Birds Birds Birds!

I decided to spend a day with the birds a couple of days ago. The top photo is a pine warbler, the middle a white breasted nuthatch who actually picked up that chunk of suet that was the same size as him and promptly dropped it Lol! He bit off more than he could chew but I retrieved it for him so he could finish his meal. The bottom photo is a male downy woodpecker. These were shot using my Nikon 2.8 70-200 VR lens on a tripod (VR mode turned off since it was on the tripod which can actually cause blurry photos if left on while on a tripod). I hope to one day be a full time professional nature and landscape photographer but at this point in time my  photo sales are just enough to sustain my photography as a hobby and pay for my website and a savings plan towards better gear. If you would like to contribute to my journey to professional photographer, my photos can be purchased as greeting cards, prints , canvases, iphone & Galaxy cases and throw pillows.  Thanks for stopping by. Photo Links below if you wish to purchase anything :

Return To Massanutten Spring With The Big Camera

About a week ago I found a little mountain spring  that was a 2 mile day hike from our home. I only had my cell phone with at the time so I snapped a photo with my litle Galaxy. I knew I wanted to return with my "Big Camera". So I set out to return yesterday with my Nikon D300 and a 2.8 17-35 mm lens, a circular polarizer and a two neutral density filters (a 4 and a 10) and a tripod and cable release. For some reason the hike seemed sooo much harder than the first time! When I returned with an aching back and sore knee I realized once I got home and weighed my photo gear that I was toting 11 lbs! Oh well I got a good work out in and a photo I'm pretty happy with. Here is the resulting photo from my hike. I hope you enjoy it too and feel a sense of peace from it like I did when I was there.

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Beauty In Our Own Backyard

Sometimes you don't have to go as far as you think in search of photo inspiration. I was recently lucky enough to make a new friend  who told my hiking buddy & I about a trail that we didn't even know existed that ends at this beautiful little spring. I was super excited when I first found out about it and and wanted to check it out to see if it was worth bringing my SLR camera and a tripod and it turns out it is! I shot this with my my phone but I'm definitely going to return with my big camera and tripod soon. It's a good work out too. It takes a total of about 2 hours round trip from the woods behind our house with a good deal of it going up the mountain and then down the other side so I'll be getting back in shape in my quest for beautiful photos too which is a win win! :-)

It's Not Just Luck Hummingbird Photography Tips

This photo is the result of trial and error that basically took me all day to get. I achieved part of my goal (freezing the hummingbird wings) but the other part of my goal I did not. My next goal is to figure out how to light that beautiful red gorget for maximum color. This photo was created  partly from hummingbird photo tips from one of my favorite hummingbird photographers Gregory Scott and partly from lots of patience. Check out Gregory Scotts amazing work HERE. Not only are his photos amazing but he's a great human being as well, willing to share tips with other photographers to help them rather than keeping all of his photo secrets to himself. I wanted to pay it forward so here are some tips that will hopefully help another photographer who loves these little flying gems as much as I do. 

 One of  the tips I learned from Gregory Scott was to use a macro lens to get great detail. Most people including myself believed that you needed a really long telephoto to get hummingbird shots but this is not always the case. For this photo I used a 105 mm 2.8 macro lens on a tripod. The reason for the macro lens is detail. You can set his to a really large f-stop number like 18- 22 and this helps a lot with your depth of field for focusing so if you prefocus the focus is a little more forgiving. The camera was set 3-4 feet away from the feeder.  I prefocused in the area where I wanted the hummingbird to hover and sat in a chair with my cable release in hand and waited and shot and waited and shot until I got the right combination of the little flying gem hovering where I wanted and the light to freeze the wings. 

The settings for this photo were F-stop 18, shutter speed 320, ISO 200 and 3 flahes set to manual 1/32 power including the on camera pop up flash that triggered the other two Nikon S-B800 flases. I also used a piece of foam core board that you could purchase at any craft store for the back ground. The back ground was placed about 4 or 5 feet away from the feeder where I was trying to get the hummingbirds to hover. 

Most people think that hummingbird flight is frozen with a fast shutter speed but that is not the case. It's flash duration that freezes the wings. And believe it or not this is done but setting the flash to a lower power rather than higher power. Bigger isn't always better. These settings are not written in stone as far as the camera settings so put your camera on manual and just take some test shots to get the light to where you want it by adjusting the shutter speed and f stop combos until you get what you want. I also used the lowest ISO I could because these keeps the noise down. 

In order to get the flahses to do what you want, you need to have control over the light which you can't do in sunlight. I shot this in the shade on a cloudy day and I had the best results around 4 pm when the sun behind the clouds went behind the house. These were all shot on our deck using the shade from eves of our house but you could do this in your yard if you have deeply shady spot. I used a sprig of flowers inserted into a hummingbird feeder port and I taped off the other 3 ports to get the hummingbird to hover where I wanted. 

I photograph on a budget so I have two tripods and two off camera flashes. I used one tripod for the camera and another for one of the flashes but since I only have two tripods for my 3rd tripod I used the arm of a chair and some electrical tape to hold the flash in place. The other part of my studio was the piece of white foam core board that I used for the back ground.

 I hope these tips are helpful to others learning their way in photography and on a budget like myself. I'd like to be able to afford more flashes but in the mean time I'll make due with what I have and continue to try to get the most of what I have. 

Thanks for stopping by to read my blog and for following my progress as a nature photographer. If you'd like to see more of my work, click on the photo below. 

