Best time to be a wildlife photographer!

New header picture

I know it's just a robin but Carden Plain is such a great place and this gives me the feeling of being there.

Getting Excited!

Newfoundland's only a month away! I can't believe it. It's time to start prepping for the trip: figuring out what to pack, getting the car detailed and a final service, nailing down those last few reservations, making a list of the pictures i want to make!

I still have room in the houses I've rented if anyone wants to come visit. Look at previous blog posts for details: Twillingate, Coffee Cove, Bonavista, Torbay... the trip of a lifetime! Contact me!

Camera's in the shop...

Seems I must have been a little heavy handed. Somehow the little doohickey inside the bayonet mount of the D800 that holds the shutter open got bent. Maybe by the teleconverter, maybe by the extension tubes. I'll have to be a little more careful.

I suspect the TC. Amin came over and brought his computer with Fo-Cal software. We were trying to microadjust the focus of the TC/400mm combo and this happened right afterwards (it's your fault, Amin!... just kidding). It's weird, though. The TC with the 70-200 lens works fine. The 400mm without the TC works fine. The TC/400mm works fine on the D5500. But the TC is back focusing beyond the ability of the D800 to compensate for it.

Sun Camera Service has my body and the TC. They said they hope it's not the mirror box... I should have it back soon. Good thing I had the foresight to buy a backup camera last year. The D5500 is "OK" but it's not a D800. When I get it back, I'll send the TC to Nikon to see if they can fix it. I'd love to be able to use it with the 200-400mm lens, giving me 680mm...

Update: got it back. All working, reasonable price ($160 + tax & shipping). They cleaned the camera (including the sensor), adjusted the AF and replaced the bent part. They reset all my menu items, hope I got everything back the way it should be! Sun Camera Service is an outstanding place, they do factory service for both Nikon and Canon, expert with bodies, pretty good with lenses too. Fast, good and reasonable. Give them a try. Tell Nick I sent you!

Update on house for sale

Not sold yet.  Need to find the right person. One potential buyer liked it but isn't ready to retire yet. The suggestion was to buy it as a cottage and watch your investment grow. Another person thought about buying it as a full time home but they already have a cottage further up North. Suggestion was to buy it and rent it out for the summers. This is a good place to buy for investment, prices haven't gone up like Toronto or Muskoka and you don't have to contend with Highway 400. Pass the word!

I love this time of year.

If you're a wildlife photographer, this is prime time. Landscape photographers, not so much but we're getting there!

In the past week or two, I've been to Algonquin Park twice, Carden Alvar 3 times, and just driving around the beautiful Haliburton Highlands.

Without further ado, and in no particular order, here are some pictures.

I shot this at the Prairie Smoke Alvar Nature Reserve. It's part of the Carden Alvar, just to the west. The Bobolinks were buzzing all around us in the grassy meadow as we walked through it. I thought this texture effect in Topaz Studio best represented the feeling of the day.

While I was there, I dropped the lens hood from my 200-400 f/4. "No problem," I thought. "I'll go on eBay and buy a new one, probably $20"... folks if you buy a Porsche, expect to pay big bucks for replacement parts. Same thing with a big pro Nikon lens. Almost $400! I went back on Friday and marched through the field, trying to execute a grid search. I was almost ready to give up when, "Eureka"! 

Algonquin Park...

You don't really get how big moose are until you have something to compare them with! OK, "Something with which to compare them".  

I did shoot the occasional landscape. This is Found Lake at the Art Centre, and that's Dr. Ron in the picture. 

Focus Stacking/Macro

It's amazing what you can see when you stack a number of closeup photos. Helicon Focus software gives you a whole new perspective!

Peppercorns 

It's Trillium time! 

This is a "Giant Water Bug". A species I didn't even know existed! 

Carden Plain

I'm not a great birder. Other people see as many species in a day as I have in my life list. People make a lot better pictures than I do. But it really is quite a challenge shooting the birds and very satisfying when you manage to entice one to come out and pose for a picture.

