Back to the Birds

I have neglected my bird photography for awhile.  I will try to make up for it and get more feathered friend pictures.  Starting today!

I took a trip this summer and saw a bunch of birds.  Most of them are probably common birds, but since I don't even have an official list, they are all basically new to me.  Even if they are common, it is still fun to practice my identification skills and then read more about them in my bird book.  Of course, I would have a much harder time identifying birds without the help of web sites like WhatBird.com with their interactive wizard that narrows down the list of possible birds to a manageable number. 

Take this guy for instance.  I spotted him when I was walking around Mono Lake in CA.  WhatBird helped me to narrow down the list which leads me to think he is a Violet-green Swallow.  Let me know if you think that is a correct ID or not.  If you would like, I would be happy to provide more details on location and environment to help confirm this id. 

Day 5 - Ghosts

I woke up about 2am and heard some interesting sounds. At first I thought it was a bear in the campground, rummaging around. I peeked in the direction of the sound and didn't see anything. It continued for awhile but didn't seem to be moving around and a couple times it sounded like human voices. I finally decided it must be a fellow camper snoring. I was talking with another camper today and he said he heard it too. He thinks it might have been deer, as he has heard them make similar sounds when they are rooting around for some snacks. The campground hosts said they haven't seen or heard a bear in the campground since about April.

When the sun woke me up, I laid in the tent for awhile till the sun was high enough up to start warming things up. Then I spread my still damp jeans over my motorcycle and propped my boots facing the sun in hopes they would dry a bit more before I put them on.

The jeans dried pretty quick, but I stayed in camp till after 9 by which time I either needed some air-conditioning or a cold beer. Luckily, the boots were dry and I headed out to find a ghost town called Bodie I had heard about.

It was a nice ride through some mountains to get there. Well, nice until I got to the last several miles which were unpaved. I don't mind dirt roads, but loose dirt, sand and gravel are not what my bike was built for and it handles somewhat like trying to hold on to a greased pig.

It was a picture-perfect day. Clear skies with big white fluffy clouds. I thought this was the schoolhouse with the bell on top, but this was actually the fire station.


Since there are no concessions for food or drinks there, and I was getting hungry, I decided to head out after looking around for about an hour or so. I knew it would take awhile to get back anyway, so when I saw there was a different route back, I decided to take it. This way had closer to 10 miles of dirt road, but there were areas of packed dirt which was easier to navigate, but still took me a while to get back to a paved road. I did stop a few times for pictures. One stop I made was a different view of Mono Lake than most that you can see. Such are the rewards for taking the road less traveled.

There are these neat white flowers that bloom everywhere along the side of the road. Did I mention the weather was great today?

Well, after lunch, I stopped to do a load of laundry and by the time that was done, the cloud bank I saw yesterday was starting to form again so I decided to stay close to camp. The rain almost completely missed me this time and I was able to light my fire and enjoy it without trying to dry my clothes out.

The sun is down and mosquitoes are starting to get annoying, so when I get the fire put out, it is off to bed. Another day is done.

Day 4 – Yosemite

I'm speechless. This place is incredible. I was hoping to compare it to Yellowstone, but there is no way to compare. I have seen more wildlife on my trips through Yellowstone, and there are some incredible views as well, but Yosemite has a much more dramatic landscape (to me anyway). Before today, I said to myself, this was a good trip even if I had to pack up and head for home today. Now I can say it was a GREAT trip even if I had to head home today.

Heading up the hill to Tioga Pass was a fun ride and I had to stop a few times for pictures and to just soak in the scenery. I saw what I am pretty sure was a Bald Eagle swooping in with his talons outstretched, but by the time I stopped and grabbed my camera, he was behind some trees. I waited awhile, but didn't see him take to the air and he was on the other side of a river, so I couldn't go searching.

Less than an hour later, I saw a brightly colored bird swoop in front of me and perch on a tree. From what I could see, he was mostly yellow with a stripe of red on his head. He was still there when I walked back there, but moving to quickly to get the camera a chance to focus so once again, I was left pictureless.

This is a great road to ride on the motorcycle. Lots of twisty sections that require active riding instead of just cruising. The downside is that you can't spend more than a second or so looking at the scenery so I found myself stopping several times an hour. Usually to take the camera out and take a few shots, but sometimes just to sit in awe of this place.

