Photo Details

Another dark bird on an overcast day, placed against a gray background.   Now the dark head and the white breast are competing, and shooting the image in JPEG format limited the options I had for drawing out the details in both those extremes.    In hindsight, I probably should have switched to RAW format and slightly overexposed.   The bird’s face would have opened up some detail, and the details on the white breast could have been teased out in post-processing.

Shot from the car using the window mount at the Crescent City harbor.

The Aleutian Goose Festival in Crescent City, CA  www.aleutiangoosefestival.org is hands-down my FAVORITE bird festival in North America.   The Festival was founded to help protect the migration stopover of the Aleutian Goose, at that time a sub-species of Canada Goose that was on the Endangered Species List.    In subsequent years, the Aleutian Goose was removed from the Endangered Species List, and became reclassified as a member of the Cackling Goose species complex.  The geese are now doing fine.   I love the festival because the people are wonderful, the scenery is great, and the digiscoping opportunities are everywhere – seabirds, waterfowl, gulls, landbirds, even scenic shots and sunsets against the famous Crescent City Lighthouse.    Sometimes you have to wait a few days for good weather, but it is worth it!

1/320 sec @ ISO 800