I was so pumped yesterday. By 10:00 am we had bright sunshine in Dubuque and so my intent was to go to Le Claire LD #14 and shoot with Burt G. I called him and he said that LD #14 was socked in with fog and rain. Plus there were no eagles around.
The good news was that we talked on the phone for about 25 minutes and I picked up some excellent tips from Burt on post processing. So after getting the equipment ready and having a little lunch I decided that I needed to get some practice in with the new lens. I headed for Green Island.
First stop Bellevue. Two minutes after I left Dubuque city limits the sun went behind the clouds and I never saw it again for the rest of the day. It progressively got darker and colder as the day wore on.
Nothing doing at the lock and dam at Bellevue. Undaunted I pressed on to Green Island. By the time I drove all the roads of Green Island my metallic bronze colored car looked like a mud ball. No eagles, no birds, nothing at Green Island. On the way back to the highway I did come across some geese in a pond but they were at the far end and were on the wrong side of the road for me.
Okay now I’m getting disappointed. So I headed for Sabula. I was concerned when I pulled across the bridge because the entire waterway was iced over and there were no birds of any kind on the water.
I thought I might as well go over to the marina and the park and shoot some gulls. The gulls were out in the middle of the water on the ice. Too far for a 500 mm lens. I finally did see 4 eagles. The one eagle on the ice is the first image on this blog and then the second image is of that eagle after I took one step too many trying to get a better angle.
Finally after spending a couple of hours at Sabula trying to wait out a pair of eagles in a tree a guy comes roaring up in his truck and jumps out with a point and shoot camera and bang the eagles are gone.
I stopped at the lock and dam in Bellevue again. There were three eagles flying around the water by the dam. It was pretty dark by this time and it was getting much colder. There isn’t a good place to shoot from at Bellevue. There is one place where a picnic table is pushed up against the fence and you can at least shoot over the fence but you are so far away from the action it is hard to capture a good image.
On the last image I had my 1.4x teleconverter attached. I shot with it a couple of times yesterday and this is the only shot that was half way in focus. It will stay in my bag, correction it will stay in my shelf at home from now on. 😦
Considering the shooting conditions and the lack of eagles I was not unhappy with the results of the day. Far, far from the kind of shots that Burt and Andreas have been getting but at least I can tell there is a vast improvement with the new lens. Now I have to continue working on my skills.
Thanks for stopping by. Enjoy your Sunday and be careful.
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