Lightning Fun

Here is a photo that I put together in photoshop a couple of years ago. I had taken a number of pictures of a lightning storm out of my back door and decided that I wanted to add a little flavor to one of them. So I searched through my vast supply of American Flag images and came up with one I had taken at a youth conference in the middle of the day. ( I love taking images of the flag in all kinds of situations and maybe one of these days I will put a few of my favorites on the blog.
I wish I had known then more about masks in photoshop and this image would have been a lot easier to creat but as it was I figure it turned out OK. I had to adjust the lighting on the flag to make it appear that there was a light shining on it through the night and I am sure there are a lot of other things that I could have done but, hey, you gotta learn sometime. The moral of this story is: don't give up before you begin. Maybe things don't look so good when you are first learning but do it anyway and your ability to make things happen that do look good will steadily increase. Most of all just have fun doing it and let your creative mind do a bit of wandering through unfamiliar territories.

Make some friends

Through the years I have always enjoyed photographing birds and animals. They are not always easy to catch but when you can it is well worth it.

This bird pictured above I happened to catch one day when I just decided to go on a walk around the farm. I had watched this one and it's companion flying around the field but was not able to get very close until nearly the end of the walk when this one finally decided to fly up into the top of one of my little pine trees. I quickly fired off a shot and it flew away. Birds don't take a fancy to long photo shoot sessions.

I was hiking in southern Utah to a place called Lower Calf Creek Falls when this lizard was running around on the rocks near the trail. I used to catch these little guys in my youth but have since found it more fun just to photograph them. I have decided we are the animals in the large zoo called outdoors and the animals love to get a look at us just as much as we like to look at them. They won't linger longer than needed but never the less they will give you time to take their picture as they size you up before moving on to the next thing on their agenda called "survival". That's if you are ready and don't take your time shooting the picture.

I spent 20 minutes in the early morning hours with my camera ISO set to 1600 trying to photograph a bunch of little birds fleeting from branch to branch. It was just before sunrise so there wasn't a lot of light but they were active and I wanted to get a shot or two of them and out of the 30 or more I took , well, let's just say I got one good one as this little guy stopped long enough for a snapshot. As you can tell from it's fluffed out feathers it was a little cold at that time of the morning.

Another hike around the farm and I caught this magpie getting a look at the nearby grassy area where it was out looking for a little food. I have a number of trees planted in my yard so it isn't always easy to get a clear shot and for some reason they like to perch where they can see you but you can't clearly see them. However here again a little patience will pay off.

Finally I just had to add a picture of the little more easily photographed animals called "your pet". This was my families dog "Pee Wee" on a camping trip with me near my home in Duchesne, Utah when I was 14 years old. Pee Wee liked the tent but she also liked to watch the traffic that we could see from our farm on Blue bench. The highway was across the valley from where we lived but she was always spell bound by the cars and trucks. At least that seemed to me to be what she was always watching.

Wow That's gotta hurt

All I can say this morning is; Always, Always ,Always be alert to your surroundings and opportunities will present themselves for some amazing images. That is at least in the struggle for life and against death. Things happen so quickly and you never know when you will be a witness to it. This image today was taken in the morning on a day when I was camping and had gone out to photograph while waiting for the events of the day to begin. I had noticed all of the wild flowers on the hill behind where we were staying and decided early in the week that I would photograph some of them later in the week. Well I went up onto the hill and was looking carefully at which blossoms I felt might make the best image. I had wandered around a little but there were so many that I hardly had to go very far. Then I heard some bees behind me and decided to try and get them as the worked. As I turned around little did I know that the reason I had heard them was because one had just been caught by a spider sitting hidden by the petals of the flower. The second one was flying close to the spider then away just as a bird does to other birds or animals threatening their young. The second one soon left and I watched and photographed this scene as the bee first struggled then became still. I had seen spiders on flowers before and yet never thought about the struggles of life that might occur because of it.

I went back to that same flower the next day and sure enough there was that spider sitting hidden by the petals again and I wondered when and what it would catch that day.

You know it is Spring when:

It was 6:15 AM Sunday morning May 18, 2008 and I walked outside as I waited for my ride to pick me up to go to my morning church meetings. I was amazed by how loudly the Magpie's were that morning and knew something must be up. Then I saw a very funny act of nature taking place on the stage of my front yard. There were three very loud upset adult magpies making a lot of noise and swooping toward the ground on the other side of some rose bushes that are between me and the vacant lot to the north. Then there appeared out of the tangle of bushes a cat that has come to call our place home ever since the neighbor that owned it moved away and the house was torn down in that lot. It ran as fast as it could across my lawn because hot on it's tail was one of the magpies swooping close to it's head and then darting around to take another shot. Finally when it was to the side of my house it stopped and the magpie landed on the ground just a couple of feet away. They looked at each other and then the cat moved away and the bird flew up into the top of one of my pine trees.
I started wondering why the worry from the birds and decided to investigate the scene just a little more closely and that is when I found three young magpie birds in the apple tree next to the rose bushes. I still had a couple on minutes before my ride would arrive so I grabbed my camera, put on a 70 to 300 mm lens and started shooting. It was still quite early and the light was still rather low so I adjusted my camera ISO to 1000 before I took any pictures. I found it a whole lot easier to hit the magpies with my camera than I ever could as a youngster trying to hit them with a bullet to keep them out of the chicken coop and our eggs. Here is the proof.