White-winged Dove

 1/1000 | f/5.6 | ISO 320 | Fill Flash

1/1000 | f/5.6 | ISO 400 | Fill Flash

It has been a while since my last post, my apologies to any readers that I might have left! I have not done nearly as much photography as I would have liked over the last couple of months, there just hasn't been the time with so much work and other stuff going on. I am really hoping that I can change that soon, I seriously miss going out to photograph birds! Today I was able to make a quick setup in my backyard for the White-winged Doves that are always present in my yard. I was hoping for some flight shots, but the doves did not cooperate, so I settled for some perched images. Both of these images were shot from the comfort of my bedroom window under overcast skies this afternoon. Enjoy.

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American Goldfinch III

1/125 | f/8 | ISO 800 | Fill Flash

Just a quick post of another Goldfinch. This one was photographed earlier this week on a cool and rainy morning when the Goldfinches were out in numbers at my feeders. I am hoping to do some more backyard setups this weekend, so be sure to check back for updates!

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American Goldfinch II

1/250 | f/8 | ISO 800 | Fill Flash

Here is another Goldfinch from the backyard taken on the same day as the last post. I had to clone out one of heads of the stalk since it was coming straight through the birds head. 

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American Goldfinch

1/500 | f/8 | ISO 160

I am sorry that I have not posted here at all this month, I have not been out doing photography as much as I would like to. But, I have been working on some backyard setups over the last few days trying to get some new images of the American Goldfinches in my yard. This morning was my best try so far. I found this dead Sunflower stalk at the neighborhood park yesterday, so I snipped it and brought it home, attached it to an old plastic tripod with zip ties, and placed some thistle seed on the heads of the stalk. I placed the perch next to a low hanging sock feeder knowing that the finches would perch on it on their way to the feeder and I sprinkled the seeds on top to encourage them to stay perched on it for a few seconds so that I could get some shots off. It worked fairly well and this image is the best one that I got from the morning, though the light was a tad  strong. I am going to try again tomorrow and will also use some other perches as well, so be sure to check back!

Thanks for having a look.

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Favorites Images From 2012

1/800 | f/8 | ISO 200 | Fill Flash

1/500 | f/8 | ISO 200 | Fill Flash

1/400 | f/8 | ISO 800 | Fill Flash

 1/800 | f/8 | ISO 640 | Fill Flash

1/400 | f/8 | ISO 640 | Fill Flash

The year 2012 is coming to an end and 2013 is getting ready to move in; since I will be out of town for the week between Christmas and New Years, I figured I would put together a collection of my favorite images from 2012 before things get crazy here with last minute Christmas tasks and packing. So here we go! The first image of the Burrowing Owl was without a doubt my favorite encounter with a bird this year. This BO made it's home along a country road outside of Dallas for about 1 month back in January and was very cooperative toward photographers. This was my first time to ever see this owl and while I only was able to photograph it on two occasions, none in ideal light, it was still the highlight of my year and I am so thrilled that I was able to see and photograph it! The second image of the Green-winged Teal is hardly an outstanding image, but my duck portfolio was something that I tried to work on this year and this image was one of my first and simply for that reason it made it to my list of favorite images of the year. Going into 2012 I made it a goal to get good images of the male Painted Bunting, a bird that had alluded me for a couple of years, and I was excited when a photographer told me of a spot where you could get images of them at the Fort Worth Nature Center & Refuge and it was there that I took these two images. The last image is my favorite photo that I have taken of an American Goldfinch to date. I photographed it in my backyard not long before the finches started their migration back up north. I always enjoy it when these little birds descend upon my backyard for some food every year, but sadly this year I have seen fewer than 5 at my feeders. So anyway, there they are, my 5 favorite images of 2012. I hope you all enjoy them. I already have some plans and goals set for 2013 and I cannot wait to get started on them. Thanks to all of the people out there who have been reading my blog this year and to the ones who take the time to comment, I really appreciate it! 

Merry Christmas!

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Great Blue Heron

 1/500 | f/8 | ISO 100

1/640 | f/8 | ISO 100

I photographed this GBH at the same suburban park as the ducks in my previous post. It was a very cooperative individual and allowed for a close approach. It was very late afternoon and the light was really nice! I am hoping to go back there again this week and try for some of the other duck species. 

Thanks for looking!

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Some Ducks

1/640 | f/8 | ISO 200

1/500 | f/8 | ISO 200

I was at a large city park yesterday afternoon that had a good size pond with a few ducks like Gadwall, Wigeons and Pied-billed Grebes spending the winter there. What I like about city parks is that the ducks are usually highly approachable (except the grebes) and while it's hard to find some of the more interesting species at such places, you are able to get great images of what's present and it makes for some fun photography and is a great way to beef up the portfolio! I didn't get to spend a lot of time there, so I am hoping to go back next week and try for the wigeons and grebes. I will post an image or two of the highly cooperative Great Blue Heron in the next few days, so stay tuned!

