"Preening Lorikeet"

Here is the first 'real' installment to my blog.  I hope you find it entertaining as well as informative.

This image of the Lorikeet was taken on 19 July 2008 at the Brevard County Zoo which is located here in Viera, Fl.  You can visit  http://www.brevardzoo.org for more information about the zoo and what it has to offer.  

I'll get to the Lorikeet picture stuff in a few minutes (please bare with me), but first I need to fill you in on some of the background as to why this image means as much to me as it does.  To do so, let's backtrack a few years to when I was near the end of my tenure as a missileer (see Welcome post) and was about to deploy to Baghdad.  When I received word that I was deploying, the proverbial light bulb went off and all sorts of thoughts (okay...dreams) began running through my head about the photographic opportunities that might present itself while there.  As you can probably imagine, I had such grand visions of winning a Pulitzer prize for photographic excellence or being listed as one of the greatest war photographers of all time...well, we can dream can't we?  However reality kicked in and I had to settle for the notion that in some respects it would be a validation of my photojournalism education...at the very least it would be a way to kick-start my portfolio that I hadn't worked on since graduation; either way it was an opportunity not to be missed.

Moving forward to the deployment, I took two cameras with me... my wife's recently-purchased point-and-shoot digital camera and the second was my monster (in comparison) Nikon F100 SLR film camera with about 50 rolls of film (and lenses, and filters, and...well, you get the idea).  Well, it was a great idea, but in execution proved to be a little daunting.  I won't go into details here, but lugging around damn near all my camera equipment on top of all my gear was a major headache...especially when we landed in Qatar and then had to make an 'overnight' bag (we were allowed to take one bag with us to our tent whereas the remainder of our 'stuff' was going to be placed on pallets...with my luck, on the very bottom of the pallet).  So in the spirit of ensuring my camera equipment would be safe, I had to sacrifice certain things like...personal comfort (i.e. shorts and t-shirt) in the almost 100 degree heat and 80% humidity.  Yeah, I was loving those photographic 'dreams' now!!!

Anyway, when I arrived in Baghdad, I quickly found out that the film camera was...well, really not the right camera to take along.  A few of the reasons were 1) it can be hard to wear all the required 'kit' (body armor, helmet, etc...) and yet remain flexible enough to function with camera in hand, 2) a camera could quickly become a liability when the stuff hits the fan and 3) carrying around a big camera paints a large 'bull's eye' on your back (and not necessarily from the 'bad guys' point of view).  This last point became very apparent early in the deployment as the area I was assigned was heavily guarded and secure; someone walking around with a large camera in hand raises suspicion fast!  Even though just about everyone there had a little point-and-shoot camera on them nearly all the time, there is just something about a large SLR that made the guards 'nervous.'  After being hassled by the security folks a few times, once to the extent of having to expose a roll of film because they thought I took a picture of their security camera systems, I reluctantly put the film camera away.

I should point out that all of this was happening during a time I had a real dislike for digital cameras...to me they were something that allowed folks to take a mediocre image and make it better by "photo-chopping."  Yep...I was one of "those guys" that was going to use film to the very end and refuse to convert...no matter what!  Well, my experience in Baghdad began to change the way I thought of digital cameras...especially when it came down to having to open the two lead-lined bags of film for the airline security personnel to look at each cassette (boy, they just LOVE their jobs and have the most pleasant demeanor's don' they?).  "Gee...it sure would be nice to NOT have to lug around all this bulky film!"  However, shortly after I returned from Baghdad...with 95% of my film unused mind you, that I ran into the final brick wall for not converting to digital.  The only photography studio/store in the town we were living that could process slide film in-house went out of business.  The only available options to me were to drive my film down to Ft. Collins, CO or ship it off to Denver to be processed.  I started to see the writing on the wall, especially after calling around to the various places to get film developed...film was quickly going away and digital was here to stay.  After a few months I finally gave in and started doing a little research.  Since I'm a pretty loyal fan of Nikon, the choices were fairly easy...the F100 film camera was almost a dead-ringer for the D200 in the digital world.  So, after I got permission from the boss to spend the money, I bought my first digital SLR.  How ignorant was I to have NOT embraced this technology before...grass...greener...I know!

