May 23, 2021

Working With What You Have
Death Valley, California
2021

I shot these images of turkey vultures when I was out for a short walk from our campsite in Death Valley one morning. I was really just out there to greet the dawn so to speak and did not carry my big camera and telephoto lens with me as I wasn’t expecting much in the way of photo-ops at the time. But as is my habit, I did take my little Sony RX100 M6 with me “just in case.” When I came across these vultures getting ready for their day, it was too far away to go back for the serious gear but I didn’t want to let the opportunity pass so I decided to do what I could with the little Sony.

The Sony is not a cheap camera by any means and it does have a moderate telephoto reach as well as auto-tracking focus like the big-boy cameras do. But still, I was not expecting much. To my surprise though I got some pretty good results. At one point I decided to see how close I could get to them for a portrait shot. I caught this vulture just as it was taking off. I only had to crop it a little to get what you see here. I was quite impressed by how clear and sharp it and a number of the other shots that morning are.

There’s an old photography adage (often attributed to Ansel Adams, but then a lot is attributed to him simply because he is a name people will know) that when asked “What’s the best camera to use,” the wise expert relied “The one you have with you.” That’s what I did in this case and was lucky to get some decent results for my efforts.