Bald is Beautiful

A new shot!

It was a beautiful day out there today, and I actually got out and took advantage of it.

I headed out with the camera and ended up at the Ladner dike on Boundary Bay. Not sure what, if anything, I expected to find to shoot out there but thought that at least I'd get some much needed exercise. I had a good walk along the dike with a couple of other photographers I met up up with. When we parted company - they'd parked at a different access point - I headed back to my car with nothing noteworthy in the camera. Then I spotted this eagle landing in an old tree just near the viewpoint I was approaching. It obligingly stayed put while I got my shots (this was the best) and was still there when continued on my way.

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Heron in tall grass

Another shot mined from the archive.

Most of the shots I've posted of birds have been close-in shots, with very little in the way of natural surrounding/setting. I've recognized for a while that this is a bit of a deficiency, something that I've tried to keep in mind when out shooting birds or any other nature subject.

With this shot I didn't have much choice anyway as it was quite a distance from me on the other side of the pond - just at the extreme range of my lens/extender to to still yield a usable result. I like this shot for many reasons and think that I simply didn't post it at the time as there had been too many birds (and probably too many of them Great Blue Herons) to justify posting another one. The happy result of this is that you get to see it now instead.

(taken in early March)

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Not exactly handsome, but good looking in it's own way.

I didn't shoot anything new this weekend and took only about a dozen crappy shots last weekend, so reluctantly, I suppose I'm left with nothing else to post but this shot from a couple of weeks ago out at Reifel. In some ways I'm more than happy with this shot as it was hand-held and manually focused and still came out quite sharp anyway.

Sorry for the prolonged sequence of bird pictures, but it's all I've got on hand and I'm not much motivated lately. Still looking for a willing victim, er, model to pose for me. Barring that, any suggestions for subject matter will be given serious consideration.

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Birds Don't Smile #2

In my continued quest to avoid the downtown Olympic mob scene I once again found myself out at Reifel last weekend. Over all, I didn't get much in the way of interesting shots, but thought I'd post this one anyway as it is so similar to my last post.

This time around it's a Black Crowned Night Heron, as opposed to the Great Blue Heron in the last post. Locally there are also Green Herons, but I've only seen two since I started this photography shtick so it's probably safe to say that you won't see that one in the next post...

One thing that I did see/photograph out at Reifel was a little Saw-Whet owl. It was kind of nice since for some time now any kind of owl - in the wild as opposed to at the Vancouver Zoo - has been on my list but I've just had no luck until Saturday. The pictures actually are horrible, so don't expect to see any posted here, but I did see and photograph it. Then, on Sunday, I got a couple of opportunities with what I believe was a Short-Eared Owl flying around in the middle of the afternoon out at Iona. Those shots have more potential, I think, so it's possible one of them migtht appear at some point. Apparently there are at least three of these owls hanging around Iona at the moment and they make regular appearances. Now that I know that I'll probably stop by there again soon to see if I can get a little closer - though my stealth skills are a little rusty at the moment.

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Birds Don't Smile

I had planned/expected for my next post (i.e. this one) to be Olympic-related. Ideally, this was to have been a picture of the torch relay, which passed right outside my office on Thursday evening. In spite of the rain, I actually went back to the office after a dentist appointment, and stood around in the pouring rain and managed shots of not one but two torch bearers. Unfortunately, I'm just not happy with any of those, so you'll have to settle for this shot of a Great Blue Heron taken out at Reifel this afternoon - well away from the madness downtown.

In all fairness, it's been a while since I posted a bird picture.

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Halloween Moon

A little earlier in the evening there was a bit of cloud about, making the view of the moon particularly appropriate for Halloween. In fact, it was surrounded/partially obscured by cloud up to about 2 minutes before I had the camera set up to shoot... then not a cloud in the sky (or at least nowhere near the moon).

Still, It's not a bad shot, though I'll admit that it took quite a few tries to get this result.

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Coyote

Working, as I do, at UBC, with so much surrounding forest, one will occasionally catch sight of a coyote. They're usually pretty mangy and unhealthy looking - not at all like this one at the zoo. Generally I'm not really too heavily in favour of locking animals up (there are good arguments for & against), but in this particular case, it's entirely possible that this coyote is benefiting from the experience.

It almost looks like a domesticated house pet rather than a wild animal, but I think I'd probably still think twice before trying to pet it.

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I See...

Another shot from the trip to the Greater Vancouver Zoo, taken during the raptor show.

