I Did It.... Again!

Nature photography is best left, apparently, to professional nature photographers... or Boy Scouts.

Today's missed opportunity: Baby turkeys.

Reconsidered taking the camera when I walked Sandia, and I was still close enough to go back for it, but decided, "nah.. won't see anything today". I had even taken a few steps back toward the Express. Sigh.

Out of the brush and onto the trail they came... singly, and occasionally in pairs. About 5 inches tall. Not sure how old that would make them, but they could fly! Once they realized there was a large human- with a dog- not 15 feet away, they took to the trees. They fly better than adults, who wandered slowly off in the opposite direction. I think we were meant to follow.

What next? Waiting for our first Bobcat!

Oh yeah... I did pick up at least one tick. Penance.

The Things You See When You Haven't Got a Camera...

Wouldn't you know it? Took Sandia for a walk on the campground trails yesterday. Had to stick to the open areas on the North end, because we were quickly flushed from the trail that runs through the woods.. (See the previous post on deerflies). I had the boy on the new 110lb Flexi, but didn't bring the camera, mostly out of pure laziness.

Now, I've seen lots and lots of interesting critters and things at the old Holiday RV Campground... Sandhill Cranes, deer, geese, turkeys, turtles, wood ducks (in the trees over the RV!), squirrels, cottontails, fungi, wildflowers, raptors.. the list is endless. Yesterday morning, while I was walking Rally, a coyote- bigger than Rally- stopped at the edge of the cornfield, about 20 yards away, and gave us a good long stare before proceeding on with his daily business.

Nothing previously could have prepared me for yesterday's event, however. We had just seen a pair of spotted fawns rollicking in the tall grass out by the interstate.. no adults in evidence. I was cursing the fact that the camera was in the motor home, and we were approaching a large thicket where a lot of deer often rest during the late afternoon. I was anticipating the explosion of mass deer-flight when, from behind us, I heard, "Excuse me!". Huh? That didn't compute- like when you hear a powerful jet, and look up in the sky and the first thing your eyes fall on is a soaring turkey vulture. I turned and, bearing down on us, was a horse.. a trotter, in fact, complete with sulky and a little black driver in goggles! As he sped by, he said, "How you doin' today?", and I said.. "uh... um... er.. fine?"

I've been on that trail dozens of times. This was definitely a first. There are horses on the nearby property. I just never realized they were racing horses, although there is a harness racing track in Jackson. It is an interesting practice track, though, because it's far from level. He disappeared around the bend, and I immediately got on the phone to Margaret to pass on the story. While talking to her, we passed the last photo opportunity of the walk, when I spied a box turtle laying eggs next to the trail.

SO.. today I took the camera when the boy and I went out for our daily constitutional. No fawns. No horses,sulkies, or diminutive drivers.. of any color. No turtle. No nuthin'! Well, nearly no nuthin'. I did see this perfect, living description of "gossamer wing"..

And Sandia self-posed for me in a nice setting...

What's the Boy Scouts' motto? Oh yeah.. Be Prepared. Well, I once hacked a hole in my knee with a hatchet... during a "hatchet safety" session at a Boy Scout "Camporee". But, that's just me.

Meanwhile, Next Door to the MGA Trial..

More fun from last weekend... the car show that was going on at the same time as the lure trial. Lake Erie Metropark. This is only an excuse to try out the new slide show website that everybody else has demo'd. (HT Patrick, Andrew, et al). We'll probably put it on the sidebar after a couple of days.

Yes... that's a freakin' Gremlin! Who knew there were still roadworthy examples out there. Most popular marque: Subaru Impreza WRX. Some nice Saleen Mustangs in attendance, too.

Fun With Photoshop Elements.

...and a distorted window. Just for fun, while we wait for the wildflowers to bloom in Michigan. Expecting Trilliums any time now.

Meanwhile, On the Fringes of a Field Trial...

Unless a field trial (lure coursing, racing) is being held on private property, there's usually more going on. Over the years, we've seen draught horse shows, radio-controlled gliders, and of course, soccer... going on nearby. Because Margaret needs a spacer between courses or races, I'll fire off a random shot of anything that's happening.. most often it's just a shot of the grass, or trees, or clouds in the sky. But often it's birds, or airplanes. Case in point this past weekend:

The military's largest aircraft, the C5, doing touch and go's at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, and out on the cross-country course, this young lass....

Field trialing is never boring.

New Gear!

