12/20/2010: Cranes and mountains

I find myself without a mammal for Monday, so it will have to be “mountains for Monday”…and we will throw in the Cranes for free! One of the wonders of Bosque del Apache is that the thousands of Sandhill Cranes and Snow Geese are set against the backdrop of desert mountains on all sides. When the shadows get long in the afternoon, and the sun low to light the underside of the birds, it can be breath-taking. Photos do not do it justice. Still…

Canon SX20IS, 560mm equivalent, f5.7 @ 1/800th @ ISO 400. Sports mode.

Processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom.

12/13/2010: wading deer (mammals on Monday)

Deer in the water wading among the ducks  is a slightly incongruous sight. As usual at Bosque del Apache, at least during the Festival of the Cranes in November, someone was already stopped and taking pictures of this group of Mule Deer crossing one of the irrigation channels. I pulled up behind and grabbed these shots with the Canon SX20IS out the window. As the deer came up on the dyke between enpondments, they showed so little concern for the gathering crowd on the road (for, of course, two stopped cars attracts a third, and three a forth, etc.) that I got out and digiscoped them (see Mule Deer).

Canon SX20IS at 560mm equivalent, f5.7 @ 1/200th and 1/400th @ ISO 200. Programmed auto.

Processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom (see page link above). Both are cropped form the full frame.

12/11/2010: Bosque sky (Scenery for Saturday)

One of those dominating New Mexico, Bosque del Apache skies, and my Scenery for Saturday offering.

Canon SX20IS @ 28mm equivalent. 3 exposure HDR, auto bracketed around –2/3 EV, assembled and tonemapped in Photomatix, processed in Lightroom.

And, just to the left.

Another HDR treatment.

12/10/2010: Merlin!

I was finished for the morning and on my way out of the refuge when this bird caught my eye in the very tip top of a tree just back from the road. I parked and climbed out gingerly, hoping against hope that it would sit long enough to get the digiscolping rig set up. I have never known if the character is named after the bird or the bird after the character, or both after something else, but, what with the Arthur associations, and the elegance of the bird itself, the Merlin is among my favorite birds…and I see it rarely, let along get a chance to digiscope it. It did not spook as I set up, and I took a bunch of shots, though at the limits of what the scope and camera could do. Over the next 15 minutes I worked my way closer until I was right across the road from it, and at a much better distance for digiscoping. Still, these shots are at full zoom on the Canon SD4000IS and about 25x on the scope, for the equivalent field of view of a 2600mm lens (it was a tall tree…big old dead cottonwood). The light was strongly from behind and I had to adjust Exposure Compensation to the plus side to maintain detail in the breast featers.

1/320th @ ISO 125. Programmed auto, plus 2/3EV Exposure compensation.

Processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom.

And, of course, since the bird was so cooperative, here is the video.

Merlin: Bosque del Apache NWR

Like I say, Merlins are always a treat!

12/9/2010: more GBH

I like Great Blue Herons. They are big. They are everywhere. They are attractive, with interesting plumage details and a range of subtle color (not to mention that bright yellow eye). The predominent grays offer no exposure challenges (unlike, say, an Anhinga or Great Egret). And they pose (sometimes for hours). As a photographer, that makes them just about the ideal bird to photograph.

Of course they are interesting from a birder/naturalist aspect to…

This is one of the resident Bosque del Apache GHBs, digiscoped, early afternoon, in the full light of a high desert, Rio Grande Valley, New Mexico day. If I am not mistaken, I photographed this same bird, in just about this same spot, two years ago at Bosque, and probably the year before too…or another very like it. (But then they all look alike to me.) Who could resist?

Canon SD4000IS behind the 15-56x Vario eyepiece on the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL. The first one is at about 1200mm, ISO 125 and 1/1250th second. The second is more like 5000mm, ISO 125 again (great light!) and 1/800th of a second. The two shots show, by the way, the range available with a good digiscoping rig.

Both processed in Lightroom for intensity and clarity.

12/8/2010: Sandhills in Flight (Wings on Wednesday)

Okay, I know I said I was done with Sandhill Cranes last week…and I did break the series, but to be honest I have a lot more Sandhill pics from my trip to Bosque del Apache. And…since it is wings on Wednesday, and a I have little video to share, I could not resist. Forgive me.

The shot is not perfectly framed but I love the light on the wings! It was late afternoon in the last moments before the sun touched the horizon.

Canon SX20IS at 560mm equivalent. F5.7 @ 1/640th @ ISO 640. Sports mode.

Processed in Lightroom for intensity and clarity.

And now the video. Also SX20IS work.

