Upde Designs

Happy Monday!

Saturday I traveled to Green Island Wildlife Reserve to meet my friend Andreas Exner.  I had not been to Green Island for many months so I was anxious to see what had changed since the last time I was there.  I also was hoping for some migrating wildlife to photograph.  After visiting with Andreas for a while he said he didn’t expect there to be any migrating wildlife this day and he was correct.

The little guy above was in our back yard carrying grass with his brother to their nest.  I captured this image before heading to Green Island.  I was lucky to catch him in this “flying” position. 🙂

These are not great eagle shots.  The eagles were pretty far away on the ice so I had to crop the images so you could see them better.  Since I rarely print my images I do not mind cropping from time to time.  I know many photographers consider cropping a sin, but I’m all about getting the best image I can and if that means cropping so be it.

I like this series of images because for me capturing the eagle making the catch is the sweet spot.  Even though we were pretty far away from the eagles my heart rate always accelerates when I’m anywhere near eagles. 🙂

We didn’t find anything at Green Island so Andreas suggested we drive further south to Sabula.  There is a wonderful lake at Sabula and usually this time of year there are lots of eagles on the ice and in the trees.  As we traveled across the bridge there were probably 20 -30 eagles sitting on the ice but nowhere to park or no way to get close to them.  So we continued to the park area where there was a better photo opportunity albeit fewer eagles.

I’ll leave you with this image of some ring-billed gulls enjoying the sun, sleeping and grooming.  It was a nice day and certainly fun to shoot with Andreas again.  We share the same passion for photography.

That’s it for today.  Thanks for stopping by the blog.  Enjoy your day and be careful.