WildBird

My Holy Grail of Bird Photography

My Holy Grail of Bird Photography By N. Cornwell age 12 Do have a “Holy Grail” of bird watching? I do. I want to-no, have to-photograph a gull. Oh, sure, I have photos of them, but the only ones I have to date are ones that I took at a park where the gulls are so tame that I could practically pet them. And one keeper from the park next door, where they are wild. One keeper for roughly a hundred photographs. Why do I have so low a success rate? The reason I have so few is that they only show up when it is cloudy. You see, I do not use an SLR camera. I use an Olympus Stylus 300 point-and-shoot camera that I hook up to the ’scope. It doesn’t have any different aperture settings. Unfortunately, it does have different shutter speeds, again which the user cannot control. So when it’s cloudy, when the gulls, my Holy Grail show up, the #!?*camera sets too low a shutter speed to compensate for the darkness, thus blurring photographs whenever the gull moves. There are remedies, you say? Name them. Well, you could wait until a gull sits perfectly still and then squeeze of a photo. Ha! Easier said than done. A lot easier said. Gulls do not sit still. Other birds might sit still long enough, but not gulls. Once in a blue moon will a gull stand tall and freeze. Even if one does, it will start moving again as you press the shutter release button. Only once has a gull sat still long enough for a photo, and that is my one keeper from the park next door. Another remedy? How nice. Let’s hear it. Well, you could pan along with the bird as it’s walking. Well, that’s a better remedy, but it still doesn’t work. You see, gulls bob their heads like pigeons when they walk. If one tried to pan along with it and take a picture, the body might be sharp, but the head would be blurred. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go photograph a gull.

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