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Humpback Whales, Forillon National Park, Gaspe Quebec

Humpback Whales, Forillon National Park, Gaspe Quebec

We recently returned from an almost 4,000 km drive around the Gaspe Peninsula of Quebec. It was a wonderful trip for many reasons, including that my parents joined us and we were able to visit my Dad’s parents homestead in the little town of New Richmond on the south side of the peninsula. Prior to my grandparents moving to Oshawa in the 1920’s, there were five generations of Martin’s in the Black Cape/New Richmond area of the Gaspe Peninsula.

Undoubtably, one of the high points of the vacation was seeing Minke and Humpback Whales while whale watching out in the rough waters of Gaspe Bay and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Our boat, the Narval III was operated by Croisieres Baie de Gaspe leaving from Grande-Grave harbour within Forillon National Park, Quebec’s first National park, located at the Eastern tip of the Gaspe Peninsula.

As you can see the Narval III is a beautiful boat for whale watching.

Narval III

Narval III

This next shot with the smaller red zodiac on the left gives some perspective as to the size of the Narval III.

Narval III

Narval III

We had reserved our spots on the boat a number of weeks before arriving, however because of the rough seas and high winds, we were forewarned that it would be a rough almost three hours on the boat and that we would get completely soaked. Deb & my mom were wise in their decision to stay on shore, but my Dad and I donned the complementary rain gear and climbed aboard. Not knowing anything about whale observation and given the rough seas, I was pretty much convinced we wouldn’t see any whales, however only a few minutes into the voyage we saw some Minke whales, which are the second smallest of the baleen whales (more on baleen whales in a minute). The average length of a Minke whale is 23 feet. It was such a thrill to see even a ‘small’ whale that the trip was already a  success, but only a short while later we found a pair of Humpback Whales and I was amazed at how close they would come to the boat as we watched and followed them for the next hour or so.

Here is one of the first pictures I was able to capture of the Humpback Whale.

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It is difficult, if not impossible, to describe effectively enough to provide someone else an appreciation for the sheer size of these whales. Humpbacks weigh in at about 40 tons (80,000 pounds) and can reach lengths of 62′, or larger than a transport truck, yet they are very graceful to observe in the water. The normal method of spotting whales is to look for the 10-15′ high water spout created when the whale surfaces to breath and forcibly exhales air through the blowhole before inhaling. This is an easy thing to spot under calm seas, but the high winds and ten foot swells made it much more difficult for us to observe the water spouts. After seeing a spout, the small dorsal fin would appear about twenty feet behind often followed by the fluke or tail, allowing for great photo opportunities. The following are a few of the results.

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The underside of a Humpback tail has large white areas which are an identification distinction visible from quite far away.

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Humpback Whales are part of the baleen whale grouping. Baleen whales are edentulous, meaning they have no teeth, but instead have up to 400 baleen plates on both sides of their mouths. These plates are side by side, perpendicular to the roof of the mouth and can be up to 4′ in length. When the whale closes its mouth while feeding on a school of krill, the small fish are trapped between the baleen plates while the water is expelled. The food is then swallowed. Blue whales, the largest animals on the planet, are also baleen whales, thus the biggest whales in the world have no teeth, which is perhaps one of those little pieces of trivia you will never forget after reading this blog post!

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The Humpback Whale, like many whale species, was brought to the brink of extinction around the turn of the last century by over fishing and a hunting ban was implemented in 1966. Since then the population of the Humpback globally has slowly increased, however the National Geographic Association still lists the Humpback as endangered. It is estimated that there are 80,000 Humpbacks alive today.

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The Humpback Whale gets its name from the distinctive hump seen in its dorsal spine as it arches above the water when it surfaces to breath.

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Humpback’s Hump

I was fortunate to capture a unique perspective of the dorsal spine of the Humpback Whale as it surfaced while swimming directly towards the boat. Only a small part of the whale is visible, but you can see how the humpback got its name.

