A few animals of Shelby Farms, with a new camera

[Celebration]

This is practice with my new Canon SX10IS, bought specifically to take pictures of wildlife from the bass boat at the Tennessee River. I tried it out at Shelby Farms.

Here is the obligatory strange duck...



I learned it is next to impossible to get birds in flight with a telephoto lens.



These birds are EVERYWHERE. Some kind of blackbird with red or something?



Now on to a few mammals



The off leash area is really used a lot. Dogs aren't that easy to take either. They are too busy having fun.



Well, some dogs have more fun than others.



The bison are sooooo obliging. I decided on the moving bison rather than the full face one because, uh, they rarely move.



These are just the most common animals. Well, there are deer too, but they only come out toward twilight.

[Blue_In_AK]

1. What we used to call "red-winged blackbirds," I believe.

We don't get them up here, but I remember them from when I was a kid in Ohio.

[Celebration]

2. Thanks

I was going to guess that, but their whole wing isn't red. Okay, they are all over the place, yet they must not like the city. We have tons of blackbirds here, unfortunately, just a couple of miles from Shelby Farms, but NONE of the red wing ones. But I don't think I have seen a regular blackbird out there........at least not near the lakes. And this might be me, filtering them out.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

3. yep, that is them

good memory

[Tindalos]

4. The new camera looks good

I also find it near impossible to track things with a telephoto. Not sure if it gets easier with practice. You did a good job with the flying ducks and I really like the dogs playing. Also, the pompom duck is adorable.

[Celebration]

9. Thanks

I came home and just immediately eliminated about 90% of the pictures I took--mostly pictures of the sky where I had half of the body of a goose in it.

[Brucie Kibbutz]

5. Been there a couple of times.

Went by there while visiting with my sister in Bartlett. I had never seen bison before going there so that was cool. That duck in the first pic has a pretty good 'fro going.

You took some great pics. Thanks for posting them.:thumbsup:

[Celebration]

8. I do miss the longhorns

Yep, there used to be longhorn cattle grazing with the bison. Every once in a while you would see a confused member of a species--generally it was a longhorn away from the herd, grazing with the bison.

The bison are a pretty big hit with the tourists.

Since there is new management (conservancy) at the park, they seem to be more proactive about the way they care for the bison. They actually fenced off a watering area for some reason, and maybe they now have troughs (???). Maybe the water had microorganisms in it that were bad. It doesn't seem to hurt the geese, though.

I think it may be one of the most eclectic urban parks in the country. I want to get some decent pictures of the model airplane people, the kite flying people, and maybe even the disc golf people. I already have a few of the kayak people.

[Fumesucker]

6. Tracking with a telephoto is a lot harder on a screen than through an eyepiece..

And it's not all that easy with the eyepiece..

Try zooming in while tracking, if your screen has a fast update that might work for you.

Also, try overexposing your shots when something is silhouetted against the sky, particularly when the subject (like your blackbird) is dark. Your camera should have an exposure compensation setting, try clicking it up a notch or two for backlight situations.

[Celebration]

7. that sounds like a good idea

Yesterday it was just the very basic stuff I was trying to get used to on the camera. The blackbird could use a little help, for sure. I need to learn all this if I am going to take bird pictures at the Tennessee River.

I tried every which way to track the flying geese--eyepiece, screen, etc. I don't even know how I came up with this picture. Most likely it wasn't as zoomed as all the ones that I eliminated--the blurry sky ones.

[Dallas Dem]

10. Terrific work.....

........and I can truly empathize with you, especially with regard to taking decent shots of birds in flight. Having recently spent a few hours on the beach trying to get some pelicans and gulls in flight, it was a real eye-opener in terms of actually trying to FIND them through the viewfinder, much less take their picture.

I was thinking about how nice it would be to have a 2000 mm, very wide-angle lens, on a super motor-driven, top-quality camera (that only weighed about 3 pounds, of course)........THEN I could get that perfect shot.

Anyway.......these were terrific, and is good motivation to get out there and take some more.

Thanks!

[Celebration]

11. wind

Honestly, I bet the wind was a big factor on the beach. The lake here where all the birds are is surrounded practically by prairie type land and a moderate wind becomes more like a gale. Literally, I was having a hard time standing still in all the wind yesterday. That made it doubly hard. Wind at the beach can be just like that. Now, I have to say this--there are just way more geese at that lake than there are gulls on the beach. And there were some gulls on the lake too. I didn't come close to getting an in flight shot of them.

I don't really like much wind, anyway--it can make me a little "off" energetically, occasionally to the point of getting fever, even. I was really glad to move on to the horses, dogs and bison. It was still a little windy, but I was a lot less frustrated. My getting out in that windy weather shows how much I wanted to try out the camera. I was amazed that there were so many people there, in that windy weather on a weekday.

I did start thinking about the types of cameras that documentary movie makers must use to get the shots that they get. I started fantasizing too!

[Dallas Dem]

12. On that day at the beach.....

.......the wind was relatively mild, and I was out there pretty early, so I got a little lucky.

I had to smile, though, when you said you immediately eliminated 90% of your shots. Been there.......had to do that.

I took nearly 280 shots over 2 days, to get about 20 "keepers."