Showcasing the beauty of Mother Nature
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.
It was a wonderful weekend for photography while out walking with the dog. I’ve got lots of photos to go through and edit 🙂
I’ve only seen deer along the Pitt River a few times, and each time it has been on the far side of the dike, away from the river. Yesterday, I caught a pair of deer relaxing in the long grasses in the flats along the river. Once they caught sight of me, they didn’t stick around long, but it was lovely to have the chance to watch them for a few minutes.
After a very stressful week, I was dragging my butt this morning, but I still managed to get out the door for our walk by ten past six. I almost left my camera at home, but decided to bring it along at the last minute – I’m so glad I did. I had a lovely walk with Spencer and fabulous bird sightings as well. I have lots of editing and posting to do over the next few days!
Today was the first time I saw a trumpeter swan along the Pitt River. I’ve not had any success in finding any information online about what the tag signifies, but it is a yellow neck band, marked with M38 as well as a visible band around one leg.
I had some lovely photo opportunities yesterday while out walking with the dog, both of the heron that I posted earlier, and of this beautiful bird. I have tried to determine what type it is, and think that it could be one of several different types of hawks. But while looking through birding websites and photos, I realized that photos I posted earlier, of what I thought to be a cooper’s hawk, may in fact have been a juvenile northern harrier. Regardless of what we call them, they are wonderful to watch. Maybe one of these days, I will see them under blue skies rather than the stark grey we had yesterday. At least it waited to rain until after I got in the car!
Update: I ran into a lovely couple from the Alouette Field Naturalists group, and they took a look at these photos and told me this is an Osprey. They had been watching an Osprey rebuilding a nest that had been taken over by a Canada goose.
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 🙂
I headed out at 6am on Saturday, armed with a travel mug of coffee, my camera, tripod and ND filter, in the hopes of practicing some long exposure landscape photos at the Pitt River. My intention was to work on techniques that when converted to monochrome, renders the water looking misty and any clouds in the sky ethereal. But the BC weather foiled me again – it was TOO NICE. I won’t complain about that, ever, I just couldn’t photograph what I had hoped to.
I’ve noted the settings that I have used and some of the combinations may seem a bit odd. I was playing around in manual mode and while it was bright, I was in the shade. Since I had my tripod, I went with the one thing my instructor repeated a good half dozen times in class “If you have access to a tripod, you have no reason to use anything other than ISO 100.”
The river was smooth like glass and a lovely Great Blue Heron sat on a pillar in the water the entire time I was out, giving me the opportunity for some lovely shots of both the hills and the water, and the heron. I’m sure I’ll be back to African animals later in the week, but I was pretty happy with these shots, taken so close to home.
