Chickadee on a wire

[Nymph]

I got this one today before the snow storm.

There sure has been some great shots posted here lately.

[Birdsong]

Nice, Nymph! It must not have been too long before the storm--he has snow on his tail. Your habitat looks alot like my habitat. Think if we glued some lichen on those wires anyone would notice?

[Nymph]

Yea, not so good for the background. Maybe someone from the bog could send us some of those branches with the lichen on it and a nice buttery background to go with it...

I just put up some pine branches with a little peanut butter on them this morning. Hopefully I can get a few decent shots.

[Birdsong]

Yea, not so good for the background. Maybe someone from the bog could send us some of those branches with the lichen on it and a nice buttery background to go with it...

I just put up some pine branches with a little peanut butter on them this morning. Hopefully I can get a few decent shots.

Actually, I was pretty impressed with the background--the gray is really buttery. And your chickum is really sharp. I tried the branch with peanut butter--squirrels ate it. Good luck. I think you have to be sure that what you have in the distance behind your pine branches is a nice buttery something or other. Whatever that gray is is perfect.

[Steve Foss]

When you are that close to the subject, depth of focus is shallow, and the way to get that buttery background is to make sure your aperture is wide open and make sure your is far enough away.

With a bit of jockeying around in the back yard, both those things are usually not only possible, but pretty easy. With subjects 6 feet away, I've shot 400mm up to f8 and found that even a busy BG 30 turns smooth as a baby's bottom if it's more than 30 feet away.