As suggested in my previous post, I will focus on one aspect of photography. This week I’m proposing to only use my 50 mm prime lens. This is a bright lens (f/1.8), but with that aperture, come some challenges when trying to get them all in focus.

Consuelo has started showing some (one actually) black plumage. I’m thinking she will soon start getting rid of the plumes and start getting feathers. I wonder what color she will be and what she will look like?!

Dolores still has clean feet, but Consuelo has started growing plumes/feathers on her feet – similar to Valentina.

The wing feathers on both Valentina and Dolores are starting to grow. They are starting to look like what Consuelo looked like when they arrived. So I’m thinking that Consuelo might be a week or two older than her sisters.

Challenges

As this week is 50 mm lens only week, getting at the right distance from the chicks is quite difficult. I used f/1.8 aperture so I can have a quicker shutter speed without introducing too much noise in the photo, but that left me with a very shallow depth of field.

The chicks move around very fast, and getting a good shot of them can be quite a challenge. If they move just a little bit out of where they were, the focus can easily be lost. I avoided using a flash as that would (see note below) next week’s technical challenge.

Corrections

Due to the difficult nature of quick moving targets with such a wide aperture, some of the photos turned out slightly blurry. Where applicable and possible, I did some sharpening through software (trying out Topaz Labs’ Sharpen AI – still in trial version, if I like it will buy it).

The Request

Last week, Dean (my husband) requested me to take a photo of the three chicks so we could print a black and white photo of them to put on our wall of photos. He wanted all three of them in the same photo, and for some reason, though I was going to be able to get them to be still by myself and take a photo.

Obviously herding chicks is like herding cats, just not possible. So I got him to help out by holding them. And that’s the hero image for today’s post.

Photos

Note

Next week I was supposed to start Flash Week, but because the sun is rising earlier every day and setting later, it has started to be come a bit more difficult. As such, I will leave the flash photography for the final weeks (around mid-June through mid-July), when the days are significantly shorter again. Next week we will do Black and White week, inspired by the beautiful photo that came out of Dean’s request.

To see the 52 Weeks of Chickens – 2nd Generation project, click here.