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Lesser Scaup in Flight

1/2000 | f/5.6 | ISO 400 | Fill Flash

It has been almost one month since my last post on the blog, my apologies for the lack of updates! I have not been out in the field much over the past month, just too little time. The wintering ducks have arrived as well as the sparrows and Goldfinches. I have not had any Goldfinches in my yard this winter, except for one straggler this week, due to the very warm weather we have been experiencing here in North Texas there is an abundance of natural food available. We are finally expecting some cold weather next week and I am hoping for a freeze so that they will come to my yard where I have plenty of thistle feeders set up! I do hope to spend more time out next week at some of my favorite spots, I have been very restless to do some photography. I am happy to say that I have upgraded my workstation from a slow Dell to a much more powerful HP machine which is fantastic so far. I am now just trying to decide on what IPS monitor to buy and I will be set for all of my photo and video projects. Anyway, here is a photo from this afternoon of a Lesser Scaup photographed at a series of small ponds that are sandwiched between two fairly busy one way streets. It was a new location for me that I had heard a lot about, where you can find dozens of Hooded Mergansers along with Scaups, Gadwall, Teal, Shovelers, and a couple of Canvasbacks. I went hoping to photograph the hoodies and canvasbacks, but they were very skittish and would take flight to the next pond whenever a jogger or someone walking would go by, so no good photos of them today. The light is not the best with this image, it was cloudy right before I got there, but naturally the sun came out and I had to use my flash to try and balance it out. While I didn't do the best job on this image exposure wise, this is actually my first good flight image ever, thanks to my recently acquired Canon 400 5.6 lens.

Hopefully I will get out more next week and have some new images to share with you all.

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Indigo Bunting

1/200 | f/8 | ISO 640 | Fill Flash

I will take a break from the Acadia series and go back to one from earlier this year. I photographed this Indigo Bunting at the Fort Worth Nature Center along the marsh boardwalk back in April. At the time when I captured it, I did not like the leaves on the left side, which were also very blown out, and the IQ was not the best, so I gave it a go in Photoshop and attempted to remove the leaves on the left and leave the ones on the bottom, I never got the look I wanted and gave it up. So yesterday, 7 months later, I found it while going through my files and decided to try once again to edit it. This time around, I found myself liking the leaves on the left and had to simply tone them down with a layer mask. Also, I applied some Topaz DeNoise to the background only and selectively sharpened the bird. So while the IQ is still not really high, I think this image turned out pretty well on the second go around. And I now have a decent image of one of my favorite birds and a highly elusive one every year. I am really glad that I never deleted this image back in April! 

Hope you like it.

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Acadia Close Up

6 seconds | f/11 | ISO 100 | polarizing filter

While landscape photography is not something that I am very good at, mostly because I do not have the oppurtunity to practice it since I live in a large city, I really enjoy viewing others' landscape images and am overall a big fan of that side of photography. I was inspired while in Acadia NP to try my hand at it once again and once again I failed pretty miserably. Happily though, I was able to get one or two decent images of what I call "close up landscapes", which are detailed images of close up scenes within a landscape. It is a form of landscape photography that I find fun, especially since I am so bad at the grand landscape scenes. With this image I really like the rock and the red leaf contrasted next to the blue'ish water.  

I hope that everyone likes this image as well.

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Double-crested Cormorant

1/250 | f/2.8 | ISO 640

While doing some photography around Jordan Pond on a foggy evening in Acadia National Park a few weeks ago, I noticed this Double-crested Cormorant resting on a rock about 10 feet from the boat launch. Once again I did not have my 400 5.6 lens with me (a hard lesson was learned on this trip), so I was confined to the reach of the 70-200 f/2.8 for a bird lens. Even though the bird was easily approachable, I went with a wider, bird small in frame look here which I always like. I spent about 20 minutes waiting for it to look up and stretch or do something interesting, but it never did. I really like the peaceful scene here though with the fog and the bird sleeping. 

Thanks for looking.

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Female Mallard in Fall Colors

1/160 | f/5.6 | ISO 400

Here is another image from my 7 days in Acadia National Park last week. This one of a female Mallard (exciting bird, right?) swimming in some orange tinted water provided by the surrounding trees at a pond in Northeast Harbor. I had to deal with some tricky lighting as the sun was just coming up and had hit parts of the water, but not the duck. Photographed with the 7D and 400 5.6 lens. I ran some DeNoise on the image and sharpened the bird only.

Stay tuned for more from Acadia NP! 

click image to view larger size.

Female Common Merganser

1/2500 | f/2.8 | ISO 100

I just returned from a fantastic 10 day trip to the East Coast with my family, where we spent 7 days hiking and exploring Acadia National Park. While I was hoping to do more photography than I actually did, I still came away with a few images which I will share in the next few posts. While in Acadia, I concentrated mainly on detailed landscape images as we were a bit early to catch the peak color. On one of our hikes around Eagle Lake, I found this female Common Merganser chilling out on a large rock about 5 yards off shore. I didn't have my new 400 5.6 lens with me or my flash, so I had to make due with the less than ideal light and lack of reach and grabbed the Canon Rebel T2i which had a 70-200 f/2.8 mounted on it and crept as close as I could and thankfully I had just enough reach to get some decent images. Stay tuned for more images from Acadia!