I think it was about 2pm or so when I finally made it to Glacier Point. Let me tell you that the view is worth the traffic and parking hassle once you get here. WOW! I will be posting more from this trip in my other galleries with higher resolution, but as a teaser this is one of the many times on road to Glacier Point that I had to stop.



I was going to do some hiking once I got here, but after I finished eating a sandwich, I decided the clouds were starting to look like the forecast 20% chance of thunderstorms was a greater chance of rain than when the Arizona forecasters say 20% chance of rain and decided to head for home. I figured I had enough good pictures from the day and I can always come back on Wednesday or Thursday if I felt like more (I hadn't made it into Yellowstone Valley yet) so I would keep the photo stops to a minimum.

That resolution changed when a couple cars stopped in the middle of the road and were all hanging out the passenger side of their cars with cameras. That reminded me of some advice: Look where the people are pointing their cameras, it is probably worth taking a picture of. Sure enough, there was a bear not 50 feet from the road just ambling along.



After that excitement and with the ever-darkening ominous clouds overhead, I redoubled my efforts to not stop for every picturesque view. Sure enough, partway back, I saw a few drops hit my visor so I quickly pulled over and threw my rain liner on under my jacket and proceeded, albeit a bit slower. Sprinkling rain turned into heavy rain and heavy rain turned into hail. I kept going for the lighter hail, but when it came down heavy enough to blanket the road like snow, I pulled over. There was nowhere to go, no trees for shelter or overhanging rocks, so I just killed the engine and sat there for a few minutes.

The sun had been bright enough, so the road was hot and quickly melted the worst of it and when a caravan passed me going pretty slowly (trike, motorcycle and a van), I pulled out behind them. They were taking it easy and it was nice to have someone to follow through the hills.

By the time we got to Tioga Pass, the rain had completely stopped and the wind was starting to dry some parts of my clothes. But my fingers were frozen stiff and I was happy to get some hot coffee before heading back to my campground for some dry clothes and a little fire.

Still not sure what I will do the rest of my time before I leave. There is a ghost town named Bodie I have been hearing about and the hot springs near Mammoth both sound nice. Stay tuned to find out.

p.s. I was too cold and tired to post this last night in case you were looking for this post yesterday and wondered what I was doing.

Day 2 - Theme song

Happy Fourth of July!!! I hope you enjoyed celebrating the many freedoms this great country provides us.

I realized that the song I mentioned yesterday was not the best song for the conditions. For me, Roll Me Away has a cold feeling to it. A better song for yesterday would be Rodney Atkins "If you're going through hell". It fits the weather better for sure. And it was good advice yesterday, since it was blistering hot and I just kept on going. I did stop a few times for water and pictures, but otherwise, I just kept going. I finally ended up in Pahrump Nevada for the night.

I vowed to get an early start the next morning since I would be going through parts of Death Valley. I did get going pretty early, but missed one turn leaving Pahrump and ended up taking a different route. I took a longer route to get back to the originally planned route. That added a few miles, but got me on the road I wanted to see.



One of the scenic detours I took was the road to Dante's View. The view from high above the floor of Death Valley was just incredible.



Even better (in my humble opinion) was the ride up there. Narrow roads, twisty and winding turns required 100% of my attention to keep from leaving the road. It seemed like I was leaning the bike hard one way and then immediately after that curve, throwing it hard the other way. I think I had to work harder on that 11 mile ride than I did in the next several hundred miles, but it was so much fun, it was worth it.

Made it to Bishop CA before I stopped for lunch. Found a hotel with a pool, picked up a pair of swim trunks and relaxed in the pool for a while. I am fighting a little bit of a headache. I think it is mostly a touch of dehydration and a good nights sleep and plenty of water will take care of it.

Soggy Triathlon Photos

It is not very often that an event in Arizona gets rained on. I had heard about a chance of rain for this weekend so I checked the forecast on Saturday to see if the race we were scheduled to shoot would be wet. Late on Saturday, the forecast was for 30% chance of showers overnight ending by 7 Sunday morning. I figured that was Arizona forecasters hoping for a bit more rain.