Sometimes it's not just about the picture. Just being there, seeing them and hopefully identifying them is enough (well, I'd also like the picture...). I bought a pair of binoculars on Amazon. Really very impressive, you can see things much brighter and clearer than looking through the camera!

NIKON 16004 PROSTAFF 7S 10 X 42-Inch All-Terrain Binocular, Green. They cost me $239 Canadian. People told me to spend more but I didn't want to. Anyway, you can return stuff to Amazon, so I thought I'd give these a try. Amazing quality. Perfect. Here's the link if you want some yourself.

On Friday, when I was back at Carden because I was looking for my errant lens hood, I met a group of real birders — you could tell because they had Swarovski spotting scopes that cost more than my camera — and they told me about a rare hybrid bird called a "Lawrence's Warbler", a cross between a blue-winged and a golden-winged warbler. I spent some time looking for it. I played the call of the blue-winged warbler on my iPhone (in the iBird app) and out he came to investigate! I got a good look through the binoculars, dropped them and picked up the camera but he was gone in a flash. I got a couple of shots of a fuzzy yellow blob. But I saw it! Large as life.

Here are a few shots I did take over the past few days.

Baltimore Oriole
 

Chestnut-sided Warbler. Another new one for me
 

Eastern Towhee

Upland Sandpiper 

Savannah Sparrow. It was a windy day!
 

Here's another shot of the Savannah Sparrow. Sometimes pictures like this tell a better story. 

Parting Shot


Here's a macro shot of my one and only daffodil, stacking something like 30 images together with Helicon. I plan to do more of these as the spring flowers come up here in the Highlands.

 

'til next time!

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Ready for winter?

I'm ready!

There's a whole checklist of things that had to happen to get ready, and I'm done. Today, my neighbour Jack came over to help (wrong word: he did the work!) by sweeping the chimney and removing some trees that had grown too close to the house. The other day I got my ATV back from the mechanic, it now sports a dedicated 4WD switch (electrical problems. It was intermittent) and the battery from my boat is now mounted on the back of the ATV to help power the winch that controls the snowplow. The car's been serviced, the furnace people were here three times to iron out issues with the heat, I've split and stacked all the firewood, snow shovels are by the doors. The boat's parked in the garage, the gazebo and lawn furniture are in storage. I'm done.

Let it snow! 

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A few more Lake Superior pictures

I still have lots more to process, mostly "people pictures" from the weekend. Here are a few more landscape shots from my trip

I didn't record exactly where this was. It was somewhere south of the Montreal River Harbour, maybe Alona Bay? 

Another shot in the same location 

Commercial fishing boat at Mamainse Harbour. 

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Algonquin Park

I managed to get a few days at home early in November. I woke up one day and decided I'd drive up to Algonquin Park to see what there is to see before winter sets in. It was certainly a lucky day! I got there early and saw this cow and calf moose. I took a bunch of pictures, then decided to move along, to see what else I could find. I really wanted to find a bull moose!

 A couple of fellow photographers were there (Jerry and Dave from Barrie) and one of them said, "a bird in the hand, you know..." so I stayed a bit longer!

Yearling male. You can see the nubs of his antlers coming in.

My favourites are the last two; they're "environmental portraits" which tell of the animal in its surroundings. Closeups are fine, but I prefer to tell a story

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Eventually they moved on, and so did I. Next stop: check out if the Pine Martens were back. I wonder where they go in the summer...

They were – or at least one was – but the backlighting was horrendous and it was really dark where he was. Still, I got a shot or two! 

Continuing east, I drove up Opeongo Road to see if I could find that elusive Bull Moose... no such luck, but I did come across a couple of spruce grouse!

Check out the gorgeous colours of this male bird! 

