Nikon D700 | Nikon 70 - 200 mm lens | ISO 200 1/500 sec @ f9

Happy Thursday. It was a good shooting day for me yesterday.  I grabbed a sandwich at Subway and then headed out for some fun.  I went looking for a bridge I had seen sometime ago but couldn’t find it (actually I couldn’t remember where I had seen it) so I came back to the Duck Pond to see what was shaking there.

There were a bunch of little ducks with dark heads (Andreas would know what kind they are) but they are just little ducks to me.  Anyway I quietly got out of the car and slowly started walking toward them and just as I was bringing the lens to my eye they did this water walk to the other side of the pond.  I didn’t even have the burst mode on, just manually snapped as many shots as I could get (which is why they are a little soft.)

Nikon D700 | Nikon 70 - 200 mm lens | ISO 200 1/500 sec @ f9

I walked around and waited for a long while but the ducks and geese stayed on the far end of the pond.  I decided to drive over to the Interpretive Center and see if I could find any birds closer as I didn’t have my long lens with me.

As I rounded the corner on the way to the Interpretive Center I found these geese exploring a small inlet area next to the shore.  They didn’t seem to mind me and so I was able to get some close up shots of them.

I got a few more shots of the pond to show you later but that’s it for the Duck Pond today.  After work I headed home.  It was a bright sunny day and I knew that Jeanne had an appointment after work so I decided to go down to the river and see what the flood stage looked like.

Nikon D300S | Nikon 18 - 200 mm lens | ISO 200 1/200 sec @ f10

I don’t remember seeing the river this high and so full.  I’m sure it has been but you have to realize that I don’t remember what I what I did yesterday so I can’t remember how high the river has been over the 30 years that I’ve been here.  I was just impressed how high the river actually was today.

I saw a pair of Mallard Ducks swimming very close to the shore and so I walked out as close as I could get.  Apparently this guy is used to having his picture taken or I’m getting really good at this because he let me get very close.  I’m thinking he is pretty used to humans coming close to him and probably even throwing him something to eat.  Which might explain the loud quacking and look of disgust he displayed as he swam off when I didn’t feed him. 🙂

Well that’s it for today.  I have some (I think) pretty good shots to show you over the next few days.  I shot several HDR images at the river and I’m anxious to see how they come out.  It was late last night when I got to the laboratory so I only got to process these three images.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by.  Be careful.

I told Jeanne last night that I didn’t have anything to post for today.  I’ve had after work meetings two nights in a row so nothing.  Her response, “You have thousands of images in your archive, why not use some of them.  Why not indeed.  No Eagles or wildlife but lots of other images to choose from.

So I was rummaging through my images and came across a bunch I shot while I was attending the Graduate School of Banking  HR Program in Madison last August.  I went down on State Street one night and  there was plenty of things to shoot.

The group above is an all Cuban band.  They were holding a street performance this evening and they were quite good.  When they took a break I walked on down State Street.

I remember they told us in class one day that you could find  a lot of interesting sights on State Street.  Just about anywhere I went on State Street there were musicians playing.  This individual was in his own world.  I watched him for a while and finally asked if I could take his image.  He rolled his eyes at me as if to say how bourgeoisie.  So I ignored his boorish behavior and took the image anyway. 🙂

I just remember it was hotter than the hubs of hell this particular evening and I was full from dinner, tired from all the walking, and just downright uncomfortable.  So I took a few more images and then headed for the ice-cold air-conditioned hotel room and a nice cool shower.

By that time the all Cuban Band was cranking up for their second set.  Twenty years ago I would have hung around and enjoyed the music and the crowd.  But that was 20 years ago and the comfort of my hotel room was much more enticing than the music.  😦

Thanks for stopping by.  Be careful.

