Mountain Bluebird - Rare in Minnesota

We had seen reports of a way-out-of-its-range male Mountain Bluebird at Schaar's Bluff near Hastings, Minnesota, and were fortunate to be able to get extended good views of it Monday evening after work. What a beauty!

The overcast sky, fading light and rather diffuse color of the bird when seen from the front created some photographic challenges. At one point it flew to a perch within 15 feet of where I was standing, but with a network of high-contrast tree branches in the background, I could not get my camera to focus on the bird. The photos show here were all taken from many yards away with high zoom, and then cropped.

The normal range of the mountain bluebird is primarily the western mountain and plains states and up the western part of Canada into Alaska in the summer breeding season. Winters are spent in the southern part of that range and well south into Mexico. Normally it would not be closer to us than the western edge of the Dakotas.

For comparison, here (below) is the male eastern bluebird, which is the bluebird we normally see in this part of the country.

Bluebird in Soft Focus on a Gray Day

I sometimes forget what a difference good light makes to the clarity of a photo. But the flip side of that can be the tender, even painterly, softness to shots taken on an overcast day. Here is a male bluebird perching on a marker post in the Upper Arb at Carleton College, with a stand of leafing-out trees some distance behind.

Misty Morning Spiderweb

Click on photo to see it full size - wow!

I was out walking in the dense fog yesterday morning, with only my older-model iPhone for a camera. The spiderwebs were spectacularly outlined in tiny droplets everywhere I went, and I couldn't resist taking some photos. I didn't really notice the background on this shot as I leaned down with my phone to capture this low-to-the-ground web head-on, but it turned out better than I could have expected.

Best Bird Photograph Ever?

This photo of an osprey diving for a fish near Cocoa Beach, Florida, taken by Mike Wulf, is featured in the December 2011 issue of Birdwatching magazine (formerly Birder's World). The symmetry, the balletic power, the squared-off angularity of those enormous folded wings, the reach of those talons all amaze me. (Definitely click on the photo to see a larger version!)

Black & White +/- Red

My blog friend Richard of At the Water has been experimenting lately with black and white photography. He has spent time exploring an explanation he read on a photography site that said that color is shot for contrast while black and white is shot for form.

Below are two versions of the same photo of a red-bellied woodpecker at our suet feeder today. (By the way, he has returned often enough that I no longer think he only comes when it's bitterly cold. I think we're on his regular route now, which delights me.) 

I am interested in how differently my eye chooses to focus in the two photos.

In the color version, above, I can't keep my eyes off the brilliant red-orange head. I'm also drawn to the texture of the suet, which is studded with corn and seeds which are not very noticeable below.

In this photo, my eyes want to explore the black-and-white pattern on his back and the soft downiness of his breast fuzz. With the light color of the background almost stripped away in this version, the shape of the bird becomes a more significant element of the photo.

Nature's Snow Scuptures

Our 8-10 (amended: I just read a report that we did indeed get 10+ ) inches of dry, fluffy new snow formed a surprising pattern near a privacy fence at one end of our deck -- like a mini mountain range. Here are three shots, cropping closer each time. Interesting how the colors change when cropping this snowy scene really close.

Larger photos -- what do you think?

Update, December 6: I have decided to revert to a smaller size photo and have adjusted all the previous big ones back to a more moderate size.. One reason was that I was reminded that some people subscribe via e-mail, and the big photos seemed really too much. Also, I liked the balance of the page better with the smaller photos. When I've got one that looks really great big, I'll beg people to click on it to see it larger, but I don't need to make them all big.
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I adjusted my blog template to provide room to show the photos at a larger size. That means a lot more scrolling, but more impact for each photo. I'd like to know whether or not you find this format more appealing. Here's a photo from last winter to serve as an example. If you click back through earlier posts, you'll see I've enlarged the photos in the two or three most recent posts, but the earlier posts will show the size the photos were displayed at before I expanded the template width. Thanks for letting me know what you think!

Hummingbird Series

I finally found the high-speed-burst setting on my new camera, which is great for freezing creatures in motion, like this hummingbird at our feeder this morning. The resulting photos are smaller, but it's a worthwhile trade-off when the subject is not too far away.

Difficulties in Photographing Diving Ducks

I was trying to capture images of two small diving ducks -- perhaps female hooded mergansers -- on the river this morning. Whoops, where did they go? Only a spreading whirlpool to show that something ducked under the water. (Hey, that prompts a quick etymological query, and sure enough it looks as if the verb duck is indeed related to the word for the bird. Or vice-versa, actually, as it appears that the origin is a word meaning "to dive.")

Oh, I know she was here a moment ago!

Hey, this time there are TWO little whirlpools showing where BOTH ducks were a second earlier!

Finally, there you are!

Goslings Close Up

I was experimenting with how close I can crop in on goslings with this new camera. With the higher zoom (up to 12x on the optical zoom, compared to my old 3x), so I can get closer in to start with, and a larger photo size than previously, I can crop in quite a bit and still end up with a decent photo.



Several of the photos here are further crops of photos in the previous post, which were themselves already cropped. The one below is about at the limit -- it's starting to lose resolution -- but for web use it's still not bad.

I particularly like the lighting and the downy texture on the somewhat larger goslings below.

