Snowy Owl in Our Neighborhood

When I say “neighborhood” I mean anything within 20 minutes’ drive and since location of where we spotted the owl falls into this category then this owl is in our neighborhood. Now that general geographic location of this fairly rare bird for South-Western Ontario is established let’s get down to details.

This morning about 9 o’clock we were driving to London taking a scenic country road route. Nice sunny day, just few clouds on horizon and not a fleck of snow anywhere. The country roads here are quite chopped up so it is constant left turn and few kilometers down the road you do a right turn and so it goes until you zigzag your way in diagonal North-Westerly direction to Highway 401 or all the way to London just 45km away. Shortly after I made one of these direction changes I spotted bright white bird in a plowed corn field and immediately said to Marjo: “We’ve just passed a snowy owl.” I stopped immediately about 70 meters past the spot he was sitting, got out of the car and slowly opened up the trunk where I had all my camera gear from this morning sunrise shoot (yes, another one) including my heavy Manfrotto 500 tripod. I mounted Canon75-300mm zoom paired with 1.4X extender on the camera which was the longest lens in my bag, I left my Vivitar 120-600mm zoom coupled with 2X extender at home (never again!) and started to move towards the owl. I didn’t want to take my tripod because it is big and it would look threatening to the bird. I definitely regret that decision since I use tripod all the time, I like sharp photos. I was astonished how calm that bird was, he did pay attention to me as you can see from his expression but he was too busy getting at his meal that looked like a groundhog or rabbit, it was dark grey brown and fairly large. He lifted it few times but I never caught it on camera. I will go back tomorrow with my long lens and see if I can relocate him again. The location where he was to day is at  42°53'13.69"N, 80°53'53.00"W, which is on north side of Wilson and west of Pigram Rd. in Elgin County, south-east of London.

Most of the time, I was ignored. Too bad I didn’t use my tripod!!!

Interesting Morning Photo Shoot

Yesterday (December 10^th) I have witnessed very rare occurrence when sunrise and full moon set coincided within minute of each other. It was quite coincidental discovery for me. I was driving west to shoot a sunrise over a local wood lot when I have spotted huge moon setting in north-west direction. The moon was full, huge and had a yellowish tint while the ground was almost red because of dramatic sun rise at the same time. I shot about 20 frames of each. For the moon I was lucky to have my 600mm with 2X extender with me, that gave me 1,200mm long tele lens. The Sunrise was even more dramatic, blood red and for about half a minute all the fields were red like Savannah in Africa. Now I have to find out when the sunrise and full moon set will coincide again but I guess that it is quite rare, maybe once in a lifetime occurrence when you factor in the weather.

Celestian information from Garmin MapSelect.

Canon Rebel T1i, 160mm lens, f/5, 1/3,200, ISO 400

Sunrise

Canon Rebel T1i, Vivitar 120-600mm zoom plus 2X extender, f/5.6, 1/60, ISO 400

...and most incredible Full Moon Set. Once in the lifetime chance to see both at the same time!

Note: These are raw and un-altered pictures.

Strobe Photography – Part 2

I did more strobe pixs of water droplets but this time instead of white card to bounce flash I used old calendar page with yellow sunflowers and white daisies. It came out pretty good. Later on I took my camera, strobe and tripod outside to take some early morning pictures of dew on peach tree branches and leaves. Then I packed my gear and drove to Lake Lisgard to take some foggy morning photographs. It was a good day.

The cedar that reflects in dew drop is only 1 meter behind the twig.

50mm Macro, f/16, 1/16sec., ISO 800, off camera flash at 1/32 power fired from left side.

Lake Lisgar at 9 o'clock.

Sunrise on Lake Lisgar

18mm lens, f/10, 1/400sec, ISO 100, CP filter

Strech of Trans-Canada Trail system.

Strobe Photography - More Fun with Camera

As I was surfing YouTube I came across interesting movie about photographing water droplets. Since I had everything needed for this specialised form of photography, generally called “strobing”, I just had to try it. I needed solid tripod, flash, radio strobe trigger set and lots of time on hand. The fact that I also have a light tent for close-ups was big advantage. Here are the results. Watch the video on YouTube to see how the set-up and focusing works.

In this shot I used Cloudy White Balance setting. Rest of the photographs were taken with Tungsten White Balance.

Canon Rebel T1i, Manual mode, 1/60 shutter, Macro lens 50mm 1:3.5 set at f/16 and 1:3 magnification, ISO 400, Yongnuo Digital flash YN468 at 1/16 power, Jianisi PT-04TM radio trigger, Cullmann 2904 tripod and head.