Last Summer, when I wrote about the sad plight of our Nikon D200 digital SLR, I mentioned that I thought my good Karma was starting to turn bad. I may have been a bit premature. Just a month later, Nikon introduced the D3 which, at $5000, I can only dream about, and its little brother, the infinitely more affordable D300. The two cameras are nearly identical.. the major exception being the D3 is Nikon's first "full frame" digital SLR- it has a larger sensor than all the preceding models- and it can shoot at ridiculous resolution at nearly night-time conditions.

Since that fateful immersion in July of last year, we've struggled along without a high res camera. Our old D70 was obsolete even before the D200 was introduced. (It's for sale- make an offer!) Our workhorse D2H's only advantage is a very useful high shutter rate.. (8 frames per second). Unfortunately, in the last two weeks, the D2H started showing signs it was reaching the end of its useful life. Not surprising, in that we fire the shutter off 2-3000 times a weekend. Do that for 4 years and the shutter starts resisting my commands that it do its job. It's begun hanging up on a regular basis. I got through last week's trial, but knew something had to be done. And soon. Even though we couldn't afford it.

Last Monday, we ordered up a D300. It arrived Wednesday. And I love it. It makes obsolete everything we've used before, and most everything else on the market, excepting the D3. The most striking difference? Color. Color like I've never seen. The following images were all basically point-and-shoot snapshots, at my brother's house, and Margaret's parents' house. Also, check out the "white-on-white" dog statue... last year's technology wouldn't be able to capture that tonal gradation without completely blowing out the highlight areas. And it all works without me having to think a whole lot about what I'm doing. And that's the most valuable advantage of all.

UPDATE: Apologies to those who looked and found no pictures. A Blogger problem. I've had to reduce the file sizes significantly, so the resolution isn't quite what you'd see if you looked at the originals, but the colors are still there.

New Slide Show!

As promised, Margaret's pictures from the Oklahoma Aquarium in Jenks (Tulsa).

That's all we have time for today, unfortunately.. gotta get Rally to the vet for the cast padding change. Wanted to do a sports wrap... that will have to wait till we get on the road again as this is probably the last chance we'll get to come into Hugo.

Briefly: Disappointed in the Final Four. Happy with the Frozen Four. Grand Valley basketball had a decent season (36-1) losing for the second straight year in the "Great Eight" to the ultimate Division II champions... Winona State this year. Tigers opening game today. That is all!

Buteo Regalis

As the last vehicle.. (us).. left the field on Sunday, we were buzzed by this magnificent Ferruginous Hawk. It was as if it were saying, "It's about time you people left... I'm hungry!".

Birding on this trip, especially as regards birds of prey, has been most impressive. Today, for instance, we saw a Peregrine Falcon. Too far away for a picture, unfortunately.

NOTE: Yes, I know I need to clean the filter ;-)

Mountain Blanket

Can't let the day go by without at least one post. This was about 7AM MST today. This solitary-but very large- cloud hung over my favorite little mountain range for hours. That's the Capitol Dome formation on the right. I need to get out and do more of this, and give the dogs a break. Tomorrow looks promising.

Scenes From a Hunt.

Yesterday, I took Sandia and the camera to a nearby hunt. It was good to see old friends, and meet some new ones, and get reacquainted. But mostly, it was good to see hounds doing what they do, doing what they've done for more than a Millenia; and doing it in such a beautiful setting.

This dog worked hard, over a long, long time and a great distance. Usually, unlike life, hard work isn't rewarded. In this case it was.

They're back out there today, but I have another task. It's time to let Sandia loose on a jackrabbit. Let the learning begin!

Might As Well Get a Greeter Job at WalMart.

It's bad enough these days, when anybody with a couple hundred bucks in their pockets can get a fair-to-decent digital SLR camera, and set up business as a "Pro-fesh-uh-nul Photographer". My advantage, of course is experience. Having the technology and camera speed and knowing how to use the technology and that speed are two different things. 9 times out of 10 I'm still going to get the better shot than the other guy. Or girl.

Fer example, I get communiques like this:

Dan
Are you going to shoot any ASFA trials in places where I tend to show up? J ___ ran pretty well at ___ over ___ _____, but the photographer's work was not very good. __ has a poor sense of timing, and ___ focus is sloppy. I want a good picture of J___ for her breeder
(Edited to avoid embarrassing anyone)

So, what me worry?, right?
But, as "the Coach" on ESPN's College Game Day is wont to say: "Not so fast, my friend". Casio is about to tilt the field of play way out of whack. Beginning in March, any granny, or cuzzin Bruce with a thousand bucks laying around can get the perfect shot, (s'long as they can aim the damned thing, that is). The magic machine they will do this with is below:




See what it says on the lens barrel? If you want to see what kind of resolution you can get at that kind of speed, check out the samples here. Pretty impressive. So impressive I might as well retire to a life of leisure and panhandling in Deming, New Mexico.


