A lot of bird photos

On an outing back, once again, to Jordan Lake (we’re in a rut) this past Friday, the bird activity was higher than it’s been all year, so far anyway, but unfortunately a bit distant. I shot a very large number of frames, but probably better than half will be discarded too much of it was either trying to snag the actions of a distant subject that couldn’t be seen read more

More pleased than many would be

Trotted over to the neighborhood pond this evening to see if the sunset would pan out, and keep an eye open for wildlife, especially water snakes because it’s that time of the year. The sunset was total crud, but I was successful with one goal, anyway, finding a pair of northern water snakes (Nerodia sipedon sipedon) right smack in the path ahead of me. The light was fading fast but read more

For effort, anyway


On a (fairly) recent trip to the NC Botanical Gardens, I was making the attempt to shoot with more effort towards composition and all that, rather than illustration, but we know I don’t do ‘art,’ so we’re back to being fartsy here – define that as you will. And I could probably research read more

Tripod holes 19


N 26°22’37.94″ W 81°36’28.29″ Google Earth Location

While this image isn’t stunning, it represents two things: a place you should definitely visit, and one of my specific ‘branding’ images that presently illustrates one of my many business cards. I don’t have many businesses, just a wide variety of cards, because what kind of fool read more

Tried to slip one past, eh?

As usual, I had several egg cases of praying mantids to keep an eye on around the yard this spring: one Chinese mantis, two that I suspected were European mantis brought down from NY, and three Carolina mantis. One of the Carolina’s vanished over the winter, perhaps found by mice or something (this was before I’d mounted them on new stalks to keep them out of reach of read more

One week to prepare

Well, a little less now, because I’m posting this later than I should, but next Saturday, May 13th, is World Migratory Bird Day for the Americas, so make your plans now. For once, we have no traveling that falls around that weekend, though my own schedule flanking it is a little booked, so we’ll see what happens.


It’s not like I don’t get the chance to photograph read more

More Friday color

We’ve done Friday color before, two, no, three times, and a read more

Improving autofocus

Earlier I mentioned having pretty egregious autofocus issues with the Canon 7D and the Tamron 150-600 lens, and sat down to see if I could improve things. My efforts were quite successful, so I’m going to go over what I did in the hopes that someone else may benefit from this. Virtually all of these will apply to any DSLR camera, with perhaps minor variations.

Clean the contacts. read more

Tripod holes 18


N 34°51’19.93″ W 76°19’6.58″ Google Earth Location

This one’s a little fun in that, if you go to the location, it’s not technically there anymore. Well, it is, but storms between the time this was taken and now have radically reshaped the islands, and what was once inlet is now mid-island. Not only that, but reaching it takes a lot more effort.

This came from read more

April? I thought you left already

April is now toddling off into the past, never to be seen again or at least not for another eleven months depending on your interpretation (or remaining perpetually according to yet another,) and so we arrive at the end of the month abstract. Which looks amazingly like thus:


The sunset didn’t perform all that well this day, but the double-crested cormorant (Nannopterum read more

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