Here are a few more images of the barred owl I spotted in my yard last week. The monochrome treatment shows in another way how camouflaged these birds are, even when perched on an open branch.
2020-01-27: Monochrome Monday
2020-01-19: Barred Owl
I spotted a barred owl hanging out in the backyard a couple of days ago while I was having lunch. It spent a bit of time trying to hunt, and the rest trying to nap. It was -28C, so I took the photos through my window, as it was just too cold for me to get out to take a couple of pictures. Besides, Murphy’s Law would have kicked in, and by the time I got bundled up enough to head outside and take a few images, the owl would have flown away.
Thankfully things have warmed up a little bit here; still cold, but at least not bitterly cold. I hope your week ahead is looking up too 🙂
2019-12-29: Lilac Breasted Rollers
I missed the opportunity to get out and photograph my local birds today, which is a bit of a shame, as it has been a lovely day with mild temperatures and blue skies. So instead, I’ll share a few images of my favourite African bird, the stunning lilac-breasted roller.
This will be the last Sunday post not only of the year, but of the decade. It seems a bit hard to believe. I don’t yet have a grand plan for the blog in 2020; so far, the only plan is to continue to share images and some of the stories that go alone with the photos, and see how things go.
Wishing everyone a fantastic week ahead, and many thanks for your support throughout the year.
2019-12-15: Photo Art – Birds
For the last few days, it has been very quiet around the yard in terms of bird life. While last weekend the chickadees, nuthatches and flickers seemed to be around non-stop, the past few days, even on my walks, I haven’t heard a twitter.
With birds on my mind, I decided to play around with some of my photo art edits for my post this week. This is a topic that I have worked on previously; if you missed some of the posts from a couple of months ago, here are two links to take a look at:
2019-09-15: Photo Arts – Birds
2019-12-08: Random photos from walks
I always take a camera with me when I go out for walks with my dog (or on the rare occasion when I go for a walk on my own). I haven’t taken too many images in recent months, and as such hadn’t downloaded the card in quite some time. While out on Thursday, I saw a beautiful barred owl near my house, and while reviewing those pictures, I found a few others I had forgotten that I had taken.
This is a bit of a random assortment of images taken since July, while out and about on walks.
2019-10-27: Weaver Nests
I’ve been having fun this weekend working on some of my photo art images, but decided to share a few images of interesting weaver nests today. They caught my eye, and I decided to just go with it.
On my most recent trip, we saw communal nests of the red-billed buffalo weaver and the typical hanging basket style nest of southern masked weaver (that’s my best guess, as we didn’t actually see anyone in residence).
On previous trips I saw several other great examples.
2019-10-20: Photo Art – Owls
I recently saw a beautiful abstract painting of an owl, and it inspired me to work on some of my owl images in a different way. All of these were created in Topaz Studio, using a variety of different filters and techniques. It’s been a lot of fun playing around with these this week.
You can find these images, and lots of others, over on my gallery page.
2019-09-23: Monochrome Monday
Here are a few images of red-billed quelea murmurations that I hadn’t finished editing when I was doing my month of posts on birds.
I was a little unsure of converting these all to black and white, because they had beautiful sunset colours; but stripping it back does change the focus and impression. What do you think?
Wishing everyone a fantastic week ahead!
2019-09-18: Wordless Wednesday
2019-09-15: Photo Arts – Birds
As much as I had hoped that my photo art topic would allow me to get comfortable with Topaz Studio version 2, I haven’t actually even tried it yet. Fingers crossed that this week coming up I can make some time to a watch a tutorial or two and get familiar with the program operation, but for now, I have stuck with the original version, and I am really happy with the results of this weeks experiments.
I decided to focus on birds this week, and played around with two basic combinations of software. The sunbird and hornbill were edited primarily using the Topaz AI Remix module, while the rest were done with Impression (along with the usual basic edits to start for tone, cropping, etc.).
Do you have a favourite this week?
I hope you enjoy, and wishing you a great week ahead.
