Category: Observation

Another Dose of the Ravens at Yellowstone

You are in luck if you liked the previous set of images on the Ravens we saw in Yellowstone National Park (link here).  Yes, it’s another dose of those dark winged demons and to be honest, the trusty companion of the ONLY ‘clown’ related character I can actually tolerate… Eric Draven.    For starters, I tried recreate one of my favorite pictures from the last time we were at Yellowstone.

It do not think it came out as dramatic as the other one (which is now hanging in our living room), but definitely not the worst shot I’ve ever taken.  A little brighter background would probably have made it pop a little more but he was having none of my “please move over here” requests.

My close up shots received a few comments on the last post so figured a few more wouldn’t hurt.  This one is a little more stoic but shooting against the bright blue sky wreaked havoc on the exposure.  I backed it down a tad, but lost some of the eye detail in the resulting shadows.  For some reason it gives me the feeling that a large tear will emerge from its eye followed by some public service announcement to not pollute.

The following was a once in a lifetime shot of a UFO hovering over Ol’ Faithful in some kind of super secret refueling process.  Well, that was what it was until this damn raven photobombed my shot… and thanks to this inconsiderate birdbrain.. NOBODY believes me.

Hit the jump to see the rest of the Raven shots!

Continue reading Another Dose of the Ravens at Yellowstone

It Was a Forbidden Love

It was a tragic story of longing. A longing from deep inside to be with the one she loved so dearly. She could not free herself from the image of his silhouette soaring high in the majestic blue sky above Yellowstone National Park. But alas, it was a forbidden love in the eyes of her father, for he had wished a better life for his only daughter. Those early days in the nest hearing about how the life of an eagle’s spouse is a life of luxury would excite her so. A life filled with fresh fish and the respect of a whole nation. These stories filled her dreams until she spotted him in a murder. So dark! So sinister! So dangerous! With the constant danger of her father finding out, they had to keep their meetings in secret.

She would continually scan the sky looking for those sexy black tail feathers to come a calling. She couldn’t find him to the left…umm  the other left

A similar result when she looked to the right..yeah, the other right (hey, birds don’t really know direction anyway)

.. but then she spotted him hanging out on a low branch of a neighboring pine tree.  She fluffed her feathers and made a nervous scan for her father.

Good, he was out harassing some tourists trying to shake them down for a piece of hot dog or french fry… ummm french fries… oh.. she re-gathered her focus and called out to her beau.  “Hey Baby, your place or mine?” she jests as she takes flight already feeling her heart beat at the strength of 10 + 2.

Hit the jump to read the rest of the tragic story.. or just to see the rest of the pictures

Continue reading It Was a Forbidden Love

Ummmm the Merganser…I Think

Howdy Everyone! We are still celebrating reaching our 300th comment here at LifeIntrigued so pardon the mess. For those interested, Ron was the lucky commenter and will soon be receiving a token of appreciation in the mail – well… as soon as we figure out what that will be, we’ll be sending it out. He was also extended a guest blog spot so we are all looking forward to that. In the meantime, you are just going to have to make due with more Yellowstone posts. There are two similarities with the last post – one is it once again covers water fowl and like last time there are struggles on the identification front. The good news is the images are little sharper (not tack yet, but getting more familiar with the Beast). I must say, I am actually pretty happy with the action shots. The takeoff scenes were actually taken from the car doing my best to keep the Beast on focus while panning to compensate for the narrow field of view. Be sure and check out the larger versions up on our SmugMug site (link here).

I had just maneuvered the Beat into position to capture these ducks enjoying the water when they started their pre-launch plan. I am not sure if pulling up next to them in the car or pointing the bazooka glass at them startled them, but they definitely wanted out of there.

I was shooting at f4 so the depth was too shallow to get all the ducks focused in, but to be honest it gives a pretty interesting effect. The larger version gives a better view of it, but they were literally walking on water while building air under the wings. In the following shot they are just beginning to get air under their wings.

Hit the jump to see some more images of these birds taking flight!

