Canada geese make an appearance in today’s One Picture a Day. These geese were pairing up near a pond, grazing in the grass. They are pretty common in these parts. I wanted capture something different about them than the standard “Oh, look, a goose!” shot. This image emphasizes the long, flexible neck of these birds. I like the picture because it takes a moment for the brain to put together the story of the image. Another thing I was going for was the golden light of the setting sun. I had to pull it out a little with the Saturation tool in Aperture as the sun was all but set and shadows were thickening quickly. The rapid loss of light did not give me much time to experiment with camera settings.
This photograph was taken with a Nikon Nikkor 70-300mm AF-S VR ED DX. I can also recommend the older 70-300 AF-S ED, non-VR version. There is also a non-VR, non-ED version that I found to be awful. Both recommended lenses will work on full frame cameras, a nice future-proofing feature. The camera was a Nikon D90.
This image is heavily cropped, and it shows in larger versions. I shot at ISO 800; light was failing as the sun set, I was full out at 300mm. Even with VR, you need some speed in these conditions, with moving subjects to boot. The grain is OK, but at this crop level it starts to show up. Black and white might work well here, and make the grain more of a feature than a distraction. 1/500 sec; f/8. I could have slowed it down another stop to be able to reduce the ISO, though the movement of the goose may have made that more of a tradeoff.
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