Buzzard Exposure

Sunday presented me with a dilemma, do I stay in and watch the England cricket team push for an unlikely victory in the 3^rd test match against Pakistan or do I wander out into the field complete with camera to see what I can find and enjoy the afternoon sunshine? With Pakistan a tantalising five wickets down, I nonetheless went out for a local walk, no car, just a couple of hours within a short distance from the house covering a bit of low grade heathland, some pine trees and some grassland. The habitat is a lot better than I have just made it sound and this is a favourite walk.

Most of what follows is all about buzzards, two of them to be precise making quite a racket in the skies above my head, busily shouting at each other as I tried to take photographs. These are pretty common around Surrey these days, a line I would never have thought to write a few years ago when they were a treat to be seen on family holidays to Devon. Now I am going to get a bit technical (at least by my standards) around exposure; stay with me it will be interesting (a bit).

One of the things I wanted to do was capture the rather splendid underwing pattern of the buzzard and to do that, I ended up playing with exposure levels. The photos that follow are unmolested by photoshop apart from a bit of judicious cropping. I will talk in term of 'stops', so over exposed by 1 stop or level, 2 stops etc. The first photo has no ‘stops’ so is if you like, ‘normally’ exposed. This is mostly because when the buzzards appeared, I instantly panicked about the possibility that they would fly away and just pointed the camera and started shooting! Nonetheless, I like the natural light and warm colours (as I see them) and the picture does show the power of a large(ish) raptor, quite likely my favourite group of birds.

Buzzard (normal)

Ok, so panic is receding a bit as the birds are showing no real signs of leaving me so this next shot is ‘over exposed’ by 1 stop. It’s a bit different because the buzzard is against a bit of cloud but begins to show up a more detail. Different buzzards have seemingly endlessly variable plumage, light phases and dark phases and middlin phases and this one is a typical buzzard; broad black trailing edges and primary tips to a fairly white outer underwing graduating to lovely barred secondaries.

Buzzard (1 stop)

Against all my expectations (I operate on the basis that good things don’t happen to me at times like this), the birds are still with me so now we go to 2 stops over exposed. All the features I have mentioned are showing nicely in this image but now the sky is looking on the pale side, certainly paler than I remember it ‘live’. Still, nice image in some ways illustrating the fact that this bird is calling, as both birds were constantly doing all the while I was with them.

Buzzard (2 stop)

Last shot, this one 3 stops over exposed and let’s be honest, positively bleached, both bird and sky, but still calling. I might play with this on on photoshop now.

Buzzard (3 stop)

I have nice things to say about the first three images and, at least in these conditions, I guess the ‘right’ exposure is perhaps the 1 stop, quite like the two stopper in many ways (this is beginning to sound like an F1 strategy). Putting all that to one side, this is a relatively common, but deeply impressive, almost regal bird; powerful, beautiful and if you qualify as food, distinctly dangerous.

Oh, England won the test match and of course I have it recorded so, best of both worlds!