Nikon D700 | Nikon 70 - 200 mm f2.8 lens | SB900 | ISO 200 1/60 sec @ f5

Growing up we were very poor.  I didn’t realize it until later but we were.  The one thing you could count on was what ever we had for Sunday dinner (lunch) you would see some form of it on Monday.  🙂  So that’s what I have for today.  I’ve been working on a web site (seems like for ever) and I was determined to get it finished and published by the end of the day yesterday.

I love the image above.  It was a look we saw a fair amount of when we babysit Josh on Saturday.  He just wasn’t sure of what was going on.  Grandma and Grandpa are okay when Mom and Dad are around but when there not, well hence the look.

Nikon D300S | Tamron 200 - 500 mm lens | ISO 200 1/250 sec @ f10

This image is from the “Duck Pond” shoot on Thursday.  I had followed this pair of Geese around the pond trying to get a good shot of them.  One would do their bottom thing and then the other one would.  I couldn’t get them both upright at the same time.  I did however manage to get both their butts at the same time. 🙂

Nikon D300S | Nikon 70 - 300 mm lens | ISO 200 1/200 sec @f10

Finally this interesting railroad bridge at Sabula.  My regret about this bridge is that I didn’t spend more time with the shot and explore the different perspectives available.  It was cold and I was after all after Eagles.  However if it is worth doing it is worth doing right.  I’ll get back to Sabula this Spring and get some better shots.  It would really be cool to take an image of the bridge with a train on it.

Have a great week.  Hope to get some shooting in this week.  Thanks for stopping by and be careful.

Nikon D700 | Nikon 70 - 200 mm F2,8 lens | SB900 Speed Light | ISO 200 1/60 sec @ f5.0

Today was the first day that I got to try out my new lens.  I got it a couple of weeks ago but shooting wildlife is a job for the Tamron 500 mm lens.  The lens is a Nikon 70-200 mm f2.8 VRII lens.  WOW!  That is the only word I can say for it.  Wickedly sharp and fast focusing.  It weighs 7 pounds and for a lens that’s heavy.  It is quite as  can be.  To say that this is my new favorite lens is an understatement.

Nikon D700 | Nikon 70 - 200 mm F2,8 lens | SB900 Speed Light | ISO 200 1/60 sec @ f5.0

So we got the call.  Ben and Angie were going out to dinner with Ben’s family and did we want to baby sit.  Jeanne said yes of course and so she went over at 5:30 pm to do her Grandma thing.  By the way she does it very well. 🙂

Nikon D700 | Nikon 70 - 200 mm F2,8 lens | SB900 Speed Light | ISO 200 1/60 sec @ f5.0

Yes his eyes are really that blue.  I did not enhance this image.  He has the bluest eyes I have ever seen.   I don’t have any pictures of Joshua smiling for this shoot as the only time he was smiling and laughing was when Grandpa was playing with him.  Seems that Grandpa hasn’t lost his skills either. 🙂

Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy the rest of your weekend.  Be careful.

Nikon D300S | Tamron 200 - 500 mm lens | ISO 200 1/340 sec @ f10

Yesterday was a very sad day for lot of people in our community.  I spent a fair amount of my day with friends trying to come to grips with the terrible tragedy of this week.  If any thing positive  has come from this week may it be that we never take the people we care about for granted.  We tell them, hug them, and show them each and every day just how much they mean to us.

Nikon D300S | Tamron 200 - 500 mm lens | ISO 200 1/340 sec @ f10

I love going to the Duck Pond.  I have images of it frozen solid, flooded, with wildlife on it, without wildlife, glassy smooth, white caps, and bone dry with cracked ground.  It is my favorite place to spend some time in solitude and to reflect.

Nikon D300S | Tamron 200 - 500 mm lens | ISO 200 1/340 sec @ f10

So out of the 180 images I shot on Thursday I culled them down to 35 and out of the 35 I will use only 6 and out of the six I will print none.  But the entire process of taking, reviewing, editing, and posting is some of the most fun I have.