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Humpback Whales are migratory animals that cover a lot of miles every year, in fact 16,000 miles on average.  They summer in the cooler northern polar waters and head south in the winter to the tropical waters where they breed and give birth to their young. Interestingly they don’t eat while in the cooler waters in the summer and live of the fat reserves created by all the krill and small fish they consume in the winter months. Although they don’t eat in the summer, they continue to produce waste as this next image shows 🙂

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You won’t find this next pic in the gallery, but it is included here in an attempt to convey the relative size of an adult Humpback whale, using the rough waters of Gaspe Bay and the shoreline in the back ground to provide some scale. The width of the Humpback fluke can be up to one third of its length meaning the tail width can reach 15-20 feet or the length of most recreational motor boats.

Humpback Fluke

Humpback Fluke

I trust that you have enjoyed these Humpback Whale images and if you’ve never been whale watching, I would urge you to plan a trip to Forillon National Park and sign up for an excursion with Croisieres Baie de Gaspe. You will be amazed when you see up close one of the largest animals that God designed to roam our oceans.

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To see the above images in more detail, you can view them in the Wildlife Gallery.

As mentioned in the opening of this blog post, our whale watching excursion left from Grande-Grave Harbour in Forillon National Park. You could easily spend a few days exploring the park itself and admiring its many beautiful vistas overlooking the Gulf of St. Lawrence and Gaspe Bay. One of the most picturesque is Cape Bon Ami in the northern section of the park. The cliffs around the Cape provide nesting grounds for Black-legged Kittiwakes, Razor-billed Auks, Common Murre and Black Guillemots, which will be described in a future post. In the mean time here are some pictures of Cape Bon Ami and the surrounding  area.

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A number of other images from Forillon can be found in the Naturescapes Gallery.

The whale images in this post were all taken with a Canon 5D Mk III and 500 f/4 L lens while all other images were taken with a Fujifilm X-E2 and 18-55 zoom lens. Long time readers of this blog will recognize that this is a significant departure from a gear perspective, however I will talk about the new Fuji equipment in more detail in a future post.

One final note; if you would like to receive future blog posts via email, please enter your email address in the “Subscribe to Blog Via Email” box at the top of the right sidebar. By doing so, you will receive future blog posts via email as soon as they are published. Your email addresses will never be shared and your email subscription is easily managed.

Easter – The Saviour Is Risen

Easter – The Saviour Is Risen

Easter marks the high point of history for the Christian as we celebrate the crucifixion, burial and resurrection of Christ, without doubt establishing his credentials as the Saviour. This year our church, Calvary Baptist Church, performed an Easter Musical entitled “Saviour” on Good Friday Morning which was attended by over one thousand people.

Being devoid of musical talent, my contribution was to photograph the presentation, the results of which are the subject of today’s post.

Event photography always presents challenges, not the least of which are there are no ‘do overs’, you only have one chance to get it right. Secondly, you need to capture the feel of the event, so that the viewer of the images gets a glimpse of what it would have been like to be there, and those who were performing at or attending the event should be able to relive the experience through viewing the photographs. I trust both of those ideals are met with these images.

Event photography presents numerous and significant technical challenges that must be successfully navigated in order to achieve good results. The venues are generally dark, and lighting is typically achieved through multiple point sources (spotlights) that continually move about and change colour as well. We will talk more about dealing with various challenges in a minute using images to provide examples.

Event photography, especially in low light situations, is one of those things that requires a good camera body that functions well at the high ISO’s required to generate shutter speeds fast enough to capture the action without blurring the subjects. The Canon 5D MkIII used for all of today’s images is a terrific high ISO performer and all the images in this post were taken at ISO 4000. I purposely did not perform any noise reduction in the post processing of these images so that you can see how clean the files are right of the camera, even at ISO 4000. Fast glass is also a big help in low light and if you look at the EXIF data you will see many of the images were taken at f/2.8. Four different lenses were used for this photo-shoot; 16-35/2.8L (wide angle zoom), 24-105/4L (short telephoto zoom), 100/2.8L (portraits), and 70-200/2.8L (telephoto zoom).

When covering events, get there early and look for some unique compositions and angles that are all about capturing the feel of the performance.

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I aways start with the wide angle and get shots that show the performance on a large scale as well as capturing the venue and the audience. Move around the auditorium (if allowed) and get a number of different views.

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Side views of the auditorium are the best vantage point to highlight the audience.

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And from the other side of the auditorium.

