Weekly Photo Challenge: Motion

There is a lot going on this Spring in my household.  One thing, that I’m pretty excited about, is that there is a robin’s nest outside of my kitchen window.  I’m busy taking photos of the birds as they are growing.  I use a fast shutter speed setting on my camera but sometimes I still get photos that look like this:

ISO 1000 50mm 0ev f/6.3 1/125

A second later I get a clear shot:

ISO 1000 50mm 0ev f/6.3 1/125

This shot has been cropped and sharpened in Photoshop.  No amount of sharpening is going to make that first picture a clear shot.  For the most part to get these shots I have my camera on a tripod which is set on top of a few of the good dining room chairs that I have set outside.  I have a remote shutter which allows me to be inside and taking pictures.  I took a photo of this silly looking set up and blogged about it here.  For the two shots above I used my Canon 50D.  I also take my point and shoot out when I am setting up my larger camera.  This morning I got this shot:

ISO 800 4mm 0ev f/2.7 1/200

This shot, cropped and sharpened, is my favorite of the day.  I’v been using my point and shoot everyday to get a close up photo like this.  I have a series of photos of the eggs and then the hatchlings.  Those photos I have posted on Twitter and Flickr, so feel free to drop by and follow along with the unfolding story there.

The difference between the two photos, between a blur of motion and a clear shot, is one second.  The first photo taken at 9:17:47 and the second 9:17:48.  What a difference a second can make.

What do you think? which photo do you prefer? Care to hazard a guess as to how many photos I took this morning between 8:31 and 9:18 as I was watching the adult birds come and go?  Feel free to leave a comment or you guess below.

Cheers!

The Family that Dropped By

While I was filling my bird feeders the other day, I accidentally spilled some bird seed on our front step.  After I was inside, I realized that some sparrows were eating it.  I thought this might be a good opportunity to take some bird pictures that did not feature our feeders.  Here is my favorite picture of the series that I took:

ISO 100 50mm 0ev f/8 1/250

I got this shot by setting up my camera on a tripod and using a remote trigger.  My camera equipment is outside and I am watching from inside waiting for the sparrows to come back and pose, which they were nice enough to do.  I set my ISO to 100 because although it was still pretty early, it was really bright out.  I used an f-stop of f/8 and shutter speed of 1/250 to stop the motion and retain detail.

Once I was finished shooting I cropped this image and then edited it in Photoshop.  I changed the levels and turned it into a black and white image.  I started with the blue filter setting, but did tweak it a bit as I thought the blue was too dark on the wings of the sparrows.  Here is the image as it was in my camera:

ISO 100 50mm 0ev f/8 1/250

Fifty two species of sparrow live here in North America.  That is one very large family, and family is the theme of this week’s black and white photography challenge hosted by Sonel

Cheers!