David Speiser and I are very happy to announce the resurrection of the NYC Audubon Camera Club. All meeting take place on the second Wednesday of each month. The first meeting is next week Sept.14th. The meeting place is at National Audubon headquarters located at 225 Varick Street just north of Houston near 7th Ave South. Here’s a map view :

All meeting are from 6:30 – 8pm. There is a minimal $6.00 charge at the door for Audubon members or $35.00 for the complete yearly series. We plan 9 sessions a year.You can pre-register at the NYC Audubon offices. Their phone # is 212-691-7483

For the first meeting David and I will present a slide show of our work just as an introduction. We encourage you to either send me or bring with you up to 5 images of yours to present to the group as well.This is my e-mail. If you like we can do a very gentle critique on any of them.  We will also talk about “Ive taken a photo, now what do I do?” where we’ll show you how to get the photos into your computer and suggestions on file management.

Please remember that beginning photographers are more than welcome. At the end of the series our hope is you will have a learned a lot and have become a better photographer.

Photography and Shorebird ID Workshops with Lloyd Spitalnik and Kevin Karlson

 All Workshops Cancelled due to flooding

August, 2011 – Sponsored by New York City Audubon Society

Contact Lloyd Spitalnik (lloyd22) (917-301-8744) or Kevin Karlson (karlson3) (609-465-2138) for details

1) Shorebirds Made Simpler – ID Field Trip at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge ($50)

August 21, 2011 (1 pm – 5 pm);  August 28, 2011 (8 am – 12 pm) (Maximum 20 people)

Join author and professional field trip leader Kevin Karlson and New York’s own Lloyd Spitalnik as they share a simple and more effective approach to shorebird ID as highlighted in Kevin’s bestselling book The Shorebird Guide. With initial focus on basic impressions of size, shape and behavior, a more effective ID starting point is achieved. This outdoor workshop is suited for beginning birders who want to build a solid ID foundation, and for advanced birders who want to take their shorebird skills to the next level. Two experienced leaders will give both groups personal attention.

2) Outdoor Photography Workshop – Birds of Jamaica Bay’s East Pond

August 28, 2011 (4 pm – dusk) – (Maximum 10 participants) ($100)

Enjoy the magic of waterbirds at Jamaica Bay’s East Pond with professional photographers Kevin Karlson and Lloyd Spitalnik. This small photography workshop features basic instruction on how to get the best possible bird or wildlife photo, and advanced techniques for capturing birds in action or flight. Topics include artistic composition, low angle shooting options, lighting basics and camera settings for action and portrait photography, and personal instruction for hand-held or tripod panning techniques.

At the beginning of Spring migration 2011 I had one major goal. Getting a good male Golden-winged Warbler photo was the top priority. It took 4 visits to the breeding grounds to finally meet with success. While on the quest there were a few surprises. Photographing Blue-winged, Brewster’s and Lawrence’s Warblers completed the grand slam, something I never could have expected.  On top of that the Lawrence’s was a female building a nest. Both Brewster’s and Lawrence’s are hybrids of the other 2 with Lawrence’s being much less common. The plus one was a Kentucky Warbler, a bird not seen very often in the NYC area. Sometimes things just fall into place.

JAMAICA BAY WILDLIFE REFUGE

Join Lloyd Spitalnik and Denise Ippolito for a half- day workshop at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, Queens NY. We will visit the East pond in the early morning where we will be photographing a variety of shorebirds in a birder’s paradise. Jamaica Bay is a birdwatchers heaven, a stopover on the Atlantic Flyway that provides a resting and feeding place for thousands of migrating shorebirds. In addition to the migrating shorebirds Yellow Warbler and American Redstart warblers, Willow Flycatcher and sometimes cuckoos are all breeding at the refuge. Lloyd Spitalnik has been photographing at Jamaica Bay for 15 years. Last year Lloyd gave a slide show presentation at the Jamaica Bay Shorebird Festival. He knows the best places to be and is very familiar with the species that frequent JB. Denise Ippolito co-led Arthur Morris’ Jamaica Bay IPT (Instructional Photo Tour) last year and together they will lead a great hands on workshop.