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Event lighting changes quickly but the effects are dramatic and powerfully contribute to the effectiveness of the performance.  It’s difficult to capture those rapid changes photographically and retain the ‘feel’ of things. These next two images are from a similar vantage point with the same spot lights visible in both. In the first, the primary spots are yellow (1/160 sec f/4).

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In this shot the spots are white and I’ve over exposed it a bit to highlight the beams of lights diffusing in the smoke. (1/125 sec f/4).

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Photographing soloists is perhaps the most challenging as they are virtually always in a bright spotlight against a much darker back ground.  This creates big problems for the camera metering system which ‘sees’ the primarily dark scene and tends to ignore the small real-estate occupied by the brightly lit person in the frame. The result is an overexposed person with blown highlights and a result that is destined for the round file. To correct this problem you need to underexpose the meter reading by two to four stops depending on the situation. All of the soloists shown here were underexposed three stops with the exception of the first which was four (the less area in the frame occupied by the light, the greater the compensation required to preserve the highlights). The pleasant result of underexposing to preserve highlights is the creation of even darker back grounds which makes for an uncluttered dramatic image.

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Always be ready to take a good exposure very quickly. The red back lighting in this next shot only lasted for a few seconds but provided an interesting dynamic to the image.

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Most serious DSLR users shoot in RAW format (as opposed to JPEG) and for event photography using RAW is essential because of the great latitude it provides in post processing. RAW files are like digital negatives and contain all the data captured by the sensor at the time of the exposure, which although creating large files, allows for manipulation of that data in post processing, including exposure and white balance. When you shoot in JPEG format, in order to make smaller files, the camera strips out a lot of ‘non-essential’ data before writing the image to the memory card in the camera. Obviously the data removed is not available for modification in post processing and unfortunately exposure and white balance are two of the many things removed when you shoot JPEG’s. The variable and dynamic lighting conditions inherent with event photography demands you take advantage of the insurance provided by shooting in RAW.

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The rest of the images from the Easter presentation can be seen by clicking this link to the CBC – Easter 2014 gallery.

I trust you have enjoyed a wonderful Easter weekend and thanks for taking the time to go through this post. As always, your questions and comments are much appreciated.

 

The Short-eared Owl And Red-bellied Woodpecker

The Short-eared Owl And Red-bellied Woodpecker

Although I’ve been fortunate to see Short-eared Owls (SEOW) over the years, a good photograph of one has eluded me. It seems the longer you’ve waited, the more effort you will invest to finally get that desired shot, so perhaps not surprisingly I left home at 5:00 a.m. on a winter morning when the temperature was -25°C to embark on a 600 km round trip looking for Short-eared Owls. Fortunately, to make it an enjoyable day, I met up with my equally dedicated friend Arni and off we went. The plan was to be in the area where the owls had be seen for sunrise and although we did our part, there were no Short-eared Owls in sight. We looked faithfully for a couple of hours until Arni spotted one in a tree not too far off the road. We were relieved to find the owl however the nature of wildlife photography is that you often invest considerable time and expense to see a bird or animal and they simply don’t show up on cue.  Seeing what you set out for is never a certainty and some times you must drive away empty, but when you are blessed to see what you set out to find you are elated and a good photograph becomes a bonus.

The Short-eared Owl Arni spotted was a fair distance off the road in the yard of a large farm, so we obtained permission from the owners of the farm to access their property to take some photographs. Here is the owl, nestled deep into the needles of an Eastern White Pine Tree.

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Unfortunately the owl flushed when we were about 100′ from the tree and we watched it fly down the road and perch in another tree. You can imagine our surprise when we packed up and drove down to the tree to find that it had joined six other Short-eared Owls! Seven owls in the same tree was quite an unusual sight. Here is a snapshot of two of them.

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The Short-eared Owl shares a similar range and habitat as its cousin the Long-eared Owl and they even look somewhat similar with the exception of their short ear tufts and the horizontal black feathers around the orbit. Their small ear tufts are often not displayed however can be seen in the above two images.  Short-eared Owls have always been one of my favourite looking owls primarily because of their eyes, which have been referred to as mascara eyes because of the unique black feathering around the eyes. The next few images will demonstrate those alluring mascara eyes.

