Returning today to the shopping mecca of snowy owl sightings was an effort in frustration. Yep, there before dawn with not another soul around – and four and a half hours later of looking, it was time to call it quits. I absolutely hate coming home empty handed after so much effort or time is put in. It is a fact of nature photography though, you have to put in your time to get the rewards. Bringing home shots of something you weren’t even after is a decent consolation prize, but sometimes that doesn’t happen either.
So, go figure – I get home and am packing away cold weather items. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a swooping swish in my backyard. Anyone with backyard bird feeders probably knows what this is a hint of. So I grabbed my camera that was already setup, and took a peek through the backdoor window.
This guy was sitting in a tree 10 feet off my back deck – in a clear area. Click, click – and he was gone. A result of me sitting out in a blind for hours — nope. Scouting forest fields for days on end? Nope. A bird of prey spirit being kind? Perhaps!
Coopers Hawk, my backyard, Michigan
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Urban wildlife is always a refreshing site, although sometimes a sad one as well as you know these animals are struggling for habitat day in and day out. But today I was fortunate enough to see my first snowy owl in the wild. Strangely enough, it was in a typical suburban shopping mall plaza, with no shortage of sightings reports about it on through mailing lists. It was also probably a bit strange to also see a dozen people or so staring into an apparent empty field on the edge of a Target parking lot, obvious by the number of questions posed by passers by. This owl was certainly comfortable in its environment, and watchers gave it ample room. Conditions to get really good shots today were difficult, but I was more than pleased just to be watching such a gorgeous bird so close to home.
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Our rather strange January weather produced some interesting conditions today – rain overnight, and then dropping temperatures through the morning caused dripping raindrops to freeze. The tricky part was finding drops that had some interesting structure attached to them. There were a lot of plain branches covered with them, but it just didn’t seem to work graphically for me. Then I found these small tendrels off a vine, complete with some frozen drops attached to them. I thought it provided for a more interesting shot. A couple more are in the gallery.
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Strange concept to think about huh? Perhaps not completely, but changing your light bulbs in your house actually will help. This is one of the simple things in reducing our electricity bills, along with ALOT of other changes every one of us can do to help ease the tons of carbon dioxide that is dumped into our atmosphere and causing Global Warming. Anyone who has not seen the film An Inconvenient Truth simply needs to get off their butt, put aside a couple hours of your time, and simply watch the film. Whatever your take is on this issue, it gives some pretty compelling things to think about and what we take for granted. Their site also has a lot of tips on what individuals can do to lessen their load on the atmosphere. Write to your city and find out what they are doing on a local level.
It is really disturbing to read reports about polar bears being listed on the endangered species list because of loss of habitat. The Arctic is one of the most sensitive to this climate change and has direct impacts on the animals that live there. I am sure a lot of people would never advocate, and would certainly protest against other actions that might harm these animals, so why not try to make some of the changes that might help their habitat?Â. If every household in America switched five regular light bulbs for five fluorescent bulbs, it would be the equivalent of taking 1 million cars off the highways for a full year.
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I have the week off between Christmas and New years from my ‘day job’ and was really hoping to get out and do some shooting. The weather really sucked. Rain, drizzle, dark and drab light. To add to that is my own laziness of just wanting to lay around the house, surf Itunes, play video games, practice my guitar a bit – all in all – not very productive creatively.
Well this is the last day before going back to the grind and I was determined to create a few pictures, no matter what it was like outside. Fortunately it was just heavy overcast and not too cold (45 deg F) for the 1st of January in Michigan. But I wanted to do something new..and actually ended up spending about 2 hours just outside my back gate in the leaf piles of my woods.
So this is one of the results. I have procastinated for more time than I care to admit in getting to know my Nikon macro flashes from my R1C1 speedlight kit. For those of you are not familiar with this kit, it is perhaps one of the most well designed aspects of the Nikon product line.
You get a lot in this package – all kinds of mounting rings, colored gels for flashes, mounting arm, and a very nice storage case. The “Commander” itself that fits on top of your camera like a flash is pretty easy to adjust the output from the little ring flashes that sit on the end of your lens, creating different light ratios and looks to the image. Every aspect of it, from ergonomics to fit and finish, is nicely done. I have yet to scratch the surface of the capabilities here. It gives you tremendous control over how your subject is lit.
This is the result of me playing with the blue and yellow gels in the kit, using two flashes, one gel on each. This is pretty much straight from the camera, other than some minor cropping and sharpening. No Photoshop wizardry here, just using light in the field. I thought it was quite interesting, especially the way the yellow looks like it is ‘painted on’ the surface of the leaf. I suppose you could say it was painted with light. I also find it incredibly cool how the yellow light overspills onto the blue, and some of the blue onto the yellow, with different ways the light is absorbed by the leaf.
It is part of my way of getting away from more documentary approaches to photographing nature. This is just another set of tools to help along the way. Happy new year to all of my visitors to this blog, I hope you have a prosperous and healthy 2007.
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