Madrona Marsh After the Rain

The Transformation

December and January brought quite a bit of rain to Southern California. A lot, in fact. One of the things I knew I wanted to see was the Madrona Marsh after all that rainfall. The past couple times I visited, the marsh was almost entirely dried out. Places that are normally underwater become footpaths connecting different parts of the park.

This time? The water was so deep it turned the whole place into a maze. It was actually disorienting because the brush and growth had gotten so much thicker. My friend Alan and I went exploring, and even though we knew where we were and it's not a big place, we got a little lost. Lost in the action, lost in the moment.

The Wildlife

One thing I didn't see this time, which I'm not sure if it's the time of year or what, was the great white egret. A couple years ago, I captured one of my best shots ever at Madrona Marsh: a white egret. This visit brought the usual suspects: common geese and a bunch of smaller birds.

What really stood out was the insect life. It's January, so I have no idea what the migratory pattern of the monarch butterfly is, but there were definitely a few around and I was able to get some solid close-ups. I also spotted lizards and squirrels. California squirrels look similar to the ones back in Indiana, but they have a slightly different face. Same color more or less, but just ever so slightly distinctive.

Landscapes and Birds in Flight

The water level created some incredible landscapes that I was testing out a new lens on. But some of the best shots I got were birds in flight. These have always been a challenge for me, and honestly, it's one of the hardest skills for most photographers to master.

The images turned out quite dramatic, and I implemented some new editing techniques on them. Even still, if you saw the full-size image, you'd see how much I had to crop just to get the composition right. They're fast. Really fast. Getting good bird-in-flight pictures is tough.

The Coyote Encounter

As we were wrapping up the day, we had a pretty interesting find: a coyote. My friend was like, "Oh, should we call somebody?" And I'm thinking, man, it's in nature. This is where it's supposed to be. This is where it's allowed to be.

On the way out of the park, I casually mentioned it to the volunteer. "Oh, there was a coyote in there." She was like, "Oh, cool! Was it eating any frogs?" She didn't care at all. It's only people with their designer dogs moving into coyote territory that get all up in arms about it. Like, hey man, you're in their neighborhood. Let them be.

Reflections on the Work

I was decently pleased with some of the wildlife pictures I got. Not my best work, and some of it was similar to what I've done in the past. But here's the thing I appreciate lately: my editing technique has gotten so much better. Before, some shots might've looked over-processed. Now they have a much more refined look that's still in line with my style of photography.

The Gear

Gear-wise, I had my R6 Mark II as my primary wildlife camera with the 100-400mm version two and the 2x teleconverter. Plenty of light to get past the smaller aperture. Even with the converter, that thing has way faster autofocus than the version one I used to have.

The lens I was testing out on my R6 OG was a Voigtländer 40mm Ultron, a manual focus lens. I'm still getting a feel for how much I like it and whether I want to hold onto it versus getting the Zeiss 35mm. I like the rendering and color, but Zeiss is another story...

Bonus Content

A little bonus content: on the way out, there was a protest in Torrance. I'm not going to get into too many opinions about it, but I did get to try out my Zeiss 85mm f/1.4. Since I was in a moving car shooting action, I went with the old "f/8 and be there" approach.

I am very impressed with the color contrast, the micro-contrast, the sharpness, and the detail of that lens at f/8. The colors are just out of this world. I might actually separate that into its own post, but I'm in love with the Zeiss look. Now I've got to keep my eyes open for other lenses for the future.

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