The Portable Reflecting Pool - A Great Way to Photograph Song Birds

Recently, my little one acre country yard was certified as an official Natural Wildlife Habitat. We really did not have to do too much to obtain that certification, just make sure we met the requirements for food, shelter, water, and a natural setting free of chemicals. Being surrounded by farm country and a wealth of natural habitat already, it is only natural we would have an abundance of critters roaming around. It was fun none the less to receive the official certificate.

My wife Kris and I always enjoy the birds that flock to the feeding stations and she has become quite the bird photographer capturing many creative and interesting images. Along with her, I will from time to time take a few images myself. One thing we do is place a few natural limbs and twisted root or driftwood remnants along the banister around the deck. With a few strategically drilled holes and using the natural flat surfaces, we sprinkle sunflower seeds and milworms which all the birds seem to like. We also hang balls made of twisted sticks and such with some sunflower seeds mixed with peanut butter smeared over them and also we hang a couple suet cages. Seems all the birds like those as well and both the limbs and stick balls offer a different photo opportunity.

One creative photography thing I recently tried was to build a shallow and portable reflecting pool. It is nothing complicated, just a basic frame with some white board tacked to the bottom to provide a solid surface. The white board then was covered with a large leaf bag to create a shallow pool that holds water. At one end of the pool I placed some rocks and a large piece of driftwood to give it a natural look. I also made sure there was enough flat surfaces on the limbs to sprinkle some sunflower seeds and milworms to attract the birds. In time I will experiment with the natural setting look and try different combinations.

When placed across the banister and filled with water, it makes an easy and simple reflecting pool. Oddly enough, the birds have yet to warm up to it. I suppose with it being something new introduced to the environment they seem a little spooked by it. It will take them a day or two to get accustomed to it. Even so, a couple of brave finches tried it out.

The idea with the reflecting pool is to allow for photographing the birds a number of ways and in varying lighting situations. Natural light of course is the easiest with the best being a bright overcast day which allows for soft even lighting and relatively fast shutter speeds. Dark overcast days will also work, but usually you have to bump the ISO up a notch or two to obtain a fast enough shutter speed to capture the birds clearly as they tend to hop around a lot. One thing I want to try is to add some artificial lighting to simulate a specific kind of light.

What I plan to do once the birds begin to use it more, is to place two speedlights on stands behind and to one side of the reflecting pond, both zoomed to their 105mm setting to focus the light onto a narrow beam, and on both I will place an orange warming gel to simulate a late afternoon sun backlight. Then I'll place another speedlight without any kind of gel on it in front and to one side, but also powered back just to add a bit of frontal fill light to capture that all important catch light in the eyes.

The trick then is to lure the birds onto the log with some tasty milworms and sunflower seeds and capture them along with their reflection. I am curious to see how this technique will add interest to the finished images.

The Story Behind the Photograph - The Spillway

A Photograph is a time machine for it can in an instant transport you back to a moment from long ago. Details about where and how and more importantly, why the photograph was taken, instantly come to mind. It is amazing when you think about it how such insignificant obscure details suddenly flood back into memory. The story leading up to the capture is often just as important as the image itself.

Continuing with the focus on The Story Behind the Photograph, we will take a look at the dramatic water flow falling over the old Okmulgee Lake spillway. What might otherwise appear as an ordinary photograph of a scenic location, tells a much more important personal story...a story reinforced by a personal loss. When I absorb the image of this torrent of water, a lifetime of memories flood my thoughts. This will be the last in the series and I hope those who may have read these stories were not only inspired, but stopped to take a closer look at the stories behind their own photographs.

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My ancestral home is Oklahoma where the folks talk with their unique Okie drawl, and the landscape is as varied as almost any place around. There are prairies, pine covered rugged mountains, rolling mixed hardwood forests, muddy rivers and clear gravel bottom streams that meander across the state. Extremes of weather are the norm and Oklahoma experiences more tornado's per square mile than any place in the world. It's a distinction they would probably just as soon let some other place have for the most part, but the unpredictable and often destructive weather in the state is as much a part of life there as anything else.

Even though I now live in Kentucky and call it home, my life and times in Oklahoma still retains an important and powerful influence. Over the past fourteen years, as time allowed, my wife and I would return for a week or so almost every year to visit family and friends and of course I would pack my camera gear and spend as much time afield as I could. Places like the Tallgrass Prairie is a favorite location for photo adventures, but sometimes as is the nature of the Oklahoma weather, conditions would deteriorate to where making the drive up there is not practical. So it was on this occasion.

Oklahoma in general gets about 40 inches of rain per year across most of the eastern portion of the state and it progressively gets drier the further west you go. The problem with the rain is summed up by an old joke; yeah, we get 40 inches of rain every year, but it all comes in one night. Oddly enough, there is some truth to that old worn out joke. On this particular trip, Oklahoma was experiencing a rainy spell like I had never seen before. For days on end, it rained, hard at times. It seemed it just did not want to stop. So any trips to the Tallgrass Prairie were postponed as a result. Instead, I spent more time visiting my dad in the small town of Okmulgee, about 40 miles south of Tulsa. My mom had passed away a few years before and my brother had passed away about a year or so after that, so it was important I spent as much time as I could with him. He was 90 years old and pushing 91, but still got around pretty well.

