Photographing Nashville Warblers

Nashville Warblers have been our most common visitor during this Fall’s migration. Individuals don’t stay long and they are as skittish and unpredictable as most other warblers. I’m always very pleased when I get at least one good, unobstructed shot.

If a warbler pauses for a few seconds and I do get more than one shot, (assuming the flash keeps up with the shutter action) there is always bird movement within the sequence. Warblers don’t sit still, calmly, quietly, motionless. And that makes HDR bird photography impractical.

What HDR Does

Whenever I come across well done, realistic HDR photography on the web, it is most often a promotion for high-end housing or other real estate on the market. A High Dynamic Range (HDR) photo is the compilation of multiple exposures into one and works well with static subjects like fancy interior housing layouts.

The purpose of HDR photography is to capture a careful blend (usually AEB bracketed) of identical images, and then digitally combine them to create a single photo that has a wide dynamic range ..much wider than the camera’s sensor can capture with only one photo.

Why Use HDR?

Photographers practice HDR to enhance tonal richness (expand the dynamic range) of the image. The HDR algorithm incorporated in the camera (or post processing software) pulls multiple images together into one and thus captures more detail on both ends of the 0-256 tonal range spectrum.

Each image file is set up with slightly different exposure settings allowing the camera to create a different dynamic range for each. Most often, the photographer will set up the sequence of shots to use the same ISO, the same aperture, but different shutter speeds. They take the time to measure the shutter speed required for the darkest and the brightest parts of the scene and then add additional shutter stops at the high end and low end. Finally, they blend only those images that expand the tonal range spectrum, i.e. overall dynamic range.

Tone Mapping

At its best, the HDR process exposes different portions of the final image by different amounts. Called tone mapping, the software allows you to lighten shadows and darken highlights in specific regions. Some photographic artists prefer to use tone mapping to make the blended image look surreal and/or unnatural.

How to Know When to Use HDR

There is no point in considering HDR if the dynamic range of the scene does not exceed the sensor’s light intensity range. It’s easy to check.

Every dSLR camera maps the light intensity range of its sensor on its histogram, so a photographer can instantly determine the dynamic range. If the histogram is ‘clipped‘ at either edge of the scale, picture detail will be lost – either in the shadows (if it’s clipped on the left) or in the highlights (if it’s clipped on the right). If the histogram shows large peaks overflowing at both ends and a low dip in the center, the camera’s sensor can not handle the dynamic range of the subject.

HDR with Bird Photography

Certainly a living, breathing, highly active bird in his natural environment looks much better when the light is outstanding–   – when the direction, intensity, and overall quality brings out distinct contrast and eye popping detail.

With HDR, there must be no movement (no discernible heartbeat, no wind, no camera shake) within the sequence of fast continuous shots. In bird photography, there is almost always some evidence of movement between the shots, creating ghosting and alignment issues and making a successful image meld impossible.

Perhaps I should practice on a statue of a bird.

Photographing a Female Hooded Warbler

This female Hooded Warbler alighted on a branch near the camera for less than a minute. Right before dusk, she perched 3 or 4 feet above eye level on a Sassafras tree very near the camera. Instead of staying put, she took off like a shot…a yellow blur flying directly at the camera and then swooping up 10 feet or so to avoid crashing into the window. She must have decided that with me there, it was too risky to attempt a drink at the fountain.

There is very little to recommend this image file. The detail is good and the blurred background is OK. However, harsh shadows (created by the flash blast) outline the underside of the warbler’s profile and make the overall image look very unattractive. I was able to minimally correct the darkness of the shadowy outline with Lightroom’s Shadow slider. If only there had been some distance between the tree trunk and the branch on which she perched, the dark shadow outlining the bottom of the bird’s profile would not have been so noticeable.

(NOTE: The shadow so prevalent on this image is not the kind of shadow that would be highlighted in the camera’s clipping indicators. It is just a background shadow created by the flash and made a little less black by pushing Lightroom’s shadow slider all the way to the right.)

Photo Editing

I do not own Photoshop, but maybe I should. The thought makes me weary because I think of post processing as a hateful but necessary chore. Time consuming as Lightroom is, I can not master image editing by using it. I can only minimally fix issues with the shadow slider and adjustment brushes and make minor adjustments with cropping, exposure, contrast, clarity, and sharpening.

Photoshop (and the hundreds of fancy plug-ins designed to enhance this software) would  have helped improve this image. First and foremost, it would give me the tools to separate the subject (Bird Layer) from its tree (Background Layer) and then replace the background completely. There’s also image magic to be had with the Masking, Brushing, Adjusting, Cloning, Layering, Blending, Liquifying, and Transforming tools.