The spruce and ruffed grouse share a defense mechanism: they freeze and they're very hard to spot in the bush — are you kidding me? Maybe for the Ruffed grouse and the female Spruces... I think they were handed a short supply of brains. It's a wonder any of them are still around! Dig the bright colours and contrasty feathers!

I decided to hold off on the foxes until after I turned for home (no, I'm not going to share where they hang out... don't ask!).

This is "Papa" fox. He's been around for a while and he's really good at posing for a shot! 

So all in all, not a bad day... kidding! It was an awesome day.

The next day, at 11:30 at night, after I had posted a few pictures, my phone rang. It was Dr. Ron. "I'll be there at 7 am, we're going up to Algonquin. {sigh}. SURE!  Up we went!

While we were waiting for the foxes to show up, this blue jay entertained us. 

I think the Blue Jay should have been named Canada's National Bird instead of the Grey Jay or WhiskeyJack. This name is a variation on Wisakedjak, a benevolent trickster and cultural hero in Cree, Algonquin and Menominee mythologies

Right on schedule, our furry friends showed up. This is either Mama or one of last year's kits. 

Off to look for Pine Martens. Again, we found birds to shoot:

A fearless red-breasted Nuthatch comes down for a treat! 

Hard to see, as I said earlier. Here's a Ruffed Grouse hanging out in a pine tree. Dr. Ron spotted this guy.

And our friendly neighbourhood Pine Marten came for a visit. There was a bit more light than the previous visit, so I managed a decent picture. 

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Parting Shot

That was a long couple of days! Rewarding, wouldn't you say?

Then there was all that hype about a "Super Moon". Folks, the super moon looks exactly like any other full moon, except it was (wait for it) 7% bigger. Whoopie. But I was duty bound to go out and shoot it. When I got back to the computer, as I said, it looked just like every other moon shot. So I decided to play with it and came up with this:

Super Moon Rising over Horseshoe Lake. This is a composite image, the foreground is from a shot at the Shuyler's Island Causeway, looking for Northern Lights last summer. 

A lot of people on Facebook liked this image and asked for it as "wallpaper" for their computers. So I made a 1920x1080 pixel version and uploaded it to  http://www.photography.to/wallpaper/moonwallpaper.jpg. If you want it for your computer background image (wallpaper), just go to the link, right click and save it, then follow the procedure in your operating system. Enjoy!

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'tis the season...

This certainly is the season for outdoor photography. Birds, wildlife, landscapes, flowers, people coming out of hibernation. So get out there and enjoy it.

I need to take my own advice. I've been terribly one-dimensional lately but I have to admit that I'm fascinated by bird photography. I'll make an effort to include other genres in this blog so I'm not boring everyone and I'm also going to get out and shoot other stuff. Since I got the Tamron 150-600mm lens, I don't think my Nikon 70-200 has been on the camera more than a couple of times. Gawd, it's the sharpest lens I own! That and my 105mm macro. So I will make the effort. Stick around!

Photo Fads

If you hang out on Social Media at all, especially the Photoshop groups, you'll have noticed how there are fads in photography. For example, there was the "Twirl" — someone figured out how to do a kaleidoscope-like manipulation in Photoshop and suddenly dozens of people were doing it (to the point where some were calling for a ban in the Photoshop and Lightroom group!). "Frequency Separation" is suddenly THE technique for skin softening, everyone's trying it. Lately there's been "Big Eyes", now everyone's doing that (use the Liquify tool in Photoshop. Reminds me of people painting Elvis on black velvet 50 years ago!).

It's also what happened in the nature groups. Last year, a couple of people posted pictures of Snowy Owls, now everyone says, "me too!". Then it was foxes. And Pine Martens. And moose. Aurora Borealis. The Milky Way. Star trails. It's hard not to follow suit: nothing wrong with it, you see a technique, want to try it and show the results. But how do you avoid just being a sheep? I wonder what the next fad will be?

