Peanuts In My Pocket

My wife and I attended the Morro Bay Bird Festival from January 14th through the 18th. It was a wonderful experience set in a beautiful place. Morro Bay is a four to five hour drive north from where we live in north Orange County, so the road trip is part of the adventure. Unfortunately, that adventure quickly turned into something of a circus. I missed turns, offramps, and highway connections so often that my wife was laughing at me. I blame my inattentive driving on listening to Dungeon Crawler Carl.

The drive up, despite my navigational failures, was beautiful. We skipped the traffic mess around Santa Barbara and took the Lake Crowley route instead, which turned out to be breathtaking. Clear skies, great weather, and light traffic combined into something close to perfect. By the time we arrived at our hotel to check in, I already felt relaxed and ready to find some birds.

I attended three festival events. Thursday was a Master Class introduction to bird photography. Friday was a big day trip through south county and the Pismo Beach area. Saturday wrapped things up with another Master Class, this time focused on learning how to shoot wildlife video from start to finish. My wife attended classes and birding sessions each day as well.

My photography skills definitely leveled up thanks to the classes. To be fair, my video skills went from zero to level one. Before this weekend, I didn’t really know how to shoot video with my current gear. While I learned a lot in the photography class, the video class turned out to be especially valuable.

Key Takeaways

Photography, taught by Jacqueline Deely
I learned to pay much closer attention to the direction of the sun when shooting. It turns out to be far more important than I previously understood. I also learned how to better focus on subjects inside trees and dense brush. That single adjustment moved the needle dramatically. I went from roughly half my photos being blurry to closer to ten percent, simply by changing my approach. I’ve included a couple of favorite images below.

Videography, taught by Emmet Arries
I learned how my camera handles video, how to use the correct settings, and most importantly, how to think like a videographer instead of a photographer. That last point had the biggest impact. Instead of chasing birds with the camera and trying to constantly reframe and refocus, I learned to set up a scene and let the birds move into and out of it, almost like actors. It’s a fundamental shift in mindset, but when it works, the results are beautiful. I also learned that I need to invest in a proper tripod. My lightweight model isn’t going to cut it.

My first video from the trip can be found here:
Morro Bay Bird Festival – Birding Sweet Springs

I plan to write about my birding Big Day trip in a separate post. It was a great experience and taught me a lot about the realities of birding and the skills needed to be successful.

Morro Bay itself deserves a mention. We enjoyed it so much that we even started looking at property listings. The town feels slow and laid back compared to life among the ten million people packed into the LA and Orange County area. And of course, it’s beautiful. This was my second festival visit to Morro Bay. I attended a photography festival there around 2010 and remember thinking I could live there someday. That feeling hasn’t changed. The only difference now is that I could actually make it happen if I wanted to. Not that I will. My grandsons would have strong objections.