of practical work that went into the project will, in the long term,
improve the standard of my wildlife action and documentary photography. I also
hope that the Images 1-6 will provide the viewer with some feeling for the
character of the chosen bird species, the lively nuthatch, and give them an
insight into one example of how providing wild birds with food is beneficial
for both the birds and for ourselves.
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