Lets face it. If you live in New England, the spring has been pretty terrible….weather wise. We have had a ton of rain. Every weekend seems to be a rain out. Now don’t get me wrong, lots of great photography happens during the most unappealing weather conditions. One of the great benefits of overcast days for wildlife (especially big game) is that animals coats exhibit a different texture and look, especially when wet. Another benefit is longer shooting day. The high angle of the sun during the period of the day when wildlife photographers work on their images (or sleep) is usually 10-3, the time light quality is considered poor. Unfortunately, since Connecticut is not considered the big game capital of the world, I have to work with what I have….birds. And frankly, bird photography is difficult in the rain and overcast conditions. The birds feathers just don’t seem to pop in overcast conditions. So what can I do to make some images this spring given the poor weather conditions? Introduce flash! I recently started using the Better Beamer flash extender. This tool allows you to extend the range of your flash.

As you can see from the images above, the first one using just the natural light has 2 qualities on an overcast day you might not like in your images. The first being flat light and the second being little drama or detail in the color of the bird. In the second image, the one using the better beamer on my SB-900, you can see much greater color saturation and feather detail. One unintended consequence however is that the background now is out of the exposure calculation (the flash extender does not reach that far) and the background is completely black!

You can see from the image of this female, that the characteristics of the feathers are much more noticeable with the help of a little kiss of light. Look how the brown pops off the page against the black background. I mention kiss of light here for a reason. I am using the flash just to draw out a little color from the subject, not to “light” the subject. In this application the intention of introducing flash is only to provide fill flash. so next time bad weather gets in the way of your bird photography, try introducing a little flash!