Sometimes, I'll have to settle for good

Blue Winged Warbler and a cloudy background

I bought my new lens with visions of colorful birds with a blue sky background filling picture frames all over my house. I have quickly realized two things, one positive and one negative.

First the negative. I can't control the weather and the lens needs a lot of light. For this lens to work at peak performance, it needs a lot of light. If it is a dark, cloudy day it will work, but the pictures are not as crisp. Probably more importantly and at no fault of the camera; for pictures of birds to come out great the sun has to be shining on them. Warblers, Tanagers, and Orioles are all beautiful birds but for them too look there best a bright day is better than a dark day obviously. This is not just true of photos, but also just to enjoy them. As for the background, well, anyone that enjoys looking at pictures appreciates a blue sky in the background instead of a grey stratus cloud.

Now the positive- Honestly, I can live with the fact that not every picture that I save will be a masterpiece. Why? Because taking pictures with this lens is far and away better than anything I have ever used. For example- I birded all day from 6 am-5 pm. I saw 52 species of birds. I'd say 8-10 would be considered "good birds". Most of the rest were fairly common to abundant. It was mostly cloudy all day and the occasional drizzle got me worried about my equipment. Not the best photo conditions!

However, I got pictures of birds that far exceeded pictures I had of that species. I got really good pictures of a Blue Winged Warbler. Not a great picture. The sky was cloudy and there wasn't a lot of light. Yet as I was snapping away, I instantly knew one of the pictures was going to be a good one. It was much better than anything I had of Blue Winged Warblers.

If I think of all the species of birds in the Northeast (roughly 300 species in a given year)  and think of how few I have really good pictures of, and now I have the tool to get those pictures, it gets me excited for the challenge. Sure I want all of my photos to look like the Scarlet Tanager I got last week. It is not going to happen. If I only go out when there is good light, then I'm going to spend a lot of time in the house. And May is much too short for that!!!

You can tell a little bit of light came through as I
was taking the picture of this Cardinal