Alternate Photographic Subject

Sheila and I were out in the yard this morning looking for signs of bear damage.  Through our windows this morning, we noticed that a bear had gotten into our neighbor's garbage bins during the night and the garbage was strewn all over our next door neighbor's yard.  The garbage bins were across the street but all the garbage ended up in our next door neighbor's yard.  

Also, as we were closing up the doors and windows before going to bed last night (so bears don't climb through our screens into the house), Sheila saw a very young fox in our yard.  So, we headed outside this morning to see if the bear had attempted to get into our trash shed and to see if there were any other signs of wildlife having visited our yard last night.

While I was walking around our trash shed looking for big paw-prints or new deep gouges on our trash shed (we do have some old gouges from bear claws), I noticed a red-tailed hawk in a tree behind our house.  The hawk was at the top of a dead tree and the moon was big and bold right behind the hawk.  I knew it would make a great photo so I ran inside to get my camera with my longest lens.

Naturally, the hawk had flown away within seconds of me running inside.  Maybe the door opening and closing prompted him to fly away.  I don't know.  All I know is there was no hawk in the tree when I returned outside about 20 seconds later.  

So...  I turned to the next best photographic subject...  the moon.  It was now beginning to set behind some trees next to the big dead tree.  I had to change my position so I could lean against the shed so, unfortunately, I no longer had the dead tree in my frame.  Those tall dead branches were a nice texture next to the moon.  Since the moon was setting quickly and I had to move to a slightly different location so I could brace myself for a steady shot, now I was seeing the moon just above the tree line behind our house. 

We never did see any signs of wildlife in our yard which I suppose is a good thing but I did manage to get another nice image of the moon.  

It is clear that bears are now visiting our neighborhood.  They found garbage and had success in getting at that garbage which means they will be back.  They will continue to come back each night for food until something forces a change in their behavior (ie, finding a better source of food, being scared and chased out, etc).  I suppose this is a much needed reminder that we need to be a bit more careful about stepping outside in the dark.

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POST EDIT:  For those who might be interested...  I shot this with my Sony a6000 camera with a Canon EF-L 400mm f5.6 lens.  I was handholding the camera while leaning up against our trash shed.  I found this to be an easy shot to capture using this camera and lens.

I had a completely different experience with a micro four thirds camera before I grabbed my Sony camera.  

I first attempted this shot using my Panasonic GX8 with a Panasonic 45-200mm lens and I was having too much difficulty in getting the focus just right.  I wanted to see how this camera would handle this moon shot but I shot about 50 images with this camera (both autofocus and manual focus) the focus was missed on every single shot.  The moon was just a blurry disk in the blue sky.  This is one of the main reasons I moved away from the Four-Thirds sensors.  Even on the rare occasion when I managed to get accurate focus, the images were always too noisy which, ironically, softened the image.  

I definitely prefer my Sony cameras!