Sunday, June 19, 2011

Cooper's Hawk

From Photo of the day 2011

This little guy came to hunt around our birdfeeder and the neighbour's back yard this morning. There has been another juvenile hanging around the last couple of days, not sure if it was him - I thought the other one was a female, but not sure. He has bands on from Andy Stewart - a local researcher who bands most of the cooper's hawks in Victoria. Blue bands are male, red are female. I've sent off the numbers to (hopefully) get a bit of a backstory on this particular bird. I had some pictures I went outside to get when he was further back in our yard, this was from his second visit this morning, and I shot all three through our dining room picture window.

From Photo of the day 2011

Just a different pose, another good shot from a larger series I shot while waiting for him to take off.

From Photo of the day 2011

This one I think is very cool - even though the bird has a bit of motion blur. For the speed he would have been going I was suprised how well he came out and that I actually got all of his head in the frame (just). He had just launched himself from the previous branch and was chasing a crow. It was just as cool as watching my own bird hunt - he had his feet on the crow, tussled with it in the air for a bit before he lost it and chased it up over our roof and flew away. Not suprisingly all our feeder-visiting finches were sitting very still and quiet in the labernum tree!

Photo hunting

This is going to be a post for photos from a few days ago.

From Photo of the day 2011


I took this on Friday morning at Cadboro Bay beach on my morning dog walk. It turns out its almost as handy to have a pointing dog for picture taking as it would be for hunting. Meg is trained enough that she will wait, pointing the ducks, until I tell her to chase them. It works out for me - I can get my camera set and ready - and for her training for when I have another bird and want to hunt ducks. You can just see her blurry head in this shot. I was going to crop it out, but then the framing was off, and besides it tells a story. I could even call it "shooting" - she's just a camera dog, instead of a gun dog.

I cropped, increased shadows, and sharpened this in Picasa 3.

From Photo of the day 2011

Same duck from the same chase, just with a bit more time. With the 5fps I've been able to catch a lot more action, and had several shots to choose from. I liked how sharp her tail was and the side lighting worked. Again, a bit of a crop (the ducks were a bit far for my lens), increased shadows a touch, and sharpening.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Scale

From Photo of the day 2011

I took a paininting down to Prism Imaging in Victoria to have some prints made a few days ago in the morning. Seeing as I had to go downtown for that, I took the dog to the Dallas Road beach for her morning run. It must have been a spring tide (or close to it) as the water was way out and this big rock was exposed. I thought the big barnacles were cool - about the size of a twoonie around - and then I noticed that they had little barnacles on top of them. I was reminded of the saying "even my bruises have bruises" and figured this could be the "even the barnacles have barnacles!". The kelp added a bit extra for perspective and interest. I've been discovering the auto-bracketing function on my new camera which is cool. It gives me a chance to take the same picture in a three (or more) frame burst, and the camera will vary the exposure a little bit with each shot. I have it set to do this using shutter speed. You can do it with aperture too - I guess you could use that for action shots - but that would change your depth of field, which was way more important to this shot. I think this was the -0.3 exposure shot (meaning my chosen settings resulted in the image being more exposed than I would have liked) , which I further sharpened in Picasa 3. No cropping.


From Photo of the day 2011

While the previous was small scale, this is obviously large scale. I took this one the day before - actually, this several - on a hike up the aptly named Mt Work on Sunday afternoon. This is another stitched panorama shot using ArcSoft's Panorama Maker Pro (though this time version 5). Unfortunately the free version of the software only outputs 1/16th size panoramas - good enough for here, but not for printing. The free version of Pro 4 did the full size ones, but I guess then they weren't selling any software. I may remake this with a purchased version when I get some money.

Anyways - I shot the individual shots in a vertical camera frame to get more of the foreground in with the rest of the scenery. Also used as high an F-stop I could get and still hand-hold the shots in the given light (f 11) to maximize my depth of field. A total of 5 shots to make this one. You can see the Bamberton mill/quarry/construction site on the shores of the Saanich Inlet, and I think if had I bothered to haul out my binos on site I could have made out bits of Mill Bay and Cobble Hill. Of course, having the camera set up with the wide angle lens for scenery shots, I missed two great opportunities at eagles flying by at eye level or lower off the edge of the rock face. Bother. Other than the stitching, I did no post processing.

