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

Let’s maintain some focus here


I am presently deep within an investigation: what exactly is causing the autofocus on the Tamron 150-600 to be so undependable? Another outing chasing birds on Jordan Lake produced far too many images where focus wasn’t anywhere near where it was supposed to be, and I had made it a point to try and trip the shutter only when it seemed locked on. At times it read more

Bad light and good birds


Some weeks back, Buggato and I did a sunrise session down at Jordan Lake, which was an undeniably mixed bag. While we haven’t had rain in forever (seriously, like one five-minute shower since Dorian blew through uneventfully,) the morning was still too cloudy to see the sun at all until well after sunrise, so no rich colors and frameable prints on that end. But before read more

Finger Lakes: The animals

I have a serious number of images from my trip up to the area where I grew up, which is the Finger Lakes region of central New York, but haven’t had a lot of time to write anything up about them, so I decided to split the posts into two and make them relatively brief. For me, anyway – this might mean upwards of five-thousand words or so, but you should already know that this is what read more

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