11 Apr 18 Another shot from the Fir Island goose shoot of a few weeks back. There isn't much more to add to that which I've shared prior so this is just a different look at how the flock acts. At a camera club meeting tonight another member who likes to shoot them said she was up there a week ago and the whole flock of more than 50,000 were together on one visit. Now that would be something to see. But for today you get only the smaller flock so have a gander at perhaps 30,000 individuals. This is basically straight out of the camera save for a tiny bit of leveling. Nikon D500; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/1000 sec @ f / 9.

09 Apr 18 In previous mailings I've shared 4 of the 5 waterfalls we visited back in Jan when we were down in Oregon. This last one, Multnomah Falls, is the falls that most folks think of when you mention waterfalls along the northern Oregon border. The falls has two sections and there is a foot bridge above the demarcation of the two. There is also a visitors area at the base of the lower section that provides for some very nice viewing. Usually. But the fires of 2017 were such that the area near the base of the falls was severely damaged and that area is now considered so unstable that it is fenced off - you can see a small portion of the fence in the LRH corner of the image - and you can't get near the viewing area. The fire in fact I've been told almost took out the visitors center but stopped just a few feet from it. So now you can't get any of the pictures you can see on the web, some of which are located here. We had saved this falls as our last stop so we could spend the most time there but it turned out to be mostly a good idea and not much more. I did shoot a few shots, one of which I'm obviously sharing today, but due to the distance at which you must now shoot you can only see the upper section. This is basically what the camera saw. Nikon D500; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 50; 1.6 sec @ f /29 on a tripod.

I frequently receive comments about all the trips we take to capture the images I share. It's true that we frequently take day road trips to shoot, in addition to our annual Yellowstone jaunt, but it is also possible for me to just work the neighborhood, with neighborhood equating to anywhere from on our property to a 5 mile radius. One of the most popular places to visit on this side of the pond is the Olympic National Park, but we can get similar shots just walking around our 10 A. Today's submission is a bit altered for impact - Jan's choice of the 6 versions - but is just a view of northernmost piece of the 10 acres. If I were to place this side by side with a shot taken in the Olympic National Park you would not be able to tell which was taken where. A one mile stroll south will take you to the shore of Puget Sound and a few more miles stroll north along the beach will bring you to the confluence of Puget Sound and the Straights of Juan de Fuca where you can enjoy watching some extreme atmospheric turbulence. By vehicle you can do all this in ten minutes. So while we like to go out and explore as often as we can, we don't have to go far to get a vast amount of material with which to play. Couple that with the studio approach and I can generally keep myself busy, if not out of trouble. The dense vegetation of ferns, cedars, and firs is how all the surrounding property looks. For perspective, the fronds of those ferns are approximately 30 inches in length. The perfect habitat for a family of sauropods or maybe even bigfoot I removed a bit of distraction from the original capture, employed a bit of cropping for composition, and added the bold outline for impact. Nikon D500; 12-24 zoom; Aperture Priority; ISO 400; 1/50 sec @ f /11 on a tripod.

05 Jul 17 Stayed up way past my bedtime last night shooting fireworks; by the time I got home was just too tired write this so a bit late today. Picking up where I left off with the herd of sheep in a farmer's field, we traveled another couple miles along the road with a rocky out cropping on our left and Quake Lake on our right. At this location the road has a steel barrier on the lake side to keep errant vehicles on the highway and not in the lake. On this section of Hwy 287 we drive much slower than the stated limit always on the lookout for animals, often on the road. When we noticed red lights on the car some distance ahead of us we decided to slow way down in hopes of seeing something interesting. Boy did we! Up on the hillside was a group of 5 half to three quarter curl Big Horn Sheep rams just watching the passerby's on the road. One of them has a mal-formed horn which might be a nice thing to have during hunting season. Of course we stopped and I shot for several minutes. It was immediately obvious that at least one of them didn't appreciate the attention, the center top most ram stomping his leg, so I positioned myself behind the barrier hoping that that would placate them. That apparently didn't satisfy him as he kept it up the entire time we were stopped. Almost without exception when an animal demonstrates this type of behavior I give them the space they desire; this was a rare exception. In this case I felt like the animal was being a bit obnoxious in that the group was way up on the hillside and we were off the edge of the road and I was further away still behind the road barrier. So I shot for a few minutes while they all hung out together. One moved a little further up, two returned to whatever they were doing previously, grazing on something I think, one was apparently just curious, and the other kept stomping his right leg. The five were still doing what they were when we drove off. I got some nice photos, they got their portraits recorded for posterity, and no animals were harmed in the making of this photo. Other than some small cropping this is straight from the camera. ISO 640; 1/320 sec @ f / 7.1.

