I really wasn’t looking for the shot, I’m up in Alaska working with Sea Otters. But I love Pigeon Guillemots with their bright red feet and squeely high pitched call. So when I saw this one floating by, it was real simple to throw the D6 / 180-400VR on it and get the shot. It took a matter of seconds, I really didn’t “look” at the scene, just the Pigeon Guillemot. Then back at the computer, I looked at the water and I fell in love with the reflections. It’s a real simple click. Just sometimes, the background just surprises you!
Six days after we moved to The Ranch, I had all our nesting boxes up in place. Four days later I saw Red-breasted Nuthatches checking one of them out. Now understand, it never happens that way! Birds don’t find nesting boxes days after you put them up, they just don’t. More to the point, they just don’t move in either that fast. Cavity nesters tend to spend weeks and weeks checking out possible sites and then, they start to excavate. But here it was unfolding before our eyes, these nuthatches were definitely taking up residence in our nesting box. How fun!
I grabbed my copy of Nests, Eggs, and Nestlings of North American Bird and looked up the nesting biology of the Red-breasted Nuthatches. They incubate for about 12 days and are nestlings for about 16 days. I knew this clock was ticking yet life swept me away and I lost total track of time. We’d been seeing lots of activity, I kept saying I need to stop and shoot, but I just didn’t make the time. Then this morning my biologist friend said, “you do know how rare it is for a nuthatch to use a nesting box?” I knew it but it never really sunk home these past two months. That’s when I ran out with my bins to watch the nest box in panic. No activity! Was I too late???
After an appointment in town and a Zoom with friends, I sat down to shoot. I didn’t know if I was wasting my time or not. I thought I was too late, the chicks had fledged. I was still seeing no activity. I set up the D6 / 180-400VR eight feet from the box remotely shooting with the WR-R10. I was sitting about forty yards away. With bins in hand, I sat and watched. After a bit of time, I saw a nuthatch and a few moments later, it zoomed into the box. Over the next ninety minutes, both adults were busy feeding, removing fecal sacks, and then feeding some more. As you’re reading this, I’m out at the box for what should be their last day. If I’m lucky, and I mean real lucky, I’ll capture the kids fledging. I say I’ll be real lucky because I thought I was too late!
Oriental or Breadseed Poppy captured by D6 / 14-24AFS
Yep, it’s a flower photo on my blog, what the state of Montana officially calls an Opium Poppy and it’s blooming all over the ranch! A native of Turkey and Iran, how it got to the ranch is a mystery. We’ve not mowed a vast majority of the back nine cause we didn’t know all that was growing there. We saw these plants growing and I thought they were some type of thistle. Then the buds started to appear and my mind said opium plants! Na, how could that be. Then today when I was out with our Red Fox, I saw the first blossom to open. I used the marvelous PictureThis app which told me it’s an Oriental Poppy. I grabbed the D6 / 14-24AFS (the blossom is larger than the front element of the 14-24) took some shots and then came into the web to learn more. There I learned it’s the Opium Poppy, legal to let grow and that the state describes it as an “Annual with glabrous and glaucous foliage.” It won’t make a macro photographer out of me, but they are darn purdy!
Church on The Palouse captured by D850 / 24-70f2.8
“Dances with Clouds,” what my good friend Joe McNally called me once. That’s because I turn to the heavens every opportunity I can to get help telling my visual story. Clouds can set the stage, be the background that will make or break your photograph. That is if you take in all the other elements in the frame and incorporate them along with the clouds.
Church on The Palouse captured by Z7 / Z14-30
Here is my favorite little church out on The Palouse. I visit it at least once every time I’m on The Palouse because it is never the same. When there are no clouds, it is a photographic challenge. When there are clouds, the challenge then becomes what I want to say. Look at these two photographs of the same church shot on two different trips. Do you see the one thing that made me change where I stood and the lens I selected? You might be fooled and think it was the clouds but actually, it was the trees! The trees not only changed lenses and location I shot, but also exposure. I went 24-70f2.8 so I could stand down the hill and put the church up on the rise so the spring green of the trees “hold” the church. I used the Z14-30 and stood closer so the bare trees seem to defend the church. While the clouds made it all come together, without the trees, the clouds wouldn’t have made the photo, visa versa as well. So next time when you have clouds in the viewfinder ask yourself, do clouds set the story?
The skies lit up last night here in Montana with some great lightning. It’s coming on summer and with them, afternoon thunderstorms which mean great light shows. When the skies start barking, I’m often running to the truck with a camera in hand to chase the storm. These days though, it’s a whole lot easier to work with lightning with Miops! This simple, small, and incredibly effective tool permits you to shoot lightning any time of day with any rig with ease. You can even update the firmware via the mobile app (Mobile App is the why to go!). Charged via a USB port, the Miops simply can’t get easier, well, at least the shooting part. I like to grab the Z7 / Z24-70f2.8 / Miops and sped down the road. The real challenge is finding a spot with a great 360 vista because lightning can be in all directions. To be completely honest with you, I saw much better lightning than I captured but I was having so much fun, photography kinda took a back seat. But the good thing for Miops and its mobile app, it kept shooting even if I wasn’t paying all the attention I should to it.
Backyard bird photography is a great past time and can be a real money maker. Some though have limitations such and money, mess, or unwelcomed pests. How can you attract the birds to your lens in your backyard and avoid these roadblocks? This video goes into that and a whole lot more!
