Earth Explorations

Central South Dakota is a hotbed of bird migration and May is peak season. My bird photography skills (which I practiced all winter) are still meh. It's hard for me to get good photos of birds flittering about which means all the pictures of warblers look like this one. See the tail feathers off to the center right of the photo? Maddening. I have been able to capture a few photos of birds that are ground foragers. They tend to be a little easier to photograph because they are on the ground (no craning my neck) and they also take longer pauses between flits or hops looking for insects. I'm very pleased with this photo. Thank you, White Crowned Sparrow. Your black and white crown feathers are so fetching.

Robins have been slow to make themselves known this year. I blame the snow and the cold. They started to get active a couple of times earlier in the month and whoom! a storm would move in. I can't blame them for being hesitant. But lengthening daylight and more seasonal temperatures are prevailing, causing them to spread out and start occupying territories even if they aren't in full voice yet. My robin watching network on FB has been reporting robin activity for a week and a few days ago I saw one for myself as I left for work. After work today, Lu and I went out for a walk about the property (aka my front and back yard) to try my hand at robin photos. I actually had to leave the property (i.e. walk halfway down the block) to get a  photo even though I eventually did see a male in the trees on my front lawn. ƒ/4 1/400 ISO100 106.6mm I did not filter or edit this photo. It could probably use some cropping though I like the way the tree branches frame the bird with t...

I had just finished watching  Into the Okavango  when it happened. My mind was filled with hippos, elephants, red ball suns and paddling when out of the corner of my eye I saw two birds fly towards the dining room glass door. One I thought might be Eurasian Collared Dove as it was big and light under the wing. The other bird was dark. Oh no, I thought. The thunk was barely audible. I hopped up, hoping that if a bird were injured it would be the Collared Dove. There was a bird injured. It wasn't the Collared Dove. In fact there was no Collared Dove on the scene. The bird I thought was a dove was actually a juvenile Sharp-shinned Hawk and it had firmly pinned a Starling to our snowy deck. The Starling was in rough shape but was trying to fight back, pecking at the hawk every time the hawk lowered its head to bite. I did the only thing that there was to be done. I ran and got my camera. I knew that getting a good picture would be a challenge. As mentioned previously, ...

The weather has been wintry of late. Not surprising since this is February and of course winter. But temps have been well below normal and it's been gray. Truthfully, getting out has been a challenge. I do find that having been to the Arctic makes the cold more bearable. I turn my face north and think about polar bears and whales and Arctic fox. That and good snow pants and thick socks (I had a non-freezing cold injury on my feet when I was a teen so in my middle age I find I have to be extra careful about these things) help get me through. I also enjoy my little forays when I can. I did go to the Farm Island bird feeder recently where I finally got a photo of the red bellied woodpecker. It's belly isn't brilliantly red, at least this female's belly in February isn't. If you zoom into the photo where she's facing the camera you will see the faintest blush of orangey red on her breast, a paler version of the color around her beak. I feel particularly...

Mild weather, needing erosion pictures for a class I'm teaching, and Polar Vortex induced cabin fever sent me to the Badlands yesterday. That and a vague worry about the how the park, particularly the bison, fared during the shutdown. To set your mind at ease, the park looked in fine condition. The campground was not vandalized in anyway that I could see. The bison, the few that I saw, looked good. Plump. Relaxed. Lounging in the sun on a warm winter day. I had hoped to get a lot of close ups of the bison as this was my first spin in the park with my new camera but other than this pair basking in the sun by the side of the road the bison were all far afield, visible only as tiny bison dots through my binoculars. Perhaps a super high end digital single lens reflex camera, the kind with a two foot lens, might have gotten a good picture but I was pretty sure this was beyond what my little camera could handle. No matter. There were plenty of things to photograph. Like...