Continue reading Ummmm the Merganser…I Think

They Say it is a Trumpeter, But it Looks More Like a Bird

It was a tough debate with myself.  Do I blog about the Zook finally getting the hook (a triumphant time for all Illini fans) or do a rant on what a piece of crap software iTunes is (you would think an half brained programmer would allow you to sort your playlist folders by the physical file name).  At last I decided to go with … oh geez, I better get going on those Yellowstone posts or I’m going to spending the rest of the month wading through all the email from my angry readers.  I need to ease into this thanks to the fact there are probably 30 posts alone from our shots that week and like a big night of bar hopping, once it’s tapped … you’re in for a long stream (too graphic?.. thought so).  This set is a little bitter sweet.  The sweet part is I was able to put another check in the bird list with Trumpeter Swans.  The bitter news is I wasn’t able to get the best shots due to a combination of the weather conditions and just not having the required reach – those suckers were out there and even though we ended up hiking out pretty far to improve the shots, I didn’t exactly execute.  Enough chit chat, let’s get those pictures up!

Linda and I were able to meet up with David and Giselle while we were out there.  They are friends from here that recently moved out to Billings, Montana (to join the militia ha!).  On our first day out there we passed by Swan Lake and noticed what looked like rather large white birds enjoying the water.  Now keep in mind that was a ways off!  I pulled out the Beast and tried to pull them in, but it just didn’t have the desired reach.  Somewhat adventurous we decided to hike out there to get a better shot.  It looked like just prairie grass at first, but we soon found out it was kind of swampy – luckily the cold weather firmed it up enough for us to pick our way out there.  Linda took this great shot of us shooting the Swans.

As you can tell from the shot, it wasn’t the best day for shooting – glad we bundled up before hiking out there. I should probably point out that if it wasn’t for the cold there is absolutely no way Linda would have been out there with us because this field must be a snake haven on warmer days!  As it turns out, we checked back at this lake later in the week and had a little better lighting than our first day.  Since those came out a little better, I’ll start with those – note, I wasn’t about to ask Linda to head back out there in snake land so the better lighting cost some distance.

Here they are pulled in a little bit more thanks to a tighter cropping.  For a bird that is somewhat rare, there sure was a nice grouping of them in the appropriately named lake.

Hit the jump to see more pictures of the Trumpeters!

Continue reading They Say it is a Trumpeter, But it Looks More Like a Bird

Project: Tri-Fecta-Pod

So as a precursor to the Yellowstone photo posts, the topic today actually originates from a couple of lessons learned while we were out there.  Linda and I currently shoot with three Nikon bodies, a D70, D90 and a D7000.  This allows us to each have our own bodies with our preferred as keep one additional lens on the third body for convenient switching without having to swap glass in the field.  Well, let’s refine that last statement to “reduce” the amount of times we have to swap glass because we still find ourselves playing musical lenses to take advantages of specific body features.  Now, both our big lenses are configured with collar tripod mounts and we generally keep an Arca Swiss quick release plate on those while out with our carbon fiber travel tripod.  Bodies with the wide glass need the tripod mount directly on the body.  When I purchased our Benro head for the tripod and the same Benro head for the travel tripod I also added an additional release plate giving us a total of three.  You would think this would be enough, but we soon found out in Yellowstone that this is insufficient if you are changing glass across all three bodies.  Inevitably Linda would end up trying to take a wide angle shot on a camera without a mount.  After a few choice words the camera with the mount was located, the plate removed and then added to the desired camera.  This became extremely frustrating and depending on the situation could cause you to completely lose the shot.

The second lesson learned was there are situations where both of us would like to use the tripod at the same time or there were conditions that favor one tripod over another.  Generally we only take one tripod with us, the lighter travel tripod since I’m the one who usually gets to carry it.  Our other one is a SLIK built to withstand a small hurricane.

Now the weight isn’t a big issue since we would just throw the heavy one in the car and only bring it out when we needed it.  The underlying annoyance is they use a different quick release plate system.

Here is a shot of the plates from the top – the part that attaches to the camera:

and now from the side that attaches to the tripod which is the heart of the problem:

We would be spending more time trying to mix and match the plates than capturing the shot.  On the drive back a decision was made to try and solve both of these problems.

First task was to purchase three more Arca Swiss plates.  One was a little longer than the others to provide a better hold for the Beast since the smaller plates only provided for one screw allowing it to shift on the plate if we were not careful.  Problem one SOLVED.

Hit the jump to see how problem two was resolved.

Continue reading Project: Tri-Fecta-Pod

The Whole Cost of a Half

Greetings everyone!  Linda and I recently returned from a day of shopping small.  If you are unaware, there was a movement to shop small local businesses today (11/26).  I caught wind of it due to a local commercial and thought I’d participate in it … it was either that or Occupy Wall Street (hehe besides, I prefer to put my energy into something that has a tangible point).   Anyway, we ran around today (in the rain) and gave some love to some of our favorite local stores – Bushwhacker, Running Central, My Dog’s Bakery, Abe’s, Spotted Cow, Le Peeps and even Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory.  The latter was a slight reach, but it is owned by a local owner and surprisingly they actually had a sign reminding everyone of the day.