Just kidding.

Alone Again. Naturally.

Seems like lately all I'm doing is driving Margaret to an airport. Yesterday, it was the El Paso airport, and she was off for a week in New York, to visit her son, and daughter, who is also visiting NY. Then she'll fly to Michigan to visit with her parents, and get accustomed to that thing we remember as... "snow". Cold, she could have had here. Woke up to 15 degrees this morning. She'll be in Michigan two weeks... long enough to remember why we went away almost 5 years ago in the Express. The forecast for the area is not good; but typical.

Anyway, she took the new camera with her. I thought I'd give the little camera a little review.

A couple weeks ago, when we were still in Texas, we drove down to Austin to the CompUSA store to get a replacement antenna for our Microsoft Streets & Trips GPS. (Sandia-damage, if you must know.) Turns out the store is closing, and had everything on clearance, so we got more than we planned on.

Our shopping included not one, but two of the slick little Fuji FinePix Z10 fd's.

We've always wanted a compact digital camera for those times the digi-SLR's were too bulky to carry. Well, this little gem is compact, as you can see. It has an optical, and digital zoom lens that is completely internal, so nothing sticks out. 7.2MP resolution.. better than my old D70 SLR. It also does movies... as seen in a previous post, (although, I have to work on my technique). It can instantly re size files for blogging... love that! And it comes in cool colors! (Would I pick anything but blue?). 6 other colors are available. They were marked down to $153 from $179 in the clearance sale. If you want one, I just discovered B & H Photo & Video has them in stock for $143. Oops.

But Dan, you say, how are the still pictures? Well, I returned to one of my favorite settings, with my favorite new model, and shot this:

Other than cropping... this is "as is". No other editing. It's also a smaller copy of the original fullsize file (for quicker uploading). I'm likin' it.

Day One.

As we pulled into the field north of Deming, I looked North and spied a couple of eagles. Young Goldens.. possibly the same two I posted pictures of on this blog a little over a year ago.

There were also dozens of Northern Harriers in the air.

We parked, got the dogs out and set off to find us a few jacks... Margaret walking student, Sandia, with Fanny and Buffy free coursing. We spotted 3 jacks during the course of our first mile. The girls saw none, as they were out of position.

About that time I saw something moving about 200 yards ahead of us. I thought it was a coyote, so we got the girls leashed up, because then I spotted a second... then a third... and suddenly I realized there was a whold herd, and they weren't 'yotes; they were wild pigs, and it was really a fortuitous that we had everybody leashed.

Except, as luck would have it, that's when we jumped the jack that everybody saw! Sandia is getting pretty excited about this stuff, and wants to be let go. Well, we were still pretty close to the pigs, so nobody got let go.

I decided the only way the girls were going to get something to chase was if we kept them on slips. Good thing, too, as Buffy almost dived headlong into this...

Judging from the way it's opened up it was either the eagles or a harrier that got him. We may have interrupted somebody's lunch. It gets worse. We'll be revisiting this unfortunate critter, but...

It was starting to get a little warm, and we decided to work our way toward the car, keeping the girls in the slips. We jumped one just to Margaret's left.. she slipped Fanny, I slipped Buffy, and poor Sandia could only stand and watch what turned out to be a short exercize run, as the jack lost them in some dense brush. We headed towards the car, and Fanny did, too. Buffy, however, remembered where she saw a jackrabbit that wouldn't elude her. Yeah... off she went, and it didn't matter that it was almost a thousand yards back the way we came.. she went right to it. I was yelling my head off, telling her, "NO!", and "Stop!", and other totally useless commands. As I approached her and her lunch, she did what she's done for years: Picked it up and trotted away from me. We repeated this exercize in frustration twice more, and I just decided, screw it! (or words to that effect), told her we were leaving, and headed back to the car. She looked up at me, and at least she didn't say "Goodbye", she just looked mildly perplexed.

I got to the car, we got the other dogs loaded, and we saw Buffy wandering around, not exactly coming, and not exactly going away. Basically, she was milking the moment for all the drama she could. But I had a secret: The magic green cow tripe treats.

Everyone in the car, we started to exit the field, but we had one more photo opportunity to go, as we watched a Harrier hunting. That yielded this dramatic shot of a descent to the ground in an attempt to nab a small, furry, creature. We thought she was successful, but no dice.

Here's looking at you kid.

Announcement.

