Originally I set off to Whiteford NNR to photograph any Dark Bellied Brent geese that over winter in the estuary. The few that I did see right at the end of the reserve were soon scared off by some dog walkers, so I decided to switch to the flocks of Oystercatcher being pushed closer to the shore by the rising tide.
The strong wind was causing real problems keeping my camera and lens still. Even with high ISO and fast shutter speeds, getting sharp images proved difficult. Normally I would get the camera off the tripod and down to the ground, but the wind was drying off the top layer of sand on the beach and blowing it directly towards me. Even with my rain cover over the camera and lifted up on my tripod, sand was already getting in all the nooks and crannies.? I wasn’t going to put it on the deck.
Back on the land part of the reserve, there wasn’t much sign of autumn yet even though a lot of the berries had been and gone. Most of the foliage was still green with only a few areas? of colour on some of the smaller trees.
I liked the different colours of the back lit grasses and small trees at the edge of the marsh, but photographing them with the light directly shining into the lens proved really difficult without getting flare. Normally I like lens flare, but in this shot it didn’t look right. Even with some clouds coming along, 4 stops of hard graduated ND filtration was needed to balance the sky with the foreground producing the result below.