Feeding Winter Birds

Here are a few of my favorite winter birds in the Shenandoah Valley:

These little beauties "will work for food" and seem more than happy to pose for me when given their favorite tasty bird treats.

We have three feeders in the winter months to help our little bird locals get through the winter months.

We feed them home made suet, black oil sunflower seeds and safflower seeds. The cardinals really like the safflower seeds.


My home made suet attracts a wide
variety of birds ranging from
woodpeckers, to wrens.

 Here is a loose recipe for my home made suet:

I buy the store bought suet for the
little plastic molds that they come in and then I use those for my home made suet. The birds will eat the store bought but they devour my home made.

Recipe:

Melted Lard (not Crisco but real lard) Maybe about two or two and 1/2 cups
Once melted, remove pan from heat and add about a cup of peanut butter
Add about a 1/2 a small bag of cornmeal
Add about 2 cups of black oil sunflower seed
Add enough flour until the consistancy is about that of cookie dough
Scoop into the molds and put in the refrigerator or freezer until hard and then you can pop them right out of the mold and put them in any suet feeder.

The Colors of Winter

Winter is often devoid of color here in the Shenandoah Valley when all of the deciduous trees shed their leaves and the farmer's fields turn brown... but sometimes we are blessed with vivid colors in the middle of winter like this double rainbow that graced the valley yesterday.


 

 After the clouds parted we were blessed with this colorful sky. The sky appeared to be on fire with warm and welcome tangerine and orange hues. I'm so thankful for the colorful days of winter that give me hope that Spring really is just around the corner!










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The Cicadas Are Here!

After 17 years of slumber the 17 year cicadas have emerged here in the Blue Ridge Mountains. They emerged from the ground and left their little shells hanging on plants and trees everywhere. Some people think they are creepy and gross but they are fascinating to this nature lover. I was delighted to have such a willing subject to try my macro lens out on. They are docile little creatures. I even held one on my finger and had one perch on my wrist. They don't bite and despite the rumors they are not a plague that will destroy all trees and crops in it's path like locusts would. In fact they are not locusts at all. A grasshopper is more closely related to a locust than a cicada is. 

The high pitched "singing" that sounds like an alien spaceship about to land is made by the males and is their mating song. Here is a sample of the high pitched cicada mating song I recorded this morning.

After they mate the females will make little slits in tree bark where they will deposit their eggs. In 6 weeks or so little ant like white nymphs will hatch out and make their way to the ground where they will begin their journey into the ground. The burrow anywhere from two to 24 inches down. While living underground they feed on plant roots sucking out the juice with their little sucker mouth parts. When the conditions are just right 17 years later they will emerge again.  

Every 17 years not only will their arrival be an event for us humans living in the Eastern United State to see and hear (they are not found anywhere else in the world but in the United states)  but they are a dining event for fish and birds and animals as well. Moles are said to dine on the fully grown larva right before they emerge. Some brave humans even eat them! They are said to taste like shrimp or asparagus and they are low in fat and high in protein. I won't be one of those brave culinary pioneers though! This nature lover prefers to just observe them. 

Point and Shoot Macro Photography Tips

My new to me but used 105 mm 2.8 lens for my SLR camera will be arriving tomorrow. Technically it's sitting in the local post office but they didn't deliver my pick up slip until later in the day so I don't get to pick it up until Monday now. 

In the mean time as I anxiously await my new lens, I decided to look for bugs in our yard with my point and shoot set to macro this morning.  I didn't find any bugs so I opted for an easier choice and I "stalked" the flowers in our yard instead. 

I'm discovering that the little point and shoot has a really great macro setting that shows good detail but the only draw back is that the depth of field is so deep that the background tends to look a little busy. I found a way to remedy that in these two photos though. The daffodil was a super easy fix. I just cropped way in and that eliminated the busy background.The ornamental plum however required a little more work and Photoshop technique.

Recently I discovered a technique to manipulate a point and shoot photo's background to look like it was taken on an SLR camera with a shallow depth of field.

Here is a description/tutorial of this technique and how I created the shot of the ornamental plum blossoms.

Since I shot this on my point and shoot camera the original shot looked like this:

Using a Photoshop program (I use Photoshop Elements 11) I first made a duplicate layer and did a little cloning on the petals to clean up some of the harsh shadows since I shot this in direct sunlight. After I was satisfied with that I did a select all and copy. Then I hit control D to get rid of the selected area (since I had hit copy it's in the program's cue and still ready to paste). Then, working on the new duplicate layer that I created I go into Filter and then Gaussian blur. You can adjust the amount of the effect while in Gaussian blur to the degree you like and you can also adjust the opacity slider  for this after you apply the effect since it is on a layer. Next I click on edit and paste. This will make the non-Gaussian blur layer the top layer. I prefer to work with the Gaussian layer on top and then use the eraser tool to bring back the parts that I don't want to be blurred. To do this you will need to click on to the non-Gaussian blur layer and drag it down on top of the Gaussian blur layer. Now you will see that the two layers have changed position. Click back onto your top layer which should be the Gaussian blur layer now. Next use the opacity slider to pull the percentage down far enough so that you can see the image underneath it well enough to work with an eraser tool. The next and tedious part is to erase the parts that you do not want the Gaussian blur effect on. In this instance it's the flower. Once you have all the parts erased that you want to show through just adjust the opacity slider again to the degree you want for the background. For this photo I was able to eliminate our chimney and the trees in the back ground which makes the flower pop a little more now. And here is the result:

I hope this little tutorial was helpful. Stay tuned and as I learn more I'll share what I learn. Thanks for stopping by to read my blog. Happy shooting.