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Worked hard for this shot - many hours watching and waiting. There were originally 3 chicks but only one survived. When it took its first flight, I felt like a ...
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Worked hard for this shot - many hours watching and waiting. There were originally 3 chicks but only one survived. When it took its first flight, I felt like a proud parent.
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Behind The Lens

Location

The shot was taken in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. I was working there and from the 1st floor landing in our apartment block, noticed the Olive Thrush making its nest. I monitored its activities and soon enough, three little ones were hatched. Every day, I would check up and watch the mother flying in with food. One hatchling fell out of the nest - I put it back but it died. the second died in the nest and the survivor was the subject of the image.

Time

This was late in the afternoon, but I took many shots over a period of a week or two. The light was poor 99% of the time.

Lighting

Lighting was very challenging as it was in the shade and on the dark side of the apartment block, courtyard. I had to use a slow shutter speed but had to try to catch the mother when she was, relatively, still - not easy, as she flitted in and out with food and did not rest for a second !

Equipment

Canon Powershot SX60 and tripod. The flash did not reach that far (10m approx)

Inspiration

I originally saw the mother building the nest and then planned for the time when there were little ones. I very much wanted catch the feeding action. Although I was fortunate to catch a special moment, this is not a goof image from a purely technical perspective. Colour, focus, extraneous foliage are some shortcomings.

Editing

All I used was the free software on Microsoft - played with the exposure. The image was a jpeg so I did not have much scope for post processing. Had it been RAW, I would have toned the saturation down. I was in my "vivid colour" phase and the result was over-saturation. The poor light conditions required slow shutter speeds and focus/sharpness was always a challenge.

In my camera bag

My trusty Canon Powershot is a fixed-lense camera. It is a wonderful bit of "opportunity equipment" and relieves one of the burden of carrying a lot of kit. It has manual shooting capability and in most cases, does not have to stand back for the conventional DSLR's. Other kit would be tripod (standard and mini), spare battery, spare cards, note book, lense cleaner. The flash is on-board.

Feedback

Planning, patience and persistence - this was a long-term project. Because I lived at the apartment, I was able to check a couple of times a day. Apart from that, I had a vision of what I wanted to achieve and worked towards that . I often left the camera on the tripod and popped out to look. Hindsight says that I might have used a reflector or a hand light to improve lighting condition. An off-board flash with enough power, could have helped, but often yields a very flat and hard result.

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