Day 96 - By the river

Day 93 - Another spectacular dusk, but I was in a hurry

Taken with the 55 mm end of my telephoto lens.  Missing the wide angle view.

I tried to blur the main subject her and kept a small part of the foreground in focus.  

Day 85 - Sunrise without the sun

I went out at 4:30 a.m. on Sunday seeing that there were some pretty thick and patchy clouds.  Clouds usually make for interesting sunrises and sunsets, so why not?  It was chilly and pretty windy, but I heeded that not and went up to the new patch of riverside I was exploring the day before.

I was greeted by a great blue heron sitting knee-deep in the shallows.  After waiting for over 45 minutes, I realized that the sunrise wasn't going to happen because a thick cloud cover had rolled in.  So, the sun didn't rise at all.  Instead, the wind was bone-chilling and then there was rain!

I'm lucky this guy was so motionless - this was taken at 1.6s, f/5.6, ISO 100, to give the effect of the heron standing knee-deep in silky waters.

This was taken seconds later and the guy was doing something totally different.  It was no small luck that I got both the shots the way I wanted them!

But the highlights were that I spotted two new birds - the yellow warbler and the song sparrow although I have no good photographs of them.  Low light, small birds, and a 250 mm lens don't go a long way to getting good shots.  I also saw a juvenile red-winged blackbird that the parents were guarding fiercely.   It's a great time of year to see the young 'uns.

A not so good shot of the yellow warbler.  I have to find ways to improve these shots.  I'm losing too many good photo ops.  Usually these small birds are very active and hide in the foliage very high up on tall trees.  Go figure!  

This is the baby red-winged blackbird that was sitting not too far away from where I positioned myself.  I had almost passed it by, but the slight movement in the foliage alerted me to this little guy's presence. :-)
  

Day 84 - Planters

I was waiting for the rains to revive the flowers a little bit and found this one looking really fresh and perked up.  It had been a pretty gloomy day, but patches of sunshine peeked through towards the late evening.  These photos are from another exploration of the riverside, but this was in a different section of the island, and also unfrequented by people.  Very beautiful and very peaceful - I can see myself going back there again soon.

This last one was flashed at -2 stops to freeze the branch swaying vigourously in the wind, as well as to lighten up the really dark part of the tree I found this sprig in.  

Day 75 - Thunderstorm

I went out in the mini T-storm that we had yesterday evening.  My objective was to catch some lightning, but there were some major challenges - a) I didn't have a proper way to trip the shutter because I couldn't predict the lightning flashes; b) I used long exposures, but the lightning was really weak whereby there wasn't anything that was caught on camera; c) I waited for over an hour amidst the mosquitoes and other miscellaneous bugs that are characteristic of Spring and got a few bites as souvenirs.

I played with the WB on this one.  

These were unexpected shots of some Canada Geese treading water and taking off of the river.  I knew they always fly within some kind of formation, so I had to click continuously to get a shot that I liked.  

Day 71 - Sunset on Ile des Soeurs

The evening walk had to be cut short because of the bug infestation this little island is witnessing.  You have bugs mobbing you like there's no tomorrow.  You have to keep swinging your arms around to chase the bugs away and be able to see where you're going!  If you blow up the first photo, you'll know what I mean.

This shot was handheld.  I need to use my tripod to see the difference in details.