Broad-billed Hummingbird captured by D6 / 18-400VR / 2x SB-5000
These flying jewels can entertain us for hours on end and all they are doing is, eating! In the summer down in Arizona on the border, there is a special canyon where the hummers come by the hundreds to the feeders consuming half their body weight in a day on just nector. If you sit yourself down as I have with a D6 / 180-400VR / 2x SB-5000 and you’re lucky, you’ll get a shot of two of this activity to take home with you. It’s actually not easy, takes time and patience but well, it’s just about one of the funniest thing I know of in wildlife photography!
It was so bright, your eyes would light up white even though they were closed tight against the pillow! The walls shock with every clamp and it was, magnificent! It’s monsoon season in SE Arizona and the storms our first day was a great warm-up. It was long after midnight when the skies overhead really opened up, quite spectacular. I love lightning. When I went outside first thing this morning at 05:00 though, there was a funny color to the predawn skies. My first thought was dread that a new wildfire had been lit by the storm that night. Within a few moments though, once I walked out from under the oaks, I saw it was remnants of the thunderstorm bouncing around the first glimpse of the sun. I ran back into the cabin, grabbed the D6 / 8-15Fish, and then ran back out and up the road. The next twenty minutes were per Mother Nature magic. Oh, the skies. Wowzers!
I was sitting there very comfortably reading and watching the evening thunderstorm build outside. The light was getting nicer and nicer and there I sat watching it when the lightbulb went off in my head, “I’m not here just to sit and watch it!” I flew out of my chair, grabbed the D6, and attached the 14-24AFS, and walked out the door with just my flaps on. While I got out, I still wasn’t taking the opportunity laid in my lap seriously. As soon as I got out the door though I saw it just wasn’t just a purdy cloud, it was a magnificent sky! The chase was on.
The sky was ablaze, the wind was whistling and I was in flaps heading up the sage up our hill! The clouds were moving so I moved as fast as I could to a clearing so take in as much as I could. Set to 14mm, I realized I still didn’t have wide enough glass. I then had to decide what part of the explosion would bring home the story. It was an intense, fun, and rewarding fifteen minutes watching Mother Nature put on one helluva show. As I walked back down to house it dawned on me I had already become too complacent and not chasing the photographs as I should be. Yeah, I could blame it on COVID but that wouldn’t be honest. It was I had seen it before, I’d seen it a lot at The Ranch and just assumed I’d see it again. I don’t know, I thought I would shoot it the next time? But I’d not shot it before so why did I think I would the next time? I don’t know who or what kicked my butt but it needed kicking ’cause I would be really sad to have missed that show now that I know what I know. That’s the thought we have to keep in mind. It’s pretty simple though, it’s not why I’m here.
Photographing nesting birds is a really entertaining, informative, and rewarding past time! You have to be on top of your game to safeguard the nest and come away with the photograph. This extensive video goes through the biology, technology and combining it to get the shot. It’s a twenty-minute video so I cover it all thoroughly so you can be successful you’re first time out. Enjoy!
I was literally sitting there with my Bins up to my eyes trying to figure out what the heck the bird was across the field at The Ranch when Sharon said, “What are you looking at?! “There’s our first fawn!” I put the bins down to see our first White-tailed Deer fawn had just wlked up in front of us forty feet away and was beginning to nurse! Bambi was drawn from a White-tailed Deer fawn which is why we call them Bambis and it was so cute! This was the first time I’d ever had the opportunity to get glass on one, so off I dashed!
White-tailed Deer captured by D6 / 180-400VR
The D6 / 180-400VR is always left set up at The Ranch because there are always critters about it. We’d seen the mom go off into the sage on our hillside earlier that morning and wondered if today was the day. It was now late evening when she emerged with her new offspring. With camera in hand, I snuck through the house trying to get the shot. The windows I could see the pair through were closed and screens were still in place (no long I might add) so I headed to the garage side door and slowly opened it. It had a squeak (no more, thanks WD40) so I went real slow. I raised the D6 to my eye and squeezed off a couple of frames just before it stopped nursing. It wasn’t the best shot, not thrilled with the background nor the position of the mom’s ears but it broke the jynx, I now have my own Bambi photos. We have a couple more pregnant White-tailed and one Mule Deer doe walking The Ranch show if I’m lucky, I’ll do better later. Going to be fun trying!!!!
It was a week of complete otter satisfaction! If you’ve read my book Captured, you know that my love affair with the Teddy Bears of the Sea goes way back decades. Having the good fortune to spend an entire week with them was truly special. We traveled up to Alaska working the large congregation of them in K Bay. Seeing rafts that numbered in the hundreds is a site of my career and one I’ll never forget. It was very heartwarming!
Our trip was focused on the time mom is with young pups but we ended up seeing a whole lot more biology than just that. Adorable their entire life, otters are they’re cutest when really young. This 8-10 month old pup is at that stage when riding on mom’s belly isn’t practical anymore so more often floats alongside mom. The pup is able to swim with her underwater and grab its own meal but like any kid, prefers mom feeding it. They prefer the quieter water of back bays which photographically is ideal. The water is smooth and reflects the world around them providing a clean sweep. I shot the entire time with the D6 / 180-400VR (loaded with ProGrade CFExpress) adding 13342 images to my otter files from the week. This is just one of the hundreds of favorites I came back with. In fact, Sharon has decided one wall at The Ranch is now going to be the otter wall. So I need to go, lots of printing to do!