In the midst of all this we made a quick trip to our local Goodwill store to drop off some clothes.  While tending that task, it occurred to me that this would be a quick topic to cover for my blog… not so much the trip itself, but for the reasons behind it.  First, let’s start with a quick quiz.  What do the following numbers represent?  (hint, they start in 1985 and in 2011)

  • 124
  • 155
  • 165
  • 175
  • 185
  • 155

Hit the jump to see the answers

Continue reading The Whole Cost of a Half

Another Check on the Bird List – The Great Egret

I bet you were all ready to read a post about our recent vacation.  Unfortunately, I am generally behind on my vacation pictures and if I recall correctly I have not even posted any shots from our Zion trip other than the Phoadtography set (link here).  It would be cruel to make you wait until I get completely caught up, but at least allow me the liberty of getting a few of the posts out before deluging you with a gadzillion pictures from our latest trek to the West.  Although, I could just be buying some time to get through tagging and filtering all those images, but I’ll never tell… to the post!

If you recall, we took a ride up North so our poodles could compete in the TDAA Nationals (link here).  The “Linda” part of that sentence was changed to “we” due to all out bribery.  Linda knows I enjoy visiting the Chain O’ Lakes State Park mostly due to the opportunity to see Sandhill Cranes again (link here) and was quick to remind me that the park was on the way.  Couple that with a promised stop at the Anderson’s Candy store and there was no hope for resistance.  Alas, there were no Sandhill Cranes to be seen anywhere in the park (this is where you shed a tear for my heartbreak… I’ll wait).  Come on, pull yourself together, the trip turned out very fruitful.  On our way out of the park, I was keeping my eyes focused on the field where the cranes were hanging out the last time.  Disappointed at the lack of birds I started to turn back in my seat.  That is when a a white spot caught my eye way off in the trees.  I yelled out our secret code word for “Stop the car, there is some kind of animal out there that Brian must have a picture of”.  The code word is short and sweet to help cut down on the ear to brake response – no, I will not reveal the code word but for effect it isn’t one you would not use in other company.

Linda put the car in reverse and rolled back a little to the observation spot.  It was definitely white and definitely sitting in a tree, but exactly what it was remained a mystery.  Time to bring out the Beast!  The viewfinder revealed that it was a White Egret.  Well, that is what I have always called it, apparently it is now just referred to as the Great Egret.  Here is my initial shot giving an impression of how far off it was even with the help of the glass – remember, the Beast goes out 400.

The sight line went through a series of trees causing the leaf splotches.  Once again, this park had come through.  This was the first White errr Great Egret I have been able to photograph and therefore another check on my Bird List.  This distance just wasn’t going to do for this opportunity.  Time to go cross country.  You cannot tell from these shots, but there was a large field in front of his perch that appeared to be thick prairie grass browned from the coming Fall.  Two steps later it was revealed that it was not really prairie grass, but more like cattail stalks growing up in the middle of a swamp.  My wet shoe and sock was a proof enough.  Crap!  Out came the cell, a quick call back to Linda (she had driven off to find a pull off) and on came the hiking shoes.  Once again I was off to get the shot.  Without a doubt, this was great entertainment for the egret.  15 minutes later I was standing in the middle of the swamp trying to find an adequately firm spot to put the tripod.  Still not as close as I wanted to be, but navigating much further was going to require some serious rubber boots and the nerves were a little frayed at the though of water snakes closing in for the kill.

Hit the jump to see the rest of the Great Egret pictures!

Continue reading Another Check on the Bird List – The Great Egret

Phoadtography: Visiting Our Friends to the North Pt 2

Greetings everyone!  This month saw the rare appearance of the back to back posts of a series with the Halloween decorations (link here).  Generally I try and avoid that in order to give adequate variety for my millions of readers (I am obligated to say that to keep from having to hear how many Peeps Linda has on that crappy Fadbook site of hers).  The reason for this is October’s posts were all done from the road. This has limited my post coverage to whatever I managed to bring along with me and could get done before shutting the lights out in the hotel room.   Today I am actually writing from the car with our trusty Verizon stick.  The light is too harsh to really post process pictures so instead I’m going to double up my series posts again with the second part of the North journey Phoadtography set.  For the curious, I’ve scheduled this release to coincide with when we expect to be back home – I didn’t want to advertise that our home was vacant so kept that out of my posts up to now.  So here we go with a post from the road about being on the road which can be viewed while you are on the road.

