27 Jun. The backlog of prepared images to share is now over 350 and I'm finding it hard to decide what to use. Spent Sunday afternoon at a Civil War enactment, then came home for dinner and the birth of another calf (unassisted.) Meanwhile there have been several visits by large mammals and a whole slue of birds only some of which have been captured. All of which is just more material for additional images. But I think we'll return to the initial rainy day of departure and go with another Icelandic Poppy shot, only this time, we will forgo the blossom and work with just the leaves. At the time I left that June 1st morning the rains had let up for a few minutes and I had an opportunity to shoot the droplets of water that were forming on all the leaves of the poppies. This image is a portion of the total shot and cropped to highlight both the water droplets (primarily) and hairs (secondarily.) This would have been the ideal candidate for a serially focused set of shots, but time didn't allow for such luxury and I had to quickly grab what I could. It would be a much better image sans the soft leaf at lower front center, and in retrospect I should have simply clipped it off, but I didn't. ISO 200; 1/320 sec @ f / 7.1. Hope you enjoy, dave
28 Jun 11. One visiting our shores anywhere in the states of Washington and Oregon are certain to be visited by seagulls, of many different species. They are constant companions even if not necessarily of the affectionate type. But they are very graceful birds who are fun to watch, sometimes for hours on end. They can also be quite comical and I find that I truly enjoy watching them whenever I'm in their company. Trying to capture all these different aspects of the birds on some form of storage can be a real challenge, and although I try to do them justice every time I'm around them, I seldom get what I'm after. The image for today is one that provided something different from what I set out to get, but it did wind up presenting a single bird against a very nice background, and one that I feel supports the bird well. I would have preferred for the bird to have the right wing fully extended rather than beginning to flex, but that was beyond my control. What we do have however is a nice combination of color supporting the dynamics of flight which, when combined, make for what I feel is a reasonably acceptable image. ISO 200; 1/400 sec @ f /11.
29 Jun 11. Unlike previous years when I spent four nights filming the full moon over Seattle from Kerry Park, this year I was able to devote just two evenings due to the constraints of the house project. Both evenings were very different presentations and both offered some interesting opportunities. On both nights I led a Mountaineers activity and had different folks present each time. I have heard from some as to how it went for them and it seems to have been a mixed bag, although I think I provided everyone with the same info. When the moon first breaks the horizon the exposure for it and the city are the same, but as it climbs higher into the sky the difference for the proper exposure between it and the city rapidly changes to being around 10 -12 stops. Since I've written at length prior about this, I won't repeat it today. This will be the first of several shots I share of this June's moonrise over the city. This shot was taken about 5 minutes after it broke the horizon, and is a single exposure composition as the exposure for both was the same. There was some cloud presence that threatened to obscure the entire show that evening but what remained at moonrise simply added to the drama of the occasion. ISO 200; 1/10 sec @ f / 8.