Keep it Simple; Keep it Real

Bottom line: Learning Photoshop is not something I want to do to. When I first go through a day’s shoot, I’m looking for promise and potential – something pleasing that will draw the eye. If I don’t see this, the image is just not worth the time and effort it takes to fix.

Traveling Along, Virtually

So far, warblers have been relatively scarce this Fall. While I wait, I wonder if the devastating hurricanes in Texas, Florida, Mexico and the Caribbean temporarily put the birds’ migratory schedules into a holding pattern.

Bird photographers marvel at the distances and travails involved in the seasonal movement phenomena that is bird migration, yet critical knowledge gaps remain in the how, why, when and where of this spectacle. I hope that one day I might spot and photograph a tiny, durable, battery powered transmitter attached to one of these champions of endurance…. a geolocating device intended to track an entire migration route. These trackers will plot the movements, behaviors and timelines of thousands of bird species on world wide maps. They will allow us to travel along with the birds, virtually.

Photographing a Black Throated Green Warbler

A colorful transient appeared in short order. This little Black Throated Green Warbler perched high in a Sassafras tree that was less than 10 feet away from the tripod and camera. The soft brown bokeh comes from another thicker, taller tree directly behind where the bird sits. Tilting the lens upward with the Gimbal tripod head, I estimate that the distance between the 500mm lens and the warbler was approximately 24-25 feet.

NOTE: Gimbal Tripod heads are smooth and steady swing mounts designed to fit atop tripods and maneuver long lenses easily and quickly. A Gimbal head will support heavy equipment and enable the photographer to easily move it around horizontally and vertically. This includes the weight of not only the camera and long lens, but also the lens hood, the flash and its fresnel extender, battery pack, flash bracket, telephoto extender and various straps.

Shooting with the Lens Tilted Upward

The plane of the camera’s sensor was not parallel to the subject when I took the shots above…in fact it was substantially below it. So why do these images look like the bird was situated at or slightly above eye level with the camera?  When looking up through a long lens, parts of the subject will be at varying distances from the camera’s sensor. Shouldn’t this cause the camera to record a distortion? This bird is so tiny, so possibly its whole body was recorded at the same magnification because there was very little distance between the bird’s head and feet.  (Of course, the aperture setting … depth of field … has an impact on the sharpness of the entire image, especially when the camera is not parallel to its subject.)

This doesn’t explain why the bird looks like it’s perched almost parallel to the camera. 

At Camera Level

The Black Throated Green Warbler eventually flew down to the fountain area and I was able to get a few shots of him. Comparing the images where camera’s sensor was not parallel to the subject (see above) to an image that was taken when the bird was situated about the same distance away but at camera level (see below) is one sure way to determine if there is distortion. It is definitely easier to see that the lens was angled dramatically in those first shots. The camera level shot is a much more pleasing perspective.

Photographing a Golden Winged Warbler

The Golden Winged Warbler (female or young male) is a new bird for me. She appeared near the fountain suddenly and stayed only a few minutes. Too nervous to jump into the water with the other birds, she flew back and forth perching on different branches situated close to each other, but in very different light.

Transitioning With the Light

The darkish branch upon which the bird perches in the above shot was situated in evenly lit shade. A relatively dark scene, the flash provided a good amount of fill light and captured details on the dark and light parts of the bird. The wooded background (already 2 stops or more darker than the perching area), came through as black. The histogram shows many more dark areas than light… not an ideal bell curve, but no blinkies.

If she had only stayed there! Dashing quickly and erratically, she flew over to a light toned, more reflective branch located only a few feet away. This branch (see photo below) was saturated in overhead direct sunlight and so was the bird when she alighted there. The highlight alerts I saw through the viewfinder confirmed that the harsh light would overexpose the images, rendering certain white areas on the warbler with little or no detail.

Time to Address Highlight Alerts

A Highlight Alert is basically a quick check of overly bright areas (overexposure) on the image. If you have turned this DSLR camera option on, you will see blinking alerts on your LCD review screen after you’ve taken the photo. If the alert is not in an obvious or important portion of the image, the patch of overexposure does not matter. Ignore the blink and stick with the initial exposure readings. If the blinkies are flashing on critical areas of the subject, it’s probably best to quickly adjust your exposure settings. (NOTE: With bird photography, there is rarely time move to a different location and reshoot.)

During this shoot, all it took was for the bird to relocate a few feet away to a nearby branch and the bulk of my images were ruined. As I think back, there might have been time and opportunity to: a) Check the highlight alerts (to see if they were blinking in critical areas of the image); b) Turn off the flash; c) Alter exposure settings to correct the overexposed portions of the image; and d) Reshoot.