Well, it poured most of the night and was still drizzling pretty steadily when we left the house a bit before 6 in the morning. I kept expecting things to start drying out, but the windshield wipers kept on going all the way to the race.

When I got there, the rest of my photo team were there and although they wished it would be drier, were ready to take care of business. We took care of business by talking about the race plan and headed off to our jobs.

Right away, things changed. These races usually start with the kids race and after they finish, the adult race start. Today though, just before the start, I found out they were starting with the adult race and would have the kids races later in the morning after the adult race. That was a bit of a surprise as we usually regroup after the kids race and tweak our plan before the busier and longer adult race. This is especially handy when we are shooting at a new location (3rd time here for Flowing Desert) or when we are shooting with a new shooter (we had a new team member today).

Everyone adjusted fine to the new schedule and with the exception of the rain that never quite stopped, we all managed to carry on. Now the rest of the team has resumed their normal lives and I have started the fun, but sometimes long, process of reviewing the pictures and adding the keywords so that all today's racers can quickly and easily find their pictures.

I love pictures from the finish line and I usually start my review with those pictures. The smiles on many faces and the visible effort on others shows their pride at their accomplishments. I am most of the way through with the finish pictures and so far the "Flying Finisher" is my favorite photo of this race.

Talk about celebrating your finish!  So what do you think?  Have you tried the flying finish in a race or are you a "clock-watcher" at the finish line?

Skills for Triathlon

There are countless blogs and articles online about training for and competing in triathlons.  They will usually focus on how to properly train your body to be ready to handle the race and how to eat a balanced diet leading up to a race.  This is just going to be a pictorial on some of the skills that triathletes eventually need to develop.

Riding one-handed.

This is a skill that is very important to be able to wave to friends and cameras.



Riding one-handed is also very important for the next skill.

Eating.

Riding one-handed is very helpful in order to be able to eat while on the bike. This is especially important for athletes in an Ironman race that will sometimes spend 6-8 hours on the bike while riding the 112 miles that is the bike portion of these endurance races.



Storage.

Packing enough for a long bike ride is always a challenge. You need to have spare tubes and a way to pump them up if you get a flat tire. You will also want some food (fig newtons and gel packs were my choice) and maybe some other things like a rain jacket if there is a chance of rain (not usually a problem for IMAZ) or pain medicine if you are injury-prone. Bike jerseys usually have a couple pockets on the back. These are handy, but it can be a bit tricky to get things out while riding. Some racers get creating when finding places and ways to store things for the ride.



Rules

If you watch (or race) triathlons long enough, you will find out that there are rules and that when you break the rules, you have to make a stop in the Penalty Box. It seemed like things were pretty quiet this year here in Arizona, at least for this penalty box as the tent workers spent a considerable amount of time just standing around watching the race.



So what other skills are needed for triathlons?  After IMAZ last year, I posted another skill that triathletes develop on my triathlon blog.  What else am I missing?  Use the comments here or shoot me an email and I'll make another edition of this skills blog.

Feel free to stop by my sports photography site and see some of my other sports pictures.

Ironman Arizona

Last year in April, I finished my first (and so far only) Ironman race.  I enjoyed the race more than most people can imagine.  Some people that can imagine were out in Tempe this weekend and I was out for a while with my camera to capture some of the excitement.

There seemed to be no end to the smiles.




Even the professional athletes that are racing for money seem to be having fun. Or maybe this one was simply "hamming it up" for the camera.


Some people are more intense than others.


Many spectators wear special shirts to cheer on their friends.  They range from shirts that look professionally done to hand-made shirts that show their creative side like Team Speedy Pants.



Anyway, I had fun out there and I sure missed being in the middle of the action but was happy to be there cheering on the racers. A huge CONGRATULATIONS to all my friends that are now IRONMAN!

Ohhh What a Feeling!

I have been having fun taking pictures of triathletes. It is fun to see the variety of expressions on different people's faces. Some intense, some relaxed and having fun. Still others celebrating as they cross the finish line.

Sharing the joy with family and friends is often a part of the finish line celebration. These heartwarming moments make shooting the finish line pictures very rewarding.


Every once in a while, one of the pictures just jumps off the screen. These are one in a million shots that make photography so much fun. I think this is my favorite triathlon picture since I started shooting triathlons.


