Last year I wrote a series of posts about winter photography involving waterfowl in Bute County and Colusa County. My goal is to make images for my project photographing the “Central Valley”, or more precisely, the Sacramento Valley.
One important occurrence in the valley with regards to wildlife photography is the Sandhill Crane migration. During the fall, the cranes migrate South. In California, these birds can be spotted in several natural preserves throughout the Sacramento Valley.
The lens
On the first week of November, I headed South to the Woodbridge Ecological Reserve in San Joaquin County near Lodi, to photograph the cranes during the sunset. I went armed with two lenses, the Nikkor 200-500 mm f 5.6 and the Nikkor 70-200 mm f/2.8. I took the two because I had not been there and I wasn’t sure which one I was going to use.
At the preserve, I noticed that the water was far away from the viewing platform, actually very far, and quickly decided to go with the Nikkor 200-500 mm f 5.6.
The settings
For bird photography, I like to use the widest aperture of my lens, 1/1600 s shutter speed and auto-iso. This assumes low light and that the birds will be in movement. Rarely, when I am photographing, do I change these settings. Everything happens very fast, particularly at sunset shots, and there isn’t much time to think. My Nikon D750 does not have the tracking capabilities of modern cameras, and I use my regular AFS (Auto Focus Single). I know there are better options for auto-focus, but I am very comfortable with my AFS. I also used spot metering that day, which in retrospect, was in error, since my main goal was the landscape not the birds individually.
The results
My favorite shot of the evening, the FEATURED IMAGE (f/5.6, 1/1600, ISO 2500), and all other images, resulted very noisy (see example below).
In the past, this would have been a problem, but Camera Raw’s function “denoise” worked beautifully cleaning all “the digital dirt.”
The silhouetted birds turned out sharp, the intended consequence of my settings.
I am generally satisfied with my results, but I am still considering how am I going to make some of these images work in black and white. I do intend to come back for more. Below, a few more images from the evening, in addition to the FEATURED IMAGE.
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Wall Art landscapes and miscellaneous
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It is all about the light 
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