Black Skimmer Panorama

Work has kept me away from posting new blogs lately, but I am back with a panorama made from 9 images taken at the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, Brigantine Division, in Oceanville NJ. We went down to look for Ospreys and Black Skimmers and we found both. The Ospreys were all over the refuge and quite active. We got quite a few photos, but we did not find the Black Skimmers until we got near the end of the Wildlife Drive. They were just resting there in a large group. We decided to keep an eye on them for later in the day and see if they would be fishing.  When we first found them, I decided to shoot a series of handheld shots to make a long thin panorama showing the large group while they were still there in large numbers. Doing this is fairly easy, but change to manual exposure so the exposures are consistent and make sure if you are not using a tripod, to keep the images level and lined up with plenty of overlapping between images. I assembled the panorama manually in Photoshop, but you can also let Photoshop make them for you or use a program like PT Gui. I keep a couple of Terns and Black-headed Gulls in the shot to keep balance. I tried counting a few times, but I kept getting a different count each time, but there is about 75 in this group. I used a Canon EOS 1D MkIV, with a Canon 400mm f/4 DO IS lens, with a Canon 1.4X Series III Teleconverter, f/8 @ 1/1600 sec, ISO 400.

Red-winged Blackbird in Tree

This is a 3 shot vertical panorama composite shot with the 400mm DO lens, handheld. I was looking at the lonely Blackbird and liked the angled branches of the tree with the snow behind the tree and thought it might be interesting if I made a vertical composition of the scene with the blackbird on top. Shooting vertically I could not fit it all in, so I shot 3 horizontal shots and stitched them together manually in Photoshop. I cropped a little off the sky on top, seemed like too much empty blue, and finished off with this crop.

Pintail Ducks Foraging

I saw these 2 Pintail Ducks foraging in the mud at Low Tide. They were a pair, One Female, One Male. There were a lot of Pintails at Brigantine this day, scattered throughout the Refuge. Some were in fairly large groups, while these two were off on their own. It was interesting seeing them on the mud flats at low tide, you could see their feet and more of their body versus seeing them swimming in the water. They have very interesting patterns on their bodies and which you can see better here.

_43G0976 Pintail male v2

Male Pintail Duck Foraging
Canon EOS 1D MkIV, 400mm DO IS lens, 2X Canon Teleconverter for 800mm,
f/11, 1/1000 sec, +0.33 exposure compensation, ISO 800

_43G0984 v3

Female Pintail Duck Foraging
Canon EOS 1D MkIV, 400mm DO IS lens, 2X Canon Teleconverter for 800mm,
f/11, 1/1000 sec, +0.33 exposure compensation, ISO 800

BIF – Bufflehead

The Brigantine Division of the Edwin B. Forsythe NWR has a large variety of Ducks this time of year. Lots of Pintails, Mergansers, American Black Ducks, Rudys and the list goes on. It was busy diving in the water looking for food, so it was only on the surface for a couple seconds before it disappeared again. I was watching one of two Snowy Owls off in the distance when all of a sudden it took off and flew quickly by.  I was able to get a few quick shots, but it was moving fast and out of sight quickly.