Shot of the Month – April 2018

With my third spring in Washington State approaching I finally had some time to explore a tulip festival that is held each year about an hour north of Seattle.  Given that the “subject” of this photo shoot was going to be expansive fields of colorful tulips I packed up my wide angle lenses and a tripod and off I went, leaving my long lenses behind.  Time to do some landscape photography.

On our first visit we drove from site to site to explore the different fields to try different compositions and identify the photographic possibilities.  At one site I spotted a bird sitting on flower as you can see below.  My heart suddenly raced with excitement.  With my largest lens only going out to 200 mm my options were limited but I sensed the massive potential for something special — I would have to come back with the right gear and try for the shot that I could see in my mind’s eye.

 

So, a few weeks later I returned, this time with my 600 mm lens and a monopod.  I started the morning with more traditional landscape gear as I awaited the sunrise.  I explored the scene at 24 mm until the sun was too high for that shot to work and it was time to bring out the long lens.   For the next 4-5 hours I slowly walked among the rows of tulips looking for my quarry — a Savannah Sparrow (SS).  The SS sparrow likes open terrain and typically feeds on the ground  so the tulips fields were a perfect setting for him.  After a few trips to the fields I began to understand the patterns — the birds would become more active by “mid” morning; by around 9:30 am the birds would begin to perch on the tulips and sing, proclaiming their territory.  After a bit of time I could identify the circuit a bird would make as he traveled along the perimeter of his part of the field.  I could even begin to identify his preferred tulips to sit upon.  Of course, this would vary, but he often like to find the tallest tulip in an area to maximize the effect of his song.

I imagine that from the road that people were perplexed as to what that guy (me) was doing out in the fields with such a massive lens – “What in the hell is that guy shooting,” I assumed that many a visitor muttered to themselves.  Some were even brave enough to ask.  My reply was simply, “Just the birds.”

Each bird stayed in its territory so a given SS would only provide me the opportunity for one color of shot.  The fellow above provided me with my “red” shot.  To get the “purple” shot I would have to move to another section of the field and find a new bird, and learn his unique patrolling pattern.  And from there I just looked for opportunities to mix and match as many colors as possible.  Birds stopping along the edge of two adjacent, but different colored fields, provided opportunities for multi-colored scenes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As I seem to have a knack for doing, I yet again managed to transform a typical landscape outing into a wildlife focused affair.  In this case a tulip landscape morphed into a fanciful, magical perhaps, technocolor birdscape.  So much fun…

 

Until next month…..m

 

 

 

Nikon D500, Nikon 600mm, 1.4x TC, (effective 1275mm), 1/1000s, f/5.6, +0.333 EV, ISO 400