Goosander cleansing

Yleinen, lauantaina 15.9.2007,

Note: I intended releasing this post to my English blog, but apparently the blog machine is tits up for good. Consider this a kind of magic.

Last Thursday I went to beach of Itälahti in Lauttasaari (Finland) hoping to test my new teleconverter. I peered through the foliage while approaching the beach in an effort to catch a ducking or two, which I could use as my targets. Fortunately I found them by the water fluffing their feathers and cleansing themselves.

I descended onto my right knee and lowered my 400-millimetre lens on top of an erected steel pipe some 50 metres away of the subject. The pipe in its current form was chopped half from the waist height and in previous life had served as some kind of signal stand. I haven’t brought a tripod and this was the best alternative I could find while maintaining the line-of-sight.

I took a few shots of the ducks, but soon noticed an approaching goosander (Isokoskelo in Finnish), paddling her way towards the beach and me. I had already bolted the 2× converter between the camera body and the lens, and took few hastily aimed shots at her. Shooting in manual focus at the oncoming bird was pretty much futile; I realized this at the time and also confirmed it in post-production when deleting all of those pictures.

Luckily she stepped on rock and started the same ritual the ducks had been doing. Now I had a much better chance focusing. The drawback was my stand, or lack thereof. I had pumped the lens hood and placed it onto the pipe, while supporting the camera body on the other end. This method had freed my left hand to focusing (auto focus wasn’t working due to the converter), but didn’t really prevent my hand shake. Focusing through the small viewfinder in a world of constant hangover wasn’t easy. I nevertheless managed to get a couple of decent shots. They are slightly out-of-focus, but will do in low resolution.

It was mainly cloudy, but sporadic holes in the cloud cover released rays of light and overexposed the white parts on her feathers. Otherwise my pictures were underexposed, but I was merely testing my TC, not aiming for world-class photos.

As I stood up the goosander immediately froze. This reminded me of the important fact of wild life photography: stay low. A standing human is incredibly frightening to birds and other creatures of the nature. You have much better chances staying close to the ground.

I didn’t mind, though, as I was leaving. Might bring the tripod next time.