at http://natureandwildlifephotography.blogspot.com/2010/04/going-vertical-2.html
I've decided my project is going to be to shoot and post vertical shots for a good while.
Flickr really like horizontal images, or square images. Vertical images are not as popular, although I did recently come across someone's flickr stream that was almost completely vertically composed images.
Flickr's Explorer is almost always non-vertical shots, the non-vertical shots just work better for computer screens and the site's layout.
At a recent photoclub meeting the presenter had many panoramic shots taken with a panoramic camera. Most times you'd think of a pano you'd think horizontal, right? Well this person also had some vertical panos, like 1 foot wide by 6 feet tall. It's such an odd thing that it struck me. He's a pro and said that they sell well the tall narrow shots because they can fit in to place where wall space is very limited. And wow, yeah, that makes such great sense.
I'm going to try a few vertical panos if the subject looks right for it.
Here's another vertical shot, that I posted a while back, a rare thing...
-50-
Nikographer.com / Jon
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Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Going Vertical #2
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Blackwater - Bald Eagles Spring 2010 pt2
From http://natureandwildlifephotography.blogspot.com/2010/04/blackwater-bald-eagles-spring-2010-pt2.html
I posted this earlier today and now decided to post a bunch more shots from this time a couple weeks ago...
Bald Eagles at Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge.
2 Adults.
2 Juveniles.
http://blackwater-national-wildlife-refuge.blogspot.com/
-50-
Nikographer.com / Jon
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Blackwater Refuge - Bald Eagles Spring 2010
From http://natureandwildlifephotography.blogspot.com/2010/04/blackwater-refuge-bald-eagles-spring.html
A couple weeks ago while I was at Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge I found a patch of marsh with around 5 eagles in it, and some ducks and RWBBs too.
They seemed to be feasting on some fish as well as what might have been a goose. The goose looked snow goose sized and white - if it was a snow goose it had to be a weak one that didn't leave with the other ones during the northward migration because I think those geese left weeks if not a month or more ago. 
The group of eagles seem to be pretty friendly to each other, but did swoop in a few times to compete over some of the food. The birds in flight here - the young eagle had a fish and was trying to maintain control of it, but dropped it mid-flight, and the adult caught it mid-flight and kept it ;) I love seeing those mid-air transfers.
Blackwater should be fun this year - but I am not looking forward to the summer bug. Hopefully my blind will help keep them away from me. (The above were shot from my car, btw.)
-50-
Nikographer.com / Jon
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Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Great Falls National Park Spring 2010
From http://natureandwildlifephotography.blogspot.com/2010/04/great-falls-national-park-spring-2010.html.
The River's water levels are coming down, and the herons are fishing in the main falls some. Over the last week I saw Great Blue Herons flying around with nesting material, as well as competing for spots to fish from.
There's a rookery up river that is pretty active, and an eagle's nest too. The eagle appear to now have a chick. I didn't follow the exact dates, but the chick might be 2 weeks old now.
I forgot and now remembered some of why I like Great Falls so much. The herons and water are such great attractions, and not having to drive a hundred miles (bombay hook refuge, blackwater refuge) is a nice change of pace.
While there I also saw a couple bluebirds, as well as many vultures (turkey and black). There was also a Red-Tailed Hawk with some crows dogging it on more than one occasion over the main falls.
I highly recommend folks visit Great Falls National Park. Bring a tripod and a short and long lenses.
-50-
Nikographer.com / Jon
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Sunday, December 13, 2009
Some D300s Bald Eagle Videos
I've had the camera a few weeks now, the Nikon D300s, and I think it is very similar to the D300 for still images, and that's fine. I haven't noticed any big differences, and just remembered one thing I want to do is take another custom white balance reading with an expo disc, and then set my normal fine tune to that. I do shoot RAW, but often still set the WB to custom because it looks closer to accurate color on the back of the camera.
The 2nd memory card slot is neat, I've got a 16GB compact flash card, and an 8GB SD card with the video going to the SD card and still images to the CF card.
Read on for more and for the 2 new videos.
