I have shot a lot of images taken from my car over the years, but I have to say that I really hate it. Yes, it’s nice that you can drive around and sneak up on your subject. The camera is supported by the car so you don’t have to carry your gear over your shoulder and your sitting in a nice leather chair. Some of us even have music playing and maybe a little snack sitting next to the soft drink in the cup holder. But for me, it totally limits my style of photography. I hate the fact that the camera is five feet off the ground when your photographing birds below you. I hate that I have limited background options as the car can only move into so many positions. I also hate that most of the time I can’t get closer that the car can be parked. This was the situation when I tried to photograph a Long-billed Curlew in a field next to a road. The bird was used to traffic so I felt confident that I could drive up as close as the road would permit. I waited untill the evening so the sun would be behind my back (or the back of the car), but when I pulled up, the sun was behind clouds. I fired off a few frames and got the following image.

Nothing too wrong with the image. The bird is nice and sharp. The head angle is good with the bird making eye contact.

I just was not happy with the fact that we are viewing this image from a human perspective. This is not how Curlew’s see each other (from a five foot high perspective) but this is how humans see the bird. If I was to show an intimate perspective of how all ground birds see each other, then I had to get down to the birds level. So I had a decision to make. Do I stay in the car and get a bunch of average images but say to myself ” at least their nice field guide shots”, or do I take a risk of scaring the bird off by getting out of the car and try to get down low. My approach to this is, once I get the shots from the car, I then go for the low percentage shot. Most times the bird will flush, but every now and again, it can really work out. Here’s what happened when I tried to do just that.

There was a ditch between my car and the field the bird was in. All I had to do was get myself and my lens into that dicth without the bird seeing me. I had the camera resting on a bean bag so I just waited for the bird to feed or preen before lifting the lens off the window. I then opened the car door slowly but was still concealed behind the door. I shrunk down with my camera, lens and bean bag and peered out to see if the bird had noticed me. The bird was still preening so I waited untill the moment when I thought he was completely engrossed in his preening and somewhat facing away from me before I made the small leap down into the ditch. So now I’m crouched down in the ditch with no idea if the bird is still there. It was so tempting to pop my head up to see, but this would be the wrong time to do that. If the bird became wary or aleart, he would be looking for any movement so I waited a couple of minutes. I finally looked up through some tall grasses and saw the bird still there preening. Yes! I made it this far.

I then slowly pushed my bean bag up onto the field edge and waited another minute before lifting my lens onto the bag. Once everything was in place I looked through the grasses again to see if the bird had noticed me. He was just standing there looking relaxed. I managed to get the lens focused on him and take a few frames. I felt at that point that I had accomplished my goal. If nothing else, I got the images I had envisioned. But then the big payoff happened. Right at that moment the sun broke out under the low clouds and provided this sweet warm glow to the bird and scene. I fired off a few more frames. Now the bird was feeding and would take a couple of steps and feed. I was estatic that I was getting these low angle shots in beautiful light. But then another payoff happened. The bird started calling and would call every 30 seconds. It got so predictable that I could almost count when he was going to do it and be ready with the 10 frames per second to captuire the call. So now I have these low angle, calling shots in sweet light. I was so excited that I couldn’t even feel all the mosquitos that were biting my back and arms. 

I shortley realized why the bird was calling. He was getting ready to take off. Then the final payoff happened. Before he took off, he raised his wings in display a few times and called. This was all happening as the light was getting sweeter and sweeter. The bird was parallel to the camera plane and the perfect distance form me. Everything seemd to be lining up. Was this luck? I do know that good planning increases your luck.  Taking a risk and going for the low percentage shot can also increase your luck.

All I can really tell you is, sometimes you just have to get out of the car.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 2nd, 2009 at 5:40 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.