Winter means drab light and learning to use flash

Winter is here with overcast skies and flat light. Had to have a new battery put in my truck so stuck at home today rather than out chasing swans or looking for eagles.
Molly bought a flash as part of my birthday loot and I have been trying to learn how to use it. Flat light and small backyard birds should be a good learning situation, so I set up our portable blind and have began my education.

Winter also means we have to replenish our feeders more frequently. Molly is off to El Mel tomorrow to get more peanuts for the titmice, flickers, red bellied woodpeckers, along with the downy woodpeckers that show up. Doves, juncos, cardinals, house finches, chickadees and various sparrows have been showing up in ever increasing numbers. This means amending the monthly budget to include suet, safflower, raw peanuts and black oil sunflower seeds…..there goes the Social Security check. 🙂

Here are 3 “learning” images

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2 thoughts on “Winter means drab light and learning to use flash

  1. When you have learned the flash well, you can teach me. The birds that come to my deck and carry off entire peanuts in the sell are blue jays and, can you believe it, nuthatches! It is comical watching the latter try to pick up the peanut but they manage it quite well. I try hard NOT to keep track of how much money I spend on food for the birds and the other critters. I have finch feeders with about 20 available perches and usually have 28 to 30 finches at a time competing for them.

  2. Nancy
    I hope you have some time to kill because I am truly doing this in a ‘trial and error’ fashion…or as Sam Hampton would phrase it…heuristic research 🙂 .

    So far I have resisted placing the camera in P ( we all know that is the “professional” setting 🙂 ) and taking the easy way out. I have the flash set at -2 FEC and probably need to boost it a bit to provide fill flash on a cloudy day but like they say– the trick is to use it and not have it look like you used it. Sounds kind of like some Zen koan.

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