I’m behind on my favorite bird photos of the past week,  so bear with me…lots of birds today.  I’ll start big — a Cooper’s Hawk was lurking in a palm tree at the birding center:

Last week I saw a Least Grebe.  They are quite uncommon, but native to this area.  This week I saw a Pied-Billed Grebe.  The pied are more common, and a little bigger.  Their bill is also thicker with a stripe, while the Least Grebe has a quite narrow bill plus that distinctive golden eye.

The grebes spend nearly all their time in the water, rarely flying or on land.  They don’t walk well due to the location of their legs — far, far back on their bodies.  They are excellent divers.  As my nephew Bill pointed out the other day, when they were preening by stretching their necks out towards their tails, they are actually getting at an oil duct that’s by their tail.  It is parafin-like, and they use their head to distribute this oil onto their feathers, making them more water proof.

I thought it was interesting to see how high this Green-Winged Teal raised herself out of the water during her bathing process. 

And as she settled back into the water, she gave us a nice peek at those beautiful green feathers:

I love this picture of this turtle.  The turtles are beyond abundant at Paradise Pond this year.  This Red-Eared Slider looks like he could come right out of the picture:

Well, I’ve bombarded you with enough pix for today.  I have some warbler pictures, including a mystery female I’ll ask for your help on, but I will save those for tomorrow. 

Give-away starts Monday!

–Sue

A two-for-one deal, almost as good as Black Friday or whatever they call the internet Monday sales!  Okay, maybe not quite, but here it is.

YES,  I DID finish my PhD (Project half Done) quilt in time!!!  I’m almost caught up on my sleep, and everything else in my life is very behind, but I have a large quilt very done.

And I love it.  I started it in 2003, in 2004 it went on a shelf and has been aging to perfection until this year when several of us decided to get out an old UFO and finished it!  What a good feeling.  And check out the socks! 

Here are twelve of us (there were 13 counting a late arrival):

And on the Photo Friday front, yesterday I was watching a blue jay taunting me, flitting from tree to tree, always too far away or behind a branch, or “look, I’m up close in a tree and you don’t have your camera”, and then he was gone!  There was also an osprey circling the pond, mostly white bird against snow-covered white roofs across the way — no photo.  I was feeling a little discouraged.  Two birds we rarely see so close, and no photos.  Then I saw something dart past into a tree by the side of the house:

A downy woodpecker!  You can see we just have a little snow that stuck onto the grass yesterday.  We are cold enough to keep snow now (boooo), with a current temperature of 14 degrees. 

By the way, I’ll be adding individual photos of the PhD finishers with their quilts when I add a new tab to the top of this page called PhD (aren’t I original?).

Thanks for stopping by!

–Sue

This morning, as I was having my coffee and chatting on the phone with a friend, I was wandering around the house looking out the windows.  (Do you do that?  I know I should be DOING something, but I wander through the house and look out all the windows.)  This time someone was looking back — a red-tailed hawk!  Well, the friend and I had a good discussion going and I didn’t want to say, STOP, THERE’S A HAWK IN MY TREE!!!  Let me go get my camera!  Fortunately, my camera is always within handy reach, and I was able to grab some one-handed shots of this guy.  He could see my focusing  beam and would stare at me, but apparently I didn’t look like a threat because he sat out in this tree for about ten minutes.

The challenge was getting the camera to focus on the bird, not the tree branches, and I didn’t think it would work to holler out, Hey, You, would you mind stepping out from behind the branches, fluff your feathers, and turn a little to the left?  He already looked a little pissy.  (And I know this isn’t a great shot — I’m WAY past the 12x optical zoom and well into the digital zoom, probably up to the full 48x.  That results in the grainy look.) 

I had the same problem in Texas with this tri-colored heron.  You would have thought he was avoiding the paparazzi!  Or maybe he was just shy.  And by the way, did you know paparazzi is plural and paparazzo is singular?  The useless things you learn when you check your spelling!

You can see by the sharpness of the photo that I was much closer to this bird and didn’t have to go into the digital zoom.

So when you get a picture where you can see the camera chose the wrong object on which to focus, just try again and again, if necessary.  You can usually land a shot on the desired subject.

