Yellow-headed Blackbird

I really like the pose you caught this guy in. Great sharpness. I like having the feet hanging down. Thanks for sharing.

Excellent. Nice action, detail, exposure, setting, colors.

Just great, Nate. Love the color and contrast. Sharp with great detail.

Nice capture Nate, love the detail.

Excellent job on the exposure, Nate. Neat to get a flight shot of this species and with such a nice pose.

Great job of capturing this one in flight Nate! I have a hard time even finding YHBB in my area, let alone get one in flight. Really nice techs on this and love the positioning in the frame.

sweet flight shot, Nate. and nice job on a tough exposure, too. my 7D had to go back not long after I bought it for AF servicing but it has worked great since--only issues are in low light/low contrast.

We sure don't see many of these birds in flight, this is testimony to a lot of patience and good timing. I will get to Malheur some day I hope.

Great capture Nate - well done on the exposure with yellow, black and white on the one bird

cheers
Rob

This looks excellent Nate, darn I wish it was mine!
I especially like the color/great exposure of this difficult subject.
Hat's off!

A cracker !!!
Jagdeep Rajput

Really nice, Nate - that spot is a place I have been told to pay a visit sometime.

Very nice flight shot Nate. I have found these are not easy birds to photograph (at least at Sweetwater), interesting to read about how you handled the yellows, thanks for the tip and well done.

Wow, great shot Nate. Ditto to all comments already stated. You set a high standard, but I still want to get close to this level
someday. Just wish I had more time to spend on photography.

Ron Huff

Nice Nate, and appreciate the added comment about reducing saturation. I was on this trip with Nate and it was great. Good instruction, helpful hints, etc. I would highly recommend it. I'll just ditto the many other positive comments.

Ralph Kerr

This is really nice. The toned down saturation really helps here because these birds are so bright especially in the sun that we had at Malheur on Sat. and Sun last week. I'm impressed with this flight image because these critters move quite fast. I have a habitat image in the brush but it needs some work. (we might have seen your group at Frenchglen?)

Thanks for all your kind comments!

Ralph, thanks, it was great to meet you and work with you.

David, we did stay 3 nights at Frenchglen so that probably was us.

Good stuff, Nate. I've been after this bird for years now. Looks like you were able to get pretty close. A tough bird to get in flight I think....

Thanks Charlie, there are thousands of this species around Burns in the spring. It's easy to get them displaying at close range on fenceposts. You can also get them displaying on reeds while shooting from your car.

The only thing I don't like about this photo is, that it's not mine. Great Trip!!!

Smoking Catch Nate

Ken Archer

This is a magnificent flight shot. I heard that there are Yellow-headed Blackbirds on High Island Texas, but I did not see one when I visited this week. Nice catch-light in the eye, and I like the reduced saturation on the yellow.

Very nice pose, Nate. The YHBB really stands out against the blue background. Techs look very good too, both on blacks and whites.

I look forward to seeing these birds in Wisconsin in a few weeks.

Sweet exposure. Nice.

Lovely. I wonder if you might get a tad more detail in right wing by adjusting shadow/highlight.


lucy

Welcome back Nate and what a corker of an image to start off with :^)

I have a question for you: Did you reduce the saturation on the image as a whole or only on the subject?

Reason I ask is that the setting (while visually pleasing) seems much darker than I would expect would allow a shutter speed as high as 1/3200, assuming of course that you were in aperture priority, more especially seeing as your ISO was only at 320.

You and I are using the same tools and yet, unless I'm shooting a subject set against a bright sky, even with my minimum ISO at 400 in relatively bright daylight, if I'm shooting a subject in aperture priority that's set against seemingly any other backdrop, it's exceptionally rare for me to acquire a shutter speed of more than 1/2500. And at the risk of driving you and other people who've patiently been through this with me before completely mad ;^. I have to admit that in the latter scenario I still opt for shutter priority, as in most cases in my experience it's the only way to ensure the shutter speed will be over 1/1000, giving me at least some hope of freezing a sharp image of a relatively small bird in flight.

I spent another four hours yesterday with my Indian Rollers (over the past week I must have invested at least 20 hours trying to get perfectly sharp in-flight shots of them, yesterday I came the closest with a number but yet to hit perfection!) and in the latter setting I described there's just no hope of me capturing them with the slow shutter speeds aperture priority offers and I'm loth to increase my ISO higher than 640 for the terrible noise issues it introduces.

Apologies for the length of this Nate, but I figure I'm best off writing about this issue until (hopefully) something clicks whereby I can understand what I'm doing wrong in aperture priority, if anything, or whether it's simply a matter of varying light conditions that even the most experienced wouldn't be able to acquire sharp shot of wings and subject in motion and, perhaps, wouldn't even bother try going for.

Hi Ashley,
I did reduce the saturation on the entire image which is rare for me to do except when I'm trying to hold detail in yellows or reds of a bird. This was quite a bright scene, the negative exposure compensation and reduced saturation brought down that brightness some.

I was shooting in bright sunlight in an open area and to keep from blowing out those whites I dialed in -0.3 exposure compensation, this helped increase the shutter speed a bit. I think it's just varying lighting conditions (or possibly not using a small enough F-stop) that is keeping you from getting that type of shutter speed in aperture priority. At Beung Borapet after about 8am I was able to get these fast types of shutter speeds on sunny days when shooting in aperture priority.

You probably already do this but when I'm working in aperture priority and I'm at the highest iso level that I like to use I would first decrease my depth of field (F-stop). Then if I still don't have the shutter speed that I desire I will bite the bullet and increase my iso.

As I mentioned earlier if you think your subject might be going through various backgrounds it's better to use manual exposure but the same thinking as above applies regarding F-stop and iso.

You can get the same shutter speed if you are working at the same aperture in either shutter, manual or aperture priority. If you are underexposing the image when working in shutter priority to get a fast shutter speed I think you would be better off and have less noise by increasing your iso.

Thanks for the swift response and feedback Nate :^)

Truth be told, for all the countless photos I took up in Bueng Boraphet at the end of last year, there's barely a handful I'm happy with. But I reckon I've learned a great deal since then and look forward to my next opportunity probably in about a month's time. You're right about the light being bright after 8am, as I recall I was constantly battling with exposure compensation particularly with the white egrets.

I'll keep working in aperture priority in line with your suggestions, although as a failsafe I'm pretty sure I'll fall back on shutter priority whenever I see there's no way I'm going to be able to freeze the action with whatever the best shutter speed aperture priority will provide.

This is an excellent capture Nate. Love the wings up and the feet down. Glad you had a great trip, I am envious, I remember how much fun it was last year.
May