Surprise Virgina Rail
November 25th, 2022
I went out at dawn on thanksgiving day to see what I could find. As I was walking up on a viewing platform, here was a photographer already out photographing something that I couldn’t see. When I got up on the platform, I spotted a Virginia rail! I have heard this bird many times in my area but never had a chance to photograph one.
The light was extremely low. I had to shoot at 1/1000 f7.1 at ISO 16,000 ISO. Yes you heard it right 16,000. This didn’t trouble me for several reasons. First, I have learned that when I expose to the right in the histogram, I minimize digital noise. This is very clear to me because I keep the histogram in my viewfinder. Second, I use the product PureRaw, which is magical for reducing digital noise and generating a DNG raw file rather than full size RAW. Very helpful for keeping my storage space under control on my computer.
There were two Virginia rails in the area near me. They announced when they were about to appear with a recognizable sound. Initially the birds appears pretty far away. As the morning progressed, they got closer and closer and the light came up over the trees to the right of me. I took a lot of shots for the birds as they took turns making appearances. When the birds got really close, I got down as low as I could to minimize the backgrounds.
