Please share your photos of nature, wildlife, etc.

[december-fire]

I tried to capture a few hummingbirds in flight.
They fly at about 30 miles per hour.
The male during courtship can fly at about 60 miles an hour.
I don't move at anywhere near those speeds.

 

[december-fire]

Doing what only a hummingbird can do - hovering!

 

[december-fire]

This first photo made me think of K.C. and the Sunshine Band "Do a little dance".
Had to play some music to get that darn song out of my head!

 

[december-fire]

Last two for now.

I'll be playing with camera settings, working on my reaction time (but, yeah, the hummers have me beat in that department), and hoping for sunshine.

While waiting for a hummer to come to one of my two hummingbird feeders, I caught a glimpse of a hummer at one of my new plants and quickly took some shots. The plant is an Agastache 'Blue Fortune'. I planted three of these plants beside each other. They grew rapidly and are very popular with bees, butterflies and the hummingbirds.

 

[WinkHPD]

Just as the sun was nearly set, my wife called to me to come look at this plume of smoke.

There has been a fire burning for a few weeks now, 100,000 acres burned in the mountains. Apparently it exploded just before sunset this evening, here is the picture, looking like a beautiful cloud until you see the dark dingy smoke at the bottom of it. As you can see, the sun is no longer striking the mountains, but it makes the smoke bright and beautiful, until you realize what it is...


Wink

Wow, beauty and destruction. Unsettling once you realize a fire is responsible for the scene.

I hope there's rain in the forecast to finally end the blaze.

On a lighter note, I hope you enjoyed the photography conference (you talked about attending a June (July?) conference, if my memory cells are humouring me with a bit of accuracy).

Did that lovely rosebud bloom today?

I loved the Photoshop World Conference. I got to wallow in all things Photoshop and Lightroom for four days and met some fabulous people as well.

I just received my new camera that I bought to use outside the office, since I do not think it fair to risk my current camera by taking it from the office where it is used nearly daily for photography of Jewelry. The beautiful/horrible column of smoke was taken only hours after I received the camer.

Her is a Dahlia that I took with my new camera as well.




Edits in Lightroom allowed me to bring out the true color of the Dahlia and share more of its true nature. I had never realized what a powerful tool Lightroom is until the conference. I really love that it is available for free as a download to our phones and that much editing can be done in the phones as well. This is not much value for photography photography, but it ROCKS for taking photos of the grand kids!

Oh, no, the rosebud did not live up to its promise. The day was too hot and the outer leaves dried out, discolored and trapped the bloom.

Darn.

Wink

 

[WinkHPD]

Here is where Lightroom really shows its stuff if you are shooting in Camera Raw, which I am.

This beautiful hawk flew in front of Resa and I while we were walking our dog. It sat there as a silhouette against the smokey sky from the fires, buried within the tree. I had to switch to manual focus as the camera wanted to focus on the needles in front of the hawk.

When I looked at the picture, this is what I saw.



After literally 30 seconds in Lightroom I exported to Photoshop for cropping and this is what I now have.



If I wanted to get creative, I could make the sky blue, but I am not a big fan of that. Getting the light that was recorded in Camera Raw to show the beauty of the subject, that I like!

Wink

 

[redwood66]

Beautiful! Wink this proves to me I need to shoot raw. I guess I need Lightroom and upgrade Photoshop too though. Now that I have more time I need to get out with my camera when the eagles show up.

 

[WinkHPD]

Thank you Redwood. The nice thing is you do not ever need to upgrade Photoshop again. For $10 per month or $100 per year you can get both Photoshop and Lightroom as well as Bridge all in the Adobe Creative Cloud. I am finding that with Lightroom I do not really need bridge much any more.

They are making minor upgrades all year round and it is nice not to have to shell out the big bucks every couple of years. I never even miss the $10 per month, but I sure love the ability to access my account from where ever I am on any device.

Wink

 

[WinkHPD]

So, in addition to having a great time, I also won a piece of HDR software called AuroraHDR.

It only works on Mac machines, so I have to play with it at home since my office machines are all Windows based.

Here on the left is the hawk after lightroom, and here it is on the right after running it through Aurora, even though it is not the normal three shots that HDR normally blends together to make the shadows visible etc.



I really like the last little omph that the HDR software gets out of my original not so hot picture. (You can see the silhouette in a post a little above this one.)

Wink

 

[december-fire]

Wink,

A new camera! That's so exciting!

And congratulations on winning the Aurora software! Wonderful! Its amazing what technology allows us to do!

What a beautiful hawk! And Dahlia!

I'm so thankful that I'm not restricted to items that I can obtain or create on my own. I'd have no food, clean drinking water, car, phone, computer, camera ... hmmm, the list of what I would have would be much, much shorter.

 

[december-fire]

Here are a few shots of a Golden Eagle.

Photographing this handsome lad wasn't much of a challenge because he wasn't out in the wild.

He was at the Garlic Festival this past weekend!

 

[december-fire]

Check out those claws!

Much easier to photograph than if he was soaring off in the distance.

