Bald eagles in abundance

 

The winter struck back again with an inch of snow and temperatures below freezing but it was sunny today. The warmer weather the days before cleared the smaller rivers from ice and even the Mississippi got some open water now. It was a perfect day for Bald Eagle photography.

Lots of action at the 16th Street basin in Dubuque. I actually thought to have just a brief look at this location but I ended up spending more than three and a half hours there… :-)

I can tell you there wasn’t a dull moment during the whole time. The eagles were moving around, caught fish, missed the catch sometimes, and were fighting about the prey. I may show a few more photos during the week.

If you look at my photo from yesterday you can see what a difference a blue sky makes for bird photography, especially with snow and ice around.

Simple clicks (still with snow and ice)

 

I went on “kestrel patrol” again this evening. I saw the bird briefly but haven’t been able to put the glass on it. Instead I made another image of this old farm house on the hill. A different angle, a different lens, some nice clouds, and you can get a totally different result from the same subject. Click HERE if you like to see the photo that I made ten days ago after a snow storm.

Mud Lake at the big river isn’t far from this location and so I stopped again at the owl’s nest. The adult bird was still sitting in the nest but no evidence that a young bird has hatched.

As the sun disappeared behind the ridge the other side of the Mississippi got painted with some nice and warm light. I used the SIGMA 50-500 for both landscape shots today. The second photo was made at 370 mm and I love how it compresses the scene. It looks like the railroad tracks on the other side are just a good stone throw away but the river is actually 2.3 km (~1.4 mi) wide at this point. As you can see the Mississippi is still covered with ice but we have some warmer days coming and this will change everything here.

Blustery cold Sunday

 

The snow storm from yesterday was followed by a sunny day with blowing wind and very cold temperatures. It didn’t stop us from driving through the open country and looking for some wildlife. Joan and I went to the gravel road where I had seen the American Kestrel a few days ago but we didn’t have any luck today. Instead the fresh snow and some clouds made for a wide angle shot of this old farm house on the hill.

Joan wanted to see if we can see the Blue Birds again that I discovered last weekend in the valley. To my surprise we found three of them sitting in a tree above the creek at the same place. Despite the very cold temperatures the creek had open water. This and the fact that this location in the valley is a little protected from the icy wind draws probably the birds in. We also discovered a bunch of American Robins in a nearby tree. I guess spring can’t be that far away anymore… ;-)

Four years in the journey...

I realized a few days ago that I missed the 4th anniversary of having this blog online. Not a big deal but it’s almost shocking how time flies by. I wasn’t really sure what I tried to accomplish in 2010 when I started the blog. I guess I just tried to do something different than just publishing photos on a public website like the German “fotocommunity” or pbase. There is nothing wrong with that and I still do the pbase thing. I had the feeling the time was right to do something more specific, to tell stories with my photos, and most important to share my adventures in the great outdoors, share wildlife encounters or good locations for photography. As deeper as I dived into the whole thing as more I understood that my photos can create awareness about the vulnerability of our environment and wildlife. Reading many other photography blogs and writing my own helped me to become a better photographer. It is a wonderful challenge to publish a new image that is better than the last one. It doesn’t always happen but I’m trying. The blog wouldn’t be anything without you my friends, who stop here and shave some time off to read and view my photos. I’m very thankful for that and for any comment, your messages or “thumb up” at Facebook. I like to thank my dear wife Joan, who is my best consultant and friend and helped me many times to find the right words, and to get better with my “Sauerkraut”-English. Happy Valentine's Day!

Having the right lens in the bag

I took off early from home yesterday morning. The air was cold but it was sunny and clear. I had hope to find some Bald Eagles on the Wisconsin side of the Mississippi River. The river is frozen and only a small stretch of maybe 50- 100 yards below the dam had open water. Unfortunately there were only a couple eagles in a tree, too far away for a photo. They must have had a good breakfast already because they didn’t move at all during the whole time I was there. With other words, I got skunked by the eagles!

