Autumn birds

I also got a chance to take some shots of birds where it was possible with macro lens Tamron 90mm.

The place is in the park, that local people have made to feed the birds. And the autumn leaves gave quite a nice background for the shots.

Most of the birds are tomtits that are commonly seen everywhere.

However, the name of this bird I still struggle to find, being not very knowledgeable.  

 

90mm, f/3.2, 1/640

This funny bird is making some tricks with a seed.

90mm, f/3.2, 1/800

Here I just liked the blurred background of autumn. 

 

 90mm, f/3.2, 1/800

 This guy is obviously having a moment of inspiration after too much feeding.

 

90mm, f/3.2, 1/800

Here I was really lucky, because all these guys gave me a natural 'group portrait' of birds in process of their little doings.

90mm, f/2.8, 1/800

 And these two birds were busy with themselves, when suddenly they turned their heads towards my camera and stayed like this for half a second, like if they were posing for a picture. This was enough to get this shot right.

90mm, f/2.8, 1/800

 90mm, f/2.8, 1/800

 Of course, where the birds are not central and bigger part of the picture, it would be better to use another lens. Next time will try to make better ones. There is always room for improvement.

Squirrels

This post has nothing to do with my exercises from Picture Perfect Practice book. These are just some pictures of squirrels that I have taken about two months ago in local park.

Unfortunately, I don't have special lens for taking shots of bird and animals. That's why I had to use my macro lens Tamron 90mm for this. And, it was quite a challenge, because you need to come really close to the object to get a decent shot.  In addition, the creatures like squirrels and birds are moving rather quickly and you have to be ready all the time to catch the moment.

While trying to catch them, I found out that squirrels actually are lovely creatures, smart and beautiful.

Here are some of the shots:

This squirrel was running towards me, because she saw a small pack of nuts, and just was starring at me for half a second, waiting for a nut that I had prepared for her. Next moment she jumped on my knee to get her nut, took it and ran away.  

 

90mm, f/3.2, 1/500

It takes them about five seconds to  claim on the tree, jump over to another tree and get down again.

 

90mm, f/2.8, 1/500

90mm, f/2.8, 1/400

Classical poses of squirrels sitting on the tree with nuts.

 

 90mm, f/2.8, 1/800

Their fur looks particularly nice, with sun and some shadows from the trees.

90mm, f/2.8, 1/1600

90mm, f/3.2, 1/1600

 This shot has taken me about two hours of shooting and about 100 grams of nuts.

 90mm, f/3.2, 1/2000

The tail is longer than the whole body of the squirrel.  

 90mm, f/2.8, 1/250

And here I decided to go wild and was trying to catch the moment, when there will be two squirrels in the frame at the same time. 

90mm, f/2.8, 1/1250

It is  now late November, and squirrels are now light grey color. Next time I will try to take some picture of their new appearance.

Using Zoom for Balance

The idea of this exercise was to balance the picture using zoom, so that the two objects or frames were balanced.


1. Kids swing in the park between two chains.  I made two different pictures, where chain is in focus, and the second one, where the chain is blurred. Anyway, the main is the distance from the chains to the swing in the middle and from the edges of the picture to the chains.

240mm, f/5.3, 1/250sec

 240mm, f/5.3, 1/250sec

2. Two hanging lights. I decided that it will look the best in its black and white version. The shot is cropped from above, to make it most balanced.

 

 35mm, f/5.6, 1/60sec

 3. Two sides of the louvers on the edges create the balance of the picture.

35mm, f/5, 1/80sec 

4. Flower pot between two curtains. Two curtains are the balancing objects here. The right curtain cold have been cropped a bit more.

35mm, f/2.8, 1/320sec

5. I am not sure, whether these two pictures qualify. Though, the idea is that the balance is created by the trees on the left and the right side of the picture. I put both on purpose, just to remind myself the meaning of the lighting. The colours on the two pictures look totally different, though both shots have been made in the same season.

 

195mm, f/7.1, 1/80sec

 

55mm, f/13, 1/60sec 

 6. That was easy - two road signs divide  the shot into the thirds.

165mm, f/13, 1/400sec 

 7. Four windows, the shot cropped into almost rectangular shape. However, all lines are built n such a way that the whole view was balances on its own. 

 280mm, f/7.1, 1/1000sec

8. Again, I am not sure, whether this shot qualifies. But anyway, the idea was - several layers of the tree and the distance from the edges of the shot to the tree create the necessary balance.

125mm, f/9, 1/40sec

Though there are a lot of different objects everywhere, it was quite a challenge to find different objects that would naturally create this kind of balance on the picture.