Revealing the Hidden Beauty of Colorado
A very pleasant 56 degrees as we set out at 6:15 this morning. Very few clouds promised a sunny day as soon as the sun cleared the buttes that line Rock Canyon. If there was a breeze I did not notice it. This was not a particularly active day in the bird world at Lake Pueblo State Park. There was another ruckus at the heron nest that seemed to settle down when one of the birds flew off. I can’t tell parent from child at this point so it’s hard to say what the commotion was all about. I did…
Here is another time lapse I shot last August. This clip is comprised of 288 individual .jpg frames shot at seven second intervals. Exposure on all frames was f-22, 1/160 second at ISO 200. These images were developed and cropped in ON1 Photo Raw (2109) and then exported as FHD .jpg files for “animation” in Pinnacle video editing software.Gear: Panasonic Lumix GX-85; 14-54mm lens.Software: ON1 Photo Raw; Pinnacle Studio Ultimate V22.
Summer is returning. After two days of cooler temps we set out this morning at 6:15 in 65 degrees of sunny sunshine. Only a very slight breeze was there to offer any possibility of cooling. Highlights from today’s outing are twofold – both involving nests. Whisper and I swung past the heron nest in the Osprey Picnic Area and I was fully expecting to find it empty. It was not. All three of the siblings were perched there. I got one shot of all three but while I was repositioning myself for a closer shot two of them flew off….
This morning was even cooler at 59 degrees than it was yesterday at 6:15. Maybe tomorrow it will snow. Pretty cloudy but some sun especially near the end of my walk. Really a beautiful day for a stroll though the trails and lawns were a bit muddy as a result of last evening’s rain. The first thing Whisper and I did was check out the Osprey nest that I spotted yesterday. The reason I saw it was because I was following the flight of an Osprey who was carrying what looked like nesting material and s/he flew right to the…
One of the “bonus features” available on the Panasonic Lumix GX-85 (and probably on many other Panasonic mirrorless cameras) is the ability to digitally “extend” the focal length of the lens in use to allow for greater magnification of your subject with out a huge loss of detail. The image below is taken from the GX-85 manual and lays out the options. It is important to note that this function is NOT available when you are shooting RAW format images. To demonstrate the effect this function has in an actual shooting situation I offer the three images below all taken…
What a difference a day makes! We were greeted today by a very comfortable 62 degrees with only a slight breeze. Only intermittent sun this morning created by the mostly cloudy sky. The day was so nice that no birds felt like being photographed. Actually not many even wanted to be seen. I saw a number of Mule Deer and the image below is one of them, a young buck. I also saw my favorite doe (I call her Notch) grazing in the weeds where it was not possible to get a useful photo. I did say hello as I…
And the heat goes on… This morning at 6:10 it was a crisp 74 degrees with a lot of clouds and a little (very warm) wind. The sunshine was intermittent at first but gained a solid foothold by the end of the outing. Today’s walk was more productive, photographically, than it was yesterday. A number of birds were accommodating enough to pose for a picture or two. On the right is a Flicker who seemed quite interested in the branch he was working on. When I arrived at the fishing pond my favorite Barn Swallow “Barney” was at his usual…
After some deliberation I finally decided to head out for a walk this morning. Things weren’t looking good. Cloudy sky with intermittent sun and a really stiff breeze (wind) were waiting for us at the park. Not to mention the 75 degree temperature which the warm wind did nothing to mitigate. But I had let the weather keep me home yesterday so Whisper and I started out around 6:15. Apparently the weather was keeping the most of the birds home. I saw a couple of Osprey riding the wind currents off of the Rock Canyon bluffs as we arrived. I…
Hotter this morning. Early start at 6:03 with temp already at 71. No serious clouds and a slight breeze. Today’s walk can be best described as mellow. The only real action came at the very start of our walk right as we came upon the Arkansas River. With no warning at a Cormorant surfaced from a dive with a rather large fish in his jaws. I had no time to think about camera settings I just pointed and fired. Sadly my camera selected a rather slow shutter speed so my captures were somewhat disappointing. The “best” of four frames is…
Hot again this morning. Got going at 6:05 with temp in the mid 60s. No clouds and a breeze that was trying hard to graduate to full on wind. With the temperature being what it was I had decided to take an abbreviated walk by only taking Whisper on his shorter tour and then calling it a day. We looped past a short stretch of the Arkansas River (gorgeous in the rising sun) and then I circled back to have a look at the heron nest. There were four birds present and there seemed to be a little restlessness within…