Day 158 - On the phone

No.. I don't mean I'm on the phone.  Today's shots were taken on my phone camera.

One wet day, today!  I saw a little bit of blue sky and was really excited hoping it would stay that way.  But the weather has a mind of its own - it decided to throw down buckets of rain instead.  I saw such pretty colours on my way home that I had to stop and admire the scene, sans camera.  And then I thought - wait!  What did I pay the big bucks for my phone for?  It has an 8 MP camera on it and so I whip it out to get some nice shots.  Of course the megapixels don't really have anything to do with the quality of the lens, but you do expect a moderately good piece of glass in a hi-res camera.  Well, at least I did!

I have used it before on a nice, bright day, but this evening was a completely different story.  I couldn't believe the grainy shots I got, no clarity or sharpness - nothing.  I am certain there are settings on the camera that I could have manipulated, but I have never really taken the time to get familiar with this one.  I made a mental note of that - make friends with your phone camera!

What a bummer it was!  Anyway, out of the 15 odd shots I took, I discarded most of them.  The following remain:

To add a final note. the first three shots were processed in LR3 and the last one is SOOC.  I think the difference in quality between them is noteworthy.

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. :-)