Given adequate time, this is how I should have proceeded:

• If the graph of the histogram is just touching the right edge, the exposure should be fine.
• If the data is not quite to the right edge of the histogram, just add exposure – either manually or by moving the AEC dial a little to the right.  (on the “+” side)
• If the data is crawling way over the right edge of the histogram (clipping) that means that there’s WAY TOO MUCH LIGHT. This is very bad. Lost details means lost forever. No post processing software can bring back those over exposed details. Simple solution: Manually adjust exposure or move the AEC dial one or more stops to the left (subtract exposure – on the “-” side).
• Take another test photograph and recheck your histogram. Keep making adjustments until the RIGHTMOST data is just touching the right edge of the histogram.

It’s not hard to screw up exposure settings when a fabulous bird appears unexpectedly in front of the camera.  Despite all my time in the field, excitement can still cause me to neglect to change some setting on the camera. In this instance, even with the camera set to RAW, mistakes like that almost always matter.

Subspecies or Hybrid

This individual photographed above has the markings of a classic Golden Winged Warbler. Golden Winged Warblers occasionally hybridize with the Blue Winged Warblers and produce two separate hybrid types: a) the Brewster: yellow head and throat, white belly and white wing bars; and b) the Lawrence version: yellow crown and belly, black throat and eye patch and white wing bars.

In my many bird photography adventures, I have photographed several subspecies, but I have never seen or photographed a bird that would be considered a hybrid. A subspecies is a variety of the same species….a population (usually geographically isolated) that has a slightly different appearance than others of its own species. A hybrid is born when two different and closely related species successfully breed.

An excellent article about hybridized warblers “Why Hybridize?” by Dr. Rachel Vallender, can be found at this link.

The Joy of Bathing

Birds bathe to maintain optimal feather health, but they also appear to savor their time in the water -and seem reinvigorated afterwards.

This little female American Redstart Warbler clearly relishes her evening baths in our little oasis off the deck. She first checks her surroundings then takes a quick drink. She then wades into the water wholeheartedly, immerses her head and saturates her little body, then jiggles and shivers to release the heavy droplets. Up she rises to the branch above the fountain to continue shaking out excess water on her feathers and to preen. Once is often not enough….she goes back and does it all again. All part of her nightly spa ritual before heading off to roost for the night.

Definitely fun to watch and photograph.

Thoughts About Birding Hotspots

I’ve been a bird photographer long enough to know the rush and the rewards of good bird photo opportunity.

The best Spring and Fall Migration birding hotspots are widely publicized and photographers flock to secure the prime locations at the best times. No doubt fabulous photographs are to be had by those who put in the time and effort to pack up their gear and travel to these places.

This Spring, I had planned to travel to Magee Marsh on the southern shore of Lake Erie (3+ hours away) to watch and photograph the Warbler migration. Unexpected and sad circumstances intervened. I am not unhappy about missing the event, even though I no doubt missed photographing some new colorful warblers who would never venture into my part of the woods.

A Paparazzi After Birds

This year, I was just not ready to squeeze in onto some bridge or public path early in the morning with dozens of other nature photographers positioning their camera gear, lawn chairs, bug spray and coolers. At times, bird festivals become nothing short of a high energy spectacle. A gaggle of photographers clusters onto one spot in an effort to capture the best birds in the best light. It is impossible to practice stealth in these settings.

Generally, these birding festivals/events bring out the worst in me. Impatience, envy, and frustration…all in the name of getting a lucky shot of a new and/or uncommon bird. I’ll admit that most participants do their best not to get in the way of other photographers, but sometimes limited space just does not allow for comfortable distances. This provokes bad behavior in the form of rude glaring, annoying comparisons about equipment, and unsubstantiated judgments about skills and abilities. (NOTE: Some of these people have never had an unexpressed thought.)

Impact on Birds

Birds may appear acclimated to human behavior, but that does not mean that they are unaffected by it. The competition in the air gets in the way of concern or respect for birds. It also stresses wildlife and complicates bird routines. At times behaviors are so intrusive that they breach ethical practices.

Should I Stay Or Should I Go

So ultimately, each Spring, I’ve got to decide…. should I stay or should I go. No doubt lots of good shots to be had, but I’m spoiled here in my private bird space even though I saw very few migrators this Spring.

Bottom line: As a bird photographer, I’m not going to be continually challenged and rewarded with anticipatory delight unless I get myself out there. So I will go.