They know how to hide from a photographer very well. We have seen them at many locations in the mountains of the Western United States before but I never have been able to make a clean shot. The Steller's Jay may come close to a campsite or parking lot but always tries to stay in the shade of a tree or rock. Usually I'm happy if I get a well lit front portrait like this of a bird but this one doesn't show any of the beautiful blue feathers of its back and tail. Well, next time....
Hi guys, we are back from our vacation trip to Colorado. I know a blog should be actual but we spent most of the time in the mountains and quite often at remote locations with no internet connection. I can promise you I will make this up in the next few weeks and will post lots of images and a few little stories about great landscapes and exciting wildlife encounters.
We started our camping trip in Northern Colorado, precisely in the mountains along the Cache la Poudre Canyon. Yes, we still do "real tent camping", as one campsite host called it, and stay in my "legendary" Hilleberg Nallo 3 tent, which is now fifteen years old but still protects against the weather like on its first tour. One of the best buys I ever made.
One of the recent wildfires was just contained near our first campsite (Jack's Gulch) and in the valley we saw many signs with big thank you notes to the fire fighters that saved peoples properties. Beside the fire damage millions of trees in the Rocky Mountains are dead because of pine beetle invasions, a natural occurrence as we learned. It was not always easy to make a good landscape shot without having dead trees or branches in the frame. I scouted the area a little bit during the days with just plain blue and boring sky and when clouds finally moved in one evening I knew exactly where to go in order to make a few interesting clicks with great light. More to come, so please stay tuned.
I can't move on to the next thing here in my blog without finishing the little story about the House Wrens in our front yard, although these images are already a week old. Friday afternoon the female was still feeding the young birds in the nest box. The insects she carried were quite big and this told me that the young wrens would leave the nest very soon. Ones in a while a young bird would stick its head out of the hole but I have been unable to find out how many birds mama wren was actually feeding.
However, we were not at home during the weekend and when we came back on Sunday the young wrens were gone. As you maybe remember the first brood was destroyed earlier this summer and all what I can hope for is that the little House Wrens are somewhere out there growing up and making it safely to their winter grounds in the South. I can't wait until next spring when a male will send out his trilling, flutelike melody in order to attract a female right in front of the bedroom window. You can bet on that the nest box will be cleaned and will be ready to host the next generation of House Wrens. They are so much fun to watch and a great subject to improve the skills for wildlife photography.
Just a short post today. The American Goldfinch is present all the year around in the timber around our house. We see them every day but it is really not easy to get close to them for a frame filling picture. During my lunch break today I tried to snap a few shots of the House Wren who is extremely busy to catch enough insects for the young ones in the bird box. Suddenly this male goldfinch landed at the nearby birdbath and so I just made a few clicks of this wonderful bird instead. It wasn't before I reviewed the images on my screen when I saw that the finch had some unusual growth on his right foot between the toes. I don't know what it is but I like to find out.
Yesterday Dubuque had some very special guests in town. President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle visited during their bus tour through several cities in Iowa and campaigned for his reelection. The event took place in the amphitheater at the old Star Brewery building right at the Mississippi River. I always admit that I'm not a "people photographer" but of course, for an event like this I couldn't leave the camera at home. Because of security you couldn't bring a bag with a whole bunch of equipment and so I just chose the Nikkor 24-120, f/4 lens attached to the D300s.
I knew ahead of time that it would be difficult to make a shot of the Obamas without any other person in the frame but this was what I hoped to accomplish. Joan and I went relatively early to the location and this gave me enough time to study the light, and even more important to figure out where the action of their arrival would take place. With the president it is a guessing game, because of security reasons nobody would really tell you the details. I put all my eggs in one basket and took position at the fence closest to the driveway on the south side of the brewery. I was hoping they would walk from the bus straight to the center of the arena and would walk right by us. The other option was that the bus would stop at the back side of the building and they would enter the arena through the house. In this case my position would have been ridiculously far away from any action. When a guy from the secret service started to clean off some dust with a broom from the driveway right in front of us, just a couple minutes before the Obamas arrived, I was sure that we were in the right place.
And then they came and were enthusiastically greeted by the crowd in the arena. I'm sorry but I needed my hands to hold the camera steady and couldn't really participate... ;-)
The first image is cropped on the right hand side to keep a secret service guy out of the frame who came to close the bus door. The second picture shows how difficult it was to accomplish my goal to make a photo without other people and no distracting background. However, I like that the president points his finger at me (or maybe at the people standing around me ;-) ).
And a couple heart beats later I had the shot I really wanted yesterday. No bodyguards, no press photographers, just the smiling couple in front of the stone wall of the old Star Brewery.
The last photo was made during his speech, over the heads of the surrounding crowd, and was heavily cropped in post. I tried many different angles and ran around between the people, made a lot of clicks, but this was the photo with the least distracting background.
It was the first time in my life that I took pictures of a celebrity. Beside all my photography interest at this event, it was a touching moment for me to be so close to the current President of the United States and his wife, even if it was just for a brief moment.