–Sue

Today I thought I would just share a few pictures from Texas.  These are from Mustang Island’s Port Aransas, and we have a fabulous birding center right in town — my favorite place.  I really wanted to get to the National Seashore on North Padre, which is only a half hour from us, but we just ran out of time.  Oh, well, next trip…

Here is a Great Egret coming in for a landing.  I was up in kind of an observation tower when I took this photo:

And another pelican picture — this guy is coming in for a landing also.

And speaking of landings, this was our view as we were coming into Minneapolis:

We broke through one layer of clouds, and we were in a clear space between the clouds.  Very cool:

This trip we saw millions of either small butterflies or moths.  They had kind of the coloring of a Monarch, but not quite.  Must have been migrating.  I have also never seen so many dragonflies. 

You know how you often see them flying “together”?  They were impossible to photograph in flight, at least for me, but here is a pair at rest:

Something else we saw at the birding center that we hadn’t seen before was this blue crab.  He was very big, and you can see by his “dust” trail, he really does move sideways!

–Sue

As I indicated in an earlier post, I’m kind of “tipped out”.  The well of knowledge just isn’t that deep for me to continue indefinitely with photo tips!

However, I did take a picture this week I really liked, and I thought it would be a good time to revisit a couple of points, and I’m providing links to previous posts where I told you everything I know (and probably more) about these features.

For this picture, I used …

1. Prefocusing by pressing the shutter button half-way down
2. When I was prefocusing, I made sure I was focusing EXACTLY on one of the little crab apples
3. I was zoomed out to 12x optical zoom (which is the maximum on my Panasonic Lumix before it switches to digital zoom)

I really like these pictures where only the subject is in focus and the rest of the background kind of goes away.  It reminds me of a watercolor. 

I don’t get as pronounced an efffect with my little Canon, and I think it’s related to the amount you’ve zoomed in.  It may have to do with the size of the lens, as well, because this camera has a bigger lens on it.  This would be a good place for my disclaimer:  I’m not an expert.  I just like messing around with camera stuff.

–Sue

When I looked up “faux pas” to check the spelling and see what the plural would be (the same), I was reminded that faux pas is a social blunder; it doesn’t really fit.  Still, I like the alliterative sound of it, so I’ll keep it for today.  (Shoot, now I have another word to look up.)

The other day, Robin asked me if I had a picture of this whole quilt: 

Well, today’s lesson is that not all pictures turn out to be the beautiful photo you see in your mind.  There was so much glare on the glass at the State Fair, this was the best I could do of the whole quilt. 

My solution was to get the camera lens close to the glass and take a photo of just part of the quilt (which is the first picture above).

That made me think about all my not-so-good pictures that I usually delete right away, and I certainly don’t post them!  Well, lucky, lucky you — I found some pretty funny examples  of “mistake” pictures to share with you today.  Whoops, just a little head movement here…

Don’t look down your nose at me!  I’m just trying to take your portrait!

Since I was shooting through the blinds, I was getting some terrible white glare on the window.  I knew if I raised the blinds, this house finch would be gone in a flash, but I couldn’t resist another shot of these tufts of feathers.

You know how much I love the hummingbirds.  I managed to catch the most awkward looking position for this little one.   It looks like she impaled herself on a twig, but she was just turning around.

Is she gone yet?

Here is an example of my automatic focus catching the wrong thing to focus on — in this case, the leaves.  I hate it when that happens!

This picture came out all right, but before this one I had a terrible time getting the camera to focus on the bird.  I think there was too much light on the irridized feathers, and the focusing beam was getting all messed up.  My solution was to focus on the base of the twig she was sitting on, keeping the button pressed half-way down, then move the camera up to the bird.

And I can’t begin to tell you how many hummingbird photos I have that look like this

And sadly, the hummers are gone.  I haven’t seen them for about three days, so they are on their way south.

–Sue

We are back from Vegas, safe and sound, and our flight was less than an hour late.  We had a bit of a bumpy ride getting into Minneapolis, and one of our group did mention the possibility of kissing the ground upon arrival.  Here is a view of Caesar’s Palace, which gets bigger and bigger every time we visit. 

These hotels/casinos are so humongous, it is hard to judge the distance.  You want to think twice before deciding to just “walk over there”…it could be a mile!  (Our highs were around 105 degrees, so you definitely don’t want to take any big hikes.)

