Project 365: Jan 31, 2008

Strangely, the thing I start out intending to photograph is often not the shot I end up keeping for the day.

(P.S. Please forgive my slacker ways. Work kicked my arse this week and I missed a couple days of posting).

Project 365: Jan 27, 2008

This is my favorite house in the world right now! It's on the older side of the town I live in. Nice, big, established trees, unique houses (as opposed to the cookie-cutter newer neighborhoods with 3 or 4 different models and that's it), corner lot, gorgeous stone work... If this house ever goes up for sale, I want it!!

Photographing dark colored birds

I love the slate colored dark eyed junco. It's a winter bird to the US, coming down from Canada to spend the cold months with us. They like to hang out low to the ground, hopping around and looking for food. Their perky mannerisms can warm even the coldest day.

This is my first winter watching the dark eyed juncos, and I've wanted to get a nice photo of one of these snowbirds. It's been a challenge. They have dark gray to black feathers on the upper half of their body, and white feathers below. For some reason, in most of my previous shots, their dark feathers came out noisy and lacking detail. I think it's due to the fact that the lower half of the tree in my yard, where they like to hang out, is usually in the shade, so that plus the winter light makes for low shutter speeds, and I just couldn't get enough light into the camera. Plus, I usually am shooting through the glass of my windows, degrading the quality of the shot.

This time, I opened the window up to shoot. It was chilly but I finally got a decent shot of my snowbirds!



I think the main keys were good lighting and shooting unobstructed.

Red Tailed Hawk and Great Horned Owl

It was a big day in the back yard!

The Northern Harrier was back, [edit - scratch that! It was a red tailed hawk!] and I was able to get a second chance to practice focusing when taking in-flight bird photos. While I didn't get any good shots of the harrier's underside, my focus was much better than yesterday's attempts. I cannot help but marvel at this bird. It's so amazing to watch!





Then came the big surprise: A Great Horned Owl! I've never seen an owl in the wild before, and to have one visit my own back yard - I was beside myself! It stayed for a good hour, and I was able to get a bunch of photos with the Rebel, as well as digiscope a few with the point-n-shoot.

Project 365: Jan 26, 2008

I would have never imagined my first owl sighting occurring in my own back yard! The excitement was almost too much! This Great Horned Owl sat in my yard for nearly an hour. I got about a hundred shots of him with the Rebel and 300mm lens, and a few with the digiscope and point-n-shoot as well. I didn't hook up the Rebel to the digiscope, as I was hoping to get some flight shots when the owl took off, but he flew away from me instead of toward me and I had no luck with that.

Still, I'm incredibly happy with the shots I was able to get, and hope to get more visits from owls in the future!

Project 365: Jan 25, 2008

A Northern Harrier, in my back yard!

Blackhawks vs Blue Jackets

Hockey!

Here are the rest of the photos I took at last night's hockey game. (Click the photo to see the set)

Project 365: Jan 24, 2008

Nikolai Khabibulin, Chicago Blackhawks goaltender

Went to the Hawks game with my friend Deb, her friend Sis, and my cousin's wife's sister Shannon and her boys. The Hawks lost to the Columbus Blue Jackets, 1-0, but it was a fun time anyway. It was Shannon and the boys' first hockey game :)

Since there wasn't much scoring action going on, I was trying to get pictures that included players' faces. It's tough, when you're looking down on them from stadium seating, and they rarely look up!

I think I like shooting from the 2nd level better, only because it's easier to get good angles. I was fighting with the seams between the glass all night, and it seemed like I got more peoples' heads in my shots from the lower level. It's definitely fun to watch from the lower level - just not as fun to photograph!

Stadium lighting, at least at United Center for Blackhawks games, is really difficult to shoot in. I shot most of the night in shutter priority mode, 1/125 second - which is pretty slow, particularly when I was at the long end of my lens (300mm). Even with aperature wide open (f/4-5.6), my shots were underexposed by about a stop. I had to boost them in Lightroom. Most of my shots aren't as crisp as I'd have liked, but if I went any faster on the shutter speed, there just wasn't enough light.

Project 365: Jan 25, 2008

A Northern Harrier, in my back yard!

Drool... Canon Digital Rebel XSi

Oh me oh my... my XTi is jealous...

DPReview has a sneak peek at the latest Canon Digital Rebel 450D XSi.

I am drooling, particularly for the high-ISO noise reduction, spot metering, and live view.

Project 365: Jan 23, 2008

Cat Shadow. (It's Merlin).

Project 365: Jan 22, 2008

LMAO @ myself for the lamest 365 photo ever!! Hey, at least I took a picture! This is the video card I'm currently selling on ebay - it's an XFX nvidia GeForce 7950GT AGP 512MB DDR3 graphics card, if you're interested :)

Digiscoping for Beginners

Stokes Birding Blog has a great little digiscoping tutorial for beginners. I sure wish I'd have had this when I started digiscoping! It's all basic stuff, but it includes photos and explains the process well. I had to visit 10 different web sites and piece together info from this one and that to figure out this much!

