Evening sun and birding around the corner with the sony a7riv and 200-600mm
Full screen gallery below
Summer is here! Warm weather, late(r) evenings and golden hour for ages. Ha! I love it. Time to go explore. It’s just around the corner here over in the meadows, but still fun to do and doesn’t take up much time. This time I took my new gimbal head with me on a tripod to get the best shots, but more so to get some additional video. I really got excited in not only capturing photos but also video. So scroll down to see short clips and the photos of course.
After dinner, with epic light - golden hour rules -, I jumped on the bike into the surrounding area near my house. Not the most exciting, but good enough for some good photos. I ended up not where I was planning to go, but without realising it, I stayed the whole evening at the same location. This location I photographed to death, but still sometimes there is something new.
In this case it was a really relaxed, even posing for a while, small little (great) tit (Koolmees - Parus major) with a small spider in its beak. It looked like he was really proud of his catch, because he just sat there to be photographed. Nice!
While I could have stayed there the whole evening, after a few shots I got the photo(s) I wanted, especially the one above sitting in the evening sun. Would loved to get it with a more clean background, but the surrounding area wasn’t giving me that opportunity, so this was the best I got (others below).
Moving on I noticed a pair of Great crested grebe (Fuut - Podiceps cristatus) being really active. They where actually finding food/fish for the two little juveniles on the back of the mother. It was really cool to see! In the end I also managed to get some video which I liked a lot! Again, still learning to take proper video, but the proces for now is really satisfying.
After a few photos and videos I decided to take a look around to see what more there was to photograph. Moving back and forth I decided to stay at one spot to catch some flying and singing Sedge warblers (Rietzanger - Acrocephalus schoenobaenus) or The Eurasian reed warblers (Kleine Karrekiet - Acrocephalus scirpaceus). In the end I got some reed warblers in the sun on photo and video. Again the latter was really cool to capture.
I’m getting the hang of video and really enjoying it! The new tripod and especially the gimbal head helps a lot. I always was a bit against tripod for bird photography as it limited my freedom of moving around. However in the end, choosing and staying at a location will take up more time, but will reward you in the end. So I will be taking the tripod and gimbal more and more. I use a relatively cheap and beginners gimbal, but it works! So why not. Its this one from Jobu - https://www.jobu-design.com/Jobu-Jr3_p_9.html
So there you have it! A video and some photos! All shot with the Sony combo! And don’t hesitate to leave a comment or an e-mail. Click to view larger in a light box and navigate with mouse or arrow keys. Enjoy!