Let’s start with congratulations to Milwaukee for a a great baseball season!  All those predictions and high expectations we were subjected to by local radio and TV announcers made me think for a moment my Cardinals never had a chance.  Their pitching was better than my Cardinals, their hitting was better than my Cardinals and their fielding well that might have been better than my Cardinals as well.  But all that doesn’t matter to a Cardinal fan now does it? .. and why is that?  … cause my Cardinals are still playing !!!!

Did I mention I was a Cardinal fan?  oh.. well then for the record I’m a Cardinal fan!  Enough gloating, there is still one more game to get through.  Now on to a staple in the Phoadtography world.  The water tower.  I have seen pumpkins, golfballs and a giant smiley face, but this is the first time for a basketball.  This town must be in a sports dry spell if it takes this much pride in something that happened back in 1952.  Whatever keeps the faith I guess.

hit the jump to see the rest of the pictures in the great trip up North series.

Continue reading Phoadtography: Visiting Our Friends to the North Pt 2

Phoadtography: Visiting Our Neighbors to the North Pt 1

There is no rest for the weary these days.  I can see the edge of October and it is approaching fast.  The good news is I am down to one more post after this one and I think that is doable … at the moment.   I ended up losing yesterday because I forgot to process all the pictures for this post.  Soooo last night was spent getting that done and uploading them to our Smugmug account (Eddiesoft) so I could post tonight.

Today’s entry is from our trip up to Milwaukee, Wisconsin in early October.  Linda and the boys were competing in the Petit Prix, also known as the Teacup Dog Agility Association National’s.  Although I have really nothing to do with this since I neither train the dogs or run them in the ring, that doesn’t stop me from taking credit for how well they competed in the event.  Both Kerby and Rizzi came home with a pile of ribbons and Rizzi even made the Semi-Finals consisting of the top 84 dogs in the whole event.  Of course, there is a reason I get to take some credit…. I have to take off work and help Linda haul everything to and from the car and these toy dogs travel heavier than Paris Hilton.  The good news is Linda drove most of the way providing ample time to snap some shots along the way.  With that, let’s get to the pictures eh ? (in my best Wisconsin accent)

Keeping with the Halloween theme from the previous posts, I’ll start with these.  My eyes lit up when I saw this pumpkin.  Just imagine the cool pumpkin carving I could do with one of these babies.  It might take a chainsaw instead of a Dremel, but I’m definitely up for the challenge.

Hit the jump for the rest of the pictures from the trip

Continue reading Phoadtography: Visiting Our Neighbors to the North Pt 1

Before and After – A Marketing Disaster

As an admission, I am officially behind schedule on the blog but we need to delegate blame to a guilt trip a certain person placed on me.  Apparently queuing up a few posts is second on the evil meter only to kicking an elderly woman down the stairs because she is impeding your timeline to rob a convenience store.  Being haunted by the stigma this would bring to my parents, I was forced to immediately stop using the post buffer to compensate for busy times of the month.  Of course, now I am left foregoing all charity work and our annual prairie dog mission of peace to free up enough time to bring you this month’s quota.  When those dogs take up arms and start ravaging our countryside that person is going to have some apologizing to do!

I’m to close to completing my 4th year of blogging to blow my quota now, so it’s time to get to it.  Today’s post comes to us courtesy (and by that, I mean lack of courtesy) of Bridgestone.

As a little level setting, Linda and I finally gave up dealing with all the annoying problems we were having with our Dodge Durango.  The car was actually fun to drive when it was actually working but it was plagued with electrical problems.  This was similar to problems we had with our Grand Cherokees.  During our hunt for a new car we were ignored by a dealership while trying to buy an Explorer (shocking at the time because they were in the middle of the economy crisis and cash for junkers was in full swing).  After a few other failed dealerships we broke down and checked again at Dodge – guess what, they decided to get out of the large SUV business with what appeared to be a failed attempt with the Aspen.  Frustrated, we stopped into Toyota, had a wonderful experience and promptly came home with a brand new SUV (built in San Antonio so hold the complaints).  This vehicle has been mechanically free of errors since we bought it with the exception of the special deer magnet (link here).  BMW could learn a few things from this automaker (link here).

Now is good time for the BEFORE shot:

hit the jump to read “The rest of the story”.

Continue reading Before and After – A Marketing Disaster