Sandhill Cranes in Flight: Bosque del Apache NWR, November 2010

12/7/2010: Great Blue in a tree

Though I have seen it many times now, it is always still somewhat a shock to see a Great Blue Heron in a tree.

This is one of those cases when it pays to stop and see what the other guy is looking at. During the Festival of the Cranes at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, or most any weekend in November, the photographers outnumber most species except for Cranes and Geese. Or so it seems. They litter the road-sides, cluster where the corn has been freshly knocked down, and the sound of DSLR motor drives is as prevalent as the calls of the geese at sunup and sun down, though not nearly as loud. So this photographer was pulled off where there was no obvious crane or goose concentration…so I stopped to…and there, up this old snag, was this Great Blue Heron.

What makes this shot interesting, besides the bird, is the bokeh…it looks a lot like a Japanese screen of some sort  behind the bird.

Canon SD4000IS behind the 15-56x Vario eyepiece on the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL for something in the 2000mm equivalent range. 1/1000th second @ ISO 160. And I think I still had it on Kids and Pets mode.

Processed for intensity in Lightroom (see page link above).

12/6/2010: Prairie Dogs (Mammals on Monday)

In what has to be one of the oddest instances, Bosque del Apache spent some Our Recovery Dollars at Work building a Prairie Dog town…or maybe the PDs moved in by themselves, but Bosque certainly added some improvements and built a nice little access point and parking lot for visitors.

I have to admit, if you know nothing about PDs, they are cute. Sort of the North American equivalent of Meerkats, only without the movie and the TV show. (They just need an agent!)

The last photo here is the first taken, on a morning visit to the town…but as you can see, the morning light comes in from behind, making photography somewhat difficult. I went back in the afternoon for the shots above, but by afternoon most days the wind is well up, and it fairly sings through the tripod legs. I had to stand between the wind and my rig, to keep the scope from blowing over.

Canon SD4000IS behind the new 15-56x Vario eyepiece on the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL. All were out there in the 2500 to 3000mm equivalent range. The top two are are at 1/1000th at ISO 250, and the bottom one is at 1/640 at ISO 125. I think I had the camera set to Kids and Pets for the top two, which explains the higher shutter speed and ISO.

Processed for intensity in Lightroom. Actually, the last shot required more substantial processing, with a mix of heavy Recovery and Fill Light.

And here is a little video. This was so bouncy and shaky with the wind that I have to pull out the heavy guns here too, and use Vegas Studio to stabilize the video before it was watchable. You can still see a lot of wind shake. The sound track, which I have muted, was nothing but a steady wind roar.

Prairie Dog Town

12/5/2010: Bosque Sunrise!

Happy Sunday!

It is absolutely essential, on every trip to the Festival of the Cranes at  Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico, to get out at least one morning for the dawn fly-out. For one thing November dawns under the mountains along the Rio Grande in New Mexico are spectacular, and for another, the spectacle of the geese rising in streams and leaving the ponds where they spend the night can be breath-taking, awe inspiring, thrilling. It makes the alarm clock and being out before breakfast worth it. It makes  numb fingers and icy feet worth it. It makes, dare I say, life worth it.

It can be, for many people, a true life-changing experience…and opening of the eyes to unsuspected beauty and unexpected possibility…which fundamentally changes the way we see the world.

You can spot the first-timers by the light in their eyes, by the grins, by the voluble and visible delight as they troop back to cars and heaters and cooling coffee. But at least half the crowd (and we are talking several hundred, sometimes 500 or more,  people gathered each dawn during the festival) are returnees…people who by their manner have seen this all before, and have come back one more time to feed something in their souls that responds in the Bosque dawn. Many of these folks, like me, have been coming to Bosque in November for 20 years or more, and still we are out at least one morning before sunup to catch the fly-out and the dawn. It is essential to our souls.

Church should only be so good!

Canon SX20IS at 560mm equivalent, f5.7 @ 1/640 @ ISO 160.

Processed in Lightroom.

And here is the video.

Bosque Dawn

12/4/2010: Bosque morning

Time for some straight up Bosque del Apache scenery. Mid-morning layered landscape HDR. The temporarily flooded fields are a Bosque feature, a way of managing where the geese and cranes feed. The geese, in particular, love to feed on the seeds and roots that flooding makes available. In this case either the field was newly flooded and the geese had not discovered it yet, or it was flooded long enough already that the geese had eaten everything they could find. Still…it adds the mirror layer to the landscape.

Three exposure HDR, Canon SX20IS at about 70mm equivalent, autobracketed around –2/3 EV exposure compensation, assembled in Photomatix Pro using the Lightroom plugin and final processed in Lightroom.