Just west of town was the scenic Okmulgee Lake. Built during the depression, it has over the years developed a reputation of being a hidden jewel that few people know about except the locals. As a result of all the rain it was filled to capacity and the old rock spillway located at the northeastern end of the lake was putting on quite a show as tons of water flowed over its top. An artist must have designed the spillway because the way it was constructed, when there was a heavy water flow, there were protruding rocks and cracks and channels built into its face that forced the water into shoots and gaps creating a wonderful demonstration of a living and moving falling fountain.

One afternoon, I picked up my dad and took him out to see the spillway. Of course he had seen it many times before, but neither he nor I had ever seen it flowing with the power and energy it now showed. My dad was a photographer, in a way, with a long history of shooting film. He was pretty old school though, and digital cameras seemed a bit too complex for his 90 year old mind to grasp. But, he seemed fascinated with all the buttons and capabilities of my Sony A65 as I explained to him how it worked. When I would show him how I used Photoshop on my laptop, he was truly amazed. We had a good time standing in front of the spillway, but I could tell he was getting tired but I wanted to spend some time photographing this spillway moment.

It was a very dark, overcast day, but the low hanging clouds showed strong textures. It was still raining, hard at times, and the spillway flow seemed to just go on and on. I knew capturing this as a photograph would be a challenge because of the width of the structure was such, it was almost impossible to get all of it within the field of view of my 18mm lens, the widest angle lens I had. I moved around and backed up as far as I could without standing in the road. Being a dark overcast day worked in my favor as the shot required a long exposure which would give the flowing water a soft white appearance. I wanted to include part of the sky to capture the ominous feeling of the day,so I also used a 1 stop graduated neutral density filter to bring out more detail in the sky. Within a few minutes I had my shots, but before we left, I snapped a quick photo of him standing in front of the spillway. He always liked to clown around and on this occasion he struck an awkward pose and we both laughed at his silliness.

The Last Photo I took of my Dad

After we returned to his apartment, I downloaded the images onto my laptop and I showed him how I built the images from the raw digital files I had captured. He was again fascinated with the process, especially when I converted it into a black and white image, but he did not understand how any of it worked. His photography mindset was anchored in 1944 using an old 35mm Argus C3 rangefinder camera during the war. He still had one sitting in his closet, but never used it having graduated to a newer Minolta film camera a number of years ago. Even though he always retained a heart for adventure and the power taking pictures supplied to his life, he rarely took many photos any more.

We spent the afternoon talking about the spillway, the upcoming OU football season, his favorite television show, Bill Oreilly, and eventually headed out to get something to eat. We had a good day, but I had to return to Tulsa and connect again with my wife's family. A day later, on a finally bright and clear day, we made one more quick trip to Okmulgee and the spillway before we said good bye prior to returning to Kentucky.

He seemed frail and quiet while we walked along the front of the spillway and soon returned to the car as his legs were getting weak. After we dropped him off, he looked sad waving his thin arm at us as we pulled away from the parking area of his little apartment. It was like he sensed something, but I did not pick up on it at the time. Two weeks later, back in Kentucky, I received a call...he had passed away that morning, his heart simply gave out and stopped.

Most photographs I have captured generate a feeling of fun and excitement and so they should. When I take time to look at the spillway photo, my heart is always saddened for I know it was during that moment I was spending the last days with my dad. Today, I have his old Argus C3 and his Minolta film camera, they still work. They are precious tokens from his life.

All the family I grew up with are gone now, I'm the only one left, but I also have a time machine sitting inside several old large boxes. They are filled with a hundred years of photographs, and I can go back to visit the family captured on them anytime I desire simply by looking inside. I enjoy having a time machine.

The Story Behind the Photograph - The Nebula of Orion: Where Stars are Born

The beauty of photography is its ability to be expressed in so many ways. I have often promoted the idea of what I call Cross Training where as a photographer I want to pursue as many kinds of photography as I can. The reason being, by doing so you will strengthen your overall understanding of the photographic process. One of the most fascinating and challenging forms of photography is Astrophotography. It forces the photographer to look at the exposure process from a different perspective and at the same time offers up a fascinating opportunity to see a part of creation that is virtually invisible to the unaided eye. However, with the camera's ability to accumulate light, even what appears invisible can be captured by using a few relatively simple techniques. Photographing the night sky requires one to not only expand more deeply into the elements of photography, it also requires you to develop a basic understanding of the night sky itself. When both are combined, the results can be spectacular.