Although Paris, France, is officially the City of Lights, I think Las Vegas must be a close second.  It is an interesting city in the daytime, but it is a dazzling display of excess at night.  Ruby asked if I would share how I take pictures at night.  Vegas at night is pretty easy because it is such a brightly lit scene.  When I snapped the first picture, though, the flash went off, and for a scenery picture, I knew that was the kiss of death.  I suppressed the flash and took a second picture — MUCH BETTER!  Here are my first and second pictures:

By the way, the “Eiffel Tower” is in front of the Paris Hotel & Casino, which is where we stayed.  Pat and I went down to get coffees (and an OJ for our non-coffee drinker) to a little French pastry shop.  Oh, my, how tempting their pastries were!  We were good, though, and just came back with the beverages.  (And look at those prices!!!  They are a little hard to read but $5+ per pastry.)

So my recommendations for pictures at night:  make sure you suppress the flash, unless you are taking a picture at night of something only a very few feet away that you want illuminated.  There was so much light in Vegas, the shutter speed was pretty fast.  For most night shots, though, you might need a tripod, or at the very least rest the camera on something solid.  The shutter will stay open longer when there’s less light, and you will need to keep the camera very steady.  If you take a picture and the lights look smeary, you know your camera wasn’t steady enough.  Even resting your elbows on a railing is a big help in the steadiness department.

AND — guess who was out my window this morning?  MR. HUMMER!!!  I’ve only had Ms. Hummer this summer, so that flash of red on his throat was quite a thrill. 

And Mr. Hummer was followed by a black-capped chickadee and a goldfinch.

–Sue

For today’s photo tip, I thought I would do a little summary list of previous Photo Fridays that might be helpful:

1. Pre-Focusing & Close-Up Mode (the tulip icon)
2. Flash & Zoom
3. Continuous Shooting & Auto-focus Assist
4. Timer
5. Exposure Compensation / Auto-Bracketing
6. Memory, Batteries & Printing
7. More About Zoom
8. Scene Modes 

If you’re ever looking for a previous Photo Friday tip, they are categorized under “Photo Fridays” on the right-hand side of this page.  And, please, if you think of something you’d like to know more about, let me know.  If I don’t know, I’ll research it and cover it.  Then I learn something new too!

I realized this week that I’ve pretty much run out of photo tips!  So, here’s my plan.  Friday’s post will be pretty much another ”whatever” day, but when I come across a camera feature or a photography tip that I want to chat about, I will do it on a Friday.

My biggest tips — take LOTS of pictures, way more than you think you should take (I probably delete 90% of my bird pictures after I get them on the computer).  If you don’t have a big enough memory card to do that, get a new big one.  They are pretty cheap now. 

Learn to pre-focus on the subject of your picture.

If you’re shooting through glass, get really close to the glass and pay attention to any glare; change the camera’s angle to the glass if that helps.

Try to only use your optical zoom.  Your picture will suffer if you zoom past the camera’s optical zoom (and go into digital zoom).  You can tell you are changing zoom modes because the zoom will stop between modes, and you have to zoom a second time.  You can do it, but your picture will not be as high a quality.

And speaking of zoom, any time you’re zoomed in, you need to hold the camera STEADY.  A tripod, of course, is best, but I don’t haul mine out as often as I should.  If you can’t steady yourself (or your elbows) against something (a railing, the side of a building), at least tuck your elbows in close to your sides and hold as steady as you possibly can.  This is true even with IS (Image Stabilization) built into your camera.

Don’t be afraid to experiment with your settings, and read your manual. 

I didn’t talk about editing software because the options are so vast and varied.  Whatever software came with your camera (or you purchased separately) can be a big asset to you.  Learn to crop pictures, and play around with the features to see what else you have available.

Have fun!!!

–Sue

SCENES

Between the two cameras I use, the scene modes are so different, I’m going to assume you will need to get out your camera and possibly your manual and do a little exploring.  For example, on my Panasonic, I just turn a dial; on my Canon, I need to go into a menu.  Check yours out, if for no other reason than to get familiar with what scene modes you have available. 

Scene modes can be very helpful in shooting photos in difficult situations.  The modes are basically some preset settings for specific conditions.  Some examples are Portrait, Night, Indoor, Sunset, Beach, Snow, Fireworks.  If you have your manual, you should be able to read a little bit about what that specific setting does. 

