Scattered Thoughts . . .

Today, we finally saw some weather which is typical for May...  a high in the upper 70s to low 80s... sunny... basically, a really nice late spring day. Fortunately, my health was relatively stable today so I was able to take advantage of this nice weather and get a few things accomplished. Whenever a relatively good health day presents itself, I need to take advantage of it! These days are certainly rarer than poor health days. I cut the lawn for the first time this year today... and, wow, what a difference in how clean the yard looks! Although we had a rather snowy winter, this spring has been exceptionally dry so, while I was cutting the lawn today, I was in a constant cloud of dirt. The conditions reminded me of the driest of Augusts which is the usual period of the year when we have the driest of weather. This is quite unusual for May! Regardless of the dry weather, today was a beautiful day and I managed to have a very productive day. After cutting the lawn, I did some much

I've been writing a lot about wildlife photography and posting many examples of bird photography in my recent blog posts. I am also in the process of writing a piece with tips for this type of photography. Until I publish that piece, I thought I would write about the importance of one of the tips I offer in that piece... the art of post-processing that needs to go into your images after you capture those images. There is no doubt that today's cameras can produce some beautiful images right out of the camera. Dynamic ranges are getting better with each new generation of digital cameras, tonal qualities continue to improve, sharpness and clarity continue to improve but there are still things which are out of our control which must be tweaked while there may be other things requiring a significant amount of post-processing.  I, myself, will post images right out of the camera especially while we are traveling. That doesn't mean that an image would not benefit from even som

About a week ago, I posted some photos of birds after my first 'practice session' in capturing photos of these fast little creatures with some new gear. That previous session was the first part of a series of tests of different parts of my gear used in different combinations.  (You can read that blog post here.) I'm testing some new Micro Four Thirds format photography gear to use for wildlife photography. I decided to give this format a shot after getting snagged in a few different obstacles in using other formats. So far, I have to say that this Micro Four Thirds gear is hitting a sweet spot for use in wildlife photography. This morning I happened to see a few more birds visiting my neighbor's back yard not far from one of our kitchen windows so I figured this would be a good time to test a different lens... today would be for the used lens I picked up a couple of weeks ago... the Panasonic Lumix 45-200mm Vario f4 -5.6 OIS lens.  Again, as I mentioned in my prev

I'd really love to find the energy to get up early... just before sunrise... grab my photography gear, including my tripod, and head out to shoot some early morning landscapes of the new spring growth... preferably on a morning with a dewy, misty, foggy, moody atmosphere as the sun begins to appear. Unfortunately, the weather has been rather lousy the past few days so I have no desire to get up early just to be frustrated and disappointed by attempting to shoot photos in the rain, with poor light, and generally lousy conditions. My health has been rather lousy the past few days as well and, when this happens, very little gets accomplished in my little world. I have, however, managed to capture a few photos of our spring season in the past few days. New leaves emerging from buds Now that the springtime rains have started, I don't think I'll be getting out there with my photography gear again until after most of the blooming has occurred. In the meantime, I have managed

The latest arrival for Mother's Day...  a bouquet of flowers arrived from Adam in Texas. As always, Sheila had a nice Mother's Day this year. The weather was fair most of the day which meant we could spend some time outdoors between rain showers. Whitney stopped by to wish her mom a Happy Mother's Day and drop off a nice gift.  Liza and the grandchildren stopped by to wish Sheila a Happy Mother's Day which provided Sheila with one of the best gifts of the day... Sheila got to spend some play time with the grandchildren!  Sheila's parents visited for a bit to wish Sheila a Happy Mother's Day. We wish they could have stayed longer but it was nice to see them and thoughtful of them to stop by to say hello. Today, flowers arrived from Adam wishing Sheila a Happy Mother's Day! Currently, Adam is in Wichita Falls, Texas fending off a long barrage of severe thunderstorms and tornadoes while finishing up his Technical Training. I've sent my fair sha

As our atmospheric pressure drops due to a cold front with thunderstorms pushing down from Canada, the bone and joint pain caused by Systemic Mastocytosis has increased to an excruciating level last night. "Hyper-sensitivity" is the term of the day today.  Just some very light fingertip pressure is enough to cause sharp pains shooting through my body causing me to flinch and respond vocally.  The pain... all through my entire body... was at its worst last night at bedtime. That being said, I could have been more sensitive to the pain because I was exhausted. All I know is that when we went to bed last night, I felt as though I had something very seriously wrong with all my organs, all my bones... I felt as though I had just been hit by a train and was thrown aside like a rag doll... badly bruised... smashed like a tomato thrown against the pavement. All through the night, I had dreams of being in pain. My dreams took me to some places in my past where these injuries first

I am back into recovery mode.  It is funny...  well... maybe "funny" isn't really the most accurate adjective... but, even after having Systemic Mastocytosis for more than 10 years, I still forget how much down time my body and health requires. It isn't until I have tasks and projects stacked up like aircraft in a holding pattern waiting to land at a crippled airfield that I clearly hear that voice... "Hey... hey you, there... you are sick! What makes you think you could make plans to get things accomplished like a healthy person? Do you need another reminder of just how sick you are?"  Then I suddenly get whacked with crappy health. Last night we trekked up to Lowes to pick up a few more patio blocks (I learned long ago that I need to break all projects down into small tasks... we need more than a "few" patio blocks but I can only handle a few at a time) for our kitchen grilling area project in the backyard. We had no problems with that other

I decided to write this little tip guide as a way for me to fully understand everything I've learned about bird photography thus far.  Hopefully this little self-imposed homework assignment will help me with my own bird photography as well as help others.  As I thought about all of these tips and how each of these tips manages to play upon and affect other aspects of bird photography while, at the same time, are transferable to wildlife photography in general, I knew that putting all this knowledge in writing would help to sort and organize everything in my head.  Hopefully, others whom have been struggling to capture some nice bird photos (like I had been for years) may find at least some of this information useful enough to help improve their bird and wildlife photography. First and foremost, let me point out that I am not a professional wildlife photographer.  Photography is definitely a hobby for me.  Photography is also a form of art therapy for me as a struggle with ser