Return of the Winter Birds

Canon 7D, 500mm f4L IS, Tripod mounted, 1/80th @ f5.6, ISO 800.

I mentioned a few days back how, now that winter is arriving, the light is long and sweet for most of the daylight hours. Well its true, but in exchange, we have many fewer hours of light. In fact today we declined down to 8 hours and 28 minutes of possible sunlight, a loss of about 6 and half minutes over yesterday. But that is all beside the point. Yesterday I took advantage of the last hour of daylight to shoot the birds around our feeders. I've been trying for awhile to get a really excellent image of a Boreal Chickadee, but I still haven't attained it. The one above is fine, but not much more than that. Getting the perfect image takes a lot of time and effort, and I'll be working on this one for awhile. I think part of the problem is that I'm having a hard time visualizing exactly what I want from the image. This part of the creative process of photography that is most difficult for me. Determining what I want before I go out and try to get it. It is best to have some idea of the story you want to tell. In this case, I want to say something about the bird, its natural history and habitat, its ability to survive the cold. The image above does none of those things. Rather is a simple portrait, eating a sunflower seed no less. Hardly a natural food source here in Fairbanks.

My point in all this rambling is to think about your photos before you go out and try to make them. Ask yourself what story you want to tell and then think hard about what image will tell that story, then work to make the image. I'm still struggling with this myself.