How I Shot That - Gulls over Bridges
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| Shot with Sony 50mm f/1.8 - http://amzn.to/2FmZ82E Camera is Sony a6000 - http://amzn.to/2ELLKIr Get This Photo |
Shot this almost a year ago, I get to take many noon-time walks during my day job. Usually this isn't the time to take a photo, the light is usually so harsh.
What can you do, but take advantage of a ritual near a location that is always changing. I've read and learned that many photographers will sit in a location and even camp out for days at a time. But what I have substituted was ritual. When I go for a walk at lunch, I'll have about 4 routes I choose from. Being next to the Mississippi River, 2 of the 4 routes take me along that path.
Usually, this gives me 2 types of water fouls to shoot... mallards and gulls. They seem to love this area because... it's easy. People feed them. A ton of people feed them.
At this time, the ice had just disappeared from the river and the birds were looking for more food than people were giving them. And for a moment, it seemed I had cought them lining up as if coming or going over the interstate bridges.
And a bit of technical luck, I set the camera up for more of a street style aperture of f8.0. This helped keep the bridges sharper while I focused on the bird. And because it was broad daylight, I could keep the ISO at 100 with a 1/750 sec shutter. This is how I kept the noise down and the birds are still in the air.
And in post I really just needed to bring out the contrast and deepen the blacks.
