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.
I saw this painted on a street in Vancouver and it made me chuckle. I’ll give them an A for effort…
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 am posting this as a lesson to myself to be better prepared for opportunities! The photo, and the lack of quality, clarity, detail and definition just makes me mad!
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.
I love the vivid colours of the crocus; they are a vibrant sign in the midst of awful weather that spring, and brighter days, are coming.
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!)
I see a Cooper’s Hawk on nearly every weekend walk I take out at the dikes, and still they catch me by surprise most times. I was glad I had the camera set to capture it in flight. The setting sun is glimmering off of some of the ice floating in the river. 1/1250, f5.6, ISO100.I saw this pair on the dike as we were pulling into the parking lot, and snapped a few quick photos without thinking too much more about it. This is one of my favourites from that afternoon. 1/1250, f4.5, ISO100Cool tones in the sky, and ribbons of ice lining the river’s edge. The ice creaking in the dark made things a little bit spooky. I had to adjust my exposure slider 1 1/2 stops in processing, so I guess I should have bumped my ISO to start or waited an extra 10 seconds or so during the exposure. 61sec, f22, ISO100While we were walking, I saw this shape in the water, and thought it was a oddly shaped stump. When I realized it was a heron resting, I set up right away, and didn’t bother adjusting my settings; I just hoped it would stay still long enough to get a shot. Like the Golden Ears photo, I had to adjust my exposure slider 1 1/2 stops…but I am glad I pressed down on the remote when I did, as he soon shifted position. 34sec, f29, ISO100I love the sky before sunrise, with the beautiful warm tones to the east, and cool tones to the west. 2.5sec, f22, ISO100Beautiful Mount Baker, about a half hour before sunrise. 6.0sec, f25, ISO100
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.
I spent most weekend mornings through the fall heading out to the dikes to take photos for my fog project, and I don’t know how I failed to notice the flashing yellow light on the river!The dikes are dotted with memorial benches, and occasionally Spencer will pause long enough to let me read the plaques. These flowers have long lost their lustre, but are now home to one or more spiders. I wouldn’t have noticed the webs without the fog collecting on them.I’m not sure how I failed to notice the bright orange-yellow tone of these branches before, but this morning they stood out amongst the dead grasses and blackberry brambles.I’m not sure what type of birds these are, but their music was beautiful. It was so quiet this morning that I could hear them singing and chattering long before I could figure out which tree they were perched in.
I love the band of peach through the fog, and the touches of pink in the clouds.
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 took several photos of the frosty branches, and love the difference in colour between the one facing east (above) and the one facing west.
The sun was just beginning to come up, had I been an hour later, the frost on the trees would have been long gone.With the sun up, it was time to head for home.
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 chandelier in my apartment close up… dust and all.
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.
There is still a hint of what this is, as the individual pieces of glass can be seen top left, but the colours are much more vibrant when the focus is reduced.
When I removed all focus, I liked the results the best 🙂
I love the tear-drop shape towards the centre of this photo.
When the focus is gone, it is all about shape and colour. I love how saturated the blues are.
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.
Each year, the transition into autumn hits me harder and harder. I find the grey skies and rain day after day a bit much to handle (the colder temperatures don’t impress me that much either). However, we have recently had some gorgeous weather, and I’m glad I had my camera with me to capture a little bit of it.
I had my “photo assistant” along to enjoy the lovely weather. While I took photos of the river, he dug in the sand 🙂
This young deer was not far from where I saw several bears a few days earlier. I’m glad I was prepared this time with the correct lens.