One thing I am not immediately happy about is the format (720p AVI) is not recognized properly by my normal (old) fav video edit app (Video Vegas). These are edited in Windows Live Movie Maker.
I'm going to try to convert in movie maker to WMV and then use Video Vegas. So far that appears to be working, but I've yet to view the output video. I suspect it is going to be lower quality/ smaller video.
I do have Nero from my DVD player and will try that, but in the past I've found VV to be the most intuitive app to use, and it has some nice overlay features for text, images, and the transitions are easy to do. Nero has seemed pretty clunky or required multiple isolated areas of work to put something together.
By comparison, the Canon HD video camera I have produces some strange format for the video, and the version of Nero that came with it crashes not just the app, but reboots my computer completely. And the update/uninstall and reinstall process is horrible. If only that camera came with a simple tool to convert the video to something standard, doing just that, I'd be much happier with the camera.
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Back to the D300s's video, I don't see how it can be very useful for moving scenes/subjects without autofocus that works well.
One plus about the size of the D300s's sensor and the resulting video is that teleconverters really don't degrade the video quality as far as I can tell. I've been setting focus in still image mode, turning on live view, then adjusting exposure (play button held down + multi-selector UP or DOWN), and then hitting record (center button of multi-selector).
Also, I use the Azden SMX-10 mic for stereo audio. In windy conditions it still picks up a LOT of wind noise, so I need to add a sock or two or something...
-Jon
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Thursday, November 26, 2009
Bald Eagle - Full Crop NY S47 Band
I've seen a few eagles with a noticeably full crop, but none as pronounced as this bird today.
The bird was a banded eagle, from New York, with a (blue state) band of S47.
read on for more images, etc.
I don't know, if these aren't the utmost examples of what a bird and a full crop are, then maybe nothing can explain it via photos!
It was foggy most of the day, drizzled a little and there was like 10 minutes that the blue sky peeked through in the smallest patch, and these S47 shots were probably the best of the day for me since they show off such a unique thing even in the bland light...
p.s. this bird has a GPS transmitter, and you can see the antenna in a few of the photos.
-happy shooting,
Jon
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Monday, October 19, 2009
Susquehanna River MD - Oct 18 2009
Mid-October is not nearly peak for bald eagles at the Dam on the Susquehanna River yet, but it's good there.
This past Sunday it was scheduled to be rainy ALL day, like 90% chance each and every hour according to weather.com. I was so jazzed to go shooting that I woke up around 4am and headed out to another spot on the eastern shore of Maryland and then later wound up at the river.
I counted 50 eagles across the river without even trying in like 15 seconds.
Read on for more including a video...
Virtually no one else was at the river to see the eagles when I got there before noon. Within a few hours a handful of folks showed up. It was a slow day, but this time of year slow is still awesome.
Myself and others spotted an adult eagle with an antenna (ie GPS transmitter) - I think the standard is to track location data and upload it once or twice a day to conserve battery power. If you click to view the larger version you can see the antenna coming out of the back of this eagle
There were also a few banded birds, including this one with a green state band (I forget which state that is, MA/Mass. maybe?):
And this adult that had a blue state band (NY):
For me photographywise the highlight was this bald eagle flying by with a large catfish:
Also, one of the resident Peregrine Falcons flew up river too fast for me to catch a shot early in the day, then later (maybe same bird) one flew by and circled overhead for a brief moment and I managed an ID shot, nothing spectular:
I put together a some video from the morning of the eagles along the water, and as the sirens sounded to warn everyone to take to higher ground as the power generation was about to start. I'm a bit upset with myself because a guy was following me around and kept talking as I was trying to record some clean video. I should have spoke up and or walked away - even if just for 5 minutes, but I didn't. And the guy kept saying something like every 20 seconds whenever I'd hit the record button. So I had to chop up the video and remove audio completely from the last clip.... Fortunately the sirens in the video was still cool.
(note it says 11/18/2009 in the video-text but it was shot on 10/18/2009...)
