2022 seen through the lens of my camera

This chiffchaff finishes its ballet performance and asks for applause from the audience.

No, of course not. He has been enjoying himself in the bird bath, had a sip, and is on his way out. Only fractions of a second after this shot he is already in the air again and quickly disappears from my field of vision.

Of all the pictures I took in 2022, I like this one best. Somehow the harmony of color and light, of movement and position, of expression and eye contact are particularly well together here. I always particularly enjoy seeing this picture and that is for me the most important criterion for choosing the favorite picture 2022.

The following images have all made it into my shortlist of favorite images 2022. They are arranged thematically and not chronologically. At the very end I have added some statistical information.

For each picture you will find the information when the picture was taken and which equipment with which settings I used. Click on a picture and you see it bigger, click again on the picture and you see it in original size. With the browser button “back to previous page” you come back to this entry.

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Kung Fu Blackbird

It was already later in the evening, dark rain clouds have gathered over Corseaux, the last rays of sun could be seen only far in the west behind a tree.

Then suddenly a jay flew over the terrace and landed on the outermost ledge of the wall. We have quite rare visit from these birds and so I immediately grabbed my camera and took pictures. Only a little later, the jay flew further into the next tree and I continued to take pictures.

Suddenly a blackbird came shooting from behind and started to fight with the intruder. The blackbirds have a nest not far away and therefore defend their territory very resolutely. These three pictures are in chronological order and were taken in less than a second.

With the last picture I had the big luck that behind the open wings of the blackbird of all things still the last sunbeams penetrated through the thicket and made this exciting impression possible.

The jay was then driven away within a very short time and disappeared from my field of vision.

The series of pictures was taken under difficult conditions. ISO 25600 was necessary to achieve an exposure time of 1/3200 sec to capture the fast movements sharply. The images are post-processed in Lightroom Classic and in Topaz DeNoise AI and Topaz Sharper AI.

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Bird pictures from our garden

Birds have slowly but surely become my favorite subject. Often I just use our terrace as a location and watch what is happening around the garden and in the air above. It may sound boring, but it is not at all. There are always new birds to see, new behaviors and surprising encounters.

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Starlings

The flocks of starlings have been particularly impressive this year. Since we have lived in Corseaux, I don’t think we have ever had such large flocks of starlings with us. There must have been thousands of birds. The vast majority have then flown away to the south, but some overwinter with us and we can always watch them. However, I have never seen a starling at our bird feeder.

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Birds of prey with us in Corseaux

I have never seen a bird of prey directly in our garden, but we are regularly overflown. On one of the large birch trees nearby I was able to photograph a tree hawk for the first time.

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Waterfowl from the Pichette and Morges

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Weitere Vogelbilder aus Attalens, Grimentz und dem Engadin

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Insects from Corseaux, Grimentz and Hinjewadi

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Pictures from Engadin

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Lake Neuchâtel pictures

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Sunrise and sunset, landscape and other shots

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Final fireworks (New Year’s Eve in Grimentz)

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Fili and Hobbit

Of course, we can’t miss a few pictures of our two lovable characters, the Picardy shepherds Fili and Hobbit.

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A few statistical data

Cameras used	Number of pictures taken with it
Sony RX1R	3
Sony A7R4	36
Sony Alpha 1	82

Lenses used	Number of pictures taken with it
105 mm Macro	3
24-105 mm	25
24-240 mm	1
24 mm	3
70-200 mm	5
100-400 mm	4
200-600 mm	77
35 mm (Fixed lens of the RX1R)	3

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Thank you very much for your interest and for sticking it out this far.