It's a HAWK!

One of the best parts of photography is that it is such a fun way to learn, and not about photography, but about the world around us.  Having a camera in hand I am forced to pay attention to what is going on. Nowhere is it more evident than in the natural world.  I am the last person in the world who would want to sit down with a book and learn the names of different birds. I would be bored; it would be a chore; the memorization would soon be lost.   Nor could I learn just by being a bird watcher.  I would not have anything tangible to examine after looking through binoculars. I would most likely forget what I saw.  But experiencing different birds through observing the world around me, and then looking at the images, and cropping and other post processing. Now that is a fun way to learn!   Every time I look at one of my favorite photos, I actually relive the experience that I had when I took the shot.

To think that a few years ago I could not have identified a red tailed hawk! Sure I knew what a hawk was, but I had no idea what was what.  A funny note--my first photo of an eagle I thought was a red tailed hawk.  I thought all bald eagles had white heads, and my bird did not have a white head.  So, I proudly announced my find as a red tailed hawk, and oops, no, it was a juvenile bald eagle.  Apparently they don't get white heads until about two years old.  Reading about that in a book would not have the same impact as going through the experience.

There are many more red tailed hawks in Memphis than there are eagles, so a couple of different times I have managed to get decent photos of them. The most recent experience was last week, when I managed to follow one around Shelby Farms for about an hour.   In cases like this, I take as many photos as possible, and then delete all but the best dozen or so. Here are a few of the red tailed hawk photographs that I kept, and what I particularly liked about these photos. 

Have fun.  Oh, and this is a lot more fun than taking photos of animals in a zoo or otherwise in captivity..........at least for me.

First, I liked this one because it showed of its claws and was walking up the tree.

 

In general I would rather have a photo of a hawk in a tree than on the ground, but I liked the wings outstretched in this photo. 

 

 

This was a pretty easy choice. Who doesn't love a hawk turning his head around 180 degrees? 

 

 

Hawks can also look up!

 

 

 

This is also classic pose.  Furthermore, the hawk is in filtered sun, there are no limbs in the way, and there is decent bokeh (blur)  in the background.

 

 

Bird Photography: Comparison to Where's Waldo?

I was at Shelby Farms Park today, and it struck me that using the large zoom on my Canon PowerShot camera was a lot like looking for Waldo in those picture books!  First the differences, though:  

1. Waldo doesn't move around on the page.  
2. Waldo doesn't leave the page as you hone in on him.
2. Waldo doesn't make surrounding leaves flutter. 
3. You can find Waldo wherever you take the book, in any room in your house.  You don't have to be outside.   
4. Waldo doesn't sing. 

All of the above make it a lot more fun trying to get a photo of a bird than finding Waldo. In fact, I don't particularly like trying to find Waldo in a picture book, but I do like bird photography, particularly in the natural environment. Taking photos of birds at zoos or birds of prey shows lacks the challenge of nature photography.  All of my zoo animal photos and bird feeder photos come with an asterisk, and I favor my photos that do not have that mental asterisk.

Often the first hint that there is a bird around is that you see it flying and then landing. Otherwise you might not notice.  Do you notice the bird in this photo? All of the following photos were taken from the same location, with various stages of zoom in the lens.

Where's Waldo?

Sans the clues, most people would not notice the bird in the above photo. However, I had seen the bird, an eastern kingbird, fly into the tree. Would I be able to find it in my viewfinder before it flew away? Finding the bird in the camera viewfinder is a little like finding a particular piece of a jigsaw puzzle.  But, with a jigsaw puzzle, you can take your time.  Not so with a bird that likes to move around.

Luckily, by the time I found the eastern kingbird, it was still there.

Success!  The zoom lens honed in on the bird! 

The process is a lot of fun, but bird photographers often miss shots of birds, so it can be as frustrating as playing golf. The golf equivalent to having a bird fly away before getting a decent shot is something like hitting the ball into a water hazard! You don't want to take too much time finding the bird, but sometimes haste makes waste. It can take quite a bit of time to find a bird in the midst of limbs and leaves that all look the same. 

The moral here is that bird photography, like golf, requires a lot of patience. Now, if you use a bird feeder to attract birds, less patience is required. Since the challenge is lessened, however, the reward isn't quite as great.  Where's Waldo? would not be as much fun if there were arrows pointing to Waldo on the pictures in the book.

The Cedar Waxwing

Until this spring, I never recall seeing or identifying a cedar waxwing, and only have a bare recollection of even hearing the name of the bird.  So, after more than three years of photographing birds, I go from no photos of cedar waxwings to dozens of them.  I almost entirely missed Memphis spring photos this year due to funky cold weather.  I love photography, but I don't love getting cold.  