I have the habit to take more than just one lens on every trip, even if the goal is wildlife photography with a long lens. You never know what may come your way and it allows to change plans and look for different subjects and opportunities. The clear air, the nice light, the snow and ice, the mist from the water coming down the dam, this all invited me to make an architectural image of the dam. I have made photos from this vantage point before but these were by far the best conditions ever. The Carl Zeiss Distagon 35mm/f2 is my favorite lens for this kind of photography. It has manual focus but I love its color rendition and the incredible sharpness. I’m glad I had the 35/f2 in the bag yesterday… ;-) By the way, both photos just add to what I wrote about snow and colors in my last blog post. Wishing all of you a wonderful week!

Colors and snow

Sometimes it needs an inspiration from someone outside of our own bowl to make us look in a different direction or look in the same direction with a different pair of eyes. This happened to me after reading three blog posts from one of my favorite photographers, Moose Peterson, during the last five days. BROWN ON SNOW / GREEN ON SNOW / RED ON SNOW, they all talked about how to work with these colors in a photo with snow and still telling the story about winter.  

It was still snowing this morning when I went out to the rocky bluffs we have behind our house. The snow had painted the brown tree trunks nicely but I was looking for more. It isn’t easy to get a clear view of any of the rocks without having too many bare sticks or small trees in the frame. I finally found a spot where I was able to implement the red-orange tones of the rocks into my photo.

Later in the day, with sunset just ahead, Joan and I went on a walk with the dog down in the valley where the Little Maquoketa River runs. I have the white balance settings in camera most of the time on Auto mode. That works pretty good for most landscape photos but in this image it leaves a blue color cast on the snow because the foreground was completely in the shade already. This is easy to change but I actually like it this way. The low sitting sun brought out the warm tones of the tree trunks and rocks on the other side of the valley and even the snow reflects the power of the sun. The blue color in the foreground is complementary to the warm colors in the back and it tells the story about another cold winter night that was just half an hour away.

At Forest Gump's turning point

 

Last Saturday night I zapped through the programs on TV before I went to bed. Sure enough, one channel had Forest Gump with Tom Hanks playing. It seems there is always a TV channel that has this movie running on Saturday nights ;-). It happened to be that I just joined the movie where Forest Gump started running all across the United States. That includes the scene where he reached the east coast and turned around to run in the other direction. This scene was shot on the wooden bridge of Marshall Point Light in Maine, a place that we visited during our vacation tour in the fall of 2013.

This lighthouse is an iconic landmark and we were not the only people visiting as this image may imply. I don’t manipulate much in my photos but here I used “content aware fill”, a feature in Photoshop CC, to make five people disappear after only a couple minutes of work. Love it! It is a very useful tool for a situation like this.

NEW Landscape Portfolio finally online

 

I finished another one of my “winter projects”. A long overdue update of my landscape portfolio is finally online. The most difficult part was the selection of the images that really represent, what I believe is my best work in landscape photography. I have quite often very emotional attachments to many of my pictures but that does not automatically mean that those are the best pics to choose from. Some photos have been in the portfolio before, some have been replaced with new images from the last two years. If you like to check it out, feel free to click on the portfolio button in the side bar and to choose the respective gallery. As always, I’m very thankful for your visit here in the blog and for your comments, messages, and emails.

Snow patterns

 

While here in Eastern Iowa the mild temperatures took care for some of the snow we had on the ground, a fresh layer of the white stuff covered the landscape up in the Northwoods of Wisconsin. It was my traditional ice fishing weekend with friends and as always I took the camera with me. The fishing was good this year but a strong overcast made for gray snow most of the time. Nevertheless, there were some brief moments when the sun was covered only by a thin layer of clouds, creating at least some luminosity.

The patterns of snow on the trees were wonderful and I just tried to integrate them in my compositions. The deer tracks in the snow that covers the ice on Popple River are a different kind of pattern but they add to the story about a nice winter day in a great landscape.

Fine Art Gallery - "After the rain"

 

Who says I have to show my actual work here in the blog any time I post something? ;-)  Yes, I made some new bird images during the extreme cold weather we have here since a few days but today I liked to browse through my archive and dig out some “unfinished business”. This photo was made in September 2012 in Rocky Mountain National Park. It was a rainy and windy day but the views were stunning and the dynamic of the clouds during and after the rain showers was unbeatable.