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Birmingham UK, a nice duck on Edgbaston Reservoir.
Birmingham UK, a nice duck on Edgbaston Reservoir.
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Aperture f/1.4 
May, 2014Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
I took this photo at Edgbaston Reservoir in Birmingham UK on May 21st. It was spring and myself and a couple of friends wanted to have a morning walk around the reservoir which is about 2 miles. I took my camera and wanted to get a few photos to put up on my various social media photo streams promoting Birmingham, Great Britain's best kept secret. I am trying to expose the city for what it is actually like rather than the general perception that is a post-industrial wasteland.Time
It was around 11am, and the sun was high and bright. the trees were fully green and the early signs of summer were abound. I wasn't particularly looking for wildlife photos but all around the edge of the reservoir were lots of ducks, swans, greebs, coots, pigeons, and even carp just below the surface of the water. As well as taking loads of photos of the reservoir and the beautiful setting, I decided to grab a few of the wildlife.Lighting
The sun was shining strongly through the trees that surround the lake and produced beautiful pools of light and dappling on the shore areas on the east side of the reservoir. The shadows were stark and the water was highly reflective.Equipment
I used my Canon 100D with a Tamron 80-300mm lens in fully manual control, hand held with f5.0 and 1/2500th at 228mm, ISO 100. I wanted to have a fast shutter setting to freeze any motion, and a shallow depth of field. I actually took about 20 shots of this duck and this one was the one that stood out when i reviewed them on my laptop.Inspiration
It was the stunning beauty i found before me, the amazing colours and textures with all the leaves and vegetation, and a certain serenity of the atmosphere, especially that the reservoir is only a mile from the city centre and surrounded by the inner city. I was surprised how much opportunity there was to capture wildlife, not something I usually do, I'm generally more interested in architectural and landscape photography, but was particularly pleased with this photo of a nice duck, and I have had lots of positive feedback and encouragement to do more wildlife photography.Editing
I import the camera RAW (CR2) file into Photoshop Elements on a MacBook Pro. I set the white balance to 'daylight' as the camera daylight setting seems to be a little off. I then added a 50% sharpen, used the lighting adjustments to reduce the highlights a bit and boost the mid tone contrast. I then used the 'levels' adjustment tool to crush the mid tones and the blacks a little, and then boosted the saturation a little.In my camera bag
I carry my 100D, 18-55mm, and 80-300mm lenses, a polarising filter, spare batteries and memory chips, a cleaning cloth, and that's all.Feedback
Use a large aperture with a fast shutter speed, but don't go above 200 asa film speed as this will produce too much grain. Getting a shot perfectly in focus is hard without a tripod at these settings using a long lens, so I put the camera into multi-shot continuous mode and took lots of shots, knowing that I won't know for sure till I get the pics on a large screen that any will be right. Digital is perfect for this kind of shooting as one can afford to take several of each subject at virtually no cost. I also bracket the shutter speed with a couple at slower, and a couple at faster, knowing that much can be done in Photoshop to bring back an under or over exposure from the RAW file. Shooting in RAW is the key as Jpegs will not allow the same amount of post-processing without losing quality.