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All Your Ducks in a Row

This was taken at Reifel a couple of weeks ago and I'd forgotten all about it. What I do recall of the day is that it was far too late in the afternoon and far too hot to find much about, and while we're at it, the wrong part of the season as well. I was also having a lot of trouble getting sharp pictures until I realized that I'd bumped the dioptre adjustment on the viewfinder. When I moved it back to the correct position I finally managed to get this shot...

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Busy as a...

I've been humming and hawing over this one for a couple of days, trying to decide if I should post it or go back and re-work it from scratch. In the end, laziness has won out and I've posted it as first processed. I think the yellow is a little too vibrant, which is odd, since I didn't do much to the yellow other than try to preserve as much as possible; the blown out areas were all in the flower petals. Thanks to the RAW file format, I was able to tone down the blown petals without causing damage to any other important parts of the image, but somehow the result was a very intense yellow (at least on my monitor).

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Locked

I'm not sure how this will look on other monitors - it's one of those images that I just know is going to be immensely affected by all the little vagaries of other monitors; well, at least the cheap monitors at work...

This is actually the second version that I processed. Not that there was necessarily anything wrong with the first version, it just didn't have the dramatic oomph. Although I suppose that begs the question "Does this one have dramatic oomph?" If not, it's at least a step down the road toward learning how this style of image is created. Not sure that I could duplicate it is I had to, but it's a start.

Oh, in case you're wondering what it is, it's a Canadian Pacific Rail padlock on a track-switch. What caught my eye was the relatively rust-free lock body surrounded by (and embedded with) lots of rust. I don't think they actually run any trains on these tracks anymore, so one wonders why they'd need the lock, but there it was. Ideally, given the available light I should have taken a longer exposure but this was one of those times when I hadn't taken my tripod along as I didn't expect to need it.

[This shot was taken within a few feet of "Zero Four One" and "Sitting on a Siding".]

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Now that you have my attention...

Sorry, once again, for the continuing string of bird pictures...

This is a lesser scaup (male); they're smaller than mallards, and generally a fair bit more circumspect than mallards as well.

Normally you'll see a number of these birds, along with their female counterparts mixed in with a variety of other ducks (mallards, pintails, wigeons, etc.) but this guy was the only scaup to be seen amongst the mallards and wigeons, perhaps because they were not in the area of Reifel where the rest of the scaups usually hang out.

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Muddy Beak

I don't much like the way that this shot was framed - with birds sometimes you just have to work with what you can get, but I've tried to crop it down into something that I like better with no luck. In the meantime, I do like the way that the bird came out after processing. I just wonder what it is that these birds eat that they find so deep down in the muck that their entire beaks get covered in mud.

I've been playing a bit lately with a different way of processing images using lab colour in photoshop. I can't say that I've got the basics of it yet and mastering the technique is a long way off, but the result here was quite pleasing (you'd have to have seen the raw photo, prior to processing).

Sorry about the long delays between posts lately. Between working on the trying out the new process and not wanting to post only bird shots (Ooops, failed there - it's kinda hard since it's just about all I've been shooting lately) there hasn't been much that I wanted to post. I am, at least, feeling more motivated lately.

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Another Two-fer Sunday

I've been out with the camera several times over the last couple of days... getting lots of exercise but very few photos. Over all it's been a pretty disappointing weekend.

As a result, here's a shot taken last Sunday of a pair of juvenile bald eagles.

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Northern Pintail (drake)

Another image from Saturday at Reifel Sanctuary. It was nice to be able to catch the pinkish colour on the back of his head.

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It's Back!

Yes, I finally got my lens back, and it's workin' fine!

Got a chance to give it a decent workout on Saturday at Reifel, where there was an excellent selection of subjects to shoot.

Being Sunday, here's a two-fer - a his & her of wood ducks, one of the more intricately colourful birds around, both the he and she.

Truth be told, these colours may be a little boosted - there was quite a difference between the Adobe RBG version and the sRGB version. sRGB just doesn't have the colour gamut required to portray these shots accurately (although I might have achieved a closer match if I'd shot them in sRBG).

There will almost certainly be one or two more shots from Saturday's outing to post a little later in the week but I hope you enjoy these ones for now.

And thanks to Katrina and Alison for taking the time to leave comments on most of my recent posts - it's nice to know that someone's out there looking at what I've posted.