Trying Out New Camera

I picked out a new camera at National Camera Exchange yesterday for an early birthday present from Dave -- the zoom on the Nikon Coolpix has not worked in several months and it was only a 3x zoom anyway -- fine for family photos, but not so useful for close-up nature photography. I'm not sure yet if we'll keep the new arrival -- the Panasonic DMC-Z25 (NatCam has a nice 30-day return policy). It's got a 25mm wide-angle and a 12x optical zoom/16x "Intelligent zoom," both of which are amazing, and it has manual shutter speed and aperture controls, unlike my Coolpix, which will give more control in unusual lighting situations.

I took this series of scenes at Lake Byllesby in the late afternoon (between 6 and 7 p.m.) yesterday using the automatic setting. (The shot immediately above is a zoomed-in version of the same view as in the first photo.) The wide angle is great for this type of photo, and the clouds and reflections were really nice. Still, if you click through on the photos you see they have a slightly unreal, almost painted quality to them.

Its automatic setting knows how to do a lot of things, but it seems to leave a pixelated appearance on close-up view, at least in some circumstances.


For example, on the way back we passed several wild turkeys in a field. The photo above was a nice shot of two turkeys, both of them in full display. This was taken at full zoom, at about 7:15 p.m., so lighting was probably an issue, but if you click on this photo (which is a crop of the full photo) you'll see it doesn't look like a photo at all, but a digital distortion of a photo.


Today I am experimenting with the manual settings and so far I don't seem to be having the same issue, so maybe the lesson with this camera is if taking something you plan to crop in on, like distant shots of birds, it's essential to use the manual settings.

House Finch at Feeder

I took this photo of a house finch at one of our feeders on either Friday or Saturday. The zoom on my camera is broken (one or the other of certain unnamed adolescent cats knocked the camera off the desk, alas), but I got this shot by holding the camera to one side of my binoculars -- a technique sometimes called binscoping or digibinning. Not bad for a photo taken through a window, and a better focus than I often get with the point-and-shoot!

See more bird photography at Bird Photography Weekly!

Hidden Pictures

Trying to photograph smallish birds in trees leads mostly to photographs that will never win awards or even be considered to be examples of bird photography. Making the best of a bad situation, I offer up to bored souls out there these three photos as "Hidden Pictures" such as you may have enjoyed in your youth. Find the bird in each scene - click on the photo for a larger view if you want the easier version (or clearer confirmation of your guesses). I believe I have put them in order of difficulty. Good luck!

Winter Collage

Nature Photography Class

The winter nature photography workshop offered by Dan Iverson through Northfield Community Services was, to everyone's gratitute, postponed from last weekend, when the temperatures were below zero, to yesterday, when they were in the upper 20s or even higher by the time we got outside.

After an hour of classroom time during which we discussed the basics of aperture, shutter speed, depth of focus, and the trade-offs between all of the above (most helpful to those students who had cameras with manual settings, which my point-and-shoot Nikon Coolpix does not have), we headed out to the St. Olaf natural lands between the base of the wind turbine and Northfield Hospital.

Winter photography presents particular challenges on a sunny day, because with snow on the ground there is just so much light to deal with. However, the low position of the sun in the sky creates wonderful shadows even near midday; in the summer photographers have to get out there early or late in the day to get the same effect. Shadows on the snow added dramatic impact to several of my favorite photos of the day.

If you'd like to see some of the photos I took, you can click through on the album below for the larger version and view it as a slideshow if you wish. I've included some comments about each.

Nature Photography Class

Thinking About Photography

I'm signed up to take Dan Iverson's nature photography seminar through the Northfield Public Schools' Community Services Division (and featured on the cover of their latest brochure) on January 24. I am looking forward to it, despite the fact that according to Jim Gilbert's Minnesota Nature Notes January 24 is only a day away from what is statistically the coldest day of the year. I'll hope for a day that pulls the mean up a notch or two. I just went to look up the course description online, but was briefly distracted by seeing that Brent Kivell and Karen Madsen are teaching a series of one-night classes on light-saber duelling, for ages 8 and up. What a truly brilliant idea. I know a 9-year-old who will think he has died and gone to heaven when he hears about this. Brent and Karen, you rock. (I already knew that, knowing both Brent and Karen in musical contexts and Brent in a professional one).

Back, after this brief digression, to nature photography. The session is described thus:

See the winter world through the photographer’s lens. Professional photographer Dan Iverson will teach participants fundamentals of nature photography and immerse them in photographic field survey of St. Olaf College’s natural lands. Discover the overlooked beauty in a chilly world blanketed in snow. Participants will reconvene to warm up over hot chocolate and discuss topics like ISOs and f/stops. Bring camera and dress for the weather.

My dad taught me a bit about photography. He took some lovely black and white photos. I don't have many at this point; these are two from our time in Kenya, where I was born, showing my laughing young mother in one and my bespectacled 4-or-5-year-old self looking out of our Peugeot in the other.
An e-mail from Amazon.com today alerted me to a new camera soon to be released by Olympus that has me salivating over a piece of equipment for practically the first time ever. The SP-590 Ultra Zoom is a 12-megapixel point-and-shoot with a 26x wide angle zoom lens, dual image stabilization, high-speed sequential shooting, and pre-capture: "As soon as the focus is locked, Pre-Capture automatically archives ten frames (3MP) before fully pressing the button to capture the perfect shot."

Now that sounds like the perfect camera for a budding nature blogger. Remember those too-far-away, indistinct ducks I kept trying to capture last spring with my nice little camera that is good for many purposes but unfortunately only has a 3x zoom? Wow, could I do things with something like the SP-590. Maybe if I'm very good I can manage it as a combined late Christmas present and an early birthday present to myself. It's not due out until March - but that will be just in time for our spring waterfowl migration. I'm hoping.