We have a lot of Red-Shouldered Hawks in the area. This one was more interested in finding breakfast than worrying about me. Standing as still as a statue on the edge of the fairway, it suddenly broke out in a dead run, buried its head in the grass and came up with breakfast. Still loving the Nikon D6 with the Nikkor 500mm PF combination.
After the turtle episode, this Great Blue Heron out back of the office seemed to choose a more traditional morning meal…..
Shooting with the new Nikon D6, I have been working a lot of birds in the early hours. Whether out on the golf course or out back of the office, we have water and there is an assortment of tidbits that draws the birds in. This Great Blue Heron surprised the heck out of me (and probably the turtle) when I watched him grab a small turtle, fiddle with it for 5 minutes and then swallow it whole. Hadn’t seen that one before….
We tee’d off just at sunrise. My favorite time to play golf since there is usually no one behind you and it is full of shooting opportunities at that time of day. I have been shooting with the new Nikon D6 with the Nikkor 500mm f/5.6 PF ED VR lens; a combination that I am really enjoying. It is producing excellent image quality.
As I was driving past a large shade tree, I noticed a red-shouldered hawk fly into the middle of it. With the early sun illuminating the leaves around its head, the D6 performed with its usual brilliance; especially considering the hawk was deep within the canopy keeping a low profile.
Thanks to Bedford Camera and Nikon Professional Services, the new Nikon D6 arrived on my doorstep in the past week. To date, I have been pleased with the results I am getting during my testing. The greater selection of Auto-Focus options has been particularly interesting. Despite a steady downpour of rain, a Black-Crowned Night Heron suddenly appeared out back on the edge of the pond. Shooting with the Nikon D6 and AF-S NIKKOR 500mm f/5.6E PF ED VR lens, I followed him as he went about getting dinner….
The June edition of KHL’s American Cranes and Transport (ACT”) just hit the stands. I was excited to see that an article I finished up in late April was selected for the issue. “Distracted” includes 20 of my images from ConExpo 2020 selected by the editors at ACT, as well as my take on the show and shooting with the COVID-19 pandemic unfolding before our eyes in Las Vegas. While all this took place in the first week of March, it seems such a long time ago at this point in time. Besides COVID-19, the biggest challenge was really bad weather for largely an outdoor trade show.
I have to say that my new Nikon Z6 consistently performed alongside what would be my last serious shooting with the Nikon D5 before moving to the new Nikon D6. When you have small windows of time to capture images, you can’t be worrying about your equipment. Nikon camera bodies and lenses came through again.
After two days of miserable weather at ConExpo 2020, the sky began to clear and for a time we were treated to a blue sky with great clouds. Walking by a Kobelco Crawler Crane, I highlighted the yellow boom against what was going on above. Keeping it simple and at the same time creating a lot of space for text if it were to be chosen from my cover submissions.
A quick thank you to Bedford Camera for consistently amazing service and great prices. Thanks to them, I am presently shooting the heck out of my new Nikon D-6
Check them out at Bedford Camera. You won’t be disappointed.
Trying to capture the scope of a trade show on the scale of ConExpo really requires some height. To tell the story of the size of the show, I’ve shot from parking garages, rooftops, hotel rooms and exhibit scaffolding.
Over the weekend prior to the show, I shot what I hoped would be a cover image from an adjacent parking garage rooftop, after getting permission from the very nice manager of the hotel that owned it (trespassing to get a shot is not advised, especially in Las Vegas). Nice light, most of the crane lot in frame. Only one problem, most of the show was not in nice light and if you attended the show you probably didn’t see the blue skies of the weekend. The image that was actually was chosen by my editor was shot by me out a hotel window of the Sahara Hotel across the street from the crane lot right after one of the rainstorms that confronted us during the first few days of the show. And yes that’s the parking garage in the distance where I shot what I thought would be the cover….
ConExpo is the largest equipment trade show in the United States. Held every three years, in open lots around the Las Vegas Convention Center, it normally draws visitors from all over the world. I have attended ConExpo for almost three decades and shot the last four shows for American Cranes and Transport. Going into the show, the big challenge was that the old lot where most of the cranes were displayed had been sacrificed for the Convention Center expansion. Having shot three shows at the old location, I had a pretty good idea how the light moved throughout the day across the lot and where I needed to be to make the best use of it with the various exhibits. And I had my shooting notes from the previous shows. All that went out the window as the cranes moved to a new “temporary” lot about 1/4 mile away.
With COVID-19 at its infancy in the U.S., I arrived on March 6th and spent the weekend prior to the show, watching the light while avoiding being flattened by the flurry of forklifts and activity as the last minute preparations were made to the exhibits. The weekend was beautiful and had great light. Then for the first time that I can remember at a ConExpo, the weather went downhill fast and we opened the show to rain. Over the course of the week, the COVID-19 count in the U.S. climbed rapidly and ConExpo made the national news as the “last trade show being held in the U.S”. Most of the shooting opportunities were crammed into the last two of five show days because of weather and the show ended up closing a day early as the seriousness of the COVID-19 crisis became apparent.
I love the challenge of shooting trade shows of this magnitude and telling the story. With poor weather and COVID-19, I found the challenge amped up to an extreme. This is the scene that greeted me in the first 5 minutes of the show walking onto the crane lot.
