Got 'im!

One of my nemeses has been vanquished! I happened to catch Toledo's male Himalayan monal in the open on September 30.

 

A female companion (July, 2021)

The golden pheasant is still on my nemesis list. He was at the front when I first saw his enclosure, but he was gone by the time I was close enough for a shot.

Toledo Zoo Birds

After Breakfast With the Hippos, the missing gardener and I visited other parts of the zoo, including, of course, the aviary.

black-naped fruit dove (f)

black-naped fruit dove (m)

sunbittern

The back of a Siamese fireback. I have several nice pictures of the whole bird when it's farther back in the enclosure, meaning the mesh doesn't show. Every shot of the feathers that give the bird its name looks like this, with the mesh intruding.

red-whiskered bulbul

diamond firetail chicks

diamond firetail

This emerald starling kept trying to swallow a berry. The out-of-focus video below shows the action.

Does a photograph capture reality?

Does a photograph capture reality? I want to think so. Does a photograph duplicate what I see? No.

A few months ago, when I began spending more time on my hobby, I wanted to take photos that duplicate reality. I'd take the picture and that would be it. It might be out of focus, badly framed, or boring, but the picture would be the picture, the end.

I've been using a Kodak camera for several years, but I thought I should actually learn something about digital photography, so I read a couple of books. I was dismayed that about half of each book was devoted to manipulating photos in Adobe Photoshop. Pictures can be brightened or darkened. Colors can be changed. Soft areas can be sharpened and sharp areas can be softened. This was not for me! My photos would duplicate what I see, the way film does!

Well, I was ignoring realities of photography. I have a pair of 35mm film photos of my dad in our driveway washing a car. I remember taking the pictures because I was in a tree, looking down. As an experiment, I had varied the aperture or shutter speed, and the result was the same car in different shades of blue. Did either one capture reality? Yes, in the sense that both photos showed my dad washing a car. No, in the sense that at least one of the shades of blue did not match the shade I saw. Not only that, but different people could look at the same car and see different colors. What is reality, anyway?

Digital cameras themselves alter visual reality. The light sensors in cameras are not capable of recording the full range of brightness we see in the world. The result is that, sometimes, bright areas of a photo are completely white, with no details. For example, here's a trumpeter swan.

trumpeter swan (Columbus Zoo)

My eyes saw indications of feathers all over the swan's back, but the camera could not record those details.

washed-out white feathers

A similar result is possible in shadows and other dark areas that end up completely black. I haven't yet learned how to handle this.

Cameras also do their own manipulation of images. My Nikon can produce three different sizes of JPEG files, with each size requiring different processing. Heck, the mere production of a JPEG image requires manipulation of the information that comes from the light sensor. What's the difference between the camera's manipulating an image and my manipulating an image? Intent? The camera does what it does, but I can decide to manipulate an image. I have nothing against digital post-processing in general, but it feels sort of dishonest for me to engage in it. But I'm a hypocrite! I manipulate photos by cropping them.

So, does a photograph capture reality? Does it matter? What's my goal, a nice picture straight from the camera, or a nice picture? I don't have Photoshop, but I do have Corel PaintShop Pro... 

I like birds

In the short history of this blog, I've posted photos of birds 60% of the time. That's because I like birds. They're beautiful, and they can fly. I find them easy to photograph, too (when they're standing or perched). Walk-through aviaries eliminate the need to shoot through mesh or fencing, there's no glass to cause unwanted reflections, and the birds can be quite close.

Black crowned crane

In the Congo Expedition area of the Columbus Zoo there is a building with an attached aviary, a view of a grey parrot exhibit, and a view of a colobus exhibit. I was looking at the parrots when a volunteer popped in from the aviary to say a crane was on the railing of the viewing deck. I hustled over there, and here's what I saw:

I don't know what I did to deserve this look:

The bird stood there for quite some time before turning around.

Cranes seem to be all legs, neck, and wings, and what wings they are! (Yep, another visitor was standing right there.)

The bird eventually hopped down to a bush:

At the lower-left is a juvenile, of which there are three. I'll post about them some time.

I thought "black" in "black crowned crane" referred to the velvet-looking patch on the top of the head, but "black" refers to the bird over all. As I learned from the International Crane Foundation, there is also a grey crowned crane. "Crown" refers to these cranes' fancy golden hairdos.


The Columbus Zoo does have grey crowned cranes, in the Heart of Africa, at the other end of the zoo. I have two photos of them, but the birds are far away and my zoom lens doesn't zoom enough to bring them close.