Unexpected Success
Yesterday I set my alarm an extra half hour early because I wanted to be down at the river at first light in anticipation of good clouds and a nice sunrise. I loaded the kayak with a second camera body with my Tamron 15-30mm lens and placed my Feisol 3442 tripod into the kayak. I hiked down the trail in the total darkness and got the river at 6:25 and waited. And waited some more! The clouds were very thick on the horizon and it was a very uneventful sunrise. I was bummed. So, I started down river early, doing my morning Facebook Live session. If you don’t follow my private page on Facebook, Lewis Kemper, you may not get notices when I go live. Every morning I go out kayaking I start off with a 5-15 minutes ride down the river live on Facebook. There wasn’t a lot to share that morning, but near the end I observed a lone otter swimming upstream. I mentioned that I could not possibly follow it since I was paddling with one hand while holding the phone for the Facebook Live in my other hand. It seemed like it was going to be a low yield day.
After I stopped the FB Live, I continued downstream looking for beaver. I did spot a couple, but neither was in a very photogenic location. So, I decide to paddle back upstream. I noticed some movement on a log up ahead and saw it was the single otter hauling a salmon up on the log for breakfast. Fortunately for me the log is at a spot in the river that is like a small bay with very little current. I was able to make some great pictures and shoot some nice video during the 35 minutes I spent watching. When photographing with my Tamron 150-600mm G2 lens I use the stabilization Mode 3, which gives the most stabilization when shooting but does not show the stabilization when looking through the viewfinder. When shooting video, I need to switch that to Mode 1, or my videos are rather jerky. The difficult part is remembering when I switch back and forth between stills and video! As I photographed the light came out from behind the clouds and made some great backlit images. Turned out to be a nice day after all!
Here are a few images and a short video. Enjoy.
1/640 sec; f/8; ISO 5000; 600mm; hand held from my kayak
1/640 sec; f/8; ISO 4000; 600mm; hand held from my kayak
1/640 sec; f/8; ISO 5000; 600mm; hand held from my kayak; Topaz DeNoise AI
1/1000 sec; f/8; ISO 2500; 600mm; hand held from my kayak
And here is the video.