It is Nice to Have Indoor Hobbies

Today was a typical rainy, cold and windy day. No outdoor activities for me, no sir. Since I hardly watch any TV at all and I didn’t feel like reading even though I have 2 books and 2 magazines started, it left cooking and taking some indoor pictures. As far as cooking goes I made a load of pot-stickers for tonight’s meal and for freezer. That took over 3 hours and then it was camera’s turn. I love close-up and macro photography and I have all the equipment to do it so it was just a question of a subject. Close-ups of sandy or pebble beaches are always interesting and I do have a tiny pebble beach in our Japanese Garden but there was no way that I will crawl on wet ground and in the rain. There was only one solution: beach has to come inside. Piece of cake! Styrofoam plate used for packaged meat was base for my “beach”, spray water bottle provided the “rain” and my light-box finished the set-up. Yup, it is nice to have multiple hobbies! J

"Pebble Beach on Rainy Day."

Or, is it?

And here is the set-up. 2 fluorescent fill lights and 1 off camera TTL flash bouncing light from reflective top of the light box. f/22, 1/8 second, ISO 400, 55mm lens

Fun with Camera – October

I know that lots of people like Fall but for me it is not a favorite part of the year. I know that for few weeks it is very colorful time of the year, especially here in Ontario, and that it offers tons of picture taking opportunities, but for me it is a sad season. Everything around me in nature is dying or coming to rest and I just don’t see beauty in that. I love Spring when everything is fresh and growing and everywhere you look there is new life. I guess I have to wait 6 months for that so meanwhile, as far as picture taking opportunities go, I’ll shoot some leaves and the usual fall pictures.

Last month I bought variable neutral density filter (ND) for my 18 – 55mm and 70 – 300mm zoom lenses. What an incredible piece of equipment! It lets me stretch the shutter speed and gives the picture very interesting quality. You see pictures of waterfalls, rivers, lakes etc. in magazines and calendars but most people don’t know how that blurry, sort of dreamy look was achieved. Last few weeks I around with this ND filter and here are some examples.

Ornamental grasses on a windy day.

f/11, 1.3 second, ND filter, ISO 100, Aperture Priority. Thanks to longer exposure made possible by use of ND filter you can see the movement of the grasses.

Lake Lisgar, Tillsonburg.

f/16, 15 seconds, ND filter, ISO 100, Aperture Priority. With ND filter set about 3/4 maximum the lake looks flat, not even a ripple. Anytime I use the ND filter I rely on my super heavy Manfrotto tripod.

Lake Lisgar, Tillsonburg.

f/20, .5 second, ND filter, ISO 100, Aperture Priority.

Otter Creek, Tillsonburg.

f/5, 1/20 seconds, +1ND filter, ISO 100, Aperture Priority

In regular shot the rapids look fast and choppy.

Otter Creek, Tillsonburg.

f/11, 1.6 seconds, ND filter, ISO 100, Aperture Priority. With longer exposure the rapids appear slow and smooth.

Port Bruce, Lake Erie.

f/10, 1/8 second, ND filter, ISO 400, Aperture Priority. Here the ND filter acts as a regular polarizer filter, which it basically is, and darkens the sky.

Black Walnut, Sparta, Ontario.

f/7, 1/200 second, ND filter, ISO 400, -1 Exposure compensation, off camera flash with E-TTL on. Since I was shooting straight against the sun the flash was a must.

Hummingbirds

Looks like hummingbirds are on the way South and I am having fun with my Canon Rebel T1i camera and my long lenses. Although I am fairly new to digital SLR camera I am an old hand with a regular SLR, something like 35 years, thousands of slides and so much time spent in my darkroom it is wonder that I didn’t develop night vision just like owls have. What an incredible invention digital camera is! Buy good, fast memory SD card, get a spare battery and you can shoot all you want without any additional cost. I just love it.

Anyway, the hummingbirds are feeding on our flowers, especially Cardinal Flower and Calibrachoa (Million Bells) so often now that all I have to do is sit down and wait. I like to use manual focus because I am used to it and because the autofocus with long lens is very unreliable. This afternoon as I was adjusting some settings on my camera flash that is always mounted on the side of my Canon, I spotted one hummingbird coming to the Cardinal Flower. I went to work and this is the result of just about 30 seconds of shooting.

All pictures were taken with 75 - 300mm f/4-5.6 lens, manual focus, single frame shooting, flash set on E-TTL exposure metering, shutter speed 1/200 (synch speed for flash), aperture automatic, ISO automatic. The planter with the flowers was about 18 feet away from where I was standing. See the arrow.

Since tripod with hummingbirds is not practical, very steady hands are prerequisite. Right hand holds camera and triggers the shutter and left hand focuses the lens.

Now I have to figure out the light angle so that hummingbirds will show off his ruby throat! I will move around and see what the best angle is. Isn’t it nice to have some free time on hand? J

 These two shots are just half a second apart