Upde Designs

Happy Monday! 

What a fun weekend.  I could get use to this being off!  Yesterday Jeanne and I went for our normal Sunday photo drive and the first place we wanted to go was the 16th Street Basin.

Jeanne saw him first but even from a distance you could tell it was a lone Great Blue Heron.  They are so skittish we knew we had to be stealthy.  So I drove only about 5 mph on the wrong side of the road so that he wouldn’t be bothered by us.  Once I got past him I got the camera set up.  I shot these images with the Nikon D4 | Sigma 50 – 500 mm VR lens | ISO 400 1/1250 sec @ f8.0. 

When we got turned around and drove back, as soon as I stopped the car he gave me this pose and I knew that it meant he was ready to depart the area.  So I just started firing off the camera, figuring that none of the shots would be in focus but hoping I would get one out of the group that was usable.  I was really pleased with this one.

I got very lucky on this series of shots and the camera and lens performed beautifully.  Remember you can click on the image and see a larger version of the image.

We then went down to the river and visited our favorite little park.  There wasn’t much going on there so we decided to take a look at the lock and dam.  Much to our surprise there were 4 – 6 eagles flying.  I never got a killer shot of one as they were more on the Wisconsin side of the dam but I did get some decent shots of eagles as a couple of them got close to my lens.

So between Saturday and Sunday I got a lot of wildlife shots.  Eagles, Herons, Ducks, and yes Betty, some Geese.  🙂

If you like wildlife shots you should enjoy the posts this week.  If not, well I’m sorry because for the most part that’s all I have so far.  Of course, now with Daylight Savings Time in effect I have shooting opportunities every evening after work.  This evening some of my friends from work asked me to fly the Phantom again so I am going to take it with me and if the weather conditions permit I’ll have some video later in the week.

I did take the Phantom with me yesterday in hopes of flying it over the Basin, but the wind was just too high and with my limited flight experience I was unwilling to risk it.  Probably a smart thing.  Well actually Jeanne said no.  🙂

That’s it for today.  I hope you enjoy your day.  Thanks for stopping by and be careful.