The first time I ever went to Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, many years ago, I had the pleasure of witnessing the sunrise while crossing the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. I say pleasure because I had not planned it right and didn't know how far I had to drive (no smart phone at the time, no google maps, and no proper prior planning) and while I was less than half way there I got to see the sunrise and realized I had blew it, and would be more than an hour "late" for sunrise...
Pretty much every visit since, over 50 easily in the last 9 or 10 years I've made it to Blackwater before sunrise, sometimes 45 minutes before... It is around a 100 miles to drive for me, and can take nearly 2 hours in the early morning. And it is totally worth it. Here are a couple sunrises from Blackwater that were awesome/epic/wow'd me, etc... Any many more here.
And finally this sunrise, from my second visit when I did actually make it in time for sunrise... ( Taken on December 16, 2006)
In March 2016 I think the weather wasn't supposed to be great and I slept in and then decided anyway to go east, and instead of getting up at 4am I got up at 5:30am or something. As I was driving I saw the amazing sunrise and these strange clouds and it was something to see. So for the first time, I stopped on the East side of the Bay Bridge at sunrise and went to the marina there.
Previously I'd shot the Snowy Owl that was there in the evening, while coming back from the Eastern Shore:
All that lead up to show off these two images I've shared so far from this spot... I shot a bunch, walked on the docks a bit, shot looking east, looking west, and took a few hundred photos. Then I continued east and hit a couple other spots without going to Blackwater.
Empty Docks
Sunrise @ Chesapeake Bay Bridge
Finally, here's a 'contact sheet' from the images I processed and rated from this day in March 2016. I've only posted the 2 above so far. There might be another couple to post from the sunrise timeframe... Later in the day the images were not unique, though it was fun to see the osprey early in the season the ducks as well.
If you're wondering about how I rate images, here it is:
1= come back and find this image and process it later.
2=used for an automated image/hdr creation, not editing by itself for single export
3=any edited image that is not rated higher
4=hdr images (TIF's then processed and exported), or regular images that are a "4". So just because an HDR is a 4 doesn't mean it is an image I really like.
5=highest rating, any image that I REALLY like...
Original content posted at http://natureandwildlifephotography.blogspot.com/
Nikographer.com / Jon
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Tuesday, October 18, 2016
Sunrise at Hemingways near the Chesapeake Bay Bridge March 2016
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Going Vertical #2
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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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/
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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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Thursday, February 25, 2010
Birds - 1, 2, 3, Many!
My recent presentation had a section of images devoted to flocks of birds. I spoke to how shooting those initial images of larger numbers of birds (100's, 1000's at once) is easy. You can get walls of Snow Geese in flight, or all on the water or ice. Or maybe 100's of Red-Winged Black Birds (and grackles, brown-headed cowbirds, etc)...
This past weekend I was lucky enough to see 10,000+ snow geese. I shot them during mid-day Saturday and again on Sunday from sunrise to mid-day.
With that many birds, it seemed logic to try to isolate them, shoot them one, two, even three at a time....
One
Two
Three
So, trying to shoot huge numbers of birds I wound up focusing on a few at a time on some occasions.
I DID also shoot the larger flocks as well, and I think I got some new to me images like this one with some depth created by the different sizes the snow geese appear in the image as... There's a real foreground and background as a result.
To get these images, different ones, took me thinking a little differently. The spot I shot from didn't line up all that perfectly. The light was coming from the back and side of the birds as they approached. But that made it unique and better / different than my previous Snow Goose shots/days.
Sometimes trying to control things, trying to follow certain rules, leads to non-unique images. Moving beyond that is a worth while effort.
That reminds me of Bombay Hook and the snow geese there. Shooting right as you arrive at sunrise from the T in the road just past the visitors center, the sun can be right behind any flying birds in Raymond Pool. And in the past I've stopped there briefly, but never setup and tried to shoot from there for more than a minute or two. Given the above shots and experience at blackwater I will try to recall this, and not try to work from a script, or move to the 'good spots' without thinking it through a little more.
The lesson I took from last weekend was to have good habits, work hard, get up at 3 or 4am, drive 100+ miles (I went to Assateague Island on a day trip AND went to Blackwater Refuge the SAME Day) - but to also be flexible, try new things, spend time (I spent around 2 hours at this spot), and also go with what is working or has worked! I went back Sunday too, after Saturday afternoon had worked at Blackwater...
I took this funny shot of a pony at Assateague Saturday morning.
--50--
-Jon
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