In case you can't read the sign in the photo, the eagle was there as part of an educational program provided by the Canadian Raptor Conservancy.

 

[december-fire]

Straying off topic (I often get derailed), but you never know what you'll find at the Garlic Festival!

Garlic ice cream, dips, flavored honey, and even gladiolas for sale.

 

[WinkHPD]

Check out those claws!

Much easier to photograph than if he was soaring off in the distance.

In case you can't read the sign in the photo, the eagle was there as part of an educational program provided by the Canadian Raptor Conservancy.

Growing up as a child, Morley Nelson was a good family friend. Morley was a falconer of world wide acclaim and he and his boys worked with Walt Disney on their early movies and programs about Eagles and other birds of prey.

He kept several wonderful birds in his eerie in the backyard of his foothills home here in Boise, and occasionally I would call and take my friends over to see them. He was always happy to share his love of his magnificent birds with strangers and friends alike. A few years before his death I arranged for a visiting group of Brasilians to visit while in Boise with a Rotary Group Study exchange.

The stories he and his sons had of climbing cliffs to catch young birds and killing rattlesnakes to feed them while in the desert were exciting to hear, and also powerfully convincing in letting me know I did NOT want to actually be a falconer.

Wink

 

[december-fire]

Wink,

What a wonderful opportunity to get to see and learn about these incredible birds!

Nature and wildlife are amazing.

 

[december-fire]

Five weeks without my camera, now I'm making up for lost time.
The last photo shows the hummer going up and doing a half twist to the right. I think she was imitating the Olympic divers put flying up not diving down.

 

[december-fire]

More hummingbirds.

 

[december-fire]

And, you guessed it, more hummingbirds.

 

[december-fire]

Yes. I know. I have a problem.
Its just that I only started photographing hummingbirds a couple of days ago.
Its a challenge for me to photograph these little guys. I love challenges.
I keep at it and changing settings, trying to get better results.
And, obviously, I keep posting! But they're shiny jewels! They belong on PS!

 

[december-fire]

Only four more for now!

 

[december-fire]

Last two! (for now)

 

[jordyonbass]

Sorry I haven't had posted pics folks, it is hard to see nature as I have been spending my weekends cutting rocks lately!! Here is a snap my father sent me from GoPro footage, they were out fishing on a reef when Tigger showed up to see what they were doing!!

 

[december-fire]

Hi Jordy!

Great to see you!

When I read 'cutting rocks', I thought pavers for landscaping; patio, walkway, stuff.
Then, it occurred to me that you might be cutting rocks of a smaller size. This is PS, after all.

Hope you're having lots of fun!

Thanks to your Dad for the photo!

 

[december-fire]

Hmmmm, looks like someone is in trouble for something.

 

[jordyonbass]

Hi Jordy!

Great to see you!

When I read 'cutting rocks', I thought pavers for landscaping; patio, walkway, stuff.
Then, it occurred to me that you might be cutting rocks of a smaller size. This is PS, after all.

Hope you're having lots of fun!

Thanks to your Dad for the photo!

You're correct on your secondary thought pattern there DF, I've been learning how to cut and polish stones and have been doing lots of opals lately. Just got a faceting machine too but I'm hooked on opals!!
I actually have a thread in the Colored Stones forum outlining the learning path I've been on as just a regular bloke who has a gemstone obsession. Plenty of pics in it too

 

[House Cat]

Madame Bijoux,
What a beautiful butterfly! I don't recall seeing any like that here. I love the wing pattern, and who doesn't love classic black and white. Always elegant. Always in style. Thank you for sharing your photo!

GCGDanielle,
Thank you for your kind comment on my photography. I love photography, the great outdoors and animals (except spiders, of course). As per, and only because of, your request, here are two photos. The first to show the massive size of this monster, and then a close-up. Note that by the time I took the second shot, the beast had turned to face me.

I love spider faces!!! They are so cute!!! They look like little old men! Or monkeys, just depends on your view!

 

[december-fire]

Jordy,
Very exciting about the rock cutting and polishing, and the faceting machine! I wandered over to Coloured Stones to check out your thread but got side-tracked by some other threads! What were the odds!
I'll go back later to see your thread.
Have fun with the opals!

HouseCat,
After posting my comments about spiders, I started to think I should reconsider my views on these creatures. When I see one in the house, I've been taking a 'catch and release' approach rather than reaching for a shotgun. And, while I've yet to see a little old man or monkey who looked like a spider and have never really considered the facial features of a spider (other than their evil-eyed glare and fangs), I'm going to make a conscious and deliberate effort to examine these beasts - opps! - beings and hopefully discover the 'cuteness' factor mentioned in your comment. Stay tuned. (But don't hold your breath.)

By the way, before heading over to Afghanistan to enjoy the countryside (I've been told I should get a new travel agent), I learned about camel spiders. I don't recall thinking 'oh cute!' when it came to those guys. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

 

[december-fire]

Bees!

 

[december-fire]

More bees! They love the new plants I added to my backyard this summer.

 

[december-fire]

Wings and flying!
Two of my favorite things.