Over the past couple of days I’ve been chasing a Spot-breasted Oriole thought he neighborhood in an epic game of telephoto cat and mouse. Mostly with the mouse, er bird, winning. In the mean time I’ve also been working on continuing the two open series, A Brief History of Focusing and Photographing Flowers as well as starting work on a 3rd series investigating the design of camera UIs.
I was working on a new series about the history of focusing and focus aids when I looked outside and saw this the sky was turning simply amazing colors. Unfortunately, it was too late to go find a foreground worth including, but I wasn’t about to pass up the shot at the colors.
I’ve always liked clouds, not normal clouds but big cumulonimbus clouds. Especially when they’re back-lit in the morning or late afternoon. Abstract in nature, often with interesting lighting and tonalities and always impressive in scale. On that note, I shot these of a brewing storm a couple of weeks ago.
Or the problem with umbrellas, shiny objects and reflections. Either way I was fooling around with decorations and lights on my desk and cooked up this in the spirit of Easter.
Black cloth forms the background, the light is provided by a single Canon 580Ex II to high and to camera right tripped by Pocket Wizards, shooting into a Westcott 43″ Double Fold Umbrella, there are white reflectors to camera left, camera center, and camera right to provide fill.
I just got back from an interesting trip to Sanibel and Ding Darling NWR. I had been hoping to get a couple of decent sunsets, I even borrowed some grand ND filters to have better control over the lighting as the sun was setting. Anyway, if you don’t follow my twitter feed, the entire time I was there the island was socked in with sea fog, except for a couple of brief clear times. The total lack of a decent sunset was definitely disappointing.
Anyway, Ding was pretty quiet, though crowded compared to the last time I was there in December. The highlight of that excursion was when a Bald Eagle showed up, though it was to far away to really warrant shooting. I’m not convinced that Ding is really practical for shooting, there haven’t been great numbers of birds when I’ve been there, nor are they close enough to be practical to shoot without some seriously long glass. All in all I find shooting shorebirds on the beach to be much more productive and enjoyable.
All in all I didn’t shoot a whole lot, but I’m still slowly working though the images, and mostly trying to ID shorebirds as that is still a big weakness for me. Anyway more to come.