If a Picture is Worth a Thousand Words............

What is a gesture worth when you don't communicate in words?

Photographing wildlife is not without its humorous moments.  I'm certain that the right-hand buck meant no disrespect as he was feeding at the moment that the other buck alerted upon seeing a coyote approaching.

Changing of the Coats

With Autumn just around the corner the whitetails are changing into their winter coats. 

The change comes on slowly.  For the adults the reddish summer hair begins to thin revealing the new soft velvety undercoat.  The adult doe pictured here has shed nearly all of her summer coat with the exception of that on her head and legs.  In the coming weeks the now short soft hair covering her body will grow into the long insulating coat she will need to survive winter's cold.

The alert fawn is also showing the signs of change as its brilliant spots are fading away.  

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Fog

As autumn approaches the opportunity for foggy morning shots increases.  Calm mornings where the air temperature is below that of the ground creates the perfect conditions for ground fog in low lying areas and even more so over bodies of warm water.

Tuesday morning was a calm 50 degrees and with the surface water temperature a warm 65 heavy fog blanketed the lake.  As the sun rose in the eastern sky it reflected off of the calm surface of the waters in a surreal way. 

The warming ray of the sun created updrafts that soon began wafting the fog upward, slowly exposing the encircling mountain. 

But the best image of the morning came when all that remained was a low cloud obscuring the breastwall.  The beauty was incredible, sky, fog and land meets water, reflecting perfectly in mirror image. 

These are the moments I live for, those fleeting moments of incredible natural beauty.

Bird ID Help Needed

While photographing a flock of Killdeer bathing in the shallow water along the lake shore I happened to notice a much smaller bird feeding nearby.  Before I could swing to camera the mystery bird flushed along with the killdeer.  Watching the flock land a couple of hundred yards away I approached them again with the boat and this time everything went my way allowing me to move into about 50 feet.

I am familiar with the spotted sandpipers and solitary sandpipers but am unsure as to the identification of this particular bird.  It appeared to be alone and spent the morning hanging out with the killdeer.  I would estimate the bird to be about 6" long.

In trying to identify my mystery bird the closest match I have came up with is the Semipalmated Sandpiper.  If any of you can give a positive identification I will certainly appreciate it.

Whitetail Casuals

Whitetail Family

Seldom does a doe and her fawns line up for a family portrait but when this family did I needed a shorter lens.  I like everything about this shot except that the fawns are cropped too tight.  A little more body and perhaps some leg would have greatly improved the shot.

The abrupt end of a nursing session causes a fawn to squint as it tries to avoid mom's flailing hooves.

With summer beginning to wain the deer are shedding their thin red summer hair; replacing it with a soft velvety gray hair that in the coming months will grow into a thick warm coat for winter.

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Canning Pickled Beets

Nothing says summer better than  the bounty of the harvest

After previously harvesting, cleaning, cooking, and skinning a wheelbarrow load of red beets; the other ingredients necessary for delicious pickled beets are arranged in the kitchen.

While the pickling ingredients simmer in the kettle

It's time to pack the jars

Packed and ready, the beets are waiting...

for the pickling brew.

Thirty minutes in a waterbath canner completes the process

Using a recipe handed down through the family we canned 35 quarts, enough to last my wife and I through two years.  And of course, when some of the jars are emptied of the beets, boiled eggs will be plopped in to soak. 

Keeping up a few of the traditions from my youth are important to me; traditions like vegetable gardening, home canning, freezing, and butchering our own meats.  Too many people today have lost the knowledge and comprehension of where food comes from.  By keeping up some of these traditions I am able to keep in touch with an indisputable fact; the fact that we all live off the land no matter how distanced we become in a world of factory farms and prepackaged food.

I recently listened as a right-wing talk show host ran our president down for a remark he had made about the environment by stating that if we followed his path that we all would soon be living off of the land.  As I listened I marveled that someone so well educated, a person with a law degree, could make such an insane comment.  And I wondered, could it really be that insulated from reality, living in a concrete jungle amid the most powerful people in this country, could it really be that this lady who proclaims to know what is best for America doesn't even realize that every bite of food she takes comes from the land?  Can she not realize that without the land humanity ceases to exist?

Scary to say the least!

SNP

Shenandoah National Park seldom disappoints the photographer seeking wildlife photos. 

A healthy, human acclimated, whitetail herd provides viewers and photographers alike with ample opportunities for close-up encounters.

Long lenses however helpful are not required to capture wildlife photographs in this wildlife Mecca.

And sometimes less commonly seen wildlife will appear for a photo op.

This was one shot where the 400mm saved the day.  The coyote was trotting through the meadow when it sensed a mouse or vole.  Stopping momentarily it then reversed direction and bounded into the air in an unsuccessful attempt to capture its tiny prey.  Fortunately I was tracking the coyote through the lens and was able to hit the remote capturing the action as the coyote burst into the air.

Lightening

Shortly after full dark a thunder storm began lighting up our eastern sky.  Attaching a 24-105mm lens setting the focus manually to near infinity, dialing in a F5.6, ISO 2000 and setting the mode to bulb I was ready to go.  I made the following images handheld with the shutter depressed allowing the strobe effect of the lightening to make the exposure.  After each bolt of lightening I released the shutter momentarily before depressing it and waiting for the next flash. 

Shooting at 12800

Always looking for another image I took the Canon 60D along to the Fulton County Fair.  A demolition derby was the main attraction.  The track lights were more than sufficient for viewing but it left much to be desired in the photography department.  Trying to milk the most our of my gear I pulled up the custom function menu and activated the ISO expansion allowing shooting at 12,800 ISO.  Having never used this high of a setting I really didn't know what to expect.  The first image was shot with the the 100-400 lens hand held, F5.6 1/20th second. 

The digital noise was very evident in the images but the noise tools in PS5 camera raw was able to calm the worst of it making these usable images.  I found that a luminance setting of 70 provided the best balance between visible noise and sharpness. 

The half-time show was a fun contest between three teams competing in an appliance race.  The goal was to load five appliances with only 100ft of rope to secure the load and to complete a number of laps around the track.  Bumping, ramming etc were perfectly acceptable tactics to defeat an opponent.  I produced this image for the winning team.  While lacking fine detail in my opinion ISO 12,800 created acceptable images for this type of event but probably will not prove useful in my wildlife photography.

Ruby-throated Hummingbirds

It's difficult to pick a favorite but of the hummingbird photos I have captured this one of a female visiting the canna lily bloom is my favorite.  If you haven't already visit my earlier posts from last week to see other captures of these diminutive birds in flight.

Unsuccessfully attempting to capture a mature male flashing his brilliant throat patch I did manage to photograph this immature male; note the two red spots of the birds throat.  As noted by fellow blogger Tom Dorsey the males throat patch can appear black one moment and a bright iridescent red the next.   

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