Regresando a casa/Going home

Nikon D300, AFS Nikkor 500VR, blind, Wimberly head and tripod, 1/1000s, f4, ISO500, Manual exposure

I have been really busy at the office since early september. No free time for going to photograph birds, not enought time for participation in my favorite forum (www.birdphotographers.net) and, and that is a very clear evidence of how much busy I am, no time for a single entry in my blog excepting the couple of B&W portraits that I posted in october. I really need things return to normality very soon because I miss to handhold my lens and to track a fast bird flying. Diving in the files of my hard drive I have found this image, a heavy crop of about 6Mp and not the sharpest image I have ever done but I love it. I like a lot the empty space, white space, around the bird. The misty like mood of the scene and the, almost surrealistic, background at the right of the frame. It looks a kind of magic. Pherhaps someone could think that this is a strongly photoshoped image but it is not Sure I have spend about an hour playing with it on photoshop but that time is just the result of enjoying the processing of an image. Cropping for composition, levels adjustment (mostly on the bird but not on the BG), color balance in the background and sharpening. I love the balance between the turquoise blue and the warm right side of the composition. Blues and yellows works really well when they are put togheter. :-)

Carracas / Eurasian roller (Coracias garrulus)

Nikon D300, AFS Nikkor 500VR, ISO500, f5,6, 1/320 VR on, hide, WHII on tripod, full frame

Al final he vendido mi querido 300VR y ya estoy a la espera de que llegue el nuevo 500VR pero, mientras tanto, tengo la suerte de tener uno que me presta mi buen amigo Pepe Reigada para que vaya soltándome con el nuevo objetivo. El otro día estuve haciendo pruebas y los resultados me gustaron bastante. Creo que podré olvidar el 300 sin problemas porque hasta para vuelos dió buen resultado. Esta carraca estuvo posando muuuucho rato y al final opté por quitar el 1,4XTC y hacer una foto a pelo para incluir los dos agujeros que anda mirando para ver en cual va a anidar.
Por cierto, nunca había visto unas carracas tan confiadas como éstas y es que viven a apenas 40 metros de las casas de un pueblo cercano a Córdoba y están muy acostumbradas a la presencia humana.

My 300VR was sold last week and I have a new 500VR on order but, until the arrival of th enew lens I have a borrowed 500VR of a friend (it is great to have good friends ) and this morning I went to try the lens with the bee-eaters. They were not very cooperative and it has been not possible to take a decent image of one perched but lots of nice flights that makes me very happy. This year, in the bee-eaters sand bank there are about three to four pairs of rollers that are visiting the old holes in th esearch for one to breed in. Very early in the morning this guy was inspecting a couple of holes in the shadows so I went up to ISO 500 and got some decent images instead of the fact that the bird was not at eye level but I am happy with this one. I decided to remove the 1,4XTC to include in the frame the holes to show the nesting habitat. I took some frames of courtship behaviour in flight. By the way, they are not breeding yet.