Finding My Passion Again

It has been over three years since my last post.  I cannot believe it has been so long.  The last three years were probably the toughest years of my life.  I lost my grandfather, my aunt, and my father in less than two years, all which took a toll on me.  None harder than the loss of my father.  It was so sudden and unexpected that it really crushed me.  After his passing, I realized how little time I spent with him doing his true passion, woodworking.  So, I guess to help cope with my father's loss I spent a lot of my free time in his wood shop doing everything that he enjoyed doing.

Looking back at my life, I realized how much influence my father had on me.  Almost everything I enjoyed doing I learned from him, and we always did them together.  Since I was a child I remember getting my first Minolta film camera, and the two of us would go out and photograph wildlife together.  For probably 20 years or so, we were always going together to take photographs.  I guess without him I didn't have the drive to go out alone.  Also, with my new full time job, I didn't have the free time that I had before.  I believe that I had gotten used to staying home, when I was not working, and finding more things to do around the house.

Just before my father passed away, I had started growing some bonsai trees from seeds.  I had also bought some pre bonsai to work on.  I thought it would be something that I would enjoy doing.   Over the last two years, I have learned a lot about bonsai care, but I still have a lot to learn.  I have really enjoyed spending the time outside and enjoyed the process of bonsai.  Now, I have approximately  two dozen different trees, in a large variety of species.  None of which I would consider bonsai at this point, but they are a work in progress.  After some reflection about the past few years of my life, I realized that maybe this was my way of coping with the losses.  Either way, I have enjoyed working on my trees, and I don't see myself stopping anytime soon.  I have started a lot of seeds over this winter, and I am waiting to see if they will sprout.

From spending all the extra time outside caring for my bonsai trees, I realized how much I was missing being out in nature.  So, I charged up my camera batteries for the first time in over a year last fall and finally took a trip out to the local reservoir.  I saw some bald eagle's fishing, some geese, and ducks, and some other small bird species.  However, I did not get any pictures.  I was focusing more on macro photography at the time.  I wanted to photograph insects because I was seeing much more insects than anything else.  I did manage to get a couple of photographs of dragonflies and frogs.  I also photographed a lot of flowers and other subjects just to have something to photograph.  I did get some good shots, but it simply felt good to be back out taking pictures.

Since my trips in the fall, I did take some other trips out during the winter.  I just didn't post anything about them.  I plan on sharing some photographs from those trips soon.  I also recently took a trip out to the Bashakill Wildlife Management Area.  I will post more about that as well.  Soon, I will also be taking a trip to Alaska for the first time.  I am so excited to finally get to visit Alaska.  I have been wanting to go there since I was a child.  I've been preparing for the trip, and I purchased a new camera lens.  The sigma 150–600 mm contemporary lens.  So far, I really like it.  I have not had much time to test it out, but it is a vast improvement over my last lenses.  I look forward to getting more opportunities to use it.  I am also thinking about getting a new camera body for my trip.  I will keep you posted on that once I decide what I am going to purchase.  I am also looking to buy some other accessories.  As I purchase the equipment, I will probably post about it.

For this post, I decided to include some photographs taken since my last post.  As a reminder all the images posted on my blog have been reduced in size for storage purposes. I hope you all enjoy them.  Until next time.

Deep Freeze

Two weekends ago temperatures dropped below zero for a couple days, which did cause the reservoirs to almost completely freeze over.  This for me was a good thing, because it forced the eagles to be near the stream where I can get the closest to them.  The eagle numbers were the highest I’ve seen this winter, but still lower than normal.  I was seeing about ten eagles every time I went out. 

However I only managed a few photographs.  I was having problems with lighting.  With the lens I use it has a very high f-stop when at long range, which was causing problems with getting the proper lighting.  Also due to this, most of the time I had to use a 1600 ISO. Which I would prefer not to use because of the extra noise that it adds to photographs.  Also I was battling the sun all day.  It was either too bright or not enough.  It always seemed to sneak behind a cloud at the worst moments.  In addition I was having problems with the full mature eagles because there heads were overexposing, and I could not figure out how to prevent it, without the rest of the image being drastically underexposed.

Furthermore I had a day that when I arrived at the lake, there was a construction crew working on clearing brush and putting in new electric poles.  They were working right where the eagles roost and feed.  This really upset me, especially since they were running a chainsaw and making tons of noise.  There are signs that it is an endangered species area during the winter months because of the eagle population in the area during those months.  Also there are signs stating that outdoor activity will disturb eagles.  Yet they were out there working.  It just seemed like poorly timed construction work.  Due to there noise the eagles left the area for the day.  But the next morning they were back and it was the best day I had all week.   

During my trips last week I was also seeing much higher numbers of ducks.  I saw plenty of common mergansers, black ducks, and a few hooded mergansers.  But I also found two common goldeneye ducks, which I don’t normally see.  I also spotted a downy woodpecker, but he didn’t stay around for long.   

Towards the end of last week, the weather had started another warming trend.  It is quite crazy.  Temperatures fell to below zero and days later it climbed into the fifties, with average temperatures around freezing.  I am hoping that I continue to see more eagles, but I believe that the warm weather won’t help.  I guess at least I can look forward to the spring duck migration.  Until next time.           

