In brief, these posts serve to introduce new readers — and reintroduce regular readers — to photos from the early days of this blog and, occasionally, to photos from days before this blog came into existence.

Today’s stroll on memory lane is another quick one . . .

The photos are from THIS, and THIS Galleries and are documented in THIS post. That post is the first of four posts documenting some of my Two Hour Drives. Meaning, occasions when I went for a drive specifically with the purpose of taking photos. Colorado was a great place for such drives because most of the roads I drove on were well-suited for stopping and taking photos. Here, in Illinois, not so much.

It’s not just the roads, though . . . I can go on a two-hour drive here and not see much meriting stopping and deploying the camera. And, as stated, even if I did, there’s no place to safely pull over.

It’s one of the reasons most of my local photos are either from my backyard or the nearby refuge. Two places where the incidence of inconsiderate demented drivers is much lower than in most other places.

When we’ll be looking to move, scenery and photogenic areas will play a larger role in our decision-making.

Anyway, the first gallery is very small . . . three photos of a brick silo.

And one of the photos is just a monochrome version of the above.

Near our subdivision was a dirt access road. Many photos were taken along that road, and along a portion of it stood these massive steel towers for high-voltage wires.

That’s shot with an ultrawide lens, and each of the sections comprising the structure was taller than I am. I estimate the tower as well over 70 ft. tall . . . and hawks liked to perch on those.

Given the high angle, hand-held, 200mm zoom . . . I figured all these were wasted shots.  Given the distance, the fact it’s moving, the fact I’ll have to crop really close to even see anything, and I figure at best I’ll have a nice blurry bird  . . .

Mind you, these are massively cropped, and hence small files, but look at the detail.  How much did I love the Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 VR lens mounted on the D7000?  A lot.

That’s the hawk landing on another part of the structure . . . and here it is taking off again . . .

This next shot is a little soft, but given it was hovering a long way away, and the photo is massively cropped, not too bad, I’d say.

Here’s a copy of the original and a quick “modern” processing of the same shot:

This particular post/gallery also contains one of my favorite hawk sequences . . .

A few years ago, I reworked those shots (HERE), and I should probably try to do so again with my current tools.

This was yet another hawk, and again, shot from a fair distance and cropped.

Here’s a hint for them who would like to capture the moment a hawk takes off . . .

You sit there with the camera poised (what I usually do), but you can still miss the moment (they move quickly). BUT . . . if you see them do this:

. . . you can pretty much start shooting because that’s the signal for imminent takeoff . . .

I won’t bother with a slideshow of the first gallery (the gallery’s link is at the beginning) since it has only three images but will give you the slideshow for the second gallery.

Note: the transition is set to 4sec to read the caption, but if still too fast, move the cursor anywhere within the photo — you’ll see a pause button on the lower left, and, once paused, you can use the left and right arrows on both sides of the photo to navigate the slideshow. It will make it easier to read the captions.

I highly suggest watching the slideshow in full-screen mode, but that’s just me.

You’ll exit the slideshow and find yourself in SmugMug if you click anywhere in the photo instead of the pause button. You can then scroll through the photos or interact in other ways.

Slideshow of the Two 2-hour Drives – Geb. 2012 Gallery — (52 photos)

That’s it. This post has ended . . . except for the stuff below.

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Note 2: it’s perfectly OK to share a link that points back here.

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