For example, on my Canon using the Portrait setting, it says, “Produces a soft effect when shooting people.”  You may or may not want this specific effect, depending upon the person you are photographing.  You might want a nice, crisp shot instead.  If you’re shooting me, or the bride, or your grandma, however, you might want to go for the softer effect!  Then again, there are some wonderfully interesting photos of older people where the lines in their faces really tell the story of where they’ve been in life.  Your decision…

And I have to tell you about a big, big boo-boo I made once when I had a new camera, a little Nikon.  Nice little camera, I just didn’t understand what all the settings meant.  We were out of town at a nephew’s wedding, and all my DH’s brothers were there (there are five of them total) and his two sisters as well.  Photo opportunities galore.  We were in a hall with low ceilings and lots and lots of rope lighting.  Now that I’ve set the scene for you,

on to the boo-boo.  I knew my brand-new camera had these “scene” settings.  I chose ”Party”.  After all, it was indoors, some weird lighting, lots of people.  The display screen on that camera was very small, and I couldn’t tell for sure, but it didn’t look like the pictures were right.  I tried again and again.  Hmmm, surely they were coming out better than they appeared.

No, they weren’t.  “Party” meant the camera would keep the shutter open longer and blur all those little bitty lights in those light ropes into wild streaks.  “Party”, as in, “Where’s the party, Dude?”  Couldn’t salvage anything.

So my lesson for today:  the scene settings can be extremely helpful, but take the time to learn what they actually do by reading your manual or experimenting with them before using them in an important setting.

Bonus lesson:  Don’t buy a new camera and think you’re going to take fabulous pictures right of the box.  Allow some experimenting time before that big vacation or your nephew’s wedding when all the family is together at last.

And have fun!

Sue

I have long observed that when you’re using zoom, objects in the background can look much closer to your subject than they really are.  A couple of months ago, my DH Jim was reading in the sun room.  He looked so comfy and natural, I didn’t wanted to disturb him while taking a picture.  I used quite a bit of zoom and basically took the picture of him from two rooms away.  I was surprised — no, shocked – when I got the photo on my computer, because I know we don’t have a neighbor that close in the back!  It looks like I could just run over and borrow a cup of sugar fat quarter, doesn’t it?

Take a look at a picture of the same house taken out of the same window but I’m standing close to the window and didn’t use any zoom (the house shown in the picture above is outlined here in red):

Weird, huh?  Well, when I took the picture of Jim, the camera zoomed everything in, including what was in the background, and made it appear that there is less distance between the subject and the background than there really was; things look compressed.

Why would you do this on purpose?  One reason would be if you’re on vacation taking a photo of your family in front of a landmark or something of interest.  If you back up from the people and then zoom in on them, still including the landmark in the background, what’s in the background is going to look larger and more prominent and make for a more interesting picture (rather than standing close to the people and including the background behind them).

Another reason would be fairly similar to the picture I took of Jim.  Let’s say it’s a cluttery background that we want to minimize (like my sewing room!), and we don’t want to have the background detract attention away from the subject of the photo.  You would do the same thing I did:  back away from the subject and use your zoom.   Because it’s “enlarged”, there will be fewer items appearing in your background, and it will be less distracting.

And remember, for the best quality photos, only use your optical zoom.  Your picture quality will degrade once you get into the digital zoom range.   (I do occasionally use my digital zoom, but I do lose quality when I do.)

“Depth of field” is a term used to describe the how much of the photo is in focus, depthwise.  Zoom can affect your depth of field, as shown in a lot of my bird photos.  Here I was using quite a bit of zoom and had my focus directly on the Cedar Waxwing.  That accounts for the soft focus of the branches at different distances than the bird, as well as our neighbor’s house.

Compare it with this photo taken out the same window this spring, but no zoom involved.  Much more of the picture is in focus — greater “depth of field”:

Don’t wait until a big occasion to try some of these techniques.  Practice and play around with it.  Then when the need arises, you will have a better idea of what you’re going to get, because it can be difficult to see just what’s in focus on your display.

Also, depending upon the amount of zoom your camera has and how much of it you are using, you will have more or less of the compression effect or change in depth of field.  Just play and have some fun!

Also, feel free to upload pictures to the PhotoFridays album on Flickr.

My usual disclaimer:  I am a layperson when it comes to cameras and photography.  I just happen to like taking pictures and trying to figure out how to take better pictures and to understand my camera better.  Hope this has been of interest to you!

–Sue