21 Feb 17 Those of you on the right coast will likely immediately recognize the location in which I took this shot as well as the time of year it was taken. Those of you and the left coast won't. Big Meadow is a large cleared field in Shenandoah National Park in VA and during the first two weeks of every June the local deer population meets here to birth their fawns. The meadow is literally strewn with fawns, but until mom comes to take care of them, every morning and evening, they are bedded down so well that you can literally walk over them and they won't budge to give away their hiding place. We know, because we tried on several occasions to find them and never did even though we walked directly over the areas where they were bedded down and they never gave away their locations. Having no odor of their own, and having mom consume all their waste products while she is nursing them morning and evening, by staying TOTALLY motionless they are well protected from predators. This mom had fed and cleaned up her fawn, then allowed him to play with others for the better part of an hour and was in the process of bedding him down while I was recording the entire event. At this point she was well aware of where I was and was keeping a sharp eye on me making certain I wasn't up to no good. The image isn't a particularly good one because of the fawn's face being obscured, but I love the look on mom's face as she stared directly at me. This was shot with a 5 megapixel camera, the D70, and the first VR lens made by Nikon, the 80 - 400 VR, which has a reputation of not being acceptably sharp, but I call your attention to the hairs around her face and especially near her eyes and will allow you to make your own decision as to sharpness. It is unfortunate that I wasn't quick enough to capture the fawn maybe one second sooner when its head would have been in full view but it is what it is. You can just imagine it being where it should have been. This is straight from the camera with the D70 and the 80 - 400 lens set to 400mm which would be the equivalent of 600mm on a film body; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/200 sec @ f / 7.1

05 Feb 16. Today's macro/close-up isn't, but you are going to make it such by enlarging it to 100%. I'm going with another shot of the Fir Island Snow Goose flock. As I'm presenting it you are seeing a section of a field of geese starting to launch. I've written several times about how they all go at once but that is a wee bit of an exaggeration. The entire lift off takes perhaps 2 seconds from start to finish, and you can see the sequencing of such by looking from left to right in the frame. The birds at the junction of the middle and right hand thirds are the last to lift off in this shot. If you are fortunate enough in pressing the shutter at the instant of the lift off you can get a shot like this. Looking at this shot at screen size the birds will likely appear to be a blurry mass, but if you enlarge it to 100% - my close up suggestion - you will see that they are very sharp. Of greater interest however is that while you will see hundreds of birds, none of them are touching each other and they are simultaneously jumping up to fly off. Imagine all the cars in the super bowl this coming Sunday suddenly all departing at the same time and at full speed. Leaves one in awe at the design behind such amazing activity. You might consider cropping the image to leave just the section with the biggest concentration of birds; it will give you an entirely different picture. The base image received a little mid tone enhancement and that was followed by a little blue color assist. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 400; 1/1250 sec @ f / 9.

27 Oct 14. Our directly above deck neighbor in the condo complex is an avid outdoors man, and we've had many fun chats about the things that go on in and around the complex with respect to wildlife. Taking a drive one day to shoot what we hoped would be LOTS of elk based on the info provided by yet another condo resident - we didn't see a single elk -, we encountered a group of five Big Horn Sheep rams walking down the middle of highway 287 about 10 miles from the condo. We drove slowly up close to them and then followed them parallel to a pullout where they decided they would recover some of the highway salt that had been laid down a few days prior. I shot them for several minutes while other photographers - mostly just snap shooters - stopped to join in the fun. Eventually one of the snap shooters spooked a couple of them who then ran across the road and started up the side of the mountain out of which the road was carved. I kept shooting as they moved from pavement to hillside and this is one of the shots of a single ram on that hillside. I was sharing these photos with our neighbor who made several comments, one of which was to name this image from the perspective of the ram - you talkin' to ME - and the other that the group of 5 rams was the total bag limit for the entire county for an entire year. So I'm think'n I did O.K. with respect to bagging over my limit in a single shoot. The late morning light was rich and bathed the animals on the hillside in a lovely warm color which I've elected not to "correct." This image is one of several I'm printing for him and I'll be sharing others during the week. Nikon D300s; 18 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/500sec @ f / 10.

09 Jun 14. Now those of you who have met Maggie know that she has at least a couple of not so endearing traits, such as barking and barking and barking at strangers of all kinds and being a total coward, actually often scared by even the slightest noise. The two behaviors don't go to well together. Add to this that she will take off paying no attention to what she is supposed to do if she comes across an interesting smell. So when I took her on her first walk among the bison I had her on a very short run, actually a 30 foot leash that I had hauled in to less than 3 feet. To my surprise she stayed right next to me and didn't even give the critters a solid look, let alone bark at them. Perhaps 1,500 pounds of mass, with horns, made her think twice! After that first exposure she walked calmly with me whenever we went walking among them which made my life a bit easier. However, on our last day there, as we returned from our long walk she spotted a lone red dog and just had to go after it. She didn't get far because the leash put a quick stop to the effort, but that didn't keep her from trying with her tail waging about 20 cps. She really wanted to play with the "little" guy. Much to my surprise, this lone calf, separated from the rest of the herd by about three blocks was just as interested in Maggie as she was in him. At first he ran away, then came closer to look at her carefully, then took off to join the herd and his mama only to return in about 2 minutes to have another serious look at Maggie. I have never seen a young mammal run as fast as these calves can go! Meanwhile, Maggie was going crazy trying to break free of me to go play with the calf. It was quite an interesting encounter, and I thought seriously of letting her off the leash, but since she doesn't respond to voice commands at all, I figured it was better to keep her corralled than to have to spend a couple of hours trying to get her back, especially if she had decided to play with the calf in the herd. Here is that calf on the return trip giving Maggie, who is at my side, a serious check out! Now there should be little doubt in your mind as to why they are called red dogs, at least not the red part. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/400 sec @ f / 7.1.