Digiscoping: Beginner Tips

Project 365: Jan 21, 2008

Took this on a drive-about down Laraway Rd past Gougar. The smoke billows always look more billowy in the cold.

Project 365: Jan 20, 2008

"Love"

Light painting. I used a flashlight with purple tissue paper over the end to paint the word "love" in the air in a dark room. I used a remote timer and an 8 second exposure. Flipped the word in Lightroom, and voila. I made a few other exposures like this for other little projects. :)

Project 365: Jan 19, 2008

It's friggin cold. I took this around 1:30pm. By evening, the actual temp was below zero.

Project 365: Jan 18, 2008

As the temperature began to drop here in Chicago, I thought to myself, "What GOOD things come from cold?"

Hockey, of course!

I'm a Flyers fan (and this, if you aren't into hockey, is the goaltender of one of the Flyers' nemeses), but I do like Martin Brodeur, and he's the best action pose amongst my hockey figures.

I took a bunch of shots, some with flash and some without (all on a tripod), but I really preferred the ones without flash. I decreased the saturation on the wall behind the figure (as it is yellow, blech) and I kind of like the selective color look it achieved. My goal here was to get the focus right, as I've been having trouble in that area.

Tips for Shooting Snow

It's that time of year! Photodoto has some tips for shooting snow:

Cameras are designed to expose for a nice, even medium grey. Grey, not white. So snow throws off the camera’s metering system, which tries to make the snow a nice shade of grey.

To compensate, you need to add light, which may seem counterintuitive on a bright day:

• If you are using a camera with a snow setting, use it.
• If you are using a camera without one, use exposure compensation to add one to one-and-a-half stops in the plus direction.
• If you are using a manual camera, do one of two things. Either use a spot meter to measure the actual light on a bright spot in the snow or else open the aperture one or more stops beyond what your averaging internal meter suggests.

More great tips: Perk up photos of snowy scenes with these simple and practical tips - by photodoto

Yes, this is a half-assed attempt at my Project 365 photo, as it's been a long week at work and I'm just beat - but it does represent an undeniable truth. Tonight is the last night of relative warmth we'll have for a little bit here in Chicago. This weekend's nighttime highs will be below zero, with daytime highs in the single digits and wind chills reaching 30 below. By this time tomorrow, I'll likely be looking at this photo, longing for 12 degrees F.

Project 365: Jan 16, 2008

I shoulda pulled over for the virtual gift horse of a Project 365 moment that the universe handed me this morning. Apparently, others saw it too, including my friend Deb up in Toronto! There was a vertical piece of a rainbow peeking out next to a hole in the clouds a little after sunrise this morning. It was weird because it was at such a vertical angle that I couldn't imagine it being part of an actual rainbow. I tried to take 2 shots will driving, but once I started to veer off the road, I decided it wasn't a good idea. By the time I got to work, it was obscured behind trees at the angle I was at, and I didn't have time to drive around and get a shot. I need to get more ballsy about pulling over on the side of the road when I see something I want to shoot.

So, you get a picture of my bamboo instead. I couldn't decide between the color or the black and white edition, so you get the black and white edition because - hey, it's something different, right? This was taken with my ancient point n shoot, so it's pretty awful quality, but I was going for composition. It looks like I've got some dust on my lens or something, too.

At any rate, I kinda like the composition. It was either this, or a photo of my duck slippers. It was a pretty close call.

Project 365: Jan 15, 2008

Rarrrrrrr!!!

Next time, I'll shoot this with something other than a blue t-shirt as the backdrop! Had some focus issues and had to switch to manual focus, but my eyeballs are so awful that I can't seem to ever get the focus right in manual mode. I think the f/1.8 was too shallow for this shot. Dino's right leg looks like it has motion blur, which is unlikely as I was using a tripod and a remote shutter release. Probably just a whacked angle with this depth of field. I used a flashlight for the lighting.

Coop up on istockphoto

Woohoo!

My shot of a juvenile Cooper's hawk in my back yard got accepted to istockphoto :)

Yeah, it's the little things that excite me...

Project 365: Jan 14, 2008

The Canon Rebel K2 arrived today. I'll be using it for my film based black and white photography class, which started today. I'm quite happy at how similar the control are to my Digital Rebel XTi. It shouldn't take much getting used to (except for the habit of checking the rear LCD to see how the shot turned out!)

I tried to get more creative with today's photo (had a backdrop set up and everything!) but my battery died mid-shoot, and a point-n-shoot wouldn't do this idea justice. Maybe some other day. 15 hours at work and my brain is absolutely fried. I'm lucky to have gotten this far :)

Project 365: Jan 13, 2008

The new doppler radar installed atop one of Lockport's water towers, right off of the new I-355 extension. I find it pretty darn cool that my town has its own radar, even if it is for Fox news. :-/ Here's a live view of what the radar is capturing right now (well, updated every 60 seconds!): Lockport Radar Image

Crappy photo, I know. Someday I'll take a better one.