"WOW" image

I follow Vincent Versace on Facebook. He is a photographer and a teacher extraordinaire and a Nikon Ambassador (come on, Canon people, I admire great Canon photographers like, um, like... I'll get back to you on that!). Search for him on FB and look on his timeline for the picture of the raging waters coming over the road in Havana, Cuba from April 26th. [I won't post other people's pictures on my blog, certainly not without specific permission]. It has every "wow" element I strive for in my landscapes. Come on folks, you don't expect ME to do all the work! Research it.

Oh, all right. Here's the link: https://goo.gl/NVmvUG

I do want to quote what he said about the Nikon D5, four days into shooting with it:

'There is no image I cannot capture. The ability of this camera to shoot in lighting conditions so dark that you have to [imagine] that there is light to provide illumination. Spot on color, speed touch screen focus in live view. Whoa.....' 

The D5 can shoot up in the millions range of ISO, which is, I suspect, not what most people will do but by derivation allows it to shoot ridiculous quality at ISO's like 6400 or more. Imagine being able to do an exhibition quality hummingbird shot at 1/8000 sec @ f/8 on a cloudy day...

Last week, I said my first stop after picking up my lottery winnings would be the Swarovski store for that outstanding spotting scope, my second stop would be the Nikon store for a D5. Imagine that optic on that camera! Sadly, the probability that will happen has too many zeroes between the decimal point and the first significant digit.

...musings

As I read about the Nikon D5 and muse about better and better lenses and optics, I wonder when enough is enough. I remember when I bought the D800, I said that would be the end of the line for me. I thought the same when I got my Nikon 70-200 f/2.8 VR. I discovered that wasn't good enough for birding, so I added the Tamron 150-600. It does the job. National Geographic quality? No, but good enough. The other day, I found something that I could not do with it: I couldn't take a sharp picture of a Loggerhead Shrike on a bush 200 or 300 meters away. I wanted that 500mm f/4.

That's what happens when you push the edge of the envelope. I have to ask myself, "would having all that new stuff make me a better photographer?" No it won't. It would enable me to shoot in situations that I can't right now but it won't make me better at what I do. If I were a portrait photographer, would a D5, with its crazy 3 Million ISO and 12 fps give me better results? No, not really. What would? Understanding lighting better and how to relate to people.

Ask yourself the same questions but substitute the genre you prefer to shoot. What would make me a better [landscape, wildlife, street, macro, travel, astro, studio...] photographer? Sure. You have to have a certain minimum set of equipment. And no, your iPhone or point-and-shoot isn't going to do that for you, unless all you aspire to is to be a snapshot photographer. So it comes down to deciding what you want to be when you grow up.

My problem is, I want to be able to do it all. Two years ago, I shot landscapes. Now I'm kinda into birding (for which, I admit, you really do need one of those $5digit lenses). And astrophotography. To do either of those things and stand shoulder to shoulder with the experts, I would need some specialized equipment. At what point do I have to say, "Enough!"? How about stretching to learn more about how to shoot those genres with what I have?

I can't carry all the equipment I have even now. My gear is divided into 3 bags. When I go out, I have to ask myself, "what should I take with me today?". And as I get older and more arthritic and more out of shape, everything gets heavier and heavier. Can you say "mirrorless"? Not yet...

So I've decided that the D800 is enough for me. Unless it breaks, of course, at which point I have to decide what to replace it with. Maybe that's when I'll go mirrorless. It's time to learn how to use what I already have, to take better pictures by using my eye and my mind, not new hardware. So I won't shoot motion-compensated photographs of obscure galaxies. I'm just going to get better at what I already do.

Algonquin Park

I decided to head up to the Park last Tuesday, well, just "because". People have been posting pictures of moose and I wanted to get my share! I got to wear the camo's I bought at Cabela's a couple of months ago (I wear them at Carden Plain as well; the pants are Goretex and tick-proof!)