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The Short-eared Owl is a globally common owl and enjoys one of the largest geographic distributions amongst the owls, being found on all continents with the exception of Australia and Antarctica. It is however in Ontario listed as a species at risk and of special concern.

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Capturing in flight images of the Short-eared Owls was a treat as they are largely nocturnal birds that roost through the day.

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Short-eared Owl 01

After photographing these beautiful birds we headed about 15km further south west to the shores of Lake Erie not too far from the little hamlet of Selkirk in search of some other unusual birds that had been reported in the area, however as it often happens , none of the expected birds made an appearance so we made our way home stopping at Lynde Shores Conservation Area in Whitby to see a resident Red-bellied Woodpecker (RBWO). Although it was very cold, the light was nice and the birds cooperative, so we were able to get a few images.

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It’s always good to have some black sunflower seeds in your pocket as the seemingly ever present Chickadees (BCCH) are usually in need of a snack.

The week after the images in this post were taken Deb & I headed to Florida for a couple of weeks and were fortunate enough to spend a few of those days birding and collecting enough images to put together one or two future blog posts.  So the next post will feature some birds of the south where the warmer temperatures were a most welcome respite.

All of the Short-eard Owl and Red-bellied Woodpecker in today’s post were taken with a Canon 5D MkIII and Canon EF 500 L IS lens with a 1.4X TC for a focal length of 700mm. The Chickadee video was via my iPhone 🙂

Great Gray Owl, The World’s Largest

Great Gray Owl, The World’s Largest

Before people start questioning the title of today’s blog, please let me clarify that the Great Gray Owl is the world’s longest owl with a recorded body length of up to 33″ (and a wing span of over 60″). You may want to think of this a deceptive length as it is the large head and fluffy feathers (better insulation) that are hiding a proportionally smaller body, such that many other owl species are heavier than the Great Gray. Anyway, the take away is that the Great Gray Owl is a very large and majestic looking bird, which I believe is captured in this first image which is also my favourite owl image from this past winter.

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The Great Gray Owl is a northern owl that breeds in the far north regions of North America, Europe and Asia and although a nomadic bird, they do not migrate. As non-migratory birds, they are sometimes seen farther south than normal in years when food sources in the north are scarce and competition for food forces some birds to head south until they find more abundant food that they can successfully compete for. Their diet is 80% small rodents (voles and mice) and 20% from alternate prey sources including small birds and ducks.

This winter we were fortunate have a Great Gray Owl take up residence just north of Brooklin Ontario, not more than a ten minute drive from our house, which provided plenty of opportunities to photograph this celebrity visitor. And a celebrity it was, attracting birders and photographers from many miles away on a daily basis.

You probably noticed the image above was shot while it was snowing, which certainly adds to the photograph and serves as a reminder get out there when it’s snowing (or raining) as some of the best images are obtained in inclement weather. When it’s snowing you do need to take some time to think about how the snow will affect the image and how you wish the snow to appear in the image, just as you would for any of the elements that occupy the frame. Personally, I prefer the snow to be either frozen in the frame (pun intended :)) and appearing as round flakes, or heavily blurred to illustrate the wind and provide that winter storm look. An exposure time that allows just a little bit of movement in the flakes creates an unappealing optic with the snow appearing as a distractive cloud of gnats. The first image above was taken at 1/2000 sec, which preserved the round snow flakes. This next image was taken at 1/500 sec, allowing some motion in the snow flakes and creating that unpleasant fly look which you want to avoid.

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A much slower exposure of 1/30 sec was used for the next image which fully blurs the snow, but in a way that contributes to the success of the image by giving the feeling of the wind driving the snow.

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The challenge with slow shutter speeds is causing out of focus results either from camera shake or object movement during the exposure. So even using a lens with image stabilization, mounted on a tripod, I took at least a dozen shots to finally get one with the owl in sharp focus.

The next time you have the opportunity to take your camera out into the snow, don’t be afraid to do it, but always think about how the snow will impact your images and experiment with different shutter speeds until you create the desired effect. Also, when photographing birds, remember that slow shutter speeds are always the last thing you experiment with and don’t forget to set your exposures back to high shutter speeds as soon as you get the shot you want. Nothing is more frustrating than missing an owl launch from its perch while you have your camera dialled in at 1/30 sec! Fortunately I was back at 1/1600 sec for this next capture.

