Not the bluest


On a sunset outing to Jordan lake almost a week ago, we had clear skies – not ideal for sunset – except for some haze down on the horizon – not ideal for birds, which were pretty much the only thing that we saw. The majority of those were more distant, which put them down lower and thus against the haze, so most of the backgrounds for this post are going to be read more

Thin but long

I don’t watch a lot of movies, for various reasons, but one side effect of this is that I’m not influenced by the common associations created by such. I’m not spooked by dark, quiet forests at night, and I find nothing at all mysterious or foreboding about fog it’s pretty damn cool, in fact. I’m still watching for conditions that I got one night decades read more

Money well spent


… or at least, so far. I doubt I’ll be regretting it.

The Girlfriend and I take the kayaks out every once in a while, so far only on Jordan Lake (though they’ve been out at both North Topsail Island, NC and Murrell’s Inlet, SC,) and the biggest frustration that I have with this – still admittedly minor – is that I have no decent way of capturing images or video read more

Four birds

Hmmm, it’s 5:09 AM with the next On This Date post set to go at 6:00. Can I do it?

On a slow outing yesterday, we nevertheless found a few subjects to shoot, and you’re about to see most of them. We’ll start off easy.


I mentioned earlier how little impact read more

Why don’t we check out the lake?

Later in the morning yesterday – much later than I should’ve – I decided to take a quick trip down to Jordan Lake, see if there was anything happening down there. I had no intentions of spending a lot of time, and in fact was planning to meet someone for lunch, so, whatever I could find in 90 minutes or less (or it’s free!)

Not too shabby, for all that.


I feel read more

The golden hour


You know, poetic license is all well and good, but you’d think photographers could be more specific and descriptive. The periods where the sun is low on the horizon are usually called the “golden hours,” but the colors are often not just gold, and spend more time in the various orange hues than yellow or gold. We could have the amber minutes, and the saffron, the read more

You wanted to know

“Hey, Al,” started the thousands of e-mails I received the past couple of days, more-or-less-kinda (which means absolutely not,) “how come you haven’t posted anything for almost a week? This is prime season – why aren’t you out shooting?” Though no one nearby actually asked that (no duh,) because they knew what the local conditions were like: read more

We got birds

Boy, howdy, we got birds


These are actually from several different shooting sessions, and the first here is from May, a grab shot as a red-shouldered hawk (Buteo lineatus) cruised by near the sun – I just liked how the feathers turned out, though this gives a rotten impression of the actual coloration. I’ve had this sitting in the folder for a couple of weeks read more

Someone will be cooperative

That’s what you can count on in nature photography: even if your primary subject fails to appear or do something photogenic, another subject will fill in the gaps.

Actually, you can’t count on that at all. Don’t listen to me. [I know, you weren’t anyway. Thanks for that.]

Having spotted some bald eagles at a particular spot that seemed promising a few weeks back, The Girlfriend read more

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