The Pine Martens didn't show up at Mew Lake so I killed time shooting a couple of "selfie's". 

I had two moose encounters, one on the way into the park and the other on the way out later in the afternoon.

This young bull was enjoying the salty runoff water beside Highway 60.

This cow was accompanied by a calf. Her coat was rather scruffy, you can see some winter ticks still in position. Her coat looks like that partly because she scraped it off to rid herself of the ticks and partly because moose shed their winter coats and grow summer ones in the spring. She was a bit more shy; or had been driven away from the roadside by a seemingly endless gaggle of tourists. I was amazed by the people who took iPhone or iPad pictures from the roadside and expected them to come out. This shot was at 600mm and cropped to about half the frame.

There are birds in Algonquin Park too. Here's a yellow-rumped warbler and a great blue heron that I saw.

It's not all wildlife, though. Here's the Costello Creek pond on Opeongo Road. Only thing missing was a red canoe! Actually there was a yellow one there, but they were behind the rock and headed the other way.

You don't have to go so far, though...

I shot these pictures at my feeder a couple of days later. I saw at least half a dozen species! I had just installed the "Merlin" birding app on my phone and just for fun, started playing some of the songs of different species. I started with the Rose-breasted grosbeak and about 2 minutes later, this guy and his family showed up!

Rose-breasted grosbeak with attitude! 

American Goldfinch. A whole flock of these showed up and they seem to like the calls on my iPhone. Whenever I stepped outside to shoot them, they'd fly away. Playing the calls made them stick around long enough for a photo. There were so many of them that they emptied my feeder all by themselves in a couple of hours. Must have been a dozen or more!

Pretty sure it's a white-throated sparrow 

Chipping Sparrow. 

Carden Plain

I was there again on Friday morning. Kathy met me there and loves the place. Somehow she sees birds that I can't!

The Eastern Loggerhead Shrike was there again. A little closer this time but we couldn't get him to turn around for a portrait:

Here's a Meadowlark singing on a rock. I think the iPhone call helped bring him in closer. 

Normally they sit further away. This guy was about 200m away and this is cropped from a 600mm shot. I like it because it says something about the environment in which the bird lives. 

Same thing is true of this Savannah Sparrow. I could have cropped it vertically but I like the story the branches tell. I couldn't get him to turn around and look the other way, but that's OK: (1) rules are made to be broken and (2) I like the light on his face. 

As I continued along Rte. 6, just before crossing the Trent-Severn Canal, I saw this Osprey eating a fish on top of a hydro pole. I have a few shots with the fish, but none as compelling as this closeup! 

It's Trillium Time

A little later than usual but they are here. Not in full force yet, but they're out at the Minden Wildwater Preserve. 

The other day I learned something new about my flash. A while ago my Nikon SB-600 flash died and I replaced it with a Yongnuo YN568EX. Reading the manual (and interpreting the transliterated English!) I learned that it will sync with any shutter speed. Interesting: the Nikon flash only went to 1/320 second with the D800. 

What's the significance? When you use the flash, you are mixing two light sources: the strobe and the ambient light. There are a bunch of ways of controlling the effect of the strobe light (normally aperture, but when you're in iTTL mode it's really exposure compensation), but the way to control the ambient light is with shutter speed (or sometimes ISO). 

This is a normal image that uses both ambient and flash light 

And this shot was taken at 1/1600 second, effectively eliminating the ambient.
 

The other advantage of high shutter speed is to stop motion, for example, hummingbird wings. I'll be experimenting with this feature.

This is a complex image. Four exposures were focus-stacked to produce the sharp Trillium, and then I swapped out the background with the texture from a nearby rock. Finally, Topaz Impression was used to create the painterly effect. 

And finally, here's the shot I liked best from today. 

The flash made the petals translucent so you can see the leaf through them.  

By the way, all of these trillium pictures were taken from ground level. It's worth the effort to get down and dirty.

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