Date: August 13th
Rain date: August 14th
Morning session: 6:00am – 9:30am
Bring your longest lens and a sturdy tripod.
Cost: $195.00
e-mail me for more info.

Jamaica Bay- choose amount of payment

As April rapidly approaches, most of the ducks will be gone from our area. Here is an assortment of some of my recent favorites. As always click on image for larger view.

No earth shattering news here but wanted to briefly write about this anyway. When shooting, the most desirable position is to get eye to eye with your subject. Of course this isn’t always possible but it should be the goal. Now that’s not to say you shouldn’t take the photo if you can’t get into position. It just isn’t always possible. Here are 2 images, both taken handheld with a Canon 70-200 f/4L non-IS with a 1.4x teleconverter on a Canon 1D MarkIV body. Effective focal lengths 127.4mm – 364mm in terms of 35mm camera. That’s still the standard we use. Not sure when that will die out. Hopefully soon. I mention the camera and lens combo to show that you don’t always need one of the bazooka lenses to get good shots of birds. If I had the 500 no photos could have been taken shy of head shots. Here are 2 images, one from a fairly steep angle and the other sitting at the water’s edge. I think you’ll see an immediate difference.

In a perfect world we’d be able to have either early morning or late afternoon light to photograph in all day. Of course, if you want to limit yourself to just a few hours of shooting each day then you could have great light all the time. I usually spend the entire day in the field and have to put up with some pretty difficult light conditions most of the time. People have always heard these words coming from my lips “sun is your enemy”, and it is. Overcast days, with flat light are one of my favorites but that doesn’t stop me from going out on those bright days. The images below were taken at 12:30pm on a cloudless, sunny day with harsh reflections coming off a semi-frozen lake. The sun was to the south and I was at the lake’s edge with the sun to my right. I would have been in the frozen lake in order to get in the right position. Wasn’t about to do that as somebody had already fallen through the ice (non-photographer) just a little further down the shore. Everything was working against me including myself. I was shooting owls the previous day and had the camera set to ISO 1600 and didn’t realize it until it was too late. There were exactly 2 seconds to get off the sequence of shots. Of course, if I weren’t shooting at the noon hour I never could have gotten the image. I want to thank Scott Elowitz and Alan Murphy for suggestions on how to make the image acceptable. The first image is cropped and slightly sharpened. The second image has been processed. Write to me if you’re interested in what was done. As always click on the photos for a larger, sharper view.

In my last post you saw what happened to my 500mm lens. While it was in for repair, Canon loaned me a 600mm. After so many lousy weather days  I was finally able to get out to Jones Beach. I found a small open patch of grass amid the piles and piles of snow. I parked the car on the road and sat for over an hour hoping for both Snow Bunting and Horned Lark to appear. I wasn’t disappointed as you’ll see below. I decided to take a bathroom break and when I came out of Teddy Roosevelt parking lot, all of a sudden I had 3 cop cars on me. I thought “I didn’t do anything, what do they want?” Somebody reported that I was taking pictures of “vital infrastructure”. There was a bridge in the background about a 1/2 mle away. I guess people think a big lens can bring detail in from the moon <smile>. I showed the cop what I was taking and all was well. I must say that the police were never confrontational and my feeling is better safe than sorry, so there was no problem. On a side note, after waiting 3 weeks for the 500 to be repaired Canon finally decided to give me a brand new one. How cool is that? As always, click on photos for larger view.

I often hear “there’s a gray cloud bank, I can’t shoot anymore”. I want to show you that statement isn’t true. Here is a before and after of a Horned Grebe taken New Year’s Day during the South Nassau (NY) Christmas count. The before image was resized to match the after one. In the after shot there was a curve adjustment done along with a few minor tweaks plus sharpening. If you’d like to learn how to get these results, contact me and we can make an arrangement. Click on image for larger version.