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Some Success With A Hummingbird

 1/3200 | f/8 | ISO 800

1/2000 | f/8 | ISO 800

Yesterday morning I spent some time, as I had hoped, photographing the hummingbirds that are in my yard right now. A month or so ago, I attached this lichen covered stick to the top of the feeder pole hoping that the hummingbirds would see it as a good place to stand watch over the feeder as they rested. Sure enough this female Ruby-throated has been coming to my garden for a few weeks now and I think claimed it as her own! She will stand guard on this stick and chase away any other hummingbirds that come along. I am hoping that the male will show up tomorrow morning as I really want some images of him. I will be working to get some good landing shots also as the one I posted here is the best one I was able to get yesterday. So stay tuned for more, I hope you like these images!

Both images were taken with a tripod mounted Canon 7D and 400 f/5.6 lens. 

Minor adjustments and Topaz DeNoise applied to background only on both images.

click images to view larger size.

Long Time No Post - Great Egret

1/800 | f/8 | ISO 160

It has been a very long time since my last post here, it seems like Summer is always keeping me away from photography. The Summer months are always busy leaving me little time to go out in search of new or familiar subjects to photograph and whenever I did find myself with a free day or afternoon, the 100 plus degree weather would keep me from wanting to spend any time outdoors. Thankfully the Summer is over, September is here and surprisingly the weather in Texas has already cooled off significantly and an upcoming family vacation to Acadia National Park has me very excited about the Fall season. Here is a image that is not unique or original by far, but it is basically the first decent image I have captured since about June. Since then, I have switched from my Canon 100-400 lens to using a Canon 400 5.6 lens. I am excited to be using this lens which has much better Auto Focus capabilities than my 100-400 (though I already miss having IS) and am looking forward to putting it to the test this fall. Hummingbird migration is in full swing now and I have 2 female Ruby-throats and one male visiting my yard right now, previously I had a male and female Black-chinned as well, but they seem to have moved on. The hummingbirds have been very uncooperative thus far, but I am going to try them again tomorrow morning. 

Wish me luck and I promise that I will try to update this blog more often!

click image to view larger size.

White-winged Dove : Juvenile

1/320 | f/8 | ISO 800

Here is another image of a White-winged Dove taken from the backyard several weeks ago. I believe this is a juvenile and there were two of them feeding at the same time as two adults. This was a setup with the perch attached to a tripod above a ground feeder tray. Photographed under overcast conditions. I still have not had any time to get new photographs, I have been very busy with work and family visiting. Hopefully I can brave the 100+ degree heat get out again soon.

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Painted Bunting Again

1/200 | f/8 | ISO 250 | Fill Flash

Since I haven't had any time for photography lately due to family in town for the past 2 weeks, I thought I would post another image of the Painted Bunting photographed earlier this month. Photographed under cloudy skies, so fill flash was used on this image. 

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Some Backyard Regulars

 1/160 | f/8 | ISO 800

1/200 | f/8 | ISO 800

Here are some shots from my backyard of a couple common visitors that come to my feeders daily. It was raining most of the day yesterday, which I always love for photography, so I set up this perch above a ground feeder filled with seed and peanuts and quickly had 2 Blue Jays come followed by several White-winged Dove, who loved to perch above the feeder before dropping down. Both photos were taken with the tripod mounted Canon 7D and 100-400 lens. I have a specific set up in mind for the doves that I will try to work on this weekend. I love doing backyard set ups!

Click on images to view larger size.

Another Painted Bunting

1/320 | f/8 | ISO 640 | Fill Flash

Another image from the fantastic outing I had photographing this beautiful bird last week. I am hoping to get out again sometime this week and work on the Indigo Buntings (the are so tough to photograph!) and maybe one or two more photos of the Painted that I have in mind, so stay tuned!

click image to view larger size. 

Painted Bunting

 1/400 | f/8 | ISO 800

1/800 | f/8 | ISO 640 | Fill Flash

Success at last! After several unsuccessful attempts in the last couple of weeks to photograph Indigo and Painted buntings at the Fort Worth Nature Center and Refuge, I finally got some images I am happy with from this morning's shoot of a very cooperative male painted. I have to give credit to another photographer that my mom and I met on Tuesday at the refuge who pointed us to this spot. It is just fantastic and filled with both species of bunting as well as other birds. Although the Indigo's are still alluding me, I hold out a lot of hope of getting some shots soon from this spot. Photographed under overcast light from a storm that passed through early this morning. The soft light really helped to bring out the vibrant colors of this bird. Both images were taken with a tripod mounted Canon 7D and 100-400mm lens.

click images to view larger size.