P#3: Injecting Emotion Into A Photo Of A Roseate Spoonbill

A serendipitous photo of a roseate spoonbill

Sometimes it's not the light that you're capturing that's so magical, but it's the time, the emotion and the instance.

I'm looking at the picture of the roseate spoonbill flying into the tree branch. This is a place in Florida that I go to a couple times a year when I'm teaching at Palm Beach Photographic Center. It's called Loxahatchee Wetlands.

I talked about having four lenses now. My newest addition to the arsenal is a big 500 mm. F4 lens that I carry around.

I was photographing the birds with my big lens and these two spoonbills came flying in. I also had the new 1D Mark III camera that shoots ten frames a second and has really fast focusing.

The birds came in and I was able to point there and hit that back button and the focus locked in and tracked this bird as it came in and he actually did a touch and go. He never really landed. He touched his feet onto the branch and then took off again. (click the image for a larger version)

So it was quite nice and I really liked the gesture of the bird and the light coming through the wings and it was a great moment.

And shooting the ten frames a second I was able to pick out the best one as far as the gesture of the bird went. So it was quite fun playing with new toys.

In conclusion

Great equipment makes photos like this one of a roseate spoonbill possible. Long lenses are especially useful for photographing birds like this roseate spoonbill.