New York: The non-raptors

Between the two trips, I got a remarkable number of images and video clips, which has taken no small amount of time to sort, resize, and/or edit into finished video – there’s one included here, and at least two more waiting in the wings. I will apologize in advance for the instability of the segments therein, since the visits to the refuge were as time allowed and I never planned read more

Just because, part 40

I know I just did a buffer post, but then I realized that I was about to hit another meaningless milestone and decided to sneak this one in to facilitate it. We already know I’m shameless.

These are just a couple of photos that I had in the blog folder with no real topic to attach them to, so, yeah…


At the neighborhood pond, one of the female mallards (Anas platyrhynchos) read more

Blame it on February

There are a lot of things that you could blame this short gallery on: the weather, the underperforming birds, my lack of ambition, my lack of skill… but we’re going with February, of course. I mean, I’d hate to put all the blame on the birds.


Yesterday during our routine break between rains, the temperature actually rose above 15°C and The Girlfriend and I read more

On this date 11

First off, we’ll start with the calibration image. Below is an 18% grey ‘card,’ a fully-neutral image that camera exposure meters are specifically set for, representing the average in light levels for images. Adjust your monitor so that this appears to be the most medium-toned, colorless image that you can, and we’ll go to step two.


All set? Any imperfections read more

I been busy, part 1


We’ll start off with a snake. Everybody loves snakes, right?

All of the images herein came from one trip to a local botanical garden a little over a week ago (I’m hedging because I don’t know when this will post) – a very busy day there as far as visitors, so this napping black rat snake (Pantherophis obsoletus) surprised me a little, given that it was snoozing right read more

The color of the day is “white”


We did not escape the clutches of the storm that passed across the country, though it did arrive a bit later than anticipated I had the IP camera set up to run a time-lapse overnight, which captured nothing but rain. Instead, it turned to snow around 9 AM and read more

The camera’s getting rusty


Yeah, that title’s a reference, not to the humidity as you might expect from the opening photo here, but to the general lack of use that my photo equipment has been seeing of late. However, I still managed to get a few pics recently, and a trip to the butterfly house is on the agenda this month.

So, jumping in the car the other evening, I looked out at the pond across the street and saw that read more

Still getting out occasionally


Despite the weather and the holidays, I do still get out to do some shooting now and then, even though the pics in this post were from… jeez… ten days ago. These were taken, with one exception, at a botanical garden during a halfway-decent day. Above, a pintail duck (Anas acuta) provides a dozing pose as the cloud cover thickened up.

While UNC’s Botanical Gardens are dedicated mostly read more

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