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When shooting in less than ideal weather, the light is often quite nondescript producing the white/grey back grounds that typically are not visually appealing. However always try to use the light to your advantage. The over cast lighting reduces the natural contrast between the light & dark areas in the frame which is sometimes referred to as high key lighting (especially when there are no fully black shadows in the image). If you don’t like the high key look you can always add blacks and contrast during post processing which is what I did in these next few images.

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Images like these with an all white back ground are perfect to use as title slides in any presentations you may be doing.

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Bird photographers are usually upset when they cut off parts of the bird, but sometimes these accidents work out well. This next image is almost completely un-cropped in post processing (about 15% of the right side of the image was cropped). It just so happened that the owl landed on a perch very close to me and the 400mm lens was ‘too much lens’ so the owl more than filled the frame. The image does capture the concentration, intensity and focus of the owl securing the landing position on the perch it had chosen. Although accidental, the resulting image became a ‘keeper’.

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This next image is a crop of a missed launch image taken as the owl took off from its perch and I cut off the head of the bird. The intent then became to crop the image to isolate the legs and tail and convey the great power required for the owl to propel itself into the air. I don’t believe this image works as well as the previous one to convey the message, but the point is, don’t always delete your ‘mistakes’ before looking at them closely to see if perhaps there is a picture within the picture that can be used for an intent other than originally planned.  They don’t always work (as shown in these two images) but when they do, it is a pleasant surprise.

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The last sequence of images in today’s post illustrates one of the typical hunting methods of the Great Gray Owl.

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Great Gray Owls use sound and hearing as the primary sense required to effectively hunt for food and although they do have incredible visual acuity, they are most active feeding before dawn and after dusk when hearing is more important than sight. Their large facial disks act as parabolic reflectors amplifying and concentrating sounds on their asymmetrically located ears allowing them to accurately locate prey, up to two feet below the surface of the snow. This is truly amazing when you stop to think about it.

Listening intently to locate the prey.

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Hopeful success.

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The images posted in today’s blog were taken with two different gear combinations, a Canon 5D MkIII with a 500mm lens and a Canon 1D MkIII with a 400mm lens.

It is always a pleasure to spend time out taking pictures, however it’s even more special when you get to do so with great friends and on the day we took these pictures Deb & I were joined by Arni & Dianne who made the trek south from Orillia to see the Great Gray Owl.  You can see Arni’s shots of the Great Gray Owl posted on his blog.

I trust you enjoyed seeing these Great Gray Owl images and as always, your questions, comments and critiques are much appreciated.

Owls And Other Winter Birds

Owls And Other Winter Birds

This winter has been unusually long and cold with our province blanketed in snow to depths that I can’t recall since growing up in the Ottawa Valley. Fortunately it has also been a pretty good winter for bird photography, especially regarding Snowy Owls for which this year has been an irruption year. An irruption year occurs infrequently and although there are different theories as to exactly what causes a particular species of bird to head farther south in greater numbers than usual, it most likely revolves around competition for food. In winters when food supplies are scarce or years that bird populations are large, the competition for food forces the disadvantaged (the young, very old or infirm) south in search of more easily obtained food. This is why Snowy Owls found significantly south of their normal range are usually young first year birds. After wintering  farther south than normal and eating well, the owls head back to the Arctic in February or March for the next nesting season.  The Snowy Owl irruption experienced this year has been the largest in 40-50 years and a Snowy Owl actually made it to Jacksonville Florida, which is incredible for a non migratory Arctic bird! When Snowy Owls are displaced southward they seek areas to stay that remind them of the tundra they are accustomed to, so you often find them in open areas such as farmers fields.

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Their predilection for farmer’s fields results in the classic images we see of Snowy Owls perched on fence posts. Snowy Owl 01

Although not the biggest or heaviest owl, the Snowy is still an impressive bird about 2.5′ high with a wingspan of five feet and weighing up to six pounds. Only in flight can you get an appreciation for their wingspan.

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Deb and I were photographing a Snowy Owl last month when a snow squall moved through the area and presented us with the opportunity to get a unique image that I hope illustrates the type of environment the Snowy Owl is used to in the high Arctic.

