Can Story-telling Trump Image Quality? On Grief

What’s Up?

The forecast for Monday morning was for cloudy with a southeast breeze. Pretty good. The reality was that it was perfectly clear with a variable breeze, mostly from the southwest. Pretty bad. Photography-wise, it was the worst morning of the trip. Despite the hazy, hot, and very humid weather, I enjoyed my 1.5 mile walk on the beach.

I met Carolotta Grenier at 3:45pm for her fourth and last In-the-Field Session. We began by spending 1 1/2 hours at Bagel Chalet in Merrick setting up Photo Mechanic and Raw Digger on her laptop. We arrived at Nickerson Beach to find clear skies and a southeast wind. We did our best to make some decent flight images, but a southeast wind on a sunny afternoon has most of the birds flying and facing away. We met Izzy Flamm of the B&H affiliate division on the beach where he marveled at the blastoffs of huge flocks of skimmers with lots of fledged young and learned about the terns, oystercatchers, and gulls that summer at Nickerson. We all drove to the very affluent Lawrence NY for a sumptuous dinner at Prime Bistro, a kosher French steakhouse. B&H kindly picked up the tab. Over-eating and dessert was on the menu. We had a great time sharing the stories of our lives. Huge thanks to Josef Brown, Izzy Flamm, and B&H for the great dinner.

Today is Tuesday 30 August 2022. The forecast for the morning at Nickerson is for a SSW breeze and cloudy skies. Not bad, but only if it is cloudy. I was ready to sleep in and pack for tomorrow’s Auto Train trip home, but woke at 4:58am and decided to head early to the beach and take a short walk with the 200-600. Wherever you are, and whatever you are doing, I hope that you too have a great day. This blog post took about 90 minutes to prepare and makes one hundred fifty-eight days in a row with a new one.

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This image was created on 28 August 2022 at Nickerson Beach. Sitting on damp sand, I used the knee-pod technique with the hand held Sony FE 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 G OSS lens (at 324mm) and The One, the Sony Alpha 1 Mirrorless digital camera. The exposure was determined using Zebra technology with Exposure Compensation on the Thumb Dial. Shutter Priority +2.0 stops. AUTO ISO set ISO 4000. 1/500 second at f/6.3 (wide-open). AWB at 7:03:12pm on a very cloudy afternoon. RawDigger showed the exposure to be within 1/3-stop of perfect. Tracking: Spot S AF-C with Bird Face/Eye Detection performed perfectly by tracking the eye of the gull. Be sure to click on the image to enjoy a high-res version. Image #1: Black Skimmer harassing juvenile Great Black-backed Gull on young skimmer carcass

Can Story-telling Trump Image Quality?

As noted here yesterday, I came close to filling an entire card with images from a Great Black-backed Gull/young skimmer predation encounter. The final tally was 2304 still images and four videos. I kept only 51 images and a single video. All of the stills were made at ISO racing from 4000 to 8000. The image above is typical of most everything I created; it is not quite sharp as I opted for the relatively slow (for action) shutter speed of 1/400 second. I should have upped that to 1/1250 or 1/1600 second and lived with the mega-high ISOs.

The question, however, remains: does story-telling trump image quality? Image one surely tells a story. Dozens of skimmers harassed the three gulls that feasted on the young skimmer, even though the only one of them or two, at most, could have been a parent bird.

This image was also created on 28 August 2022 at Nickerson Beach. Again, sitting on damp sand, I used the knee-pod technique with the hand held Sony FE 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 G OSS lens (at 422mm) and The One, the Sony Alpha 1 Mirrorless digital camera. The exposure was determined using Zebra technology with Exposure Compensation on the Thumb Dial. Shutter Priority +2.0 stops. AUTO ISO set ISO 5000. 1/500 second at f/6.3 (wide-open). AWB at 7:12:05pm on a very cloudy afternoon. RawDigger showed the exposure to be perfect. Tracking: Spot S AF-C with Bird Face/Eye Detection performed perfectly by tracking the eye of the gull. Be sure to click on the image to enjoy a high-res version. Image #2: Juvenile Great Black-backed Gulls squabbling over young skimmer carcass

The Fight for Dominance

The adult gull walked away and left the carcass in the surf. A young bird flew in within seconds, grabbed what was left of the young skimmer, and began eating. Then a second juvie black-backed flew in, drove off the first one, and ate its fill.

Many times, the big gulls wind up swallowing what’s left of the entire carcass whole, but that did not happen on Monday evening. Sharpness and Image Quality with Image #2 are noticeably better than with Image #1.

This image was also created on 28 August 2022 at Nickerson Beach. Again, sitting on damp sand, I used the knee-pod technique with the hand held Sony FE 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 G OSS lens (at 600mm) and The One, the Sony Alpha 1 Mirrorless digital camera. The exposure was determined using Zebra technology with Exposure Compensation on the Thumb Dial. Shutter Priority +2.3 stops. AUTO ISO set ISO 8000. 1/500 second at f/6.3 (wide-open). AWB at 7:18:28pm on a very cloudy afternoon. RawDigger showed the exposure to be dead-solid perfect. Tracking: Spot S AF-C with Bird Face/Eye Detection performed perfectly by tracking the eye of the gull. Be sure to click on the image to enjoy a high-res version. Image #3: Juvenile Great Black-backed Gull scavenging skimmer carcass surrounded by foraging Sanderlings

Irony and Grief

It is ironic that while the black-backeds are tearing bits of flesh off the young skimmers, the other birds, the Sanderlings and oystercatchers, go about their business as usual, often foraging within feet of the predation itself.

In a way, that reminded me of my grieving immediately after my beloved wife Elaine died (of breast cancer, in 1994). I would go to the supermarket to pick up a few things and saw others doing the same. I had the urge to grab them and shake them and shout, “What’s wrong with you? How can you shop for milk and bread knowing that my Elaine is gone?” While studying grief and grieving, I learned that the thoughts I had are very common among those with recent and tragic losses.

In my studies, this was one of my very favorite concepts (paraphrased here in my own words):

Grief is like ocean waves. At first, they are huge and smash at you relentlessly. You get knocked down and turned over, unable to breathe. When you get back up, you are smashed down again. The waves are tall and they come one after another. As time goes by, the height and frequency of the waves diminish. You are able to come up for air. After the passage of years, the waves are reduced to mere ripples, tiny wavelets on the sea. But even decades later, you will experience a small swell ever now and then.

I have come to realize how lucky I was to have known Elaine, and to have shared 24 years of my life with her, 13 as great friends, and nine as a couple. She was above all, a great friend. And she is of course, still missed.

Typos

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