Just a quick post . . . I just saw the notice for the winner of Flickr’s contest. Specifically, the Nature category winner.
https://blog.flickr.net/2022/09/29/world-photography-day-meet-your-contest-winners/
I’m like . . . “What?! A hummingbird Photo?”
I mean, I have hundreds of hummingbird photos. Heck, this past Sunday’s SmugMug Appreciation post had three photos of hummingbirds that I think are just as good.
Here they are:
It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these. Let me explain . . . on Monday, Labor Day here in the US, I started the day by sitting outside and photographing hummingbirds. Mind you, there were lots of other birds around, but I concentrated on the hummingbirds. Then, throughout the morning, I shot more photos.
For the record, 170 photos were snapped, of which I kept 123. The SmugMug gallery (HERE) has 75 of those 123.
How many am I going to show here? Don’t know yet, but not that many.
These photos are all cropped from the originals. Even after cropping, the photos are about 2400 pixels per side, and I’m linking photos about half that size (meaning, SmugMug offers larger versions, as will the slideshow at the end).
The Throwback Today posts are a chance for me to get my D100 and D200 out, make sure the batteries are charged, that there’s a fresh CF memory card waiting to receive photos, and go out and shoot with them old workhorses.
But, sometimes, it’s me revisiting past captures to see how they might benefit from postprocessing techniques and tools that were not available back then. Today, we’re looking back eleven years to photos captured in 2011.
Specifically, to the day when a Tarantula walked from my forearm to my fingertips across my palm.
I should mention all these photos were already shared in THIS post, where I documented our visit to the Butterfly Pavilion in Denver, Colorado.
I always feel weird adding the state when I mention cities. I mean, sure, if I say Marion, there are a number of them strewn throughout the US, so it makes sense to say Marion, Illinois. But, Denver? OK, there are 19 places named Denver in the US, but how many readers know the other 18?
Anyway, let’s continue.
The Throwback Today posts are a chance for me to get my D100 and D200 out, make sure the batteries are charged, that there’s a fresh CF memory card waiting to receive photos, and go out and shoot with them old workhorses.
Today it’s all about the D200 coupled with the Nikon 80-400mm zoom (a lens from around the same era, about 20 years ago) and the Nikon 105mm macro. Once again, I’m pushing the camera and lens combination and doing so more than I would have when the camera was new.
By that, I mean that while the D200 was a significant improvement over the D100 in terms of noise, it was still fairly limited by today’s standards. Once you went past the ISO 800 range, you were in severe noise territory. Of course, we now have much better tools to handle noise. That means I can shoot higher ISO values (1600 was the max for this camera) and fast speeds (1250/sec) and not worry about getting unusable photos.
Some of these photos have significant processing, but not all that much more than similar photos with newer cameras.
A few things about the D200 . . .
I closed yesterday’s post with this teaser photo . . .
I’m not sure how many noticed what I was referring to, so here’s a close-up.
That is a Snowberry Clearwing. I’m providing additional links about it (HERE, HERE, HERE) and also mentioning that if one does an image search for it, one might be shown a different moth, the Hummingbird Clearwing Moth; they are not the same.
Like in the previous post, the SmugMug Gallery has 27 photos, but I won’t be posting them all. I’ll feature a few I like, but there is a slideshow at the bottom of the post of all 27 photos. And, of course, you could visit the gallery itself. Note that the photos below are linked nearly at full resolution (they are crops of the originals), so the only advantage of going to SmugMug is that you can more easily navigate the photos.
We’re getting to the time of year when despite some hummingbirds jealously guarding their favorite feeder, there are enough birds — and enough pressure to bulk up for the coming migration — that birds, and especially young birds, are forced to share.
It’s also the time of year when I’m likely to capture photos like these . . .
In Thursday’s post documenting Wednesday’s Erculean photography effort, I posted a few photos snapped with my Nikon P900 camera. I don’t use the camera as much primarily because most of my subjects are fairly close. Also, because I’m sitting on a chair on my patio, the weight of the equipment isn’t a concern.
Still, I usually have the P900 out there with me, and for every ten or so photos with the D7500, I’ll snap one or two photos with the P900.
The advantage of shooting with the P900 is that I don’t have to crop the photo much (if any) to fill the frame with the subject.
I tend to fall am way behind in sharing photos, so when, yesterday, I ended up shooting about 300 photos, I decided to share a few more than a tenth of them before too much time passed.
So, what kind of photos? Well, hummingbirds, dragonflies, a brown thrasher, white-tailed deer, a raccoon, and a Great Egret. Oh, and the massive Moon we had that evening.
And, we begin with a ‘find the hummingbird photo’ . . . because I’ll have a number of them and I don’t want to bunch them all in one place.
Next up are a few photos from the P900, but only a few; the rest are all D7500 photos.
As mentioned in Part 1, I’ve been taking a lot of photos of birds.
The 100% Crop series is just at it sounds. Each photo shows a bird cropped from a larger photo. Most of the crops will be 100%, but not all.
