Every list of bird photography tips invariably tells us to “shoot at the bird’s eye level”. A tip that’s often ignored, though not by prize-winning photographers. Of recent top 100 winners in the Audubon photo contest, 70% were clearly eye-level; most of the rest very close to it. But all rules have exceptions. The eyes […]
Sagebrush Dry Cam-Dry (blue), Sure-dry Hip Pack (green), and big custom bag. Note: This is an update of a 2011 post. Gary Luhm has used Sagebrush Dry gear since 2001. Probably my most frequently asked question is “How do you keep your camera dry while kayaking”. In the 90’s I had no pat answer for […]
The year 2023 had some interesting twist and turns and a surprise as well. I started a bird-photography year gung-ho with my Sony A7 IV and 100-400mm GM zoom, same as 2022. By August, though, soon after I purchased the APS-C Sony A6700, I realized the new camera would be my go-to. I sold the […]
Photography in 2022 again saw limited travel and a focus on birds, shot with the Sony A7 IV, almost exclusively with a 100-400mm f5.6 attached. The A7 IV inherits the auto-focus of the vaunted Sony A1. And that auto-focus, particularly with bird-eye control, is precise, nailing shot after shot with a correct set-up (see Mark […]
2021 continued the 2020 trend of photographing birds locally, mostly by kayak, with many compromises due to Covid. All but three favorites were shot with my Sony A7 III and Sony 100-400mm f5.6 lens. Two shots used a tripod. Seated in a kayak, I mostly rested the lens on my palm or on a padded […]
In September, 2020, Australian Birdlife published a two-page article I wrote about photographing birds by kayak. Have a look at: https://en.calameo.com/read/0041078957045ff95451f If the link doesn’t take you directly to the article, use the menu to scroll down to Photo Lab, page 62.
On July 10, 2020, I launched a kayak from Joseph Whidbey State Park, Whidbey Is, WA, and paddled to Smith Is. My photo target was Tufted Puffins. Flat-top, 400-acre Smith Island is not a destination for paddlers. The five-nautical-mile, open water route crosses a shipping lane with barge traffic and speeding watercraft. Wind from the […]
In 1994, a group of us kayakers organized and executed a self-led kayak camping trip at Johnstone Strait, on the north coast of Vancouver Island, BC. It was almost pure bliss. Twenty-five years later, my wife and I joined Sea Kayak Adventures on a six-day kayak camping trip. I’m shocked at the changes. One thing […]
I’m sitting in a kayak at the Sammamish River mouth on Lake Washington. Three hundred or so Common Mergansers flock nearby─in the slough fishing, roosting on the lake or flying in-between. The heavy birds fly at 40 mph up and down the tree-lined slough, a gauntlet that challenges the electronic viewfinder (EVF) and auto-focus of […]
Since 1996 I’ve paddled Potholes Reservoir near Moses Lake almost every year to see and photograph the Western (and Clark’s) Grebe mating dance. Some years, I led kayak birding groups where the paddling was more social then photographic. More often I went solo. Most years I struck out, seeing no dance at all or merely […]