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The winter months in Ontario are also a great time to see a number of northern diving ducks which winter on the Great Lakes. In fact the introduction of Zebra Mussels in 1988 to Lake St. Claire and Lake Erie from a European freighter and their subsequent infestation of the Great Lakes (particularly Erie & Ontario) has provided a dubious but plentiful food source for the ducks. Consequently in recent years we have seen more varieties of ducks as they change their historic migration patterns to include the Great Lakes and the Zebra Mussel buffet they provide.

On a recent tour of Southern Ontario looking for winter owls and ducks with my good friend Arni, we were able see a number of different duck species as well as four different owls species. Arni is a birder and photographer second to none and you will enjoy following this link to his website. These next images of ducks were taken on our tour and although it was a dreary day the poor light did not stop Arni and me from enjoying both the birding and the photography as well.

First up is the Red Breasted Merganser, the rarest of the three Mergansers in North America, and a new bird for me to photograph. If you want to see the other two Merganser species (Common Merganser and Hooded Merganser), they can be found in the Waterfowl Gallery.

Baby it cold outside!

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This next image is of Red-headed ducks, another relatively new and unusual visitor to the Great Lakes to feast on the Zebra Mussel. The Red-headed duck is an interesting species as it never builds its own nest, choosing instead to lay its eggs in the nests of other duck species and even in the nests of American Bitterns and Northern Harriers. Apparently they aren’t into parenting!

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The White-winged Scoter is another Arctic breeding duck that is found through North America, Europe and Asia. It heads south in the winter months and their numbers have been increasing on the Great Lakes over the past few years. They are a large dark brown to black bird with distinctive white markings around the eyes and speculum. The next two pictures are of the White-winged Scoter, the male first followed by the female and both with a clump of Zebra Mussels.

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Since the inadvertent introduction of Zebra Mussels to the Great Lakes, they have overtaken Lake St. Claire, Erie and Ontario, largely due to their prolific reproduction with relatively few predators eating into their numbers. A Zebra Mussel has a life span of approximately five years and females begin having young at about six weeks of age, producing one million offspring annually. The crayfish, one of the mussel’s main predators, consumes about 40,000 per year. The Zebra Mussel filters approximately one gallon of water every day, removing nutrients for itself. Unfortunately the toxins in the water, of which there are many, accumulate in the mussel and there in lies the problem for the birds who consume the muscles and with them the toxins and contaminants from the lakes, and in a concentrated form. The health effects on the birds is not yet known, however it is a huge concern to conservationists and researchers who are investigating the effects of the muscles on birds. It is already suspected that avian botulism is transferred via the Zebra Mussel and this kills many birds annually.

Shifting gears back to owls, the first of four owl species Arni and I saw was the Eastern Screech Owl, which was a new species for me to photograph. The Eastern Screech Owl  is a strictly nocturnal bird that hunts at night and then finds its roost in a tree cavity where it spends the daylight hours sleeping. They are a small bird about 10″ high with a wingspan of 18-24″. Most Eastern Screech Owls are grey in colour, however about 10% of these owls are a rufus or red morph and it was a pleasure for us to have found this rarer colour of the Eastern Screech Owl.

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After leaving the Screech Owl we were able to find a Snowy Owl however he was too far away to get any blog worthy images of so we left and arrived at another location where we found a Short-eared Owl hunting over a large area around a quarry. Although we set up out tripods and gear, the Short-eared Owl didn’t fly close by, so as with the Snowy Owl, we struck out getting any shots. The disappointment was short-lived as after arriving at a conservation area on the shores of Lake Ontario we found a large coniferous tree that was home for the day to six Long-eared Owls. It was the largest number of owls I’d ever seen in the same tree.

The Long-eared Owl is a slender owl with long ears, large bright yellow eyes and huge eye discs that give it a characteristic look that is hard to miss.

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It was also a pleasant surprise to catch one in flight.

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Many photographers put their camera gear away for the winter, but as long as you dress for the occasion and make sure your batteries are fully charged, cold weather photography is a lot of fun and often affords the pleasure of seeing birds that you simply can not see in Ontario at any other time of the year.