I am enjoying my new camera. I am practicing the same skills I was when I last posted which means there are features on my camera I still don't know how to use. No matter. For the moment I am enjoying learning how to take pictures of birds at the feeder maintained at a nearby state park by volunteers from the Audubon Society. When I am ready to learn more about the camera, I will move on. Today is National Bird Day so I will share a few bird photos. I find taking halfway decent photos of birds unexpectedly gratifying, especially when I share them on iNaturalist. The photos I'm sharing below aren't my best photos but the ones that I am learning from. What I've learned so far: I've learned that snow is hard to get the right light. The birds in the photos I took on a snowy day come out a little dark. See the American tree sparrow photo one below. I've learned that autofocus may or may not always pick the right thing to focus on. I've had more than one p...

I am learning that one of the things you do as a photographer is chase the light, particularly the golden hours around sunrise and sunset. I know a man who specializes in photographing sunrises. He regularly gets up at or before 4 am to check the weather, make coffee and decide if it's worth a drive to the spots that he knows will yield stunning sunrise photos . I am not there yet, particularly with that getting up before 4 am business. However, I did find myself getting up and out before 7:30 am on a Sunday morning to take pictures of eagles. I feel that this is sort of the same thing. Finding eagles is easy around here as eagles overwinter by the Oahe Dam about six miles out of town, attracted by the open water and cottonwood trees. Eagles are large, photogenic birds that unlike their smaller cousins don't flit. Generally if you are quiet and still they will be as well until something calls them to take flight. In populated areas they move if there is too much human...

While I am a very inexperienced photographer I am not a complete newbie. Years ago I saw a Powerpoint on how to take good outdoor photos that talked about the rule of thirds and depth of field when composing your photos.  I've only had very very basic cameras so depth of field was something that I had no control over but I've always installed gridlines on the viewfinder if that camera had that feature.  I'm somewhat proficient at rule of thirds so with this new camera I turned my attention to depth of field. I am using a series by Graham Houghton  on You Tube to guide my learning. He recommends you start out in intelligent auto or IA mode which sounded good to me. The first subject he tackled after setting up the camera  is understanding how to set up background defocus mode and change the focal point of your picture. Knowing how to do this will help you change your depth of field in the IA mode. In peeking ahead at the topics I think he covers this later on in t...

As stated below I have added a new camera to my collection, a Panasonic Lumix FZ300. This camera is in the bridge class of cameras. The way I understand it there is a camera hierarchy with phones and point and shoots at the bottom and digital single lens reflex cameras (DSLRs) at the top and bridges in between.  The hierarchy is based on clarity and quality of image and seems to be directly correlated to price and indirectly correlated to ease of use. This camera which I shall call Lu can function as a point and shoot but also has many buttons and dials if you want to take your photography up a notch. Since the whole point of my buying Lu was to do exactly that I have decided to embark on a self designed, self taught course, consisting of what I hope are credible internet resources and my own practice. Over the next few weeks or months many of my posts will be about learning about Lu. There will be posts of photos with information about f stops and shutter speeds and depth...

Sunday was sunny and the warmest day we've had in a while-actually above freezing-so I decided to set out to see if I could find any robins. I walked Hilger's Gulch and the play trail, a short circuit around La Framboise and to the river and back on Farm Island. I don't know where the robins are but they weren't in any of those places. I might pop out again Wednesday the next day we are supposed to have a sunny, warmer day. Despite the lack of robins, I did enjoy many birds. 7 grouse along the playtrail Canada geese and assorted ducks, gulls  A single chickadee on La Framboise A bald eagle on Farm Island Waves of purple and house finches (Farm Island) Flocks of starlings (Farm Island) A cardinal calling his pew, pew, pew, pew. (Farm Island) A downy woodpecker (Farm Island) More chickadees (Farm Island) I tried to capture the sound of the birds on Farm Island, particularly the cardinal in this video. I think I might need more specialized recording equi...

On a cold day with lots of snow, I wanted to try taking photos of the snowflakes. Taken with my Galaxy 6, enhanced with the Low Fi Instagram filter.

When I go out for a walk, I bring my camera phone. I take pictures partly as an ongoing documentation of my walks, partly as a way to practice and improve my story telling skills. I don't share every photo I take but sometimes I put one out there just because.