Hi Everyone!

I have been busy photographing a ton of birds on Henry's lake where I live in my floating blind and writing many assignment articles on photography. In most cases, I used my Canon 1DX Mark II with a Canon 800mm lens, but I did have a friend borrow my blind for a week and he let me use his new Canon 600mm with 1.4x extender. I like this combo better than the 800mm, so anyone want to buy a mint-condition 800mm that has never been in the water - honest? I generally use ISO 1000 or 800 in the floating blind with such a long lens, or I just won't get many sharp images and I had to microadjust the lens to -2. As you know from a previous post, I am not a big fan of auto exposure systems, especially for birds on the water as the changing size of a largely white or dark bird will throw the exposure off, and so will the reflectance of the background should it change suddenly, such as reflected light blue sky to dark green bushes along the margin of the lake. I simply balance the meter to zero, shoot a sample image to check for blinking highlights, and adjust the exposure until the first blinkies appear, and call that good. The first blinkies do not mean that area is actually overexposed in the RAW file, as the highlight alert and the histogram are both generated from a JPEG built-in to the RAW file so you can see the image. RAW has far more data than a JPEG, so you are safe if you don't overdo the blinkies.

I keep working the same area of the lake in my floating blind and the birds now know me quite well. One male ring-necked duck swims over as soon as I come by to greet me each morning, and even dives within feet of my blind for food. Roger Trentham from the Smokies is the first person to take me up on trying the blind, and I dropped him off at the airport the other day still breathing and not in a body bag. Problem is, now he must edit the 400GB's of image he shot. I will give you a tip. If you enjoy bird photography, you are missing out on a tremendous way of doing it if you aren't using a floating blind. It is fabulous beyond belief. Imagine joining a whole flock of birds, being able to move closer or back up, change shooting angles, and the birds don't pay attention to you. Awesome!