I was going to include this in the previous post but decided it merited its own post. What is a Mississippi Kite, you ask?
For photos at 100% crop (the above photo isn’t), if your browser window is set to full screen, and if your screen is large enough, when you click on the photo, it will fill the screen. If your cursor shows as a circle with a ‘plus’ sign, it means your screen resolution is smaller than the photo, in which case, you can click on the photo to further zoom in to 100% resolution.
Again, you won’t see the above at 100% size unless you go to SmugMug and zoom in.
Anyway, I was sitting watching birds when I noticed a speck in the sky. Normally, I can tell what it is by the way it flies (various birds) or soars (raptors or vultures). This one looked odd.
Of course, in SmugMug, you can view the first photo at full resolution and you can see the bird a tad larger . . .
. . . . I wasn’t happy with either the processing or size of the 100% crop, so I ran the photo through Topaz GigaPixel and doubled the resolution . . .
As mentioned in Part 1, I’ve been taking a lot of photos of birds.
The 100% Crop series is just at it sounds. Each photo shows a bird cropped from a larger photo. Most of the crops will be 100%, but not all.
Regardless, the photos will be fairly large close-ups of the birds. And, what better way to begin than with a Bald Eagle?
For photos at 100% crop (the above photo isn’t), if your browser window is set to full screen, and if your screen is large enough, when you click on the photo, it will fill the screen. If your cursor shows as a circle with a ‘plus’ sign, it means your screen resolution is smaller than the photo, in which case, you can click on the photo to further zoom in to 100% resolution.
The above shot was taken from the car. Even at 300mm zoom (450 effective), the bird is fairly small. I can crop the image and it’s still small.
Of course, in SmugMug, you can view the first photo at full resolution and it’ll be a tad larger . . . but, I also ran the photo through Topaz GigaPixel and doubled the resolution . . .
I previously mentioned I’ve been snapping a lot of photos . . . so I have an excuse for not working on the story that’s due in a few weeks as I instead work on this post. This is a short post because I have other stuff to do (stuff that’s also not writing the story).
We begin with a series of flying photos . . . er . . . photos of flying things. Specifically, a Great Blue Heron.
I’ve been taking a lot of photos of birds. A lot. Many more than I can possibly post unless I dedicate most of my time to posting bird photos (not a bad thing, that, but it would be at the expense of other stuff).
On the other hand, as each day goes by, I fall behind and the inventory gets larger. And so, I decided to do occasional posts sampling the photos in my collection.
The 100% Crop series is just at it sounds. Each photo shows a bird at full resolution (100% crop). For example, here’s a Gray Catbird. Also, it will typically fill the frame with little of the surroundings shown other than what’s in the background.
If your browser window is set to full screen, and if your screen is large enough, when you click on the photo, it will fill the screen. If your cursor shows as a circle with a ‘plus’ sign, it means your screen resolution is smaller than the photo, in which case, you can click on the photo to further zoom in to 100% resolution.
Try it; I’ll wait before adding the rest of the photos.
Let’s begin with THIS<<link notice from the Illinois DNR. Basically, it’s a warning about the EA H5N1 strain of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) currently impacting some wild and domestic bird species. As a result, they recommend stopping the use of bird feeders and birdbaths until the end of May. I’ll have additional important information at the end of the post. (See what I did there? I used the ole “Details at 11:00” ruse to maybe have a few additional readers stick around until the end.)
I like birds, so on April 22nd I pulled all my feeders and emptied my birdbaths. But, not before I sat outside for a few hours photographing birds from my covered patio. This then is a post harkening back to the posts of yore, when I used to publish long posts with lots of photos. Posts that few people read, and even fewer readers stuck with it to the end.
If I use all the photos I post-processed, I’ll end up with 104 photos in this post (I had nearly 300 photos), but because some photos are similar to each other, I’ll probably have a tad fewer than that . . . but still more than what current readers might be used to.
Right! Let’s begin with a White-throated Sparrow . . .
Occasionally, this past Winter, I spied a Robin-sized bird with striking plumage. I snapped a few photos of it, but few were any good. The bird is the Brown Thrasher, and I live right at the edge of its year-round range.
Before I proceed, a quick reminder about the two polls currently open. One is for the Random Title Challenge Round 2 Submissions (HERE), and the other is to pick a title for Round 3 (HERE). If you’ve not done so — and if you feel so inclined — we’d appreciate your votes. Thanks.
And now, on with the bird stuff.
That’s my neighbor’s junky landscaping. It’s a tad unsightly but I don’t mind because many birds forage there. They come for the seeds of various weeds, the bugs, and for material for their nests.
Just a quick post because I’m supposed to be writing. I decided to write this because I saw something I’d not read about before. Of course, once I searched for it, I confirmed I wasn’t the first human to observe this behavior . . . drat!
But first, a brief introduction. Click in the name to learn about the Carolina Chickadee, and here’s a specimen at one of my feeders.
They are cute birds, forever looking busy, and here’s their typical behavior . . .
Disperser Tracks 