Showcasing the beauty of Mother Nature
The photos I have of the male rufous hummingbird in flight (so far!) are not as sharp as I would like, but this one of him paused at the feeder highlights his beautiful colouring.
He didn’t stay long as the female kept coming around and chasing him off!
1/500 sec, f5.6, ISO1250
I was so happy to see my first hummingbirds of the year this past weekend, and was able to spend some time relaxing on my parent’s porch, camera at the ready to capture a few shots. I’m quite pleased with the results, so there just might be a hummingbird of the day around here for the next little while 🙂
1/200 sec, f5.6, ISO 100 with speed light
1/200 left significant motion blur of the wings, and with the light, the fastest I tried was 1/640, and that didn’t even come close to freezing the wing motion.
Sometimes, I make poor decisions. Okay, oftentimes I make poor decisions. But today, the decision to leave my camera at home really pissed me off.
I’ve not had much success photographing bald eagles. The closest I came was last summer, but it came out of nowhere and my shutter speed was a bit too slow. The last three times I have seen bald eagles, my camera was safely packed in the well cushioned case… at home. Once was a juvenile bald eagle with a rainbow in the background, the second was a single mature eagle chasing a Cooper’s Hawk, and today, two mature bald eagles perched in a tree, scanning the river. As I was walking with Spencer this morning, a Cooper’s Hawk flew in front of me at head height and as I scanned to follow it, spotted the pair of eagles.
Hence the SLOW (or is it WOLS?) photo. Hopefully this time I have finally learned, and the next time I think it is too damp to bother taking my camera with me when I walk the dog, I will grab it anyways.
This was the best my phone could manage of the last couple of eagle sightings. Big, sad sigh.
I’ve been hoping that the weather would finally cooperate, and I would be able to get some photos of the crocuses before they are gone. Sunday afternoon I finally got my chance.
I’m still getting used to the focusing of my new macro lens, and I am sure I will look at these in a couple weeks and cringe at the decisions I made on focus, but for now, I’m pretty happy with the results.
The clear, cold weather over the weekend brought with it a lot of shivering, but also a lot of great photos opportunities. I had Spencer with me, so I was more concerned with his well-being and enjoyment than getting the perfect shot… but, I still managed to get a few that I really like.
I hadn’t set out with a theme in mind, but the strongest photos of the weekend were all silhouettes (a clear topic for the blog – hurray!)
Sunday morning walks with Spencer are my very favourite. When we get up and head out early, we can find, for a few brief moments, a bit of quiet space. On Sunday mornings, the trucks aren’t moving around in the gravel pit along the river, and fewer people are out early in the mornings. There are gaps when we don’t hear a train in the distance or the hum of the airplanes on the landing path into YVR – and we can hear the birds chirping, the geese honking, the ducks quacking and the breeze rustling the trees.
It was in one of these blissful gaps that I realized how much I miss while out walking the same stretch of dike. How did I fail to notice the blinking light on the top of the buoy in the channel? I’ve seen it every weekend for months, I’ve been past it on a jet ski and on boats, but until today I never actually looked at it. I know this is true in all aspects of my life – how much gets done or accomplished in busy-ness without really thinking about it, rushing around without really seeing what’s happening, being consumed with mental clutter and stress…
So this morning, I took photos of some of the things I have missed, over and over again.
The light this morning was stunning. I don’t even have words for how beautiful it was, and doubt the photos do it any justice. It was crisp this morning, with all the trees and grasses covered in thick frost. There were banks of fog swirling around close to the river; alternating between showing the water and mountains, and obscuring them. The sky was dotted with fluffy clouds, and the mountains all had a generous coating of snow… the early morning positively glowed and showed off the most subtle colour palate of pastel tones. And, it was blissfully quiet, without another person around, just the dog with me and the birds singing their wake up songs.
All in all, the perfect start to a Sunday.
I’ve decided to start 2014 off by committing to taking at least one photo per day. While I also want to commit to more regular blog posting, it certainly won’t be on a daily basis. Today, I didn’t feel like heading out into the drizzly afternoon, and found myself wondering what photographs of my chandelier would turn out like. Standard photos, it turn out, are not interesting at all, and only serve to remind me of how much I need to dedicate an afternoon to cleaning it.
The thing I like so much about this light fixture is the way it throws tiny rainbows over the walls and within the fixture itself, depending on the vantage point. When I stopped trying to have sharp focus on the fixture, but instead concentrated on capturing the colours, shapes and textures, I liked the results a lot more.
When I removed all focus, I liked the results the best 🙂
It’s been several weeks since I went on my last photo walk with my class, but life has gotten in the way of putting together a post of my favourite photos.
The purpose of the trip was to concentrate on the altered landscape, but instead I was focused on all the birds. I rarely see swans in the local area, and on the drive in went past a field filled with them. There was no where to pull over to take a photo, and I was glad when I arrived at Finn Slough and had another opportunity for a photo.
I was lucky enough to have my camera while out on a walk early yesterday morning along the dikes. It was quite foggy, and I was hoping to capture a few shots for a project I am working on. I saw some moment in the tall grasses along the edge of the river, and managed to capture a sequence of a Cooper’s Hawk hunting. I didn’t manage to see in the end if he or she was success in the hunt, but it was still a great thing to witness. The thick fog adds a bit of a vintage feel to the pictures.
