I was out on two photo excursions earlier this week, and the first made me distinctly aware that something was wrong with my autofocus. Well, mine was all right, but the camera’s was off noticeably, for damn near every frame. I provide some examples:
This is full-frame, and while it’s taken at 600mm, the osprey (Pandion haliaetus) wasn’t that far away –
We’re gonna jump the gun a little here and not post this on Tuesday as normal, because I’ve been putting this together over a period of weeks and don’t want to delay it even a couple more days. So let’s see what our opening image is.
This dates from 1991 and is a negative of course, not too long after having moved to North Carolina. I discovered, quite by
This has been a while in the making, but right now I’m pleased with the results.
Back in February I talked about pursuing a North American beaver (Castor canadensis) in the neighborhood pond, with a couple of “proof” shots taken at night. Naturally, this is limiting, mostly
An amusing (or maybe pathetic – I keep getting them confused) side note before I begin: damn near every time that I mention captive animal photography on the blog, I make some kind of defensive comment about it as if people are routinely, derisively pointing out that real nature photographers wouldn’t shoot captives, and all of their
You know, there are a lot of misconceptions about animal psychology and behavior out there, and they’re all over the map. I’m going to address a few of the more prevalent ones here, with the hopes of at least promoting a little more perspective and forethought among the topics.
Let’s get one thing out of the way right from the start: “animal” is a simple
If there is one book that I recommend to everybody, regardless, it’s Demon Haunted World, the most efficient, readable, and interesting book to promote critical thinking that I’ve ever come across. But underneath this pursuit lies a curious question: why there is an apparent deficit in critical thinking in the first place.
We had gone through a longish period with no rain, and the azalea bushes were started to suffer from it. So I pulled out the hose and gave them a good soaking, with a heavy stream directed at the base to reach the roots, then a light misting over the top to make the insects happy. Almost immediately, the one brown resident mantis scampered excitedly into the water. I really can’t
While I’ve covered some details about specific types of animals in the previous posts, I’ve been slow in getting back to some overall tips that apply to all of them, so with that in mind, let’s talk about behavior.
Years ago I worked at a humane society that, among many other things, offered obedience classes and sport training for dogs, as well as some counseling on behavior problems.
First off, even if you don’t like spiders, you really need to check out this video, an extremely well done collection of jumping spider behaviors. This comes courtesy of The Dragonfly Woman. Even though I’m embedding it here, I encourage you to go