I was on a walk in Audobon Park when I saw dozens of cedar waxwings descend on a tree with buds.  The birds were everywhere, flocking and eating the buds.  I took a few photos and had to go home to make a positive identification of the bird.  I was thrilled to have a photo of a different bird species.  Robins and mockingbirds are just a bit too common.  Here is one of my first cedar waxwing photos: 


But that was just a precursor for a cedar waxwing experience to come.  My study looks out onto a patio where there is a large pyracantha bush with red berries.  Well, it USED to have red berries on it.   There was a frenzy of cedar waxwing activity on this one bush, and they managed to completely strip the berries off the bush within one half hour.  I felt as if I was witnessing an astonishing event.  Fortunately I happened to have my camera, and shot these photos through a somewhat dirty sliding glass door.  This event probably is not rare, but it was rare to me, so I just thought I would share these photos.  For the most part, I don't think the dirty glass on the door affected the photos all that much.  I didn't want to scare the birds by opening the door. 

So, I documented few flower buds this spring, and ended up with cedar waxwings.  When you are a nature photographer, you have to discard expectations and just take what nature gives you!  And, you just never know.   

This photo must have been taken through smudged glass.

This is a bit clearer

It was easy getting photos of berries in the mouth!

As you can see they are starting to do a number on the berries!

Three of them finishing off the remaining berries.

Bye, bye, berries!

Snowless Winter, but COLD!

We probably had one of our coldest winters here in Memphis, but all without snow or ice.  We might have had half a day of ice, but not enough for wintry looking photography.  Since most of my photography is outdoors, that means a drought, because I braving like cold, gray, and windy days less than I like photography.  I did manage a couple of brief trips over the winter, and there were times when I managed to get outdoors.  I don't have a consistent theme for this post, other than "here are the few things I was able to do with photography over the winter."  One of the quick trips was to New York City, where I briefly lived decades ago.  I managed to get a photo of one of my favorite places in NYC--the Museum of Modern Art.  If you go there, start at the top floor where you find the Van Goghs, the Picassos, etc.  Here is the patio area.  I would have liked a wide angle lens for these photos of buildings, but am glad I at least got some blue sky in New York.

Photography takes a back seat on most of my trips, and it certainly did on my trip to Japan, where I greeted my newest grandchild.  Here is my self portrait (with an iPhone), which I now use as my Facebook profile.  Can you understand that most of my photography in Japan involved my new grandkid? 

Well, we certainly can't leave out Shelby Farms photos or heron photos, or other bird photos.  One fairly nice day I captured my first reflected heron with a fish, and my best reflected flying heron.  Oh, let's not forget other birds, and a nice dawn with the Patriot Lake Isand. 

Now, from Audubon Park, a junco 

 Although we had no snow, I did get a photo of a migrating snow goose in Shelby Farms.

  
On a particularly cold weekend at the Tennessee River, I happened to get my best photos ever of a northern flicker.  I took these through a window because I was not going to brave the thirty degree windy weather.  Did you know that the northern flicker is the only type of woodpecker that sometimes feeds on the ground.  They do make a racket in trees, though, too. 

 I do very little indoor photography, and when I do, it mostly has to do with family.  I was the photographer for my grandson's sixth birthday party, and it was much more fun than any of the other duties I might have been assigned (cutting and serving cake, hanging up coats, passing out pizza, cleaning up).  Flash generally isn't needed indoors any more.  My camera is not really quite up to getting good action photos in low light though, so I do lack photos of kids jumping on all the equipment.  

It is finally warmer, and I am ready for action, and hopefully some spring photos!

Reflections

 

I recently entered a small informal online photography contest with the above photo.  The theme of the contest during December was “reflections.”  My photo  ended up taking third place.  Last August I spent a solid hour photographing a single green heron in shallow Pine Lake in Shelby Farms.  I rarely get such an opportunity, but for some reason the bird paid me no mind.  It was one of those *almost* peak experiences.  

The winning photo in the contest was a shot where a single drop of water on the leaf of a garden reflected the entire garden.  The voting was very lopsided in favor of the winning entry, deservedly so.  The creativity involved far surpassed anything anyone else entered.   Can a drop of water reflect a whole scene?  Yes it can!  I saw it!  Reflections are kind of metaphorical.  Is there a tiny aspect of my life that reflects the larger whole?  Perhaps photography itself does that. 