As part three of the 'Story Behind the Photograph' we will take a look at one of the most challenging photographs I've ever captured; The Nebula of Orion: Where Stars Are Born

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The winter night sky and the summer night sky offer two differing vantage points for observing the heavens. The summer sky provides a fascinating view toward the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. Bracketed by the constellations of Sagitarius and Scorpius, our view toward the center of the galaxy is filled with bands of dust and gas and billions of stars. With just a simple wide angle lens, a tripod, and a dark sky, you can capture amazing images of our home galaxy as it arches above the southern horizon.

Fast forward to winter and the night sky changes and so does our view. Instead of looking inward toward the center of the galaxy, we are now looking away from the center toward the outer edges where wispy bands of stars orbit and we begin to look toward deep space. The constellations also change, and one of the most prominent is the constellation of Orion, the Hunter.

Orion forms a basic X in the southern winter night sky and consists of a variety of stars including four stars forming the corners, three bright stars forming his belt, and three stars below the belt forming his sword. One of the sword stars is actually a nebula, a place where stars are born, and it is one of the few nebula's of this type visible to the unaided eye appearing as a slight smudge forming the center star of the sword. This nebula when seen close up in all of its glory is one of the most beautiful in all of creation.

It is here dozens of new stars are being created within a gigantic fan of gas and dust consisting mostly of hydrogen , which also accounts for the reddish hue. It is also one of the easiest nebula's to capture using simple photographic equipment. But, to do so requires an understanding of basic celestial mechanics. You see, as the earth spins, the stars appear to move across the sky. This movement can be measured quite precisely and equals so many degrees per minute (I don't recall the exact number). To be able to photograph this relatively dim nebula, you must be able to do three things; use a long telephoto lens to make it large enough to see, use a relatively long exposure to accumulate the dim light, and because of the long exposure and long focal length lens, you must be able to track your camera across the sky at the same rate as the apparent movement created by the spin of the earth.

It sounds more complicated than it really is. Yes, you can purchase expensive camera or telescope tracker devises that work quite well, or, using a bit of ingenuity, you can build your own. The most common home built tracker is called a Barndoor Star Tracker. It is simply two pieces of wood with a hinge at one end and a drive mechanism located at the other end. There are some precise measurements required, but that falls outside the discussion scope of this story, but there are numerous examples available.

The drive mechanism must turn exactly at 1 rpm, or one full revolution per minute. It also requires that it be aligned rather precisely with the north star, actually just to one side of the north star. Once every thing is attached and aligned, and the drive mechanism is activated, this simple devise will quite accurately track deep sky objects for up to several minutes allowing your camera, which rides on top, to take clear and sharp long exposures bringing into view that which is not visible.

And so it was, one March evening in 2014, my Barndoor tracker devise was attached to a sturdy tripod and a small 1 rpm motor was attached to the drive mechanism. With some trial and error, the tracker was aligned with the north star, and using my 500mm lens, I zoomed in on the Orion Nebula. It took several attempts to get the exposure and focus correct and also a few slight tweaks of the north star alignment, but I eventually enjoyed what proved to be an amazing evening of shooting the night sky.

Standing outside on a cold winter evening under a clear sky is almost like viewing Heaven from afar. On this particular evening it seemed as though I could actually see to heaven and back as the night proved to be dark and clear, adorned with silver jewels. Hovering above the southern horizon, Orion the Hunter shimmered in all of his glory, bold and bright, unmistakable by its form, unbelievable in its clarity. It stood like a beacon as though its placement was purposeful and it shined as a visable symbol representing all the other hidden wonders residing just out of visual reach.

The tiny 1 rpm motor was activated and gently hummed as the connecting arm it turned rotated the drive shaft which slowly moved the barndoor tracker allowing it to counter act the rotation of the earth and stars. Using a remote shutter cable, I pressed the shutter release and counted from 1....18, 19, 20. A few seconds later, across the view screen appeared the reddish glow of the Orion Nebula. Using the viewer zoom, I took a closer look and realized my measurements and alignment on this occasion appeared to be dead on right. After a few more shots, I rushed inside to download them.

The image required some slight tweaking in Photoshop, brightness, contrast, color corrections, noise reduction, sharpening, all in small increments to enhance the elements already there...and a final crop to bring the nebula to its final appearance. Being my most vocal critic, I tend to find fault in almost all of my images, but even after close inspection, this capture exceeded every expectation.

Several previous attempts to photograph this same nebula had resulted in frustratingly blurred and imperfect images resulting from improper alignment of the tracker. But, when I took a close look at this one, the surrounding stars appeared as sharp pin points of light and the subtle delicate textures of the red, pink, and blue giant gas cloud floated across the darkness of space in a choreographed dance of color. Embedded within that cloud were the glowing beginnings of new stars having just formed not so long ago in celestial terms.

Orion Nebula - Where Stars are Born

All the hard work, the research, the trials and lots of errors, the endless nights standing in the cold air when the conditions were marginal, had finally paid off. With this single photo, my view of the heavens changed. The Nebula of Orion, where stars are born, became more than just a winter constellation, it became a photographic pathway to the hidden wonders of the heavens.