Saturday, October 24, 2009

A couple of birds

From Photo of the day (2009)


From Fowler


A couple pictures for this week.
The first one is a little American Dipper that I found in Goldstream Provincial Park just outside of Victoria. I was on a field trim with my observation practicum students to look at the salmon run but there weren't too many fish. These little guys run around on the bottom of the stream and pick insects off of rocks. Not much to look at but a neat bird all the same.

The second is a shot of Fowler I took today while out hunting. He spotted one bunny and chased (missed) and Meg chased another around in the trees somewhere but I didn't see one at all. Oh well. I liked the pictures though. Hope you do too.

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Dog light

From Photo of the day (2009)


I decided to try and take some dark pictures seeing as I am not out that much right now. I am currently on my first 2-week practicum for my Secondary Teaching PDPP program, so I am in school from 8:30-3 just like the old days. When I am out, it is generally dark, or I have the hawk out and bird + dog + camera is a few too many things to handle (or I simply forget the cam at home).

Anyways - I get up and take the dog out at 6am so she gets a good run before I have to get to school and now its not light until after 7am. She wears a little LED contraption on her collar so I can see her bounding all over the park. I was hoping to get a time lapse sort of thing with the light showing a trail of all the places she had been but it just wasn't going to work without the tripod. Maybe next time. I had her sit and did a 1 sec exposure with some obscenely high ISO and this is what I got. You can make out some of her spotted fur on her chest right around the light and if you look closely you can make out her chin above and to the right. It is kind of a neat effect on the computer screen. I was planning on posting a different shot but this one came out better.

Friday, October 9, 2009

Shadow of a Falconer

From Photo of the day (2009)


I took this on Sunday, October 4. I had Fowler and Meg out for some basic training - well the hawk was in training and doing well.. but the dog was all over the place. Oh well. The sun was out and, on heading back to the car, I saw this. I tried to get the dog in it to - but in that shot I cut off her head. It's remarkably hard to shoot an SLR from your waistline - I didn't want my shadow to show I was taking a picture. Anyways, she wouldn't hang around for a second try. I haven't been out shooting since, hopefully I can get some pictures over Thanksgiving and my upcoming school practicum.

I increased the shadows in this shot a bit as the camera made them grey - that's what happens when you shoot in automatic on a sunny day. I also cropped out the excess ground.

Saturday, October 3, 2009

And back at it..

Ok.. ok. My attitude when I fall so far behind in a routine thing is that when I take it up again I start from scratch. I got behind on my Road trip - you can see the rest of the pictures with captions Here - some of them are quite neat - and when I got back to Agassiz I worked 18 days straight (long days) and had to focus on packing to move to Victoria. Now I have more or less settled in, got my university classes organized and am taking this back up.

One point of note - I am not really a "Hawkless Falconer" any more, as I have purchased a young male harris hawk who I named Fowler. He will probably show up more and more in here as I get going. If you want to see pictures of him now, go here. No captions for him yet, but he just flew free for his first time yesterday. Anything new with him will be posted there, as he will not always feature on this site.

As for this site - it is likely to be downgraded to a weekly posting of several pictures as I no longer have the time every day to shoot pictures, let alone update this. I hope you will still find it interesting.

Now to business!

From Photo of the day (2009)

A branch of wet maple leaves near the Clearihue building on the University of Victoria (UVic) campus. I had just got out of class and was headed to the buses in the pouring rain. They stuck out after I had already stopped to look at a single leaf in the ivy below. This one turned out better. I sharpened it a bit, nothing else.


From Photo of the day (2009)

A very large wasp's nest at the dog park I take Meg to every morning. It is currently deserted, which made taking the shot a lot less risky. Of course as soon as I stop to look at something, Meg wants to stick her her nose in it and check it out too. I managed to get this one without her nose in it - I took some other angles after this which, when I looked at them on the camera, I thought I liked better. This is why I always do my editing on the computer screen - unless I was taking a metering shot or missed the subject etc. Anyways, this nest is about the size of a soccer ball, and attached all along the top to a big branch. Pity or I'd take it home as a future teaching resource. This shot was sharpened only.