What about you? What is your favorite sports picture?

South of the Border - Beach Edition

Finally got a chance to start going through pictures from our weekend getaway to Mexico earlier this month. The boys got to go on a banana boat ride and they had a lot of fun.

While it was nice having an almost private beach, it was sad to see the local economy hurting this much. This guy didn't seem to mind having the place to himself.

He wasn't alone and I got a fair number of bird pictures over the weekend. I played around with some settings on my camera and ended up shooting most of the weekend at ISO 400 which gives a bit grainier pictures than I usually like. I do like the grainy look for some shots, like this little worm creature we saw swimming around in the shallows. We were not sure what they were, but they looked bigger than the swine flu virus and smaller than a snake, so we didn't worry too much about them.

I will be reviewing the rest of my bird pictures soon and will have a South of the Border - Bird Edition out soon. Stay tuned.

Roses are not always red.

Most people know that red roses signify love and I have purchased more than a few red roses for my wife in the almost 19 years we have been married. A few weeks ago, I saw some roses in the store. I saw some red ones, but the ones that caught my eye were a different color.




I went with these and my wife loved them. They were a unique color and they really had a great shape. They stayed nice for almost a week too which is nice since sometimes the dry air kills flowers within a few days here in the desert.

This was a fun picture to take. I got my 50mm prime lens out of the camera bag and set the aperature to f/1.8 to get a nice shallow depth of field. You can see how the main flower in the picture is in focus and the one behind just kind of fades into the background.

So what do you think? Leaving a comment here is easy and does not require a login. You can also leave me a comment on Twitter. If you like my pictures, it would be great if you would become a fan of the Flowing Desert Fan page.

The Stars at Night...

Last week, the Perseid meteor shower hit its peak as it passed by earth and many stargzers went out to get a look at one of the shooting stars in the night sky. I like my sleep, but since there was supposed to be less, but more colorful "earthgrazers" before 10 or 11pm, I decided to head out with my camera and try my luck.

While I saw several brilliant shooting stars, the camera was aimed the wrong way each time. I did get some nice night pictures of the stars. I don't know a lot about astronomy, but I think this is the big dipper (or is it the little dipper?). I'm sure someone can confirm or correct me.

I think my favorite shot of the night is this one. I used a long exposure and then added a bit of light on the cactus with my LED flashlight. It seems a bit grainy when blown up too big, but as long as I don't blow it up too big, I like it.

My First Photowalk

A few weeks ago a friend reminded me that Scott Kelby's second annual worldwide photowalk was coming up. We decided to sign up for the one in Scottsdale.

It was still over 110*F when our walk stared that evening, but there was still good turnout as we gathered at the fountain. Our walk leader Kim gave some brief instructions for safety and then told us to look for different perspectives. I had aleady decided to start out with my wider-angle lens instead of my zoom. That was an intentional choice to try and experiment with a new perspective for me since I usually leave my 200mm zoom on most of the time.We started wandering along, taking pictures of flowers, walls, reflections in windows. All the things I had not paid much attention to even though I had worked in the area several years before. I took the oportunity to take a self-portrait using a store window reflection.


I even did some window-shopping and found a photographically-themed shirt:
I had noticed a sculpture driving by a few weeks before, but didn't think to ge closer until my friend mentioned there were mirrors on the inside. I think it looks like looking into a giant kaleidascope.

While the image Scottsdale likes to portray is one of affluence and glitter, there will always be those that choose to put their own stamp on things with graffiti.


Then the dust-sorm rolled in. It is hard to capture the mood of a storm like his, but I like how the white of the clock tower contrasts with the brown dust rolling in behind it.


After spending some time chatting with other photographers at the gelato store, we headed back to the car, but stopped to grab some pictures of the fountain where we started. I had to use my tripod otherwise I would have felt it was a waste of energy to carry it around for the whole walk. I like the way this one worked out and may submit this as one of my 2 entries for the contest.


What do you think? Leave me a comment here, shout at me on Twitter, or head over to Facebook and leave me a comment on my Fan Page there. Always looking for more people to become fans on FaceBook, so drop on by.

