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.

Read the post [+]

Hide the post [-]

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)

Read the post [+]

Hide the post [-]

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.

Read the post [+]

Hide the post [-]

This Bird Doesn't Need to Smile

For some time now, my 'list of want-shots' has included a quintessential shot of a wood duck.

This isn't it that shot.

It's not bad I suppose, but the eye could be a little sharper and the colours would benefit from better lighting (at Reifel, the wood ducks tend to hang around near one of the most tree-covered paths - not a total blanket, but it's limited). I met a woman who told me that the place to go for wood ducks is Burnaby Lake, so I guess I'll have to check it out one of these days to see if it's any better.

Read the post [+]

Hide the post [-]

Birds Don't Smile #3 (but they do punk out)

I'll apologize now for what will probably be a continuing series of bird pictures. I haven't been shooting much lately, but what little there is is almost all from Reifel. I've needed the exercise and Reifel is one of the few places I know that I will invariably spend 3-4 hours packing around all my gear. In the past 5 or 6 weeks I've socked away quite a few shots from there, and there are a few decent ones among them. Not to worry, I won't post all of them, just enough to keep thinks going until I get something else worthwhile.

This shot was from this past Tuesday, and it's a juvenile Sandhill Crane that's ruffling it's feathers, giving it a bit of a punked-up look I suppose. While it's someone similar to another shot I posted a while back, I thought it was unique enough that it merited the 'honour'.

Read the post [+]

Hide the post [-]

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.

Read the post [+]

Hide the post [-]

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.

Read the post [+]

Hide the post [-]

Can you spot the Red Winged Blackbirds?

Thought I'd post this one just for something a little different - more for what you can't see in the picture, even though they're there.

There was a very large flock (several hundred probably) of red winged blackbirds out at Roberts Bank the afternoon that I took this.
They were dividing their time between the lighter coloured taller field on the right, and the marsh/reeds behind me on the other side of the pathway (which is on the dike) that I was standing on when I took this shot.

What's neat is there were probably 150-200 birds in the field at the time I took this shot but you can't see any of them as they're down in the grass hiding from predators and having a snack on all the seeds. Whenever a group of people walked along the path, specially if they had a dog, the birds would flee the grass en-masse - over top of the 'dangerous' people - in favour of the reeds. A few minutes later they would start to return to the grass, 5-20 at a time, until the next 'threat' walked by.

I actually got a couple of shots of the sky thick with the exodus to the reeds, but I wasn't very happy with the shots for technical reasons so thought I'd post this one instead.

Read the post [+]

Hide the post [-]

I See...

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

Read the post [+]

Hide the post [-]

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...

Read the post [+]

Hide the post [-]

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.

Read the post [+]

Hide the post [-]

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.

Read the post [+]

Hide the post [-]

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.

Read the post [+]

Hide the post [-]

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.

Read the post [+]

Hide the post [-]

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.

Read the post [+]

Hide the post [-]

Some days just don't work out...

The tide chart for the morning was nearly perfect, as was the weather forcast. Unfortunately, the birds weren't particularly accommodating. I found it extremely difficult to get any reasonable proximity to the herons at Tsawwassen on Saturday morning. I spent most of my time chasing them up and down the shore, approaching slowly and taking shots from too great a distance. Every time, just as I finally got to a decent working distance, they'd take off. Sometimes it was me that scared them away, sometimes the sea gulls (technically ring-billed gulls), and sometimes it was the result of a territorial dispute with another heron. Whatever the cause, I had very little in the way of decent imagery after nearly three hours traipsing through the mud.

It just goes that way some times.

I'd thought about going out again on Sunday morning, but decided to put it off until I get a better pair of boots, more suited to standing/walking around in 4-6 inches (or more) of mud and water.

Read the post [+]

Hide the post [-]

It's in the details

Thought I'd try something a little different today. Ideally I should spread these three shots out over several days, but they really belong together - a triptych of sorts - so it's a three-fer for the second time in a row.

These are, of course, still bird pictures. Detail shots of a Sandhill Crane that alternated between scratching for food and posing for the cameras. Brighter lighting conditions than my last time around with the cranes at Reifel, and I had more of an opportunity to try some different things. At least it makes for a bit of variety from the most of my other bird pictures.

I haven't finished sifting through my other shots from today, can only hope that there'll be something else worth posting a little later in the week.

Read the post [+]

Hide the post [-]

Bullheads for Breakfast

Sorry (once again) for the long break between posts. Maybe this three-fer will make up for it.

I haven't managed to shoot much lately, and it's been mostly crap. I thought I might do a little archive raiding, see what I could find that didn't make the light of day the first time around but that just didn't pan out.

This morning I got up early again in an attempt to make it out to Tsawwassen when the tide was out. Ideally I'd prefer to be there when the tide is on the way out (that would have been around midnight last night) and it's a nice sunny morning, but that just wasn't going to work out. Instead, I got there maybe a couple of hours after low tide (I was there by 7:30, low was at 4:44); no point being there any earlier as there just wouldn't have been enough light - it wasn't a sunny morning. Not raining either mind you, but quite overcast. The sun would eventually show itself, but not until the moment I started to drive away from the beach... which didn't really matter by then since the tide was well-in by then.

I managed to scare off the first batch of birds that I saw in the distance but eventually managed to stalk this heron for quite a while. He (she?) managed to get quite a good breakfast, as I saw it pull bullhead after bullhead out of the water. Apparently herons don't like seaweed - it would always dip, toss and shake its catch to get rid of the seaweed before flipping it in the air one last time...

Overall I was a little disappointed with the shots - I'd wanted to get some shots of a heron feeding and I did, but with the overcast sky they're far duller that I'd have preferred. And I had to shoot at pretty high ISO due to the low light so the images were pretty grainy. Good thing that herons are big birds, at least I didn't have to crop the images too much so the grain isn't too bad at this resolution.

One warning... I do still intend to try for better shots, so there will be more herons in the future (tides and weather cooperating). Also, I have a 12-workdays-in-a-row stint starting on Monday, so there might not be anything else posted for a while.

Read the post [+]

Hide the post [-]

Black Oystercatchers

It's been quite a while since the last time I posted a two-fer, so I figured what they hey... Besides, I met another photographer named Nigel (who really likes Flickr) and told him that I normally only post one shot of a subject at a time (well, usually) so it makes sense that I violate that habit.

Got up fairly early this morning and made it out to the Tsawwassen ferry terminal area where I'd heard I might find some Black Oystercatchers. Not sure, but I don't know that I've ever seen one of these before, so I'm quite delighted that I got some good shots on my first attempt. A little hard to decide which shots to post - I have about 6 that were quite good.

[note: in the top picture he's (she's?) just ruffling his/her feathers.]

Read the post [+]

Hide the post [-]

An Olympic Moment

I's meant to post this yesterday for the opening of the Olympics, but, alas, I forgot. Oh well, better late than never.

It's not a great photo, but I did like the way the birds were lined up...

[I forgot to mention that, yes, they're in an upside-down Olympic arrangement... but since the Olympics are taking place on the other side of the world it'll be right-side up to them...]

Read the post [+]

Hide the post [-]