Practicing

Last week, I was away for a cabin weekend with friends that has been an annual tradition for many years. While I was away, one of my friends taught me a little about shutter speed, aperture, and ISO. It’s all new to me. Even though I like taking pictures, I have never explored playing with these settings. Instead, I’ve just stayed in auto mode, for the most part. 

Since I’ve been back, I’ve played with all of this the tiniest bit.  This morning, I went out to drink my morning tea with my camera in the back yard. My good camera does not take good action shots in auto mode.  I’d like to try to capture hummingbirds in hover mode, which shows their wings, so I was playing around with shutter speed.  

The hummingbirds cooperated and while I was taking pictures of one at a feeder, another one showed up.  This is the second picture I took. The wings show up better and I think that’s a combination of bird position, light, and shutter speed. To do this, I think I figured out the manual focus and I like how it really zeros in on the focus area and blurs the out of focus parts.  

Another thing I like is the additional crispness or clarity of the object in focus range. I think this is clearer and sharper than auto mode when the camera is trying to focus on everything all at once. 

Not So Strange

 In some places, this would be strange.  At a juggling festival, it’s not nearly as surprising.

Now I Know Where It Is

 It’s on a gravel road somewhere outside the South Eastern town of Whalen MN.

Not long before spotting East Street, we also saw Dew Drop Road and this structure.

These are pictures from our trip to Cedar Rapids Iowa for the juggling convention.  

Getting Caught Up

 This one was taken in mid-May.

Robin

 I took this picture on Mother’s Day at Wood Lake Nature Center. 

Owl Hunting

Based upon a Facebook post of a friend, we had a tip about the general location of a barred owl’s nest fairly close to our house.  Sometime in the first week of May, we went there at dusk and my camera immediately ran out of batteries, because it was the one time I did not check them first.  We did not see any owls, but we did see a turkey roosting in a tree and a raccoon.  

We did not make it back until the evening of 05/13 and 05/14 a little before sunset.  The first night, we walked around and were richly rewarded.  Mostly we saw the one adult barred owl.

It wasn’t until the very end that we saw the other adult and the juvenile. These two practically flew over our heads.  They were quiet but we sensed the air movement or something, so we barely got to the see them fly and land. 

We went back the next night an hour or so before sunset and we saw one of the adults and the juvenile.  We didn’t walk around much.  Once we spotted one owl, we stayed in that location and they did too.  Both started out fairly deep in the forest, too deep and obstructed to take a decent picture, but the juvenile kept flying out closer to us.  It also was constantly chirping or vocalizing.  We figures that we weren’t stressing it, since we stayed in one spot and it kept getting closer to us. 

When it landed on a tree in the open, it became even more rewarding to watch.  The juvenile owl started playing with some dead leaves hanging from the branch below it. 

I took a number of pictures of the owl playing with the leaves.  Many of them turned out blurry.  I almost never take videos with my camera, because I just don’t think about it but this time I did!

Northeast Bird Rookery

PT and I met up yesterday morning to go to the bird rookery.  When I look at the photos that I took, I think I was playing around with different types of framing.  Note to self - - Next time, remember to look at your notes from the photography classes you have been taking and pick an area for focus and practice.  

Almost all of these were taken at or close to full 60x zoom in automatic mode. 

I like these two photos together.  It’s subtle and you have to really look, but they capture careful stick placement and a job well done. 

This is one of the two islands where the birds are nesting.

In addition to the herons, there are cormorants, different types of ducks, and, or course, geese. 

Here are several pictures where I was trying to frame things in a certain way.  A lot of this involves just taking a lot of pictures, since the birds move so quickly. 

The first one suggests how crowded the trees, but not really since it’s capturing an edge.  It’s even more dense in the middle.

I got to witness a confrontation between two herons through the camera lens.  While the shots are not that clear it was thrilling to see and hear.  

I am taking a photo editing class later in the month and I hope I learn how to edit out the pipe or whatever it is in these last two shots.  

Last thoughts……One of the things that I’m exploring overall is what is a good photo?  Not surprisingly, I think I started with a rather narrow, internal definition in that I like crisp, clear, close shots of the thing I am photographing.  That means I’ve been approaching photos from a portrait-taking perspective, like this one.  

It’s been fun to explore broadening from that point to try and tell a story with picture, use a picture to better remember an experience, focus on “the whole” rather than one subject, and a bunch of other things.  I’m not sure I am doing this deliberately.  It just seems to be happening.