Shutter therapy; A Quick Trip To Virginia's Eastern Shore

A male Belted Kingfisher taking flight. (click any image to enlarge)
OM-1 Mark II; 150-600mm f/5-6.3 lens @ 600mm; 1/2500th sec. @ f/6.3; ISO 1250

I have been suffering a bit from the winter doldrums.  It wasn't too bad, usually worse in mid-February, but I wanted to do something now to pull myself out of my creative rut, so to speak.  So, I decided to take a break from the home routine and take a short photographic road trip.  

Each year for the past 20 years, a few photographer friends and I have met most of the time in mid-December at the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge on Assateague Island on Virginia's Eastern Shore.  The object is to photograph local and migrating birds of various species.  The other guys photograph birds much more frequently than I do but I enjoy the experience and challenge of photographing them on occasion.  Photographing birds is one of the more challenging types of photography, in my opinion.  Due to some extenuating circumstances last month, our December trip was canceled.  However, I decided to make the trip, albeit solo,  a two weeks ago.  

OM-1 Mark II; 150-600mm f/5-6.3 lens
@ 600mm; 1/2000th sec. @ f/6.3; ISO 800

Some of you older readers may of heard of the 1947 book, Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry.   You can read more about the history and plot of the novel here.  The novel made the town of Chincoteague famous, mainly for its annual "pony swim" and auction of the wild ponies that live in the wildlife refuge.  But I digress.

The day that I arrived in the NWR the light was miserable.  The temperature was in the high 30ºs F with heavy cloud cover and a stiff wind from the north.  Nonetheless, I set out on my usual activities looking for wading birds, shore birds, waterfowl, ducks, geese and swans as well as other migrating birds.  I almost had the entire refuge to myself.  Unfortunately, there was a general dearth of birds but I expected that.  What I didn't expect was for most of the small waterways and canals in which the wading birds feed to be frozen over.  Additionally, most of the water surface of the larger ponds in which the geese and swans frequent were frozen as well.  In all of my years going to Chincoteague, I had never seen ice nor snow and there was a lot of it this time.  Regardless, I still had the solitude and pleasure of spending a couple of days in nature.

I watched this male Hooded Merganser lead this female around for quite a long time.  There
must have been something really attractive to her abut him!
Nikon Z8; 180-600mm f/5.6-6.3 @ 600mm; 1/12500th sec. @ f/6.3; ISO 1250

Day two was a bright blue sky kind of day.  That helped with using lower ISOs to capture my subjects and, since I wasn't doing any landscape photography, the clear blue sky wasn't a factor.  Landscape photographers always like character in their skies.

As far as photo gear goes, I took two kits mainly because I wanted to compare the experience using both and figure out which one I liked using better.  Additionally, which I have not yet done, I wanted to calculate my 'hit rate' with the two kits to see if I was more successful with one versus the other.

The two kits I used were:

Nikon Z8

Nikon Zf (as a backup)

Nikon 180-600mm lens

OM-1 Mark II

OM-1 (as a backup)

150-600mm lens

OM-1 Mark II; 150-600mm f/5-6.3 lens
@ 328mm; 1/2000th sec. @ f/6.3; ISO 3200

In the end, I used the OM system more than the Nikon system.  It wasn’t because one performed better than the other or one’s image quality was superior to the other's.  I believe the reason was the effective field of view of 1200mm (full frame) of the OM 150-600mm lens allowed me to capture birds that were farther away—ones that I would not normally photograph.  I made shots with that combination where with the Nikon I didn’t as 600mm just wasn't long enough.  Additionally, even using the Z8 in DX Mode (1.5X crop) with an effective full frame field of view of 900mm still didn't result in the reach to photograph many of the birds.  That 1200mm focal length equivalent, I would say, was the clear advantage for using the OM system.  (Note: DX Mode on the Z8 generates a 19.3mp file, almost an identical resolution to the OM-1’s 20.2mp.  So there is little advantage.)

In the end, I saw a pretty wide variety of birds, just not a lot of them close enough to photograph.  I saw more Bufflehead ducks than I've ever seen in Chincoteague in the past.  However, for the first year, I saw no Snow Geese.  Not a one.  Also, I saw only 12 Tundra Swans but they were too far away to photograph.

One of the wild ponies of Chincoteague.
OM-1 Mark II; 150-600mm f/5-6.3 lens
@ 600mm; 1/2500th sec. @ f/6.3; ISO 1000

Back home, looking at my images on my 27" monitor, I really didn't any obvious differences between the photographs made with the OM camera and lens versus those made with the Nikon gear.  Unless I checked the metadata, I really couldn't determine which camera and lens combination made which images.  Additionally, I made images with ISOs up to 12,800.

All in all, I had a nice trip and made some satisfying photographs.

Here are a few more of the images I made.  None of these posted here are portfolio worthy.  They are mostly just record shots.  Ordinary.  But the trip was not about creating portfolio worthy images.  It was about the experience.

Directing the choir?
OM-1 Mark II; 150-600mm f/5-6.3 lens @ 600mm; 1/2000th sec. @ f/6.3; ISO 800

OM-1 Mark II; 150-600mm f/5-6.3 lens @ 600mm; 1/2000th sec. @ f/6.3; ISO 1000

Great Blue Herons are normally very skittish.  It is hard to get anywhere close to them.
I happened to spot this one directly below me at the bottom of an embankment.  I would say it was about 20 ft. away.  This is the full image, no cropping at 600mm (1200mm full frame equivalent)
OM-1 Mark II; 150-600mm f/5-6.3 lens @ 600mm; 1/2500th sec. @ f/6.3; ISO 1250

Another even more skittish bird.  These female Buffleheads change direction or just fly
away even if you just stop the car on the roadway.  I don't know why this one stayed around,
but this is one of the first set of good images I've made of one in many years.
OM-1 Mark II; 150-600mm f/5-6.3 lens @ 500mm; 1/1600th sec. @ f/6.3; ISO 1000

OM-1 Mark II; 150-600mm f/5-6.3 lens @ 150mm; 1/2500th sec. @ f/5; ISO 10,000

I've counted as many as about 25 of these ponies grazing together in prior years.  Almost all look
very much alike in their white and brown markings.
OM-1 Mark II; 150-600mm f/5-6.3 lens @ 251mm; 1/2000th sec. @ f/5.7; ISO 400

Nikon Z8; 180-600mm f5.6-6.3 lens @ 600mm; 1/1600th sec. @ f/9; ISO 1400

This Northern Shoveler was having a bad time trying to get his footing on the icy pond.  Here
his leg is splayed out to the left.  It was comical.
Nikon Z8; 180-600mm f5.6-6.3 lens @ 390mm; 1/2000th sec. @ f/6; ISO 1400

Nikon Z8; 180-600mm f5.6-6.3 lens @ 600mm; 1/2000th sec. @ f/6.3; ISO 9000

OM-1 Mark II; 150-600mm f/5-6.3 lens @ 600mm; 1/2000th sec. @ f/6.3; ISO 500

OM-1 Mark II; 150-600mm f/5-6.3 lens @ 600mm; 1/2000th sec. @ f/6.3; ISO 500

My brief trip accomplished what I wanted it to accomplish—it got my creative juices flowing, allowed me to practice some rusty bird photography and enjoy some quiet time in nature.  I found the short road trip time well spent.

I can highly recommend some shutter therapy to cure those winter blues.

Join me over at my website, https://www.dennismook.com.  

Thanks for looking. Enjoy!  

Dennis A. Mook  

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