By Ted Grussing
… but I’m including a link to Reagan Word’s website tonight and it deals with his winning sculpture “Open Gate” which features a Great Blue Heron which will be located at the Schnebly Hill Road roundabout. The link to his website is: http://www.colorcove.com/gateway.html and he has a video of the conceptual design as well as small sculptures of it available for sale. Reagan is a very talented artist, and nice guy and he thanks many of you for your support and vote in the competition last year which secured his win of the design competition. They are just waiting for the funds to be committed before the final work begins. … so, with this push and the fact that I got some really cool shots of another great Blue Heron I flight today means that is the shot for tonight.
Several people have asked what settings I use for shooting birds on the fly … short answer it depends on all kind of factors … this shot was taken with one of my Canon 1D-X bodies with the new Canon 100/400 mm lens. Settings were 400mm, f5.6, 1/800th shutter speed, and shot in raw format (CR2) and converted on upload to 16 bit .dng files in Adobe 1998 RGB. I do not wipe the metadata from my images so you can see the settings in Adobe Photoshop or whatever image processing program you are using. Lighting conditions were pretty flat with overcast skies. Camera was handheld and I pan them in flight in much the same fashion that I used to lead birds with a shotgun when I was a hunter.
I had already walked the ponds and was on the way back to the van when I saw this guy standing near the road that drops down into the parking lot. The GB are fairly skittish and will always fly as you approach them so I decided to walk down the path between the first two ponds instead of the one along the tree line … reason? … simple … this gave him the option of flying between me and the tree line on my left facing him and the tree line in front of me and which ran to the right. He took the first option and I was able to get this shot with the trees as a backdrop.
Painting the house this morning, a drive down to the ponds and a Walmart run following that … a very good day and tomorrow morning unless it is running I’ll be back out there brush and roller in hand … I’m getting into this whole paint the house thing!
Have a wonderful day … beauty is everywhere you look … smile and share your joy.
Cheers
Ted
And over every lake, and over the crest of every hill, and over the green level of every open field,
and if we could but see, over the sky-obscuring houses of every city …is God painting His revelation.
— Max Ehrmann
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The easiest way to reach Mr. Grussing is by email: ted@tedgrussing.com
In addition to sales of photographs already taken Ted does special shoots for patrons on request and also does air-to-air photography for those who want photographs of their airplanes in flight. All special photographic sessions are billed on an hourly basis.
Ted also does one-on-one workshops for those interested in learning the techniques he uses. By special arrangement Ted will do one-on-one aerial photography workshops which will include actual photo sessions in the air.
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