Project 365: Jan 12, 2008

This was probably the most unobstructed view I've had of a hawk in my back yard to date. This is a juvenile Cooper's Hawk.

36 Exposures

FILE magazine is running a contest that requires photographers to grab a film SLR and take 36 exposures illustrating a single idea. The thought behind it is that in this day and age of digital simplicity, photographers have become non-committal and spend less time making well-considered photos.

I may try this, at least for my own personal experience, since I will be thrust into the world of film photography next week, thanks to the class I'm taking.

I ordered the Canon Rebel K2 camera for my class.

Project 365: Jan 11, 2008

New glasses. Eyes burning. Long day at work.

Project 365: Jan 10, 2008

Because cats are always willing models.

Project 365: Jan 9, 2008

Mike Modano, Dallas Stars

Went to the Chicago Blackhawks vs Dallas Stars game tonight. I was rooting for the Hawks (who lost), but Modano is mighty delectable!

Project 365: Jan 8, 2008

"Raindrops on a window at night"


We're on the back end of a spell of record-breaking warmth here in Chicago. It's currently 37 degrees F and falling. This is likely the last rain we'll see here for a while. It may even change over to snow tonight.

This photo was taken out my office bedroom window with my 50mm prime lens set wide open to f/1.8. The camera is on a tripod, about 8 inches from the window. I turned off all of the lights in the house then used a flashlight to "paint" light onto the window. I increased the blacks and contrast in Photoshop to get rid of some hazy light remnants, and voila. This shot was made with a 10 second exposure.

Project 365: Jan 7, 2008

Last night and most of today were consumed with the project of painting one wall of my living room (shown here) and hanging new drapes (also shown here). This is the first phase of redecorating my living room. The drapes served as my color inspiration. I'd like to hang chocolate brown sheers with a tie-back on the other 2 windows in the room, and replace furniture with neutrals then accent with the some complementary colors to the blue/green wall color. I'd also like to get some chunky dark brown shelves to hang.

Project 365: Jan 6, 2008

It's Goose, in his new cube bed. Goose loves cat beds, and pretty soon he's going to have one in every room! Mer was the first to crawl around in the new cube (as is evidenced by the white fur around the opening), but Goose didn't waste much time staking his claim and making it his own. The glowing eyes are like nuclear laser beams to keep Mer away.

Project 365: Jan 5, 2008

The Common Redpoll visited me again today. It's an irruptive species of bird, meaning it only visits this far south once every few years, when the nut and seed supplies up in Canada are too low to feed them. In birding chat forums, it seems like many people are hoping to catch a glimpse of the Redpolls this year, so I figure I'm pretty lucky to have them visiting my back yard.

Project 365: Jan 4, 2008

Board game night at Kev and Tracy's. I won :) Hooorah!

Fixing Cluttered Background

Photodoto has an easy tutorial for quickly fixing cluttered backgrounds. (Consider this a "note to self" post!)

Inspiration for the day

A quote from photographer Thomas Hawk:

"The best photographs in the world have yet to be taken."

Check out his top 10 tips for dSLR owners.


(Found this via the DPS Blog).

Project 365: Jan 3, 2008

If I could have gotten a picture of the mouse I had in my house earlier, I would have, but the whole ordeal was so traumatic that grabbing the camera never occurred to me! Instead, here's a photo of my first ever red-bellied woodpecker. Yeah, you'd think this one should be called a red-headed woodpecker, but that's a different bird altogether (one that, not coincidentally, has a completely red head). Woodpeckers are fun to watch and this is the first time I've ever seen a red-bellied :)

Project 365: Jan 2, 2008

Yes, another cardinal - this time, a male. The sun was going down quickly when I got this shot, and it was too noisy to keep, so I turned it black and white and it made a nice silhouette. I'd like to work this up a bit in Photoshop, as I really like it the lines.

Project 365: Jan 1, 2008

My friend Deb has inspired me to give it a go at Project 365. Basically, you post one picture per day for a year. I imagine many of mine will be of birds (as I take pictures of birds pretty much every day anyway), but this will also give me a bit of a reason to snap photos of things other than my avian friends :)

Jan 1, 2008:


Geronimooooooo!

This female Northern Cardinal is jumping off of my deck railing to the cedar feeder where the black oil sunflower seed is. She just started coming to my feeders this week, with her hubby and another male cardinal. The Northern Cardinal is the state bird of Illinois, and I had never seen a female before. I'm very happy to have them here! I think the female is just gorgeous, and of course the male is a stunning bird (as many male birds are).

I had to act quick to get this shot, and unfortunately the light was bad so my ISO was kicked way up, resulting in a very noisy photo - but still, the pose cracks me up and it's one of my favorite bird shots.