04 Sep 13. Based on the response to yesterday's submission, I know that just clouds are not appreciated, as I was "politely" told by Jan before I sent it. So we won't go there again. Now if my memory serves me right, there is an old saying that goes something like "early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise." If my experiences has anything to say about it, having gone to bed at 2200 and up at 0200 through my undergraduate years, this saying is not quite on the mark, on any of the three counts. But it does sound good. My experience has been more along the lines of if you were to follow the advice, you would miss out on many beautiful sunsets, but would get to see all of the magnificent sunrises assuming the weather would allow for such to happen. This image is one such occasion when being up early made it all worthwhile. This one might even be acceptable for a magazine cover or full page spread such as those in outdoor Photographer, a magazine which seems to prefer the very dramatic to grace its pages. This was taken one morning on my way to go work on the house in 2010. I have done absolutely nothing to it so, for you purists, this one's for you. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 320; 1/160 sec @ f /10.

26 Mar 13. With weather almost perfect, we took advantage of it and made a short trip over to the Olympic Peninsula to see what we might find. What we found was nothing but one beautiful sight after another and after about 300 frames we returned home in the nearly dark to a most spectacular sunset. All-in-all a day to remember and one which will be providing several shots over the next couple of weeks. One stop was at Madison Creek, a spot we've visited a couple times before but never with the amount of water that was spewing over the top like it was today. After shooting many frames we returned to the vehicle preparing to start the trip back home. Now there is an old adage in photography that says, after you've taken the shots you want, turn around and see what you missed right behind you. That phrase coming to mind, I did just that to get today's offering. It being B&W Tuesday, I've added in some noise to simulate the old B&W films as well as to add a bit more realism to the water vapor. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/250 sec @ f / 9.

29 Aug 12. A bit late for today but I was incapable of any fine motor control last night after having spent 8 hour on a rotary sander removing mildew and mold off 300 sq ft of the deck in preparation for sealing it. It was covered with tarps that was supposed to protect it from weather but it turned out they held water underneath creating a massive problem. Another 450 feet remain to be done before Friday, so the images for the next couple of days may also be morning editions. On my 6th birthday one of my Grandfather's cows gave birth, and my Grandfather "gave" it to me as a birthday present. At 6, and basically being a city kid even though we had infrequent visits to Grandma & Grandpa's farm, I didn't quite comprehend what the gift really was. A year later when the "gift" was on our dinner plate, I recall not being all that happy about what had happened. Fortunately there weren't all that may trips to the farm in between those two events, so I never really had an opportunity to make a pet out of the calf. It leads me to ponder however just how many folks now days truly don't know from where their food originates, and I'd be willing to venture that there are millions who actually think the food comes from the stores and not from farms. This year's calf will eventually be on someones plate, but for now provides lots of entertainment any time I find to go and visit my cousin's farm. Jan took the cherubs there last week to feed them some left over watermelon and they had to trek to the "back forty" to get to the herd. The older cherub found the walk through the somewhat "messy" fields a delight, while the younger one wanted nothing to do with the "messy" stuff on the ground. But they both delighted in attempting to feed the cows even though only one had a hankering for watermelon. I guess northern cows aren't accustomed to such delights. Nikon D300s; Aperture Priority; 18 - 200; ISO 200; 1/320 sec @ f /8.

06 Mar 12. For those of you familiar with the area the image for today will be readily recognized as the Seattle waterfront; for those of you not familiar with the area it is a photo of the Seattle waterfront. Now, familiar or not, what is likely for the majority is an unfamiliarity with the history of said waterfront as well as the city itself. There are at least three, if not more, versions of its history depending upon who and what you read or have watched on the tube. Probably the most familiar story that many my age grew up with was called "Here Come the Brides" and the most likely stories about the city either come from a book called "Sons of the Profits" or several of many heavily biased history books on WA State. Of all these Bill Spiedel's book is probably without a doubt the best read as he combines a great deal of humor in his relating the story of the city. But it is in the reading of the book that brings to mind the generally less then desirable politics of the city that is now bringing us an underground thruway (tunnel to be more exact) in an area that is, at best, tideland fill, and not so stable at that. We have however come about our political conditions based on years of practice as is well documented in the best selling book. Today's depiction of the future thoroughfare was captured from the deck of another WA icon, a WA State ferry, this one transiting Puget Sound from the waterfront and sailing to Bainbridge Island, about 30 minutes west. The photo is a panorama consisting of 15 shots; the stitching of the individual frames left the corners a bit warped and straightened what is not a parallel shoreline providing for a bit of a false perspective. In attempting to completely straighten the edges I messed up the Smith tower a wee bit; it isn't tipping over. The original image is approximately 72 inches in width. ISO 200; 1/500 sec @ f /10.