 Morning. Today we're out looking for birds. If you listen close, I think you can hear them. My name is David Patton. When I started photography, I wanted to make art. I wanted to be a landscape photographer. But with a family to feed and bills to pay, I decided it would be better to be a working photographer than a starving artist. So I took a job as a photojournalist. 25 years and thousands of assignments later, it was time to go back to my first love. It was time to follow my passion. Come along on my journey to become the best black in my photography I can be. Whether it be film or digital, I will be sharing what I learned through my successes and my failures. In hopes to inspire and educate. This is my journey. This is Brighton Yash. Today I thought I'd do something different. Take my camera out and see what the bird population looks like over here at the Wildlife Refuge. Looks like it's pretty good right now. A lot of fog right now, so it's kind of hard to photograph. But I might get some kind of moody shot here. Something with that atmosphere that's kind of what I'm hoping for. Wildlife isn't my usual type of thing to shoot. I'm not really equipped for it. But I'm going to use what I got. See if I can't make a photograph. It's pretty dark. It's a bit of a challenge to take a photograph with fast enough shutter speed. No contrast to get out of focus. A whole bunch just took off. That was kind of a challenge. The light is just so low right now. And the contrast is so low that my out of focus, especially with this cheap old lens, is having a hard time locking on focus. So I tried some manual focus and some auto focus. I'm just not in an ideal situation. I need to be sitting on that side of the car. But I kind of want to be able to move if someone comes along and says I can't park here. This is not ideal. I'd like to get some shots of someone coming in out of the fog, landing. That kind of thing. That'd be kind of cool. I'm totally out of my element here. Not that much. It's still photography. You just have to have fast enough shutter speed to stop the motion of the bird and the shake of the camera. I might have to go for technical perfection. Probably have a little bit of noise in these images. But it's alright. We're going to get something to do. I never get to say what I'm shooting with. Because I'm in low light. I'm going with my D750. It does a little bit better in low light. And I have a 400mm 5.6 lens on here. And the light's really low. I'm having to shoot like f3200. It's a lot lower than I'd like. But the fog and the atmosphere, we've got some ice on the foliage. There's potential here for an interesting photograph. But it's a challenge. This is a lot of fun. It's good to get out of your comfort zone. To push yourself a little bit. Even if you don't get anything. It's just getting a different train of thought. You can either get a still shot or video. It's a bummer that you can't do both at the same time. One problem I'm having is shooting through this grass. I'm hoping that I can get enough sharp images. Because this grass is kind of softening my images a little bit. So I'm hoping I can find gaps through this grass to get a shot. It's also playing havoc with my autofocus. But it also could lend some mood if I can use the grass to frame some of my subjects. So in some ways it's probably adding something a little different to the photograph if I can make it work. I could really see the allure to shooting wildlife. But it is pretty specialized as far as the equipment you need to do it effectively. All the birds that were in this area have moved on. I don't know if they're heading out to feed in the fields or going to move on down the valley. We still have a few out here. But nothing like what it was before. So I might try another location before I head home. It would be a shame to waste a foggy day. So I think I might try to make a few shots with the fog. So we're out of wildlife mode and kind of back in the landscape mode. I was kind of attracted by these little trees out here. These little spindly little things with no leaves on them. Just barely can see them through the fog. I don't know if that's a bit too abstract or not. But I had to make a few frames. And that since the fog is kind of like this. Maybe I should try to see what else I can find before I head home. Maybe it's not all about the birds. Well I drove to the other side of the refuge. I've been up here before. It's a little hilly. We've got some oaks on some of these grassy hills. So I'm going to see if I can find a photo in here. I photographed one of these oaks this summer. I'm going to see how it looks in the fog. They don't have any leaves on them now so they're going to look completely different. I really love the atmosphere in the fog. It would be a shame to not try to make a few more images before I head home. Gorgeous scene. I love the structure of this tree. And this fog just really makes it. I'm using the 20mm. That's what I put my pocket when I started off walking. I had my 7200mm in the 20mm. I think the 20mm works pretty nice. I'm shooting fairly loose. Trying to get some of the grasses. Trying to get a little bit of the arc of the hill. And I'm putting the tree pretty much right smack dab in the center. It's a real simple kind of portrait of a tree. I think this fog makes it more effective. I also got my camera set to shoot raw and monochrome. So I'm getting a JPEG file that's black and white. And I see the black and white on the back of the screen. And then of course it's also making a raw file as well. This gives me an idea of what I'm getting here. Nothing else is really grabbing me right now. So I'm going to have to hit the road here pretty soon. It's been a great morning. I appreciate you coming along. Hopefully I'll have something to show you. Well, until next time, thanks for coming along for the ride.