Change of Luck

So far this winter’s eagle season for me has been a complete bust.  I have been seeing small numbers of eagles, but nothing within range to photograph.  Due to the warm winter most of the water in the lakes and reservoirs is not frozen.  Which gives the eagle’s free roam of the area, and they mostly stay in areas where people cannot go.  But yesterday and today Mother Nature is throwing a curve ball, and dropping temperatures to zero and below, with wind chills in the -20 to -30's.  I am sure that the ice will form on the lakes, and tomorrow I hope that I will get a chance to spend most of the day out.  Maybe these extremely cold temperatures will be the change of luck that I need to get my first eagle photographs of this year.

Since it has been so bad with the eagle count, I decided that I would fill my bird feeders and see what I could get.  I have had a good amount of species visiting including cardinals, blue jays, chickadees, juncos, tufted titmouse, and nuthatches, but I have not seen the woodpeckers that I have seen in the past.

I also have had a hawk that seems to show up every time I fill my feeders.  I guess he likes easy prey.  I feel bad about the situation, but I don’t think I can do much about it.  If you watch him carefully he normally hides in the trees above my feeder and ambushes the other animals.  Last year he attacked a squirrel on the ground below my feeder and chased him up a tree.  It was crazy too watch.  I had never seen a hawk hop branch to branch up a tree and chase a squirrel.  In the end he managed to kill the squirrel just behind my fence.  Since then I have felt bad about filling the feeders but I guess it is only nature taking its course.  If anyone has ideas about stopping the hawk, please feel free to comment.  The only thing I could find was to not fill the feeders for a while and hope the hawk moves on.

I know that I have not been posting much, but I have not had many photographs to post.  So I think I will be trying to post more helpful hints and other things to fill the time in between my photographs.  If anyone has a topic that they would like me to try and cover, please leave a comment and I will try and cover it.  Until next time.

Lunar Photography Attempt

It has been a while since I have made a post, but I have not had any photographs to post.  I have been having very few chances to photograph any wildlife.  So I decided to change gears a bit, and I tried to photograph the full moon about a week ago.  It has been a long time since I had done it, and since the last time I have gotten a better tripod and a gimbal head. So it was definitely easier this time around.  I was using my Bower 650-1300 mm lens for this though; because it is the only lens I have that can get close up to the moon.  I kind of wish I had a telescope I could hook my camera up too.  I was happy with the photographs but wish I had a better lens.  The Bower lens is not high quality, but for the price it’s great for me.  So because of the quality of the lens the photographs are more pixilated in my opinion.  After I took the photographs I did some processing, and maybe even too much processing, but I think they came out good.  My favorite thing about them is that if you look close enough you can see the craters, which you can’t see when you’re taking the photographs.  I think the next moon photograph I want to try is a crescent moon to see the difference from the full moon.  But I need a clear night to try it. 

Even though it has been a slow couple of months for me wildlife wise, I am looking forward to the winter.  I am hoping that this winter will be another productive eagle winter.  Last year I managed some of the best eagle photographs that I had ever taken.  I’m really excited that there migration will start soon.  I spend a lot of early mornings trying to take a photograph of these magnificent birds of prey.  But with my limited budget it makes it very difficult to photograph them.  Most of my long range photographs are taken with a manual focus lens.  So it is almost impossible to capture them in flight.  However last winter I did manage some flying shots with my 250mm lens.  The eagles came extremely close though, and that does not happen all the time.

I have seen several eagles lately and I hope that I continue to start seeing higher numbers.  I can’t wait, and I will try and post as often as I can over the winter about all my sightings.  Until next time.

Productive Outings

Finally I am starting to have some productive photography trips.  The last few I have been on were great.  The fall foliage is at its peak and the scenery is absolutely beautiful.   My most recent trip was the most productive.  I made my way to the Bashakill Wetlands and was hoping to find some warblers and other fall migrant birds.  I did get a glimpse at a few of them but didn’t manage a good photo.  Once I decided that birding was not going well, I changed to photographing insects.  I managed a couple shots of dragonflies and butterflies.  Most didn’t come out due to the harsh natural lighting.  There were no clouds and it made it very hard to control lighting.  After a while I remembered I had extension tubes in my camera bag, so I put two of the three on.  That’s when I saw this little jumping spider crawling up a boulder.  The spider was probably about the size of a pencil eraser.  The spider didn’t sit still very long so I only managed a few shots before he hopped off into the grass and disappeared.  I was pleased with the shot but I wish I could have gotten closer.  

While I was home after this I realized that maybe if I added the extension tubes and then attached my small lens reversed it might actually get me more magnification than I had with my 250 mm with the extension tubes on.  I plan on running a test to see if adding extension tubes to a reversed lens lets you stay a little further from the subject.  I’m hoping this is the case because with the reversed lens you have to get so close to the subject that it’s almost impossible to do, because the wild animals don’t stay when you get that close.  I hope that the upcoming week is as good as this one.  I hope everyone enjoys the photographs.  Until next time.