Eagle Bluff

A DAY AT EAGLE BLUFF CONSERVATION AREA

Columbia, Missouri

July 8, 2018

The high for the day was 90° but during my morning visit it was in the low to mid 80’s.  The sky was clear and it was a sunny bright day.  There weren’t a lot pf people in the area; however, the roads were dry and what cars were there stirred up a lot of dust. It is wise to roll up your windows when you see cars approaching and always use the inside circulation of your car air conditioning. Even this won’t stop dust from getting into your vehicle or on your equipment but it helps.  If only folks would slow down when approaching a park car. Always remember to clean your equipment after a day in this area or any area that is dusty or sandy.

I started off the day looking for the Sunflower Field.  The field is on Private Property, even though it is in the confines of Eagle Bluff and it appears the City of Columbia has added two pump stations on the road leading to the property.  I also noticed a sign halfway to the field that indicated “authorized vehicle only”.  Just a note of caution and please respect this owners property and his crop. Yes, these are not growing wild they are a commodity and damaging them could cost some bucks.

I used three cameras today.  For the Sunflower Field I was shooting with a Nikon D750 and a Fujifilm X-T2.

This first image was taken with a Fujifilm X-T2.  I was using a 18-135 walk around lens. My settings were as follows; f/5.6, 1/180sec, and ISO of 200.

My second image was also taken with the Fujifilm X-T2 and same lens.  My settings were as follows; f/5.6, 1/160sec, and ISO of 200. I haven’t accomplished the art of fine tuning the focus, using focus peaking. (Focus peaking works by detecting edges of highest contrast in your scene and therefore most in focus and highlighting them in a bright color, usually of your choice.)

The above image was taken with a Nikon D750 with a Tokina 100mm Macro Lens.  My settings were as follows, f/8, 1/250sec, ISO 100 and EV of -1. I processed this so that only the flower in the lower right corner would be in focus.  I used a Gaussian Blur Filter and Radial Filter to help accomplish this.

My final image of the Sunflower Field was of the flowers looking to the sun as if worshiping the energy of its rays.  I positioned myself in order to shoot the back of the flowers as they were facing east.  The flowers will follow the sun as it travels across the sky to the west.  Also taken with a Nikon D750 and macro lens the settings were set to f/8, 1/250sec, and ISO 100 and a -1 EV.

I traveled on with no set plan or place to go just looking for wildlife. I ended up taking the road towards Pools 14 and 15.  There were a lot of White Egrets and Blue Heron in the park today.  The water is low in Pool 10 with only shallow water and an exposed mud floor. This makes for great hunting for invertebrates, and fish for these birds.

Turning from one gravel road to the next I saw a large gathering of Egrets and Heron.  I grabbed my camera, the Fujifilm, and when I did I must have locked down the safety buttons on the shutter dial and ISO dial and also moved them to their maxes.  Bottom line I was shooting at f/22 and an ISO 12500. Yep 12500.  

Now this image is not the best, no let’s put it in its proper perspective, it sucks and normally I would delete such a capture.  It has a lot of noise, not to mention focus was off but I am posting it in this blog because I wanted to show the number of Egrets/Heron in the area. I also was amazingly surprised at the picture. I drove down the road and naturally they all flew off so I couldn’t repeat the capture and it wasn't until I drove off that I notice the locked up controls on my camera.  (You have to push in a safety button on top of the control wheel in order to turn the control and change the settings and these had not released.)

Some of the pools have patches of American Lotus flowers in bloom.  Beautiful flowers but these plants are invasive and uncontrolled will take over all the pools.  It appears MDC is addressing this problem as I noticed a patch that were dead, appearing to have been sprayed. On this particular day I was able to compose the next two images of an Egret feeding among the flowers.  The Egrets don’t appear to be as skittish as the Herons especially when hunting for food.

I switched to my Nikon D500 and Sigma 150-600mm lenses for these shots.  My settings were as follows; f/5.6, s/1000sec, and ISO 125.  My focal length was 310mm or a 35mm equivalent of 465mm.  Normally I shoot at f/8 because this lens is sharpest at that setting and I for sure did not need the light.  What this boils down to is forgetting to check my settings prior to taking the shot'

My final catch for the day was this Blue Heron perched on a Wood Duck House. Like I mentioned earlier these birds are flighty and quick to take to flight once your vehicle gets near or for sure if you stop the car. 

Settings for this image was f/6. 1/1000sec, and ISO 280. My focal length was 460mm or a 35mm equivalent of 690mm.

Well it was only natural for him to take to flight.  I mean after all I was a block away and posed a major threat to his safety.

If you enjoyed this post please leave a comment.  I have been told that unless you have a Google account you have to prove you are a human.  This prevents spam so please take the time to go through the questions and steps or better still set up a Google+ account and create you own personal social network that you can restrict to photography, photographers, and photography groups. Thanks for stopping by.