Full moon and clear skies

We had a change of weather this Sunday with blue skies and a full moon after sunset.

I headed out to the White-throated Dipper place at sunrise to explore the possibilities. It didn´t take long for me to find two Dipper’s that seemed to be fighting over the rights to hunt at the best places along this stretch of Säveån.

This time I had brought the tripod and that was surely one of the reasons I actually came home with something to show. Why am I saying this? Because I had trouble with exposure. It is still too dark and I really need snow to lighten up the surroundings. Snow would make it easier to capture good pictures of these interesting birds.

I experimented a little with the flowing water, but I find it hard to get the momentum that I want in this type of picture. I hope the upcoming vacation to Australia will give me ample opportunity to work with flowing water.

A European Robin appear as I sat there waiting for the Dipper to do something of interest. I have had a tough time finding this small bird around Gothenburg, so this was a nice distraction from the Dipper photography.

The picture isn´t the best and it was really a fluke that it turned out this decent. It isn´t tack sharp, but I still like the picture with the bird in the habitat with autumn colors. The picture is taken handheld with a 600mm combo at 1/160s and ISO 3200. If you know what this mean then you´ll understand that it shouldn´t have been possible.

1/600s is the norm for the shutter speed when you have a 600mm lens and I was way too slow with 1/160s. The picture shouldn´t be this ok, but I am surely happy it turned out this way. It still lacks that extra edge in sharpness, but that is compensated by the fact that I actually managed to get 2-3 shots that are decent.

Now I continued the Sunday tour to Mölndal, the city just south of Gothenburg. I want to follow up on a tip about Crossbills.

It was hard to find this place, but I found it in the end.

There were 7-8 people at the place and that is always good. It didn´t take long for me to see the first Two-barred Crossbill. They were eating seeds from a European Larch.

This is not a good Crossbill photo in my eyes, but it is the only one I felt was good enough to show here. The trouble is the bright blue skies in the background coupled with the twigs in the foreground. Sadly I couldn´t direct the Crossbills, but hopefully the´ll stay for some more time before they move on.

The week then ended with a nice full moon that I tried to photo.

It is hard to do anything out of the ordinary when you shoot from your balcony in the center of the city. Still I like the picture and it was great to actually manage to see the landscape on the moon in the picture. Please look at this photo at full screen.

In the end it was a productive day and I hope you find the pictures to be okay even if I ain´t satisfied with most of them.

Photo Gallery: Full moon and clear skies