I was very hesitant at first, it was (and still is) a new ball game and the learning curve is fairly steep.  Very quickly I became frustrated using my new camera...not at the camera itself but the fact that we didn't have a computer fast enough to run the software required to process the RAW files.  Fast forward to this year where I took the other plunge (again) and purchased a new iMac with the large 24" screen!  You've got to understand something about me and the way my mind works, I'm not frugal by any stretch...it's just I'm not a 'techie' and I certainly don't 'have to have the latest and greatest' when it comes to gizmo's and gadgets.  So for me to get this computer was a real step out of my shell...especially since I don't like them in the first place and think they are one of the many reasons families are not today what they were two generations ago (more on that in later posts).  

Now Onto The Shot:

That's the background up until when this image was made (don't worry, I won't bore you with all the background stuff again for the future posts).  Andree (my wife), another couple and I went to the zoo to kill some time that day.  After seeing the standard zoo affair (eagles, falcons, alligators, deer, the big cats, etc...) we ended up in the small bird sanctuary.   To our wives it probably looked quite humorous as we started shooting away at all the birds...but to us we were on a safari and this was the big game.

What really caught my eye was this lone Lorikeet sitting on the railing...completely oblivious to the world around it, especially the two crazy guys with the cameras flailing about like a couple of idiots.  I started taking picture after picture of it...not really paying attention to anything at all but the bird in the viewfinder.  After about a dozen pictures of the same thing (almost literally), I paused for a second to gather my thoughts.  I reviewed the last couple pictures...then the ones before that...then the ones before that (outside of the bird sanctuary, back in the zoo proper) and noticed one common theme...they were all SNAPSHOTS!!  My forehead is probably flat due to how hard I slapped myself, but the point was made very clear.

Gee...I had this $40k+ photography degree, a $2k digital camera, a $1500 lens, a $2400 computer and all I was getting were snapshots!  It just goes to prove that no matter how much money you throw into photography (or what equipment you might have) it still comes down to the person behind the camera to create the image.  So, I took a deep breath and started to 'look' at the scene.  The first thing I noticed was the way that occasionally the Lorikeet was spotlighted by the light filtering through the swaying trees.  I then started to move from side to side, up, down, near and far to see which angle gave the right feel and look to the bird.  Finally I forced myself to look at the background (which is something that doesn't come easy to me as I tend to focus on the main subject and ignore the remainder of the space).

I made several exposures, adjusting the aperture here, zoom there, up a little, down a little, finally doing a quick-check to see if my thought processes were on target.  The results were a dramatic improvement over the images taken earlier but they were still lacking something.  The front of the bird was just beautiful but it lacked that 'pop' that make it stand out.  Well...it was almost by accident that I stumbled upon the solution...my thumb happened to hit the flash button and the in-camera flash popped open.  It must have been fate as "duh...fill-flash you idiot" started to run through my head.  So, after a little adjusting of the flash compensation, I managed to capture the image you see here.  It was taken with the Nikon D200, at f4.5, 1/160 sec, at ISO 400 using a Nikon 80-200 f/2.8 ED-IF lens.  In post processing using the Nikon Capture NX2 software, the only adjustments made were a slight adjustment in the levels and curves for the background and a touch of sharpening due to the raw files being somewhat 'soft' out of the camera.  

To date this is one of my favorite images, a constant reminder that everything happens for a reason and that when applied the basic elements of color, composition and beautiful light can come together for such a wonderful photograph.  This image was my first real 'success' (in my eye) with my digital camera and is the cornerstone for getting me back into the game so-to-speak.  Every time I look at this shot I am in awe of how much nature can teach us...that even in a chaotic environment (with a few crazy photographers to boot) you can still find peace and solitude in yourself, sometimes it just takes a good slap in the forehead to figure it out.  Thanks for reading!

Cheers,

Bill