High Plains Drifter

I have posted an album of 7 images from the total lunar eclipse on my gallery.  Here is the direct link.  I shot exclusively at telephoto length (400mm) with my 80-400mm Nikon lens. The images I processed were roughly 250 to 320 ISO images. I hate high ISO noise, so I rarely shoot above ISO 400 unless I absolutely have to. The problem is that at such low ISO is ya gotta leave the shutter open with such low light… and with 400mm of length and f/5.6 (sloow!)…its extremely difficult to achieve sharp images… but I did the best I could, and I am satisfied with my results. On the tripod, I used a remote shutter cable with my D200 with VR mode off and mirror lock UP… I was fortunate that the wind was almost calm at that time of morning. Still though, I found it just about impossible to get sharp images at longer than 1 second shutter speed at 400mm of length during the darker stages of the eclipse. By increasing the exposure compensation and curves adjustment, more noise was introduced even at ISO 250, but wasn’t as bad as my ISO 600 shots, so I didn’t even bother to fully process those.

I did get out to photograph the lunar eclipse early Tuesday morning, August 28th.  Below is one of the images as the eclipse just enters the total eclipse of the "Earth Umbra" at around 4:52am CDT.  This phase of the eclipse provided for a beautiful gradient of colors with a hint of blue/turquoise!  Photo specs:  400mm, f/5.6, 1.0s, ISO 250.  Nikon D200 using the 80-400mm VR lens.

80,000 Sandhill Cranes.  It was one of my days off Monday, and I decided to head out to Quivira to do some photography… since I haven’t done any shooting since the 2nd of January.  With it being late February, I was hoping to photograph some Sandhill Cranes that are staying on the refuge temporarily on their journey north.  While the large majority of these cranes stay along the Platte River about 175 miles north of here, there are a number of family groups that use Quivira.  I think some stop at Quivira shortly anyway before continuing to the Platte.  When I arrived Monday around midday I was greeted to a large conglomeration of cranes on a farm field roughly 3 miles north of the Big Salt Marsh. I photographed from here for about an hour to hour and a half.  In the late afternoon, I drove through the rest of the refuge to try and find any other action, but I didn’t find much — although I did spot 5 Tundra Swans.  I was anticipating the cranes flying back to the Big Salt Marsh just prior to sunset, but that wasn’t happening — they were all still in that one location, frolicking in two different fields separated by an east-west farm road.  I was fortunate enough to have a big row of trees to help use as a blind allowing me to get a bit closer to the cranes than I otherwise would.  Anyway, I stayed here until sunset to photograph them as they were not in any hurry to fly back to the marsh.  I ran into a local photographer and volunteer at Quivira NWR, and we struck up a conversation for a bit… and he told me that the large percentage of these cranes actually stayed the whole winter!  I found that hard to believe given how cold it got during January.  Really interesting.  I wonder how much last winter’s warmth had to do with that, and they figured it would be just as warm this winter and decided to stay after migrating down in late October.

Well it is that time of year again… avian migration.  It is mid-October now and birds are really on the move.  Not the least of which are the Sandhill Cranes.  I was off work this weekend and decided to take a couple quick trips to Quivira to check out the new scenery of birds.  I went up there Friday afternoon after work and arrived there about 5pm or so.  I did not see or hear a single crane until I got about halfway through the drive along Wildlife Drive (the north part of Quivira NWR at Big Salt Marsh).  I finally heard the familiar call of the Sandhill Crane wayyy in the distance.  You almost always hear this birds before you see them, they are so loud and persistent.  A bunch of them were moving in from the north, apparently after a long day’s worth of flying.  They were landing on the southwest shore of Big Salt Marsh, which is their primary roosting ground at the refuge.  In the meantime, I photographed a couple of Avocets in good light, along with a myriad of gulls flying around.  The sun was getting pretty low, and I wanted to get closer to the cranes, so I drove south a couple miles on the sandy road, NE 90th Ave. which skirts the west edge of the refuge.  This road takes you to the closest approach to where the cranes are roosting, just north of the K-19 Rd, by not even a mile.  Several hundred, if not a thousand or so cranes were flying low back and forth from the roost to the nearest cultivated fields about a mile or so to the west.  This was the perfect spot to photograph them from.  I stayed here until sunset.  I got some decent shots, but I had my camera set up to some poor settings, and combined with the low light, a majority of them didn’t turn out very well.

The main reason I wanted to make this afternoon trip was to investigate a morning shoot location, since I was going with a friend of mine, Scott from work to photograph.  Scott and I left around 5:30 getting to the refuge around 7am.  At first, the cranes were silent, making it impossible to determine if they had possibly moved overnight… but after awhile, it became pretty obvious where they were as the grew louder and louder.  We positioned ourselves exactly where I had setup last evening…and sure enough, just about every crane that left the roost, flew over the road where they did last night to the fields directly west of the roost.  The light was pretty darn good, with cranes flying silhouetted against the rising sun.  This is certainly a part of Kansas that very, very people will ever experience.  The number of cranes were in the couple thousands flying over the road!  Anyway, after the majority of them left roost to go loaf and feed for the day in the fields, we took a drive along Wildlife Drive, since Scott had never been to the refuge.  Not a whole lot of activity until we approached a very large flock of gulls on the northwest end of Big Salt Marsh.  I had never seen such a large flock of gulls before like this one… When I got home I had to ID this gull since I’ve never photographed this one before.. "Franklin’s Gull" — a migratory bird that breeds up in the northern Dakotas and south-central Canada.  Reading a little bit about Franklin’s, they actually can reach a population of nearly one million birds during peak migration at Great Salt Plains NWR in northern Oklahoma, about 100 miles south of Quivira NWR.  Anyway, a good little weekend short trip to Quivira!  I’ll upload more photos in the next couple weeks after I get all my Yellowstone/Teton photos processed and uploaded.