“Reflections” was a wonderful contest theme, and the variety was amazing.  Buildings, puddles, lakes, droplets, glass, marble, etc. were the reflecting surfaces.  If I had the time I probably would have gone to Graceland to get a photo of the mirrored staircase leading down to the “Jungle Room”.  It is slightly disorienting to negotiate. Be sure to visit Graceland if you ever get to Memphis! 

Reflections are particularly timely in December, when we reflect back on our year, as we look forward to a new one—a new beginning.  I used the contest theme to be reflective in my own life, particularly when it comes to photography.  What is it that I want photography to do for my life?  How does it add value?  What direction do I want to go with photography?  How does this hobby enhance my life?  What have I done new or different with photography this year?  What will I do with photography next year? 

I realize that photography, for me, is not an end in itself.  I recently read an article in our local newspaper about the person who consistently takes the best wildlife and bird photos in Memphis.  I have always wondered how he got so many great shots.  He obviously is extremely talented.  It turns out he has a monster lens that he bought at an estate sale, and rarely leaves his truck to get photos of birds!  They fly away if he opens the door.  I could do that (if I had a lens that big, and a truck), but that wouldn’t really provide the need that I have to explore nature with my camera.  Observing nature in a truck, to me, isn’t quite the same as observing it on foot.  Monster lenses are heavy, and tripods can be unwieldy.  Therefore, unless I go that route at some point, my wildlife photos will never be as consistently good and prolific as his.  I can live with that.   I do think of myself as being in competition with the birds, much like a hunter does.  Hunters don’t generally hunt from trucks.  I don’t feel that competitive with other photographers, though.

Photography in general causes me to be reflective, as every trip I take, whether it is to Japan, or to the Tennessee River, or to Shelby Farms comes back to me when I observe the photos.  Also, when I observe a place where I have taken a special photo, that place is transformed in my mind when I see it again.  Here are some other reflection photos I have taken over the past few years: 

Autumn 2012

Usually by this time of year I have My Pictures filled with photos of turning leaves, crisp sunsets, and wonderful low light landscapes.  This year is the exception.  Firstly, the dry weather this year caused a lot of leaves to fall off before they turned colors.  Also, I was on a couple of trips that involved very little time for taking photos.  I managed a few tourist photos, including lower Manhattan before Sandy hit, and some basic photos of hills from the Blue Ridge Parkway, but nothing earth shattering or even very much like fall.  Rather than abandon the blog for the season, I thought this would give me the opportunity to demonstrate a few things that have been keeping me busy—all related to photography of course, and various cheap software.   Mostly I try to stay away from technical stuff because I really am not very knowledgeable about it, but I do like to experiment with various types of software.

One of my trips involved a seven day Foundation Biogeometry course in Asheville.  I took away from that a new appreciation for the ancient science of shape and number, and new ideas to transmute negative subtle energy into positive subtle energy, using shape, number, color, etc.  And yes, electromagnetic fields and other similar influences can weaken people energetically.  Because I work on the computer a lot, I have to be well aware of its effects on my own energetic fields around my body.

As usual when I learn new things, I like to put my own spin on the knowledge, and rather than immediately running around my house with a pendulum measuring earth lines, I decided to make some mandalas on the computer.   It just sounded more fun to me, and I can always correct my house later.   I used some of the principles that I learned at the training to make this YouTube video.   I used guitar music from Jon Sayle (free MP3s here). 

 
I had to have some software to make these mandalas, obviously.  I don’t have Photoshop, because of the expense and because I like the challenge of getting by with cheap or free software.  If you download "free" software from the 'net, though, make sure it is a reputable source!!  Freebies  come with strings attached, such as unwanted toolbars, and oftentimes computer viruses.  Rather than buying mandala making software, I used an online mandala making program for free that allowed me to save drawn mandalas to a pdf file.  I then used PrtScn (Print Screen) and paste into Microsoft Paint, and used that program to color the mandala and resize it.  I saved it as a bmp file (for better resolution than jpg).  Because using Paint alone results in garish looking colors, I experimented with Photo Filter Factory to put layers over the mandalas.  Someone with Photoshop would likely not need this program.  I have a free version of Photo Filter Factory, but now the free version doesn’t just limit the number of filters, but also the number of times you use it.  It is cheap though, especially when compared to Photoshop.  GIMP may have some free filters, though, I am just not sure!

The only other two software programs that I used for the mandalas were Irfanview to rotate the photos, and Sony Movie Studio to make the slideshow. 

If you take up photography as a hobby, you will find that learning about various types of software is both challenging and rewarding.  Be creative and see where it leads!