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Flowers

From Photo of the day 2011

I took this photo yesterday, but didn't get a chance to process it. I took it on a walk around Oak Bay and Willows Beach with my mom and sister in the morning. I didn't see anything much that sparked my photo-eye until we were almost finished and I spied this iris in someone's roadside flower garden. It was huge, and I liked the brush of stamens waiting to paint the next bee to visit with pollen as he crawled in. I stood back and shot this with my long lens (70-300mm) to make it more like a macro shot. I sharpened a touch in Picasa 3 just to bring out that brush a bit more.


From Photo of the day 2011

This one I took today at the end of a walk around Durrance Lake with a friend. I liked how they were clinging to the rockface above the parking lot, and I liked how the light was hitting them from the side, but not the rock behind them. This made it look like they had a bit of a spotlight on them. It also let me meter off them and leave the rock behind them underexposed enough to be black. Just cool. Again, I shot this with my long lens as they were up out of reach, and it just does macro better than my wide angle. Slight sharpening in Picasa, nothing else.

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Takeoff

From Photo of the day 2011
I didn't see much at Cadboro this morning for picture taking. I did have some fun trying out the 5 fps feature of the new camera on some pigeons, though my focus was off so they didn't make the cut.

Meg spooked this heron from the rock where I was going to take pictures of him (closer to shore) but he landed on this kelp-raft. I waited around long enough for him to take off and got a bunch of shots of his actual take off - being a heron, that part of his flight takes a second or two. I liked this one the best - you could see his face and the trail of water coming off his feet. It is far from camera-direct, however. I cropped this a fair bit to remove extraneous image and played with the highlights and fill light (the original was too dark). I also significantly sharpened it - all in Picasa 3.

Will have to figure out the focusing better for next time.

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Cadboro Bay

From Photo of the day 2011

I really like how this one came out and if I knew I was going to be more consistently posting, I would have left it here. I will call it the "official" photo of the day. I spotted this scene immediatly on arriving at the beach this morning and liked how the oars of the rowboat looked. I framed it long to give it more perspective, same reason for using a wider aperture to blur the driftwood out. It makes your eye look out towards the fellow rowing rather than the foreground. He looked kind of lonely out there by himself, not sure if he was. The boat in the picture turned out not to be where he was headed, there were two more anchored out of the shot to the left and he went to one of those. This is straight from the camera - I was going to clone out what I thought was sensor dust just above the bow of the boat, then realized when I zoomed in, it was actually part of the boat!


From Photo of the day 2011

A barnacled rock being washed by the waves. I liked how the waves were coming in, and figured the bubbles would make a neat shot, but knew from previous experience that those kinds of shots need something to focus on - bubbles don't work on their own. This lonely barnacled rock worked out quite well - I had fun trying out my new D200's rapid fire (5 fps) continuous shooting and so took a lot of these ones, some with the water just coming in, some with more water, etc. This one came out the best. I cropped it a bit to change the framing (put the rock more to the center left) and to bring out the focus on the barnacles some more. I know when viewing the small versions on here the little details aren't so clear.


From Photo of the day 2011

And last but not least - my pooch. Mostly in here just because it is a nice picture of her. I think she was watching some ducks and debating if it was worth swimming out to chase them or not. Turns out it was. I adjusted the fill light (increased) to bring out her dark face a bit more.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Nikon D200

So after the escapade with the barred owl and my camera eating the better picture of the flower, I decided to take the Nikon D70s into the shop. As it turned out, it needed a new card slot (estimate ~ $200 to fix). As I could buy a used D70s body for 200, I figured I would instead replace the camera body with a cooler one and use the $200 to upgrade. Thus - all my shots on here will now be taken with a Nikon D200, unless otherwise stated. I have kept my old D70s, probably more for sentimental reasons than anything else.

From Photo of the day 2011
I saw this shot on the way to Cadboro Bay beach this morning with the dog. I made her wait and fired off a bunch - its another one of my reflection shots. You can see me on the left with the new camera, and the dog in the right lens. The sky looked cool too. I used my wide angle lens, increased the highlights a touch in Picasa 3, nothing else.