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Red/Light

I didn't shoot anything new this past weekend, though I did drive around for a while looking for inspiration. I finally gave up and decided to try again on Tuesday, being a day off work and all. Tuesday rolled around and it was more lousy weather... or was it? I'd decided to go back to the Point Atkinson Light House, something I'd been meaning to do for quite a while. On the drive there going over the Granville bridge the downtown area was all shrouded with low lying rain clouds - the type that're more mist than rain - and looking very atmospheric. It was almost tempting enough to stop the car on the bridge to get a shot, but no, that wouldn't have been a good idea so I continued on my way to Lighthouse Park in West Vancouver with the hope that I'd find the same conditions there.

Of course by the time I got there the low clouds had lifted and changed to a more solid rain so that I had neither the interesting misty backdrop/surroundings nor the lighter precipitation to deal with. The first shots were a bit of a challenge, trying to keep the camera dry while lining up the shot from a bit of rock sticking out into the water to the east of the lighthouse. This is not one of those pictures. I finally gave up trying to get anything worthwhile from that vantage point and re-packed my equipment so that I could work my way up back up the hill to get try some shots from the north. While better, they were still not very interesting, but at least the rain was beginning to let up. Then I climbed the last little hill to get to the top viewing point, which is where I took this shot.

It's not a particularly great shot either; I'm sure it could benefit from some additional processing, but for the life of me I just can't think of what else to do with it and I don't have anthing else that's any better so it's what we're stuck with.

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(last of the) Fall Fungi

This will, I think, be the last of the shots from the great fungi field trip; this view is actually just a foot or two to the left of the previous post. I'm not actually sure if they're the same kind of mushroom or not - I don't know enough about mushroom be able to identify the different varieties.

While I think the previous post is probably my own favourite, each has something a little different that appeals to me. You're of course welcome to leave your thoughts/comments on which you like best (or least).

[For those who might be wondering... no word yet on whether my lens is repairable, or what it will cost, but then I'm not expecting to hear anything until sometime next week at the earliest.]

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(more) Fall Fungi

This is another shot from last weekends' trek through the trail at UBC - a.k.a. the fungi field trip. There's still maybe a shot or two from that afternoon that might find it's way here. Hopefully this won't bore anyone too much. There won't be any new bird shots for a while though, because...

Although late in the day, I did get out to shoot a bit on Saturday. Unfortunately, when I was packing up my equipment at the end of the day my wonderful long lens (100-400mm) fell from about 5½ feet and now doesn't work - it won't focus (auto or manual). I can adjust the 'focus' near or far, but it won't focus even remotely sharply.

I've always known that sooner or later some piece of my equipment would get damaged. I've fallen with it a couple of times (broke my own ribs once as a result, but saved the camera from harm), and once had my camera with lens attached fall out of my backpack onto asphalt, all without any significant damage to any of it. I guess my luck had run out though... Of course it had to be the most expensive lens in my bag! It's now at the camera shop waiting to be shipped out to the wizards at Canon to take a look at and see if it's fixable or not - for a hefty fee, of course. In the meantime, I suppose I'll just have to get reacquainted with my other lenses for a while (they say 4-6 weeks).

[Oh, forgot to mention - this shot has been sized/cropped a little differently than normal. It has been properly sized to fit a 1024x768 screen, making it more suitable for a desktop background, for those so-inclined. Click on it first to bring up the full-size image though.]

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Two Worlds, Apart

Sorry, once again, for the long delay between posts. Last weekend I was busy doing a little shoot for the Friends of the VPL; some of the pictures might end up on their website - if I ever get finished processing them. The woman who runs their store doesn't seem to have discussed the matter with their web master so what I shot doesn't seem to be quite what they both want, though I think I can pull enough together from what I shot. Regular visitors here will recognize that I like big pictures, so one of their late specifications came as a bit of a surprise: none of the images is to be larger than 350 pixels on a side. That's a tiny image, given that my raw images are 4300+ pixels wide!

Anyway, I did get out twice this weekend to shoot something for myself. This shot was taken on Sunday afternoon on the Salish trail in Pacific Spirit Park (UBC Endowment Lands). It's an HDR image, created from a single RAW image - this is possible with RAW files as they store more exposure data than a .jpg though it's not as effective as shooting multiple exposures and combining them.

Technical aspects aside, it struck me as a fitting image to post as we're about to go to the polls in just a few hours. Why? Maybe because of the strong Us/Them symbolism. Personally I'll find it hard to vote tomorrow; once again it will be a matter of selecting the lesser of the evils, the party which I think will do the least harm. A minority government isn't what this country needs right now, but with the current crop of politicians so totally out of touch with reality it's what we're likely to end up with.

Vote well!

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