Good morning all! It's been a while since my last post, and try as I might, I've not been able to convince Kenz that she should take up blog writing full-time. As a result, I guess I'm back to writing my own material.
We've been madly trying to sort and post photos from 3 consecutive weekends of horseshows, with the end finally in sight. Once the Didsbury pictures are up, we can concentrate on our really big project that has been brewing for some time. I'll discuss it in the next post, which, unlike today's, will actually pertain to something equine.
So, what am I on about today then? Birds. Pelicans in particular and my first attempts at shooting a super-tele from a boat. Should be easy, right? Big glass, close pelicans, great morning light,what can go wrong? Movement!! Good grief, I had no idea how much a boat moved until I was looking through 600mm of glass trying to shoot a bird flying a foot off the water.( Now, I'm not totally new to boats, but I'm by no means boat savvy, so those of you who are can begin mocking me now...)
I don't have a lot of advise on the subject-technically it's not really different than any other picture, although the water tends to throw around a lot of stray light that I wasn't used to shooting from shore, so I found spot metering gave me my best results with surprisingly few blown-out sky shots.
No, it was the movement of the boat that killed me! My brother-in-law was great, creeping up slowly with the trolling motor then shutting it down early and drifting in, but it was still like bad 60's Hollywood acid trip looking through that lens. And holding your breath, no, that just makes everyone in the boat wonder what the heck your doing to be out of breath! I had brought a monopod, thinking that with the little room I had up in the bow seat, that would be a good tool for stability. Most definitely not the answer-it seemed to amplify the movement 10-fold. I also tried stabilizing it on my knee with similar results. The best results came when I just hand held the unit , (breathed!!!) and let the IS do it's job.
When I was buying this lens a while back, I read a lot of reviews that it's too heavy-can't be hand held, etc. I even discussed it with the salesman, who told me he often hand-held his Nikon 600 with stellar results, you just have to put a little effort into it.
I'd have to say I agree. While you won't be doing it all day, it's more than possible to get the shots you need. here's the proof.

For those of you keeping track, I'll now get back to sorting and posting show pictures.

Bluffton Classic 2012

Hey everyone! Mackenzie here. Dad's out shooting some jumpers so I'm your interim blogger for this post. :) This past weekend has been a flurry of activity at the WW Ranch in Bluffton. The days have been filled with rider after rider competing for that lovely red ribbon. Mind you, getting up in the early hours of morning was not very appealing, we made it through the past three days without falling over entirely. (Hey. It's summer. Gimme a break.) Whether it be standing inside the arena or standing in the scorching heat outside, we managed to get some pretty good shots. Dad tells me, "Pick out your favourites." Me, ".... OKAY!" *goes and tags over 70, and then, with great difficulty, goes and whittles down the selected to about 6.* (Yeah, harder than first thought.) Howbeit, all of the pictures were good, and I've managed to pick a few of the stunners. I think most of these were taken by yours truly, however, there's wayyy too many to try and keep track of who took this and that.
This is simply a preview of what's yet to come. We hope to post the rest of them in the coming week.
Talk later soon,
Mackenzie :)

(Never mind, this one above is Dad's) :)