Scattered Thoughts . . .

I added another snapshot of a bird in our backyard to this year's collection of bird photos...  well, this bird is really in our neighbor's yard on his Frisbee Golf basket, not our backyard.  I did shoot this photo from our backyard though.  This is another photo from my initial test photos that I shot about a week or two ago but I just got around to editing it.   This was really a test of the autofocus system while using a new lens adapter but I feel the need to point out the negatives and positives of this image as a whole. I could have used a bit more light on my sparrow's face.  The sun was high and behind the bird so that was a problem.  I'm not too fond of the bird being perched on a Frisbee Golf basket either.  I would have preferred it being perched on a tree branch.  Plus, this sparrow is looking out of the frame which forces the viewer to wonder what he is looking at...  not a good thing.  You want your subject looking into the frame, typically anyway.  There

B etween typical lousy springtime weather and continued daily struggles with Long-COVID problems, I've been trying to find things to accomplish around the house.   I'm still having more difficulty than usual with breathing problems.  I'm always feeling like I'm trying to clear thick, nasty phlegm from my lungs.  Actually, I am still clearing this thick, nasty phlegm from my lungs (dark nasty stuff) but it is difficult to move this thick stuff and it seems to continue to replenish itself even after I clear some out.  So, this makes breathing difficult which also causes extra fatigue.   Another lingering problem is inflamed joints.  This isn't nearly as bad as it was from January through March but it is still worth mentioning.  As exhausted as I am, the pain continues to keep me up at night and keep me more uncomfortable than usual almost all the time.  I'm always dealing with pain due to my extensive spinal injuries as well as the bone and joint pain due to my sy

W e are in the midst of a bit of a snowstorm here at the moment so, while I wait for the storm to subside a bit before heading out to remove snow from our roof, I dug out some additional Panasonic G3 color photos that I shot while at the lake house back in 2015.   I enjoy getting out on a kayak and shooting wildlife photos.  While at the lake, these photos were mostly of loons.  I also have some nice duck photos and some Bald Eagle photos.  The Bald Eagle photos were shot with my Sony cameras though so they are not included here.  The past few blog entries have been solely about my little old Panasonic G3 so I've only included photos that I shot using that camera. The first two photos here were shot at dusk.  This old camera struggled a bit once the light dropped off to lower levels.  What I like about this first photo is you can actually make out the iridescent blue band on the loon's neck.  This loon was looking for fish to eat and I captured this photo just as he took his he

I'm still waiting to get in to see my doctor (appointment is tomorrow) so I was still just hanging around doing nothing but hoping to find something to do. As I was boiling an egg for breakfast, I noticed a Nuthatch outside our kitchen window... "Hmmmm... I haven't seen these guys since last year!"  I quickly decided that I'd grab a camera and a lens and try to capture a few photos.   Last week when doing the same, I grabbed my smallest camera and longest lens. Since my smallest camera was plugged-in to recharge its battery this morning, I decided to use my larger Sony camera body. Once again, I grabbed my longest lens. I haven't really used this combo yet so this would be a good test while giving me an opportunity to practice on these jumpy fast moving birds.  None of these birds outside our kitchen window ever sit still for longer than about three seconds so you need to be quick if you want to capture a crisp photo. This morning was no different. It

Another new season is upon us and the wildlife around the house is finally starting to come alive again. For the most part, our neighborhood has been devoid of song birds for the past few years. We see the occasional sparrow or robin during periods of migration (like now... it is the season for migrating birds) and we can hear some songbirds (although, not a lot) chirping away as the sun comes up but we really don't have the numbers we should have here around our house.  I know we have a couple of monstrous crows living in a nearby tree. Since these particular crows are quite aggressive, songbirds can consider that enough of a threat to find trees elsewhere. We also have a lot of cats in the area and those are clearly dangerous predators. Additionally, I sometimes see a Red Tailed Hawk in our area. These factors definitely limit the number of songbirds that settle down in our neighborhood so it comes as no surprise to me that seeing them is a bit of a rarity. This morning

We've been spending time at Lake Groton for about seven years now. We often hear our visiting guests claim they saw a Bald Eagle flying while they were out kayaking. I've always had my doubts though. The unfortunate fact is that there probably are no Bald Eagles in the area. Vermont actually has a Bald Eagle Recovery Plan in effect because these birds are so exceptionally rare in our neck of the woods. There are a few known nesting pairs of Bald Eagles in Vermont (mostly around Lake Champlain where the water does not ice-over in winter) but no known Bald Eagles at Lake Groton. These birds are tracked closely by numerous sources and especially if there are nests. Knowing the exact number of Bald Eagles in all of Vermont and where they are located is important for this program. In all the reports I can find, the few Bald Eagles in Vermont are still near the area where they were introduced at the beginning of this program... near a wildlife refuge in Addison. Lake Groton is id

Whenever I post some photos here of songbirds, ducks, loons, any wildlife as well as the moon, I know that few will understand the distances involved. I also know that few will understand many of the terms I use pertaining to these lenses.  After capturing some images of the moon last night, I thought it would be a good idea to get a couple of comparison images to show here. In this first image we see a fairly wide view... the red arrow is pointing to an insulator on a utility pole which is just peaking above the rooftops.... Just barely visible above this rooftop is an insulator on top of a distant utility pole... For the second image, I shot a photo using my longest lens... a 600mm lens...  of course, I understand that saying a focal length of such-and-such "mm" means nothing to most people which is why I am posting this comparison for everyone to see. These comparison photos help to picture the difference between focal length in millimeters. What may be mor

Black-capped Chickadee. The last couple of times that I wrote about practicing my bird photography (I practice this time of year so I am ready to consistently capture acceptable photos while at the lake house in the summer), we had mostly overcast skies which resulted in a lot of poor photos. Even the few good photos I managed to capture were rather 'flat' because the light was quite flat. Yesterday, however, was a different story. Yesterday was a very bright and sunny day. The sun was reflecting off of the snow creating even more light like an enormous reflector stretched out over the ground. These brighter conditions meant I could drop my ISO down in order to retain more detail while still keeping shutter speeds high.  This brighter environment also meant that I could stop down my lens into a much sharper zone providing me with sharper images. When you stop down a lens, the aperture gets smaller which cuts down on light getting into the sensor. When we have bright co

I like to try my hand at nature or wildlife photography whenever the opportunity arises. Of course, my health needs to be cooperating... the weather needs to cooperate... and my photography gear needs to be ready to go for when these situations arise.  (Note:  When I say "the weather needs to cooperate", I don't necessarily mean clear, sunny skies. I mean the weather needs to match what I intend to capture. For instance, I often get up early in the morning while we are at the lake house so I can get out on the lake while it is still foggy... the environment is thick with a lot of depth which makes for nice photos. I rarely will want sunny, clear skies... some clouds are much more interesting! So, cooperative weather means different things depending upon my photographic vision.) Sometimes I'll choose an area of the yard... say, just a small area of only about 50 square feet... and I'll try to find a few things to photograph in that limited area. This forces