Capturing Alaska
with Wayde Carroll





Unexpected Gift!




  The other morning I was heading out to run some errands. Photography was the last thing on my mind. I was going over my to-do list in my head: get coffee, drop off books at the library etc. etc. It was cold, around five degrees, so I was in a hurry to get to the car. As I turned to lock the front door behind me I caught some motion out of the corner of my eye. I looked towards the side of our home where we have a nice sized Mountain Ash tree and was pleasantly shocked to see it full of Bohemian Waxwings gobbling the dried berries that remained from summer. There were at least fifty birds hopping from limb to limb. Some looked lean and healthy while some were positively obese from gorging themselves!
  They didn’t seem too worried about me so I excitedly snuck back in the house and got my camera set up for some wildlife photography in my own front yard! I slapped a 70-200mm F4 lens onto my Canon 20D, which basically gave me a 300mm lens due to the fact that the CMOS sensor in this camera is smaller than a frame of 35mm film.
  I knew I wanted a fast shutter speed so I could hand- hold the camera while shooting and to try and freeze the birds in motion. I set the aperture wide open at F4 and the ISO to 400. This allowed me to shoot at 1/500th of a second and I was able to get plenty of sharp images. The wide-open aperture also gave me a shallow depth of field, which helped to isolate the birds from the cluttered background of branches.
  I forgot to grab my gloves when I grabbed the gear and my hands became quite cold but I was afraid to go back in and frighten the birds away. It was a good decision. After about ten minutes of shooting the Bohemian Waxwings took off as a group, leaving scant few berries in their wake, but one extremely lucky photographer. What a thrill it was to spend such intimate time with these surprise visitors. It’s nice to know that every once in a while good things are just handed to you!