Thursday, May 20, 2010

One of the nice things of my new office location


Blue tit
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.
Is a wooded area with a lot of birds. There's nesting blue tits. I've spotted a woodpecker. The most common waterbirds. According to http://observado.org/index.php there's even some rarer species of woodpecker and Kingfishers have also been spotted.

Of course shooting these small birds with a 70-300 in a densely wooded area at the middle of the day is tricky to say the least.

Friday, May 14, 2010

How I feel right now


HDR world
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.
Yep, this symbolizes it rather well.

I start therapy on Monday, bit apprehensive on one hand but also very looking forward to it. We'll see.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Bird photography, putting in backyard practice.

Any regular reader must know by now that I'm trying to improve my nature photography and that I am putting in a lot of practice to get better at bird shooting. The reason for that is simple, there's a lot more birds, both in species and numbers, to shoot here than mammals or other big animals.

Last night after dinner I noticed that the house sparrows had managed to empty the feeder in 24 hours. Since I am low on seed for the feeder I decided to get some stale bread, cut it really fine and treat the birds to that. Soon after I noticed that this totally changed their flight patterns, from their usual hops to and from the feeder they now went on different routes. Why not put in a bit of practice? There wasn't much light left but I could still practice framing and focussing.

I was right, this is good practice and it's fun too!

I especially like these three showing typical house sparrow behaviour. After the young have left the nest you can still see them begging for food from their parents. Af first they will always give in to the begging but after some days they are left to fend for themselves. I think there's a bit of a teaching aspect as well, the chicks watch from a safe place and see their parents swoop down and pick up food.

Pics clickable for bigger version. Everything Nikon D300 + 70-300 VR


DSC_6169


DSC_6171


DSC_6175

Ridiculous contest rules.

As you can see at the top of the page I am trying to participate in a nikon sponsored contest. Unfortunately I made the mistake of choosing a contest where the first round is a popularity contest. And I just don't have the social network for that.

Take this shot: http://www.whoareyouwithnikon.nl/index.php?a=inzending&code=4be2a464a53bc still top of the list. And this http://www.whoareyouwithnikon.nl/index.php?a=inzending&code=4be42edc38d67 is stuck at 5 votes.

That's no photography contest, that's just a popularity poll.

I'll pull those widgets tomorrow.