Lockdown Sunbirds (and friends) in the Room of Dreams @NAF2022

There are more images of birds than anything else in my Room of Dreams 3D virtual exhibition. It’s already open though Fringe Exhibitions @naf2022 don’t start until June 23. Once the hard COVID lockdown started in March 2020 I was restricted to the house and garden and so I taught myself how to use the ProCapture function on my Olympus OMD EM1 II to capture images of sunbirds (and friends) coming to and from our bird feeder. One immediate problem is that I only have the M.Zuiko Digital ED 40-150mm f/2.8 PRO lens and that meant I had to sit very still and close to the birds – about 1.5 to 2 metres distance. I also needed to figure out the camera settings – shutter speed, ISO etc – but I fairly quickly managed to produce these images of single birds – usually backlit. I was delighted when Aerial Ballet – the first picture here – recently won the Hunters of Light Black and White Award.

One thing that I really wanted to do was to show how fleeting and transient the birds’ movements were and so I then set about learning how to use my photographic software – Luminar 4 and PhotoScape X – to overlay multiple images. This next set of images shows what I have done. The ProCapture mode takes 60 frames per second and so I usually got 10-15 good frames of each bird. I then selected a few and overlaid them to show the birds in flight.

I’ve selected seventeen images from my gallery for the exhibition: single birds, multiple overlays and some in black and white. I really enjoyed assembling the display and I hope you enjoy the exhibition too!