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Thursday, October 1, 2009
Octobers Past
I took most of September off from Flickr's daily grind of posting and visiting friends photos... And now I am back at it, posting, etc.
October's going to be awesome. Fall is such a great time in this area (Maryland, Virginia, Delaware - New England!, etc. The birds, the foliage, the cool weather, the later sunrises and earlier sunsets - I just love those changes.
3 Years ago I made my first trip to the Susquehanna River in search of eagles and it was a day like none other, with a real drama that unfolded revealing the character present in so many of the photographers there that day (and DNR's extremely slow response).
Read on for more....
We thought that eagle must have hit the power lines and broke a wing and he then drifted down river.
He was left for dead, then rescued and then a couple of days later at a rehab facility deemed too injured to be rescued...
That same day I got one of my all time favorite bald eagle photos. Since that day I've been a ton of times to the river to see the eagles. Peak time for them (mostly migratory eagles) is Thanksgiving to Christmas.
Some of the other places that I've been in Octobers past are Shenandoah National Park, where late October is good for foliage
and Mason Neck State Park in VA where some fog and a walk on the 'beach' gifted me with an brief encounter with a red fox
And some god-beams peaking through the trees early during a walk at Mason Neck
The river and eagles is probably the highlight of Fall here in Maryland, watch the leaves turn and fall and the eagles arrive, hungry for fish, and less afraid of human proximity than locals - it's a great thing.
I like to go with the flow, and plan for trips and get out shooting a lot, often. But when sunrise is earlier than 6am or the day's heat bring temps at or above 95 degrees I tend to save my energy. But it is the welcome Fall season where heat fades, the sun rises later and the days bristle with color that I make that extra push to get out and shoot.
It's October 1st and the next two months are going to be awesome. I just can't wait. Be it 100 miles away or 10 miles away, there's always something to search for in Fall...........
-Happy Shootin'
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Friday, June 19, 2009
Blackwater NWR - Bald Eagles in June
I've been in to photography and eagles for coming up on 4 years, and I've been going to Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge for the majority of that time. For whatever reason I've had gaps in when I've been to Blackwater. June was one of those gaps, the bald eagles have recently fledged in the area and the osprey have young chicks.
Here's one of the adults, possibly from the cam-nest:
I went a few days ago to Blackwater, read on for more.
I've been to Blackwater around 45 or 50 times, starting in about December 2005. It really helps to go some where a lot. Things like where exactly the eagle cam-nest is, or habits of the eagles can be learned by spending a lot of time at a refuge like Blackwater. While I like to share all sorts of images from a place like Blackwater, I think people should put in the time themselves to visit a favorite place and learn its special details.
It took a couple years to just find some fox kits, and that was last year, this year I've been a few times and struck out even though I know I was close:
The above is from early April 2008, when the kits may have been just a few weeks old.
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So, my recent trip has resulted in seeing quite a few just fledged bald eagles. One was perched with its parents right off of Key Wallace Drive near the visitor's center:
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The next images are from right off of the Wildlife Drive. The pair of adults (probably the cam-nest pair) were perched on a pole together watching their territory. Another (neighbor) bald eagle was hidden in the grass out of my sight, but in their sight, and after a couple moments all the eagles hit the air:
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Near the cam-nest is another nest, that's closer to the Wildlife Drive. There's just tons of eagle's nests in the area so, being surprised that there's a nest here or there is not what you should be thinking. Taking some time to just look around almost anywhere at Blackwater, you will probably find/see a nest.
Roughly between the cam-nest and the other nest I spotted 3 Juvenile Bald Eagles all perched together. Young eagles have a way of calling out like the little kids that they are, and listening revealed them to me this time...
And finally, here's a bald eagle hanging out in the grass at the refuge, right off of the Wildlife Drive as well.
Unlike some other spots I've visited on multiple occasions, Blackwater NWR in Maryland never disappoints. There are more than a hundred resident eagles, and there are Golden Eagles there too, as well as osprey, herons, hawks, harriers and all sorts of great wildlife to see. I've got a set on flickr devoted to Blackwater NWR here with a variety of things I've seen...
-Jon
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