We’ve been privileged this winter to also have photographed two other species of owl, the Great Gray Owl which the world’s largest owl and the Short-eared Owl which is arguably the prettiest of the owls. They will form the subject matter for the next two blog posts before retuning to our European tour.

Niagara Falls Time Lapses

Niagara Falls Time Lapses

Time lapse photography is something that has always been of interest and recently both my son and I have been experimenting with this fascinating niche  in the photographic world. The basic premise of time lapse is quite simple; you record several images at regular intervals over an extended period of time and then after processing them, add the images into a video file. When you play the resulting video file, you have a video that shows everything captured in the still images over the period of time they were taken compressed into a few seconds. For example, if you take one image every fifteen seconds for an hour you will take a total of 240 images. Placing these 240 images into a video file of 24 frames per second will produce a video of ten seconds duration. Thus the resulting video will display in ten seconds what occurred over a period of an hour.

This first sample time lapse is exactly as described above; 240 images taken over an hour ending with sun down and displayed in a 24 fps video file. The images were taken from our hotel room in Niagara Falls.

 

 

Besides your DSLR you require two other pieces of equipment to get into the time lapse game, a tripod and an intervalometer.

The tripod is required to ensure that the camera is stable and records the exact same frame with every exposure over the time lapse period. Next to the camera and lens, the tripod is arguably the most important piece of equipment and I would certainly buy a tripod before a flash. As tripod technology hasn’t changed much since the advent of carbon fibre, I would recommend investing in the best possible as they will, for all intents and purposes, last a lifetime. I use Gitzo tripods which have proven very reliable over the years. They are well constructed, very stable and lightweight. As time lapse photography generally involves wide angle or short telephoto lenses, I use a smaller Gitzo 1542T traveller tripod with a Markins Q3 ball head.

The intervalometer is simply a timer remote switch for the camera that allows you to program a remote timer (delay from activation to shutter release), interval timer (the amount of time between successive exposures), long exposure timer (defines exposure time with camera on bulb setting) and exposure count setting (how many exposures will be taken). I use the Canon TC-80N3. Some of the new cameras have an intervalometer built into the camera itself so make sure you check for this feature on your camera before buying an intervalometer.

The easiest time lapses to take are those with a constant exposure over the duration of the time lapse. Changing exposures within the time lapse often causes flickering in the final product which is very distracting and must be avoided. Even slight exposure variations when shooting in any of the automatic exposure modes will result in flickering which is why it is essential to shoot time lapses manually. Similarly you want to disable the autofocus on the camera for time lapse photography to ensure that that the camera focus does not change during the shoot.

This next time lapse is of the American Falls and consists of about 380 images taken over a ninety minute period.

 

 

Moving from a CF card with hundreds of images on it to the finished time lapse is surprisingly easy as long as you have a video editing software program. I use Adobe Premier Pro CS6, but any editor will work fine. You are not too concerned with post processing the images and any post processing done must be applied equally to every image to avoid flickering in the video. My workflow is to open all the RAW files in ACR (Adobe Camera Raw), select all, level and crop if needed (but care should always be taken to do this in camera so it is not needed in post processing), adjust for lens correction, contrast, clarity and vibrance and save the images as jpegs in their own folder. Open a new file your video editor (I prefer 24 frames per second), import your time lapse images, render the file and export it as you like it and you are ready to go. I’ve been playing around with both YouTube and Vimeo formats (you can find me at both sites under Scott Martin Photography). When watching the time lapse videos on full screen on the desk top, the Vimeo format appears better than YouTube, however for embedding videos in WordPress blogs like this the YouTube plugins are infinitely better than any of the Vimeo plugins I looked at.

Here is a 240 image, ten second time lapse of the Horseshoe Falls, again taken from our hotel room window on the 44th floor of the Hilton Fallsview Hotel in Niagara Falls.

 

 

I would encourage you to experiment with time lapse photography. It provides a lot of enjoyment and is one of those things you can truly multi-task with. My intent is to set up a camera for time lapse when I’m out doing landscape photography and that way as I’m moving about shooting sunrises and sunsets or exploring an area for landscape images I can simultaneously be recording images for a time lapse of the same scene.

Although this last image is not a time lapse, it is a time exposure taken from the American side of the falls, looking across the American Falls towards the Horseshoe Falls in the back ground.

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