Fullersburg Woods Forest Preserve - 4.15.12 - Post 4

Here we go again! :)  More Fullersburg Woods spottings.

One of the real stories of the day was the sheer flocks of Red Admiral butterflies.  I mean, I could stand on the path and look at some of the nearby flowers and there would be six or seven of these guys floating around.  I'd walk 20 feet down the path, look at some flowers and see six or seven more.  And the whole place was like that.

Red Admiral Butterfly (035 - 2012)

Red Admirals aren't uncommon in the area, but we tend to get a lot more Monarchs and Painted Ladies and smaller butterflies in the Whites and Sulphur families.  So the large number of these guys was notable.  And they aren't just hanging out in forest preserves - which is the only places I've seen them before - they're around the block I live on!  I've seen them in really busy Chicago neighborhoods.  The news is even covering the abundance of these guys, there's so many.

Now one of the nicer things about being in 'the middle of nowhere' in the middle of Northern Illinois, is that I can still get cell phone reception out there.  So I googled Red Admiral caterpillars, to know what I was looking for, but even then I didn't see any. :(  I'll keep looking though.

There were also herds of little white butterflies that didn't, from what I could see, have the black spot that marks a Cabbage White.  But not one of them would land for more than half a second.  Not one.  So maybe if I go back out there next month I'll have better luck with those.

This is another flower that was tricky to research.  Turns out it's a Wild Geranium.  It's about an inch across, so it's a pretty small flower. 

Wild Geranium (036 - 2012)

I love the clarity of this shot.  The clear dark veins in the petals, the anthers that are bright yellow with pollen.

Great Black Wasp (037 - 2012)

The bees and wasps are slowly making their way out.  This Great Black Wasp was hanging out near the Red Admiral Butterflies

I need to start working on using a fill flash when I'm outside just to let the camera move a little faster.  This could have bee a really cool shot if the ISO were lower and the shutter was a bit faster.  You can see the hairs on the wasp's feet, but where his wings were moving a bit and his antennae were clearly moving, there's too much blur.

 And this is where I wish I had my tripod.  This Great Blue Heron was just hanging out on this downed tree on the other side of the river for a very, very long time.

I would have loved to have been able to use a narrower aperture to get this guy, because clearly there's too much light here and there's still blur, which means the shutter was open too long to be done well hand-held.

The heron was itching and moving and ducking around to stretch as I was watching.  Here you can see the length of his neck, even if it is all folded up under his head.

Great Blue Heron (038 - 2012)

Here you can see him scratching an itch on his head.  It made his white crown pop up.

On a photography note, you can really tell the difference between the shooting modes I was using.  In the first two I was on 'action' mode and let the camera make the decisions for me.  It chose f5.6 at 1/200th of a second.  It also clearly changed the setting of the white balance and it upped the ISO to 200.

On this one, you can see that it looks much greener.  This was done on Av (aperture priority mode, meaning I set the ISO, the white balance and the f-stop, the camera chose the shutter speed).  I had it on ISO 100, the white balance was set for a cloudy day and the f-stop was 5.6 here also.  The shutter speed was a much slower 1/50th.  You can clearly see what the difference is between the two white-balance settings.  The first one has a lot more blue and this one is a lot more yellow.  Honestly, I think the true light values were somewhere in between.

Okay, one more post on this walk then I need to double back around and do the North Pond walk that I actually did between the last Magic Hedge trip and this trip.

Total Identified Species Sited for the Year: 38
Total Unidentified Species Sited for the Year: 1
Total New Species: 20

Red Admiral Butterfly
Wild Geranium*
Great Black Wasp
Great Blue Heron

What Does This Button Do? - White Balance

Many people want photographs that are, in essence, memory aids.  "Hey, there's a shot of Little Jack's first birthday!  Remember that?"  For things like that a camera that does most of the thinking for you is perfectly fine.

But when you start thinking about doing photography as art, you need to start taking control of your camera.  I haven't met a dSLR yet that doesn't let you control the features I'm going to highlight.  I haven't met a pocket camera that really does let you control all those same features.  But I do see that that is changing.  For example, about two weeks ago I got a new cell phone and the built in camera lets me adjust the ISO and the white balance.  I can't, however, set the shutter speed or aperture. 

Many of the topics I'll be covering are interconnected.  For example, the faster the shutter, the wider your aperture will need to be (especially when you're shooting hand-held - without a tripod).  But this one is independent of everything else in your camera and one of the last ones I got any kind of real understanding of.  (Okay, not *completely* independent - on most cameras you can only select what you want when in Av, Tv or Manual.  When you use a preset, it also presets this one.)

White Balance.

I remember as a kid, my dad had these cards that were various shades of white - some were grayer, some were more tan.  When I asked what they were for he'd say they were for setting the white balance.  I, being a wise-acre, wondered how the white got off-balance - white was white after all, right?  Otherwise it was gray or tan or something not white.  So never really paid attention to that when I was shooting on film.  I'm also pretty sure I never owned a camera good enough account for the light temperature anyway.

So what is white balance? Basically, it's this: the light in different environments has different temperatures, which has nothing to do with the air temperature.  Your camera needs to know what white should look like in different situations.

Most cameras have a range of presets that will cover most shooting locations.  Outside you get Sunny, Cloudy or Shade.  Inside you get Incandescent Lights (old-style 'regular' lightbulbs), Florescent Lights or Camera Flash.

Most have a custom setting, but I've never needed to use it.

There's also an AWB - Automatic White Balance.  That means that camera checks out the lighting and takes it's best guess.  Sometimes this works fabulously, other times less so.

Here's the short version:  When your white balance is off your shot skews towards one color or another.  White is no longer white. Your picture may have bluish cast in shadows or a yellow cast or a red cast under certain lights.

Like this:
Believe it or not, these flowers are white.  Plain white.  Like that paper you use in your printer white.  Like the background of this blog, white.  But I was shooting with the wrong white balance.  Unfortunately, for as much meta-data as my camera captures and my post-production program will show me, all it says is "Manual White Balance Selection."  So I'm not 100% sure what I was set on, but I think it was set for "Sunlight" when, in fact, I was under incandescent lights.  Bad, dim incandescent lights.

The good news is, this is pretty apparent when you look at your picture in your LCD screen.  I could see right away that these were awfully yellow and adjust the white balance.

Once I did, I got the same shot with accurately white flowers.

Our eyes adjust the 'white balance' naturally, but our cameras can't.  I found that with the abysmal lighting conditions of this particular show, some of my shots actually looked better when I told the white balance I was outside shooting in cloudy weather.  When you have odd lighting, the best thing to do is to experiment.  If you really are outside in bright sunlight, the camera should be able accurately adjust under the "Bright Sunlight" setting.

The AWB setting is very helpful if you're going in and out of various lighting conditions, but if you know you'll be shooting in a given setting, taking control of your white balance can save you a ton of time correcting it in post-production when you realize nothing in your shot is actually white.


Comments?  Questions?  Corrections?  I'd love to hear what people think of posts like this instead of just, "Hey look, I took a picture of a thing!"