Technical Notes
These were all shot with my Nikon D60 in RAW/NEF with my little lens (as compared to my 200mm zoom that I usually use). As far as post processing, I did some cropping and straightening and a white balance adjustment on some of them. Otherwise, they are SOOC.

Sports Shooting - Triathlons

Triathlons are hard. I should know, I've done a few (check out my other blog for more) from short Sprint Triathlons all the way up to a full Ironman. When I attended my first race as a spectator with a camera instead of as a competitor, I had a great time cheering on my friends and taking lots of pictures. I got enough compliments on the pictures I took that I decided to do it again at another race. After a few races, I decided to try and get in with an official photographer to get more exposure.

I contacted a Race Director and after some discussion, I became his Race Photographer. This was a huge step for me since now instead of just trying to get pictures of a few friends, my goal was now to get good pictures of every competitor in 3 different disciplines. I knew I could not do it myself, so I proposed a partnership to a friend I had met a few months before at a photography workshop. Paul agreed and we planned our approach to the race. Paul has had kids in swimming, so we decided he would cover the swimming leg of the race and then move over to the finish line.

I would find a good spot to get the bikes and as soon as the last bike was past, I would get most of the runners before they got to the finish line.

Paul got a lot of great shots and I was able to find some pretty good angles for the bike and run portions. It was fun to see so many competitors with big smiles having a great time.

Now after 2 races, Paul and I have a good plan and really work well together. Sales are starting to roll in. Nothing I will be able to retire on, but at least it seems to be paying for the expenses of flyers and gas to get to the races. I am sure that the longer I do this, the more sales will take off.

Take a look at the race photos and let me know what you think. Do you race? What do you like to see in your pictures?

Fireworks Practice

Taking pictures of fireworks is a lot of fun, but can be challenging since there are not a lot of opportunities in most places. I was getting excited for tonight, but wanted a chance to practice some night shots. Mother Nature was kind enough to provide me with a firework show of her own last night. I grabbed my camera and tripod, double checked my settings and opened the patio door.

The lightning was fast and furious and I was able to get a lot of shots with lightning bolts. Here are some of my favorite shots.

In this one, I did a bit more post processing than usual and I kind of like how it turned out. I just played with the recovery slider and a touch of exposure control. The next two were pretty much straight out of the camera. I like the shots of blue branching off on the next one.

I really like the snaking motion on this one. I thought lightning took the shortest route to ground, but this one seems to have gotten a bit confused.

So what do you think? Does this bode well for firework pictures tonight?

Get a little bit closer

One thing I like to do with cameras is to always "get a little closer". Some photographers love the wide-angle lens, but unless I need to take a large group picture or a landscape shot, I will usually have my biggest zoom lens mounted on my camera.

Since some of my favorite subjects are wild animals and often a little camera-shy, that usually works out well for me. Sometimes though, a subject captures my attention and I want to get a bit closer, like inches away instead of feet away. My beloved zoom does not handle that request very well. Instead, I will sometimes switch to either my short zoom or my 50mm prime lens. Sometimes that does the trick, but other times, I need to reach into my camera bag for something special. In the case of these tiny flowers, I wanted to capture them on a different scale than I could with just my lenses.


I dug into my bag and came out with a kit of macro filters I had picked up a while ago. I didn't have a lot of time and the breeze was making things a bit challenging since every breath of wind would move the flowers just enough to lose their focus. Still though, I feel like I came away with a few nice shots. I especially like the sharpness in the middle blue flower below. Click on it and let me know what you think here in the comments.


Are you an experienced macro photographer? Please feel free to leave comments with suggestions or resources.

New week, new "Name That Bird"

I will admit that I have been lazy this week. I didn't even reach for the Bird Encyclopedia or even give WhatBird.com a shot yet. Crazy busy weekend. Besides, it is fun to hear what you guys have to say on all these birds I see.

This guy was all over the place, but loud, so he was easy to spot. I think at least one of these might be of a different gender. I liked the yellow color on these birds and how small they were. They were about the size of a hummingbird or slightly larger.

If you pay close attention to such things, you may notice that these are not stored at my usual SmugMug site. I am not real happy with the quality of these, so I am just storing them on my PicasaWeb site for now. There are several other shots there, so please feel free to visit the animal photo album if you want to see some different angles.