A couple weeks ago I reported that the House Wrens get ready for another offspring. I don't know how many eggs have been in the nest but the female wren is definitely feeding another brood. I have not seen or heard the male in the last few days and I wonder if he got caught by a predator or just moved on to a different place. It is not uncommon that the females feed the young wrens just alone.
After a badly needed rain today the light was good for a few shots at the nest box. No harsh light and shadows today! ;-) The female did an excellent job bringing spiders and moths and with each turn she did also some "house cleaning". As written here before, the first brood this year got destroyed but now we have hope that the second one will lead to a new generation of House Wrens.
I still owe you the final part of my "Travel impressions" series about Prague in the Czech Republic. If you like to see the older posts about this wonderful city again, please feel free to click HERE and a new window will open and let you review the older posts and photos.
I can't finish this series without talking about how gorgeous Prague is at night. The castle, towers, most churches, and many buildings are illuminated and let the old architecture stand out. I did not bring my tripod because of the weight limits during air travel but this didn't stop me to try some night shots. In an old city like Prague you can always find a spot to place the camera for a long exposure shot. Any wall, statue, or even a restaurant table is good for supporting the camera.
I hope you enjoyed my little series about Prague. Drop me a note if you did, or even if you not did...
I have been in a creative hole during the last week and as a result haven't made any new photos. It was hot and humid again and maybe it is just the weather that kept me from going outside and explore things in nature or somewhere else. Coincidently "The Grit", a podcast from Kelby Media Group that I download and watch every week, had as their discussion topic "When Inspiration Fails You" (episode 63). Couldn't be a better time for me to watch what other photographers had to say about this. Well, I'm not alone. It seems that even some of the most creative professional photographers have sometimes a period without any inspiration. Check it out here if you like: http://kelbytv.com/thegrid/
Not having any new images helped me to work on the backlog I have with my catalog. I made a lot of clicks this year already but the busy travel schedule recently prevented me from working on some of the pictures.
This photo is still from last Sunday. It was taken near the Mines of Spain, a nature area south of Dubuque, IA. I underexposed it by one stop in order to catch the sun rays coming through the clouds. I had to bring back carefully some of the light in the foreground in Lightroom because I did not have any of the split grade ND filters with me. I could have done more for the detail but I wanted to give the scene a "painting-like" feeling. I applied my changes, including the usual sharpening, very subtle in order to get the result I had envisioned.
As expected the water in the Green Island Wetlands along the Mississippi has dropped to the lowest level I have ever seen it. Many of the smaller ponds and canals beside the gravel roads are totally dried out. Only the larger ponds have still some water left. Needless to say that water fowl is not present at all, except for a family of Wood Ducks that I saw far away. Some egrets and herons still try to feed in the mud and shallow puddles where water is present.
I drove my usual loop to check the situation and to learn what animals make the best out of these very dry conditions we have here in Iowa at the moment. I saw a raccoon mother with five young ones feeding in the water that was left in one of the larger ponds. Unfortunately they were too far away for a photo that can be shown here.
Even this time I did not come back from the wetlands with an empty memory card. I had a very good opportunity to make an image of another flycatcher. The Eastern Kingbird was posing for me and I grabbed my chance and shot a nice series of pictures. After they catch an insect they do not always return to the same perch but twice I was lucky enough to put the glass on the kingbird in front of a decent background. I only had to clone out a small branch that stuck into the frame from the side but this is an easy task in the post process at home.
Despite all the dried out mud around, you can still find some beauty in the landscape. The water lilies are in full bloom and the big patches are always good for a picture.
I'm always an advocate for paying attention to the wildlife close to your own home. It doesn't need to be a National or State Park to experience and watch wildlife. Learning about the biology of the animals around your neighborhood will help you to make observations you may have missed otherwise. This becomes even more important if your time is very limited due to a busy working schedule or other things in life that have temporarily higher priorities in life than photography.
Every year the House Wrens have a nest in a box between the flowers right in front of our home. It is a thrill for me to wake up in the morning by the beautiful trilling, flutelike melody the males use to attract a female. The first brood this year was no success. One day I found the bird box on the ground. It was just about the time when we expected the young ones to hatch. The nest box was probably pulled down by a raccoon. The good news is that the male found a female again that will incubate eggs (I don't know if it is the same one since the wrens are not always monogamous) .
Usually the males are quiet while the female sits on the nest, except if an intruder comes close to the nest box. However, whenever the female wren leaves the nest to get some food for herself, the male starts singing in a kind of gurgling outburst that is repeated in short intervals. The goal was to get a photo where the mandible is in fast motion but the eye and other parts of the bird a still sharp and in focus. The key for this picture was to shoot several bursts with 7 frames per second. Quite often the wren closed his eyes or there was simply too much motion of the whole bird. Nothing really big, but despite I was not able to invest much time in this little shooting session I'm happy with the result.
