View from the office window: Photographing elusive cardinal

For a couple months, I've seen a cardinal or two foraging for food or nest-making material on the roof of my sun room as I've looked out the windows while working in an upstairs office.

Of course, each time I saw a cardinal I immediately thought "pictures!" but this colorful bird can see me through the same window I saw him, and the moment he saw movement inside the office -- i.e., me dashing across the room to grab my camera -- he made himself scarce.

The more I saw the cardinal(s), the more I wanted to photograph them. So about two weeks ago, I decided to set up my camera with the appropriate long-range lens and keep it on my desktop at all times unless I was using it out on a shoot. Several days passed without any luck.

It finally paid off early the morning of Oct. 1 -- a few hours before I would leave the house to do the Lake Benson photo shoot (see previous post). The pictures in this post are the result.

Photo geek stuff: I had to make some quick adjustments on the camera's shutter speed and ISO to make things work on my Canon 6D and Tamron 28-300mm Di VC PZD lens set at the maximum focal range (300mm) and an ISO of 4000 (remember, it was very early morning, just a couple hours after dawn). So there is some noise in the images, and at 300mm, and because of that -- and because I had to shoot through a window, I had so-so luck with optimum sharpness.