Arrived in Dubuque last night in time to meet Angie, Ben, and Josh for dinner at Happy Joe’s Pizza Place.  Jeanne drove herself  as it would have taken an additional 25 minutes for me to drive home and pick her up and then go to the restaurant.  It was a fun time with them.  Josh was awake the entire time and just looked around at all the sights.  Never once got cranky.  Neat kid. 🙂

Be careful and give someone you care about a hug today.  Thanks for stopping by.

Nikon D300S | Tamron 200 - 500 mm lens | ISO 200 1/320 sec @ f10

No this isn’t another set of images from Green Island or Sabula.  These images were taken yesterday on my lunch hour at the Hurstville Wildlife Center.  Affectionately known around Maquoketa as the “Duck Pond.”

There are a pair of Trumpeter Swans that come back every year (for the last 7 years at least.)  They usually stay late up to November before departing.  This year they returned about the middle of February.

Nikon D300S | Tamron 200 - 500 mm lens | ISO 200 1/320 sec @ f10

The “Duck Pond” is known as a rest stop for migratory birds on their way North in the Spring and South in the Winter.  On any given day you may find any number of species of birds.  Last year there was a huge flock of Pelicans that spent a couple of days at the pond.

The  Wildlife Center is only about 1.5 miles from my office and I pass it every morning on the way to work (when the sun is in the perfect position and I am always late) and on the way home when I would be shooting directly into the sun.

Nikon D300S | Tamron 200 - 500 mm lens | ISO 200 1/320 sec @ f10

So yesterday the sun was bright, it was cold and windy but I wanted to get out and do some shooting.  I had noticed a large number of birds on the water when I came by yesterday morning so I thought I’d grab a sandwich and see what I could capture.

It was pretty cold and after about 20 minutes and 180 images I was an ice-cube.  Plus of course I was over my time limit for lunch. There is never enough time.

I don’t know what the Swan above was doing but after her cruise around the pond with her mate she stopped off at their residence and she was flinging grass and dirt every where.  Maybe she was just doing some spring cleaning. 🙂

Anyway it felt good to get out and make some images again.  Hope you have a nice weekend.  I’ll post some more Hurstville images tomorrow.  Be careful and thanks for stopping by.

Good Day.  Okay this is the last Eagle image you will see.  It is the last one that has any value to show in all my collection.  It is the weakest of the weak but I love the pose of this Eagle who has just landed (the instant he landed) and hasn’t yet folded his wings.

My first trip to Green Island, I saw this structure as I was entering the Wildlife Refuge.  It caught my eye but I was so anxious to go find Eagles that I didn’t explore any possibilities with it.  Later on the way out (and being pretty unhappy with what I thought I had in the images of Eagles) I decided that I could at least make an image of something that didn’t move or fly.  I knew I would make it a black and white image when I took it.

And finally on the way back to highway 52 I saw this barn.  Well you know my weakness for barns.  So I had to take a few images of this guy.  He looked like he had been around for many years but was in good condition.

Okay that’s it for my Green Island shots.  They are all used up.  The good news is that my Friend Becki Kenton and I are going back to Green Island on the 9th of April.  Hey Andreas join us if you like.  Of course Steve and Jeanne will join us too.  I’m not sure what they will do while we’re capturing the wildlife at Green Island but if the weather is nice it should be a great adventure.  Stay tuned.

Have a wonderful day and be careful.   And as always thanks for taking the time to look at my work.  I am grateful for your visit.

Sorry, I just have all these Eagle images and I look at them and they are not as good as I would like them to be, but then the more I look at them the more I like them.  So I’m posting some more that didn’t make the first round pick.

The image above is the young Eagle I talked about after my first trip to Sabula.  He grabbed this fish from a more mature Eagle and flew off with it only to drop it a 100 yards later.  Then he didn’t seem to know what to do with it.  This is an out-of-focus image but I wanted to show you the young bird with his prize in flight.

The Sabula experience was such a great learning tool.  I learned so many things on my three trips to Sabula and Green Island.  I really enjoy making images of wildlife even though it is often in difficult conditions.