And my salute to fall this year is a movie clip of the wind blowing fall leaves at the Tennessee River.  This clip illustrates that camera microphones tend to exaggerate any wind noise!

To illustrate what a photo filter does to a regular photo, here is a basic tourist photo of the sculpture in Rockefeller Center ice skating rink, first straight from the camera, and then with a "parched paper" photo filter:

Fall is for Festivals

Well, spring is for festivals too, but the October weather here in Memphis is notoriously good--dry and clear--well, generally. That is October, but what about September? That depends. Why is it that I am talking about festivals in September rather than October? It turns out that festival season in Memphis starts out with many of the smaller, lesser known festivals, targeted for certain groups. They do not want to compete with the huge Pink Palace Arts and Crafts Sale, or even the Arts Festival, both in October. 

And festivals are a fun place to take a camera.

I prefer September festivals. I am always telling my friends and family, "Everything good gets ruined."  Really I am referring to festivals, and my own "Peter Principle" type effect. The Peter Principle was developed by an author who made a very good case for people being promoted in companies to their level of incompetence. They do a good job but once promoted, they may not have the skill set required for the new job.   
 
But, with festivals, the argument is that once a festival gets really good, it gets popular. Once it gets popular, it gets crowded. It is hard to find a parking place. It is hard to fight the traffic. The same is true with tourist attractions. I love tourist attractions until they get really good and thus attract more patrons. So my children were deprived growing up because we never went to DisneyWorld. When they complained, I pointed out that we had gone to Six Flags and Sea World. These were acceptable because, even though popular, they at least were in my home town of San Antonio, so we didn't have to make a special trip. We just went when we visited relatives.

I also love the beach, but will no longer go in the summertime.  I prefer some sort of off season. 

That brings me back to festivals in Memphis in September.  Festivals are a must for any photographer interested in candid shots (frankly, I don't really like posed shots that much!)  And the best festivals are easily accessible, fun, and not so popular as to be overcrowded. Enter the Japanese Festival in Memphis this past Saturday. The weather was perfect, the crowd good, but I could still get front row seats at the main stage. If truth be told, there was only one stage, with three rotating acts.  I actually lost my program so I am not sure that is the case, but they started repeating after I was there for awhile.

A lot of the charm of the Japanese festival is that it takes place in a Japanese tea garden at the Memphis Botanic Gardens.  It was actually a good time to go to it because I have been seeing the world through orange colored lenses lately, as I have been hosting an informal photography contest with the subject of "orange".  There are few better places to find orange than anything Japan! 
 
For example, Japan uses a lot of orange in architecture, as seen  above in the roof of the tea room in the Memphis Botanic Gardens.
 

And then there are the koi fish, a must for every Japanese garden.

 

 

 

 

 

 

That's a pretty good orange start already.  Even better, though, orange koi fish are even used in the theme for the festival.  And there is the traditional reddish orange Japanese bridge-

 
I was not done with orange, as the first act on stage were the Taiko drummers.  You guessed it--orange!  In the first one, since the drummer's pose looks as if he might take off flying, I decided to experiment with an effect call "focal zoom" in Picasa.  A lot of serious photographers don't like effects like this, but I think they are fun.  And I have a straight version of this anyway.  They good thing is that you can make up your own mind about using effects like this.

  
And below is a behind the scenes look.  Because I got there early before the crowds, I could take photos from almost anywhere, a big plus. 

 
Here I am going to insert a video I took with my camera, if only because I get frustrated seeing photos of musical performances without getting to actually hear something.  Although I took this video in high definition, You Tube reduced the quality. Please remember that I do not pretend to be a videographer!

The other acts were a very short Japanese dance, and an aikido exhibition.


 
 

 

 

I am going to include my very short You Tube of the aikido demonstration because it showcases a huge mistake that I made.  I knew that one thing about my camera was that it could take video and photos at the same time.  Well, I won't make that mistake again.  Every time there was a throw, I started snapping away, actually interrupting the video.  The result is a little odd to say the least.  

This is called learning from mistakes, a very important concept for photographers. Here are a couple of more interesting photos of some attendees.   












 

A wonderful Japanese street performer made this sugary concoction, which is a dragon I think:
 

I wasn't done with orange, though.  As the acts began repeating themselves, I meandered toward the exit.  I got hit in the head with a persimmon falling from the tree.  I couldn't resist this photo, which is probably one of the closest I have come to setting up a still life photo.  I did it for "orange".  I started and ended the whole experience with orange, and I wrapped it up thusly:

Check out your community's calendar for some fun fall festivals. Pick out the unknown gems, take your camera, and have a great time.