Modest photographer meets cardinal! Hurrah!!

f/5.6, 1/125, ISO-100, 300mm

I spend a large portion of my photography time in the wild, but I don’t do a lot of wildlife shots. Partly I don’t think I’m very good at it, and partly I haven’t really caught the knack of catching wildlife when it’s interesting. I stumble around like a rhino in rainboots, scaring everything within a mile, before I every have a chance to lift the camera to my eye.

I spotted this colorful cardinal when I just happened to have my 300mm mounted to the body, and got a couple of quick shots before he flew out of sight. They were badly over-exposed as I was so excited to actually have him in the frame that I forgot to, you know, check the exposure. I believe the over exposure was the cause of the chromatic aberration you see here. It was actually much worse, but I toned it down considerable just by ratcheting down the purple saturation to nearly nothing. The light is all wrong for the subject, yada yada. But before you think I’m being too hard on myself, bear in mind I don’t post things here that I’m totally ashamed of. But I do think it’s valuable to cast a critical eye on my own work.