Announcement 1: We have arrived in New Mexico! Back at Dreamcatcher RV Park in Deming, and the good news is the goathead stickers that plagued us last winter in the field adjacent to the campground are pretty much gone, along with a great deal of the foliage. But there's enough cover in there to hide a lot of cottontails and jacks, and about a thousand Gambel's Quail, and other birds. I took Sandia out to see his first jacks. Took a while, but we were finally successful. I tried to video it with our new Fuji Z10 compact digital camera, (More about that in another post), with little success. But here it is...


It took me 3 or 4 viewings before I finally picked out the running jackrabbit. Good luck with that... :) Tomorrow we'll head out in earnest to some of our favorite fields.. Fanny will begin Sandia's training. Should have better video then.

Announcement 2: Pictures from the weekend trials in Hutto TX are now uploaded and available for viewing and purchase at our website.

Flying Fanny.

Holy cow! Where did that come from? I'm used to getting shots like this of Buffy, but I've never caught Fanny in this position. She's peaking at just the right time and will be in the best condition of her life when we hit New Mexico next week. Not bad for almost 8 years old. Jackrabbits better look out!

Cleared For Takeoff

I've often mentioned here my preference for shooting on fields that have some character. "Flat" is the enemy of exciting lure coursing, and lure coursing images. On the list of great fields, soccer fields are usually at the bottom of the list.

This weekend, we were at a soccer/football/baseball complex located in the center of a big oxbow of the Brazos River in Richmond, TX. This is not your average soccer field lure coursing field... What makes it different from your run-of-the-mill flat field?

Ditches!

Hounds that negotiated the three jump opportunities on the course flawlessly were rewarded with high scores. The same can't be said for the less successful leapers...

One-Handed Photography.

Why "one-handed"? I present you with Exhibit A. My left hand was busy holding dogs. Fortun-ately, I found out that vibration reduction is a good thing to have, especially when all I had was the heaviest camera in the arsenal-and no flash. Thank goodness for "editing tools"! Would have been a good time to test out a new D300. (I wonder if we're getting one for Christmas??).

Anyway, Mr. Puppy was suffering from extreme cabin fever, so I packed him.. and Rally, in the car and drove 30 miles to the Big Thicket National Preserve, where these images were taken on the Kirby Nature Trail. We had a great walk, with the following exceptions:

• Extra 3 miles of walking, backtracking to find the cell phone



• Half a dozen deer ticks on the dogs. (None on me.)

Other than that, a very nice afternoon for a walk. More images are on the new slide show on the sidebar. If you want to see larger images, click on the slide show to be taken to the web album. Enjoy. As usual, heavy on the fungi.

Blatant Commercial Message.

A week or so ago, Margaret sent out about 500 email messages to people we have addressess for. Kinda like spam, only with a more valuable message. Her idea is to have periodic "specials" for our customers. The first of these specials is for a gen-U-wine art gallery style poster... 16x20, and custom designed by Margaret herself! These can be done from any picture we've taken in our "digital era"- from August 2003 to now.

Ideally, they will look a lot like this one of our staghound, Buffy.

Regular price for a 16 x 20 print is $40 + $6 for shipping. If you order by October 10, the price is only $25 for each, and shipping is only a flat rate of $6, no matter how many posters you order. So far, we've sent out about a dozen, and the feedback has been beyond positive.

About 70 messages bounced. If you didn't get one, or if you know someone who might be interested in this special product, pass this post on by clicking on the envelope icon at the bottom. To order, simply send your request to margaret@shotonsite.us. It's as simple as that to get the ball rolling.

See other samples at our event website.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled entertaining blog posting.....

Super Wide

Finally got the lens I've coveted for over a year. I would have had it long ago if Nikon would have anticipated the hit they had on their hands. The lens covers the range of super wide angle, 18mm, to telephoto, 200mm, thus replacing a couple of lenses in the bag. In addition to the astounding range, it also has vibration reduction... so I can handhold shots at slow shutter speeds I would have formerly had to use a tripod for.

This above shot is Sandia, on the loose, and having fun. Shot at the 18mm setting, this image has been cropped about 40%, and the puppy was only about 3 feet from the front of the lens, which accounts for the little bit of distortion.

And how good is the VR? This shot was taken in the Express, at 1/2.5 seconds... hand held. Other than cropping so you can see the detail, this picture hasn't been sharpened with Picasa editor. It is as it was. Click the image to enlarge and look at the detail around the eyes. Pretty cool. It helps when you can catch the subject in an abnormally pensive... and still... moment.

And the best difference between the 18-200 and the giant 80-200 f2.8 I've been using for the last 4 years is that it weighs almost nothing.. probably almost 2 pounds less I have to carry around all weekend. I love it!

And that's how you foist more puppy pictures on the unsuspecting public without boring them to death.