I went looking for ducks on the Platte River this morning. I found a great many ducks but they were remarkably skittish. I plan to try again with a bind, but even without one I still came away with a couple of reasonably good images, including this photo of a Northern Pintail (Anas acuta) taking flight. Light levels were too low for sharp images of birds in flight, so I went for a slightly blurred look instead. As always, click on the image for a larger/sharper version.
I just fixed my RSS Feed to show the entire post (with images). The thumbnail galleries still look a little funky, but I’m working on it. Let me know if you have any other issues with the feed.
I got up very early on Christmas Eve to shoot at my favorite spot. It was so cold that I couldn’t find many animals to photograph, but the sun playing through the mist from Clear Creek more than made up for the lack of animate subjects. The first image is a straight-from-the camera image. The second is a monochrome image that I toned using a custom tone curve.
I tent to prefer the first image, mostly because I think the composition is stronger, though (obviously) I liked the second enough to post it. Please post a comment and let me know which you prefer.
I love shooting red foxes in the snow — their fur really pops against the white background, and fresh blanket of snow can simplify an otherwise bushy/busy background. Here are a couple of particularly good images from a recent trip to my fox spot. Remarkably, the fox above spent at least ten minutes laying in the snow watching me take his photograph.
This is my favorite fox composition – fox running toward the camera, seemingly intend on taking a bite out of the photographer.
I like the colorful, sunlit background on this image.
If this image wasn’t backlit it would be perfect. I wind up with more backlit fox images than I would expect, mostly because the foxes are reluctant to look toward the bring sun.
Finally, a mean looking fox.
I finally overcame my ambivalence about the new Canon 7D and bought one. I haven’t used it enough yet to say definitively that it has no problems with autofocus or noise, but images like this certainly make me think that the sharpness/resolution concerns are overstated. It may not be entirely apparent from this web-sized jpeg, but there is amazing detail in this Chickadee’s feathers. So far, so good.