{"id":215,"date":"2020-01-06T04:35:25","date_gmt":"2020-01-06T04:35:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/?p=215"},"modified":"2026-02-17T11:03:54","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T18:03:54","slug":"2020-1-5-where-are-the-turtles-6118","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/?p=215","title":{"rendered":"WHERE ARE THE TURTLES?!?! – 6\/1\/18"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Around the beginning of June I brought my camera and new telephoto lens to the local park. After a recent trip there revealed to me there were a large number of turtles living in the little pond there. My girlfriend and I had been playing Pokemon Go at this park when we had a seat by the pond and soon noticed the turtles swarming. <\/p>\n

I mean 5-10 turtles all coming right up to the edge of the water expecting us to feed them. So when we went back we looked up what kind of foods are okay to feed turtles, brought a variety and I started taking pictures. Some things I didn\u2019t think about beforehand. It was very overcast and not a bright day. I didn\u2019t know what I was doing in manual mode yet. And the majority of people don\u2019t look up what food is safe to give a turtle, so they spoil them on bread and crackers, etc. <\/p>\n

Therefore when presented with nice fresh veggies, they really didn\u2019t care for them.<\/p>\n

Looking back over these images there are several things I would do differently. Like a different time of day so there is better light. A CPL filter for the water reflection. Using autofocus. For some reason I decided I needed to do this entire thing in manual focus, and so almost all of these images are out of focus. I also hadn\u2019t learned about the diopter for the viewfinder. Two things that need to go hand in hand.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

\"
Canon T3i w\/ 75-300mm – 1\/200 Sec – F5.6 – 240mm – ISO 6400<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"
Canon T3i w\/ 75-300mm – 1\/60 Sec – F5.6 – 75mm – ISO 5000<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n

As you can see, the camera needed to crank the ISO all the way up. Making for some really grainy images. But after playing around with it for a bit, I must have switched it to an auto mode. Which decided to pop the flash up, I took two pictures that I\u2019ll put below. But I actually hate that I did that, I would never use a flash now on a wild animal. I just think it\u2019s unnecessary and disturbing them too much. They aren\u2019t asking for their picture to be taken, and if I can\u2019t take a good picture without disturbing them in some way, oh well. It wasn\u2019t meant to be and I\u2019ll have to try again some other time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"
Canon T3i w\/ 75-300mm – 1\/60 Sec – F5.6 – 300mm – ISO 400<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"
Canon T3i w\/ 75-300mm – 1\/60 Sec – F5.6 – 300mm – ISO 400<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n

Lessons learned all around. Although the turtles didn\u2019t seem interested in the food we were offering, they still nibbled at it and gathered around for us.<\/p>\n

Another thing this pond had was a little water spray, and after a few trial and error pictures like this one.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"
Canon T3i w\/ 75-300mm – 1\/60 Sec – F10 – 75mm – ISO 6400<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n

I figured out how to get the shot I wanted, where I could freeze the water motion. A faster shutter and a smaller depth of field. Which produced this next image.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"
Canon T3i w\/ 75-300mm – 1\/800 Sec – F4.5 – 120mm – ISO 6400<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n

I\u2019d still like to go back here at some point and get another shot during much better lighting so the ISO doesn\u2019t need to be so high. I do very much enjoy shooting water, it\u2019s fascinating in two types of shots. Longer exposure where it all flows as one unit, and faster where you can see the individual droplets. I think I do have more images of this specfiic water spout at this park, it\u2019s a little hard to remember as I\u2019ve been there countless times over the last two years. Not sure if I ever went back with a tripod to get the longer exposure. <\/p>\n

But I do have one last image to share from this day, it was on the walk back to the car. The sky was absolutely gorgeous.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"
Canon T3i with 18-55 – 1\/100 Sec – F5.6 – 55mm – ISO 1600<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n

Hard to beat a sunset like that. Vary rarely have I see one with such a nice gradient of color.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Around the beginning of June I brought my camera and new telephoto lens to the local park. After a recent trip there revealed to me there were a large number of turtles living in the little pond there. My girlfriend and I had been playing Pokemon Go at this park when we had a seat […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-old-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=215"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1866,"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions\/1866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}