So help me out here. What is he? (she?) Comment here or over on Twitter (or both for that matter).

Lessons of a flash

A while ago, I was finally able to buy an external flash for my Nikon D60. If you are not sure why an external flash is a big deal, I'll explain a bit why my new SB-900 flash is an improvement over the built in pop-up flash.

The pop-up flash on my D60 has a few limitations. One is the limited range, subjects that are too far away from the camera will not be lit up enough for a proper exposure.

Another limitation of the built-in flash is the proximity to the lens. This is a major contributor to the "red eye" seen in many pictures.

The last of the major limitations covered here is that the pop-up flash is uni-directional. That is to say it is not able to point in any direction other than straight ahead.

In spite of these limitations, the built-in flash has it's uses. For one, the fact that it is always with you, which is incredibly useful if you need to take pictures in dark or low light conditions.

Another benefit of the pop-up flash is that it can be used to trigger certain remote flashes like the SB-900. This allows you to get better lighting arrangements then you could with the built-in flash alone. With some cameras, that is a simple camera setting to tell the camera's built-in flash that it is a "master" for other "slave" flashes.

The Nikon D60 does not have this setting in the camera which means that the flash needs to understand that it needs to flash when it sees a flash. Sadly this is not a readily apparent setting in the flash. It is there, but it takes some digging to get to it. I will create a blog post (and maybe an Instructable entry) for this as I know there are probably some other D60 owners with an SB-900 flash and are trying to figure out how to do this.

Now is the time for your opinion. Leave a comment here with your thoughts on what topic I should tackle next:
- Step-by-step enabling SB-900 to work with flash control from D60
- Why off-camera flash matters (with samples)
- Enough with the tech talk, show me more animal pictures
- Something else

Roadrunners

One of the birds I have been wanting to catch ever since I got my Nikon D60 last year is the roadrunner. Not an impossible goal since I live right smack in the middle of the desert which is his habitat. Every time I have seen one, by the time I get out of the car and over to where they were, they are gone.

A few weeks ago, my Dad told me that he had seen some roadrunners near his house, so the next time I was over there, we took a different route on our way home to drive by where he had been seeing them.

As soon as we turned down one street, I saw a couple of shapes run across the road. Everyone else in the car saw them too and everyone was wondering aloud "Were those roadrunners?".

As we got to where we had seen them, I slipped the car into neutral, rolled the windows down, killed the radio and air conditioning. I had my camera out and ready.

Not the best picture I could hope for, but the best I got before they both jumped a 5 foot fence and were gone. I will keep looking for another chance to capture this speedy bird. In the meantime, feel free to stop over in my animal photo gallery and take a look at some of my other pictures.

So are there any elusive targets on your list to see or photograph? Leave a comment here or say something over on Twitter.

Salsa Festival

I live in a fairly small town. It has upsides and downsides. The closest hospital is over 20 miles away and the closest CostCo or Sams Club is almost as far. These things make it a bit of a challenge at times.

The other side of the coin is the small-town feeling that we seem to have. When I went out for a run this morning, everyone I saw smiled and said "Hi" or "Good morning" regardless of whether they were also running, walking their dog or on a bike ride. It just feels like a friendly town most of the time. This is true right down to the local festivals and other city events including the Salsa Festival.

There were many local merchants with small booths showing off their products as well as a few with bigger displays to draw more attention.

It isn't a Maricopa event unless the wind is blowing. You can sure tell by looking at these flags that the wind was pretty strong. It felt good though since it got up around 80* F today so the wind made it feel nice.

There was also some salsa there. There was another area for all the competitors in the salsa contest. They had samples out and everyone that came by could vote on their favorite salsa. Some of the entrants were area restaurants and others were individuals.

Later on in the afternoon and evening, the concert stage would be jumping with three different groups scheduled to perform.

I was not there for too long, but I did enjoy talking to people, snacking on some food and browsing through the vendor booths. I met some more great people including folks Tony and Jessi (EDIT: now I got the names right) in the 8523mine booth who I had seen online on Twitter before.

Well, that is my small glimpse into a local Salsa Festival. Were you there? Please add your comments here. Do you have a local event you enjoy in your area? Please tell me about it.