Trogon Photo Tours

October 2020 - This month's photography article goes through some of my favorite images from an Ecuador trip in 2018.  The article focuses on high and low key images and photographing bathing birds.  This was some photography I did on my own and with Chuck and Guilherme for a few days before Chuck and I led an Ecuador tour.

The trip started out with spending some time with Angie's family at the family home near Santo Domingo.  One afternoon I was in the living room and I spotted a large raptor land in the palm in the front yard.  I grabbed my camera, went out on the deck and got a grab shot of it taking off.  I decided to follow the bird as it flew and I saw that it landed in a bare tree some distance away.  All of a sudden I saw another bird fly in, land and activity ensued.  As soon as I saw the other bird fly in I started taking a lot of images, even though I was a long distance and I knew it would be a big crop.  The settings for this shot were Canon 5D4, 500F4 1/1000 F6.3, iso 1000, Av mode, evaluative metering +2.0, handheld.  From experience I knew that I would have to add a couple of stops to the evaluative metering when working with that bright cloudy sky background.  I also wanted decent depth of field with 2 large birds and enough speed to stop the action to some extent.  One way to meter these shots against a bright sky background is to push the sky as far right in the histogram as possible without blowing it out, this will usually result in a pretty good exposure of your subject while retaining some detail in the sky.

A little bit later I found the female perched by itself and luckily it took off straight at me, so this isn't much of a crop.  The settings for this shot were Canon 5D4 500F4 1/1600 F6.3, iso 1000, Av mode, evaluative metering +2.0, handheld.  Even with the +2.0 exposure compensation I had to lighten this image up some to get good detail on the underside of the kite, so much so that I had to just go with blowing out the sky.  It's often a challenge to get good detail when photographing the underside of a raptor against a bright sky.  But the blown out background serves as a nice contrast for the bird. I would prefer a blue sky background on a sunny day, but with the lighting conditions as they were, this was the best I could manage.   Of course I could change it in photoshop but I don't like to alter my images that much and it's difficult to make the lighting look natural. 

I continued to see the kites in the neighborhood so I kept working to try and get good images of them, but for the most part I wasn't able to get close to them.  Here's a shot of the male for comparisons, while the female is slate-gray the male has a reddish brown neck and underparts.  The settings for this shot were 5D4 500F4 1/1000 F5, iso 800, manual exposure, handheld.  After the original set of images I changed to manual exposure when trying to photograph these birds because I found it more precise.  Again I pushed the sky as far right as possible in the histogram without blowing it out.  For the original series, I had to get my settings really fast and I am more comfortable making quick changes in aperture priority than in manual.  

We photographed this Cinnamon Flycatcher at Bellavista Lodge.  It kept sallying out catching insects and returning to the same perch.  So I set a high shutter speed and iso and prefocused on the branch to attempt to get some landing shots.  None of those worked out great because the bird would usually land from the wrong direction and the lighting was difficult with a small area spot lit against a very dark background.  However we did manage to get some nice images of the bird perched with its prey and preening.  The settings for this shot were Canon 5D4 500F4 1/2000 F6.3, Av mode, evaluative metering -2.7, Gitzo Tripod, Wimberley Head.  The settings for this shot are kind of the opposite of the high key kite shots.  With the very dark background and the bird spot lit in the sun I needed to dial in a lot of negative exposure compensation to keep from overexposing the bird. 

Chuck, Guilherme and I also spent a couple of days photographing at Los Gralarias Lodge.  It was at the end of July during the dry season and a lot of birds were using the bird bath there.  This is a Blue-winged Mountain Tanager.  The settings for this shot were Canon 5D4 500F4 1/200 F5.6, iso 800, Av mode, evaluative metering -0.3, 600ex flash at -1.3, Gitzo Tripod, Wimberley Head.  For these types of bathing shots I find you don't need a lot of shutter speed to usually have at least some of the images of bird's head sharp.  That was was the case here and if I have a bit of blur in the wings it adds to the shot, showing the motion.  I like the splashing action but obviously the problem here is the unattractive man made bird bath.  The reason I included this shot is to show what I had to work with and change.

So I used a technique that I had used before at the Asa Wright Nature Center in Trinidad, I covered the bird bath with large ginger leaves, being sure to leave a puddle of water in the middle for the birds to bathe in.  It gives the impression the birds are bathing in a natural puddle in the forest.  This is a Beryl-spangled Tanger, one of my favorites.  The settings for this one were Canon 5D4 500F4 1/320 F5.6, iso 1000, Av mode, evaluative metering at 0, 600ex fill flash at -1.3, Gitzo Tripod, Wimberley Head.  I added a bit of fill flash to each of these shots to give me a bit more light and add some more punch to the colors.  Again the head is sharp, while the wings are blurred with the relatively slow shutter speed.   

Here's a White-tailed Tyrannulet in the bird bath at Las Gralarias.  The settings for this one were Canon 5D4 500F4 1/200 F5.6, iso 1000, Gitzo Tripod, Wimberley Head.  Over the course of a couple of hours I photographed 8 or 9 species coming to the bird bath, some of the birds would also perch on the leaves and drink water.  Some of the other birds I photographed in the bath were Masked and White-sided Flowerpiercers, Slate-throated Redstart and Slaty-backed Nightingale Thrush.  Some of these species such as the flowerpiercers I don't associate with bird baths so that was interesting.  Las Gralarias is a nice place to spend a couple of days on your own photographing, especially in the dry season.  The backgrounds and vegetation are busy for bird photography but some interesting and difficult birds come to the bath and feeders. Another way to deal with a stone water feature like the one at Las Gralarias is to add moss all around the edges of the bath. 

Next we went to Sachatamia Lodge which has long been my favorite lodge for bird photography in Ecuador.  To our surprise we discovered that they had built a bird blind there and we spent a couple of early mornings in the blind.  One of the most common species in the blind is the Strong-billed Woodcreeper.  This one landed on the ground quite close to us and picked up this large insect.  I cropped it to a portrait as it was too close to get the whole bird in.  The settings for this shot were Canon 5D4 500F4 1/100 F5, iso 1250, Av mode, evaluative metering -0.3, 600ex fill flash at -1.7, Gitzo Tripod, Wimberley Head.  It was at this time that I met Javier Zurita who I found out had built the blinds at Sachatamia.  Now Javier is always one of the leaders on our Ecuador photo tours.  

We also did a bit of multi-flash photography at Sachatamia.  This is a Velvet-purple Coronet photographed with a Canon 5D4 and 500mm at 1/200 F18, iso 800, with 5 slave flashes.  In next month's newsletter I will show more multi-flash images with additional info on the settings we use.