I saw this guy after I’d been there awhile and was pretty much a frozen Popsicle.  He had been in a tree just above the frozen lake and apparently there was an abandoned fish laying on the ice so what the heck why work for your food when it is just lying around.

He kind of looks like a concord jet landing with his head down, landing gear down and full flaps.  Okay maybe that a little too much but I did like the look of this image.

That’s it for today.  Hope you enjoyed the Eagle pictures.  Sounds like the weather is not going to be good for the rest of the week so I don’t know if I will get any shooting in or not.

Have a great day.  Give the people you love an extra long hug and don’t let the small stuff bother you.  Be careful.

Some more things to show you from our Green Island visit.   For example this Ring Billed Gull was having a snack on this dead fish.  Jeanne and I saw lots of dead fish in the water.  I’m thinking they must have died from the lack of oxygen because the water is fairly shallow and it was frozen solid.   Like I said I’m not really very knowledgeable about wild life.

This pair of Geese were swimming in one of the small ponds located in the wildlife refuge.  They were just slowly meandering along and grooming them selves without so much as a look our way.  We would have never gotten this close to any of the Eagles.

Finally here are a pair of turtles.  We were driving by and I caught some movement out of the corner of my eye.  This pair of turtles had been sunning themselves on this tree branch and when we drove by they dove for the bottom.

We just stopped and stayed motionless for about 5 minutes and slowly they would stick their heads up out of the water, look around, and then go under again.  Finally I guess they decided we were not going to bother them and they finally climbed back up on the log and continued working on their sun tan.

I have really enjoyed the time I spent at Green Island and I’m sure I will go back from time to time this Spring and Summer.  I find it fascinating to watch and photograph the wildlife.

Have a great week.  Thanks for stopping by and be careful.

Nikon D300S | Nikon 70 - 300 mm lens | ISO 200 1/100 sec @f11

When Jeanne and I went to Sabula / Green Island yesterday we stopped in Bellevue to grab a quick sandwich for lunch.  We ate at the Subway on the river and there were probably 40 – 50 fishing boats on the river just below the damn.

We asked the guy at the Subway what was up with that and he said there was some type of fish (spoonbills?) and that the season was only two weeks long.  It started Saturday.  Well I’d never seen that many boats on the river in one place at one time so I grabbed a quick shot.  I didn’t have a wide-angle lens with me so I couldn’t really capture the sight of all the boats congregated in a fairly close area.

Nikon D700 | Tamron 200 - 500 mm lens | ISO 800 1/1250 sec @ f16

I have to show you one more Eagle image.  I spotted this Eagle in a tree and I had the 200 -500 mm lens off the tripod in anticipation of getting a great in flight image of this eagle.  So I walked very slowly up on him trying to keep him in frame as I walked.  Just as I got to THE Line (of course I didn’t know it was the line only he knew that.) I looked down to make sure of my footing and that was the exact moment he decided to fly.  I got a lot of shots of nothing but blue sky 😦

It’s like Jeanne said afterward, “It really makes you appreciate the really good nature photographs you see, when you know how hard they are to get.”

Nikon D700 | Tamron 200 - 500 mm lens | ISO 800 1/500 sec @ f16

After a few more minutes of looking for Eagles we decided to head for Green Island.  Andreas had said he hadn’t seen any Eagles there but Jeanne wanted to see what it was like so we headed out.

It is a very interesting place and the Eco System there must be amazing in the Spring and Summer.  I plan to visit there on a regular basis.  I just hope there aren’t any snakes.

There were lots of Geese at the Refuge and I enjoyed shooting some images of them.  Like Andreas says “They don’t have to be Eagles, I’m just as happy capturing a great image of a Goose as well.”  He is correct.

We saw Andreas again and were going to hook up with him but by that time Jeanne had had all the sitting she wanted for one day.  It was getting late and she wanted to go home.

Thanks for stopping by.  Have a great rest of the weekend.  Be careful.