Category Archives: Wildlife
First Day of Spring!
Daffodils are big springtime favorite here in Connecticut and with today marking the first day of spring for 2015, I’m sharing one of my faforite’s of the yearly blossom…
Time to wake up from hibernation and get moving!
Happy New Year!
2013 was quite a year for me and that’s putting it mildly. For the most part, photography took a back seat throughout the year, but it never fully left. I took on a few personal projects in the Photoshop composite realm to prepare for a new service I’d like to offer in New England. I’ll have more on this soon…
Proud Dad Moment!
I want to give a shout out to my oldest daughter! She placed Best in Show for juniors in a local photography contest in September! She inspires me to not only be a better photographer, but a better person, every single day. I couldn’t be prouder of my Goose!
Gray’s Beach Follow-up
I wrote in my last post (Gray’s Beach – Bass Hole Boardwalk) that I’d be posting more of Gray’s Beach to show off why I like going there so much. So… To make up for my lack of posting recently and to honor that commitment… Here are some of my favorites:
Cheers to a happy 2014! Looking forward to seeing what it has in store!
Signs
We see them every day. Some just don’t listen!
Gulls
I have heard them referred to as the rodents of the sky. I have probably reused the phrase a handful of times myself, but for the photographer just starting out, they can be the perfect subject.
For one, if you live or take trips near the water, they are always available for their close up. 
And if you can get to a fish pier, the numbers of seagulls are overwhelming when the boats come in with their catch of the day.
Sometimes they add a different perspective to a common scene. 
And they are always around to practice portrait work.
Gulls – Hubbard Park, Meriden, CT
This is a rare event for me and not one you should get used to, but I’m posting an image from a photo I took today. I needed to leave work early in order to be at an award ceremony for my oldest daughter. She is a very talented piano player and one of only two students from her school to receive this special award for the arts (OK, proud daddy moment done).
So traffic ended up being much better than I expected and I had a few extra minutes to head over to Hubbard park for an image to finish this post. I was actually looking for an image to be up above, but when I saw this one, I decided to make it the feature image. The light from the setting sun was perfect and it took less than 5 minutes to get some nice photos including this one. Happy with what I captured; I was off to the ceremony. I’m really happy with this image but it doesn’t come close to how happy and proud my big girl makes me as a dad. Congrats Cailin!
Squirrel
They usually are bothersome; they usually ruin any bird feeder in the yard; they have no idea how to react to an oncoming car; and yet they are pretty cute when you can zoom in and get up close to them. I had the luxury of our storm door between us on this day, so the outside reflections let me get close without surprising him. After I got a few decent shots I wanted to get one of him looking back at me, so I lightly tapped on the glass with the front of my lens. As soon as he looked up, I captured this shot of the little guy!
Incoming Pigeon
Since the birds won the big superbowl game tonight, I thought it fitting to post one of favorite bird shots. This was the first assignment for the only photography class I took in college. It was a simple, go to a park and shoot what you see. Well, I saw a boy and his mother throwing popcorn for all the pigeons and then running away from them to do it again from another spot.
There were hundreds of birds flying around and I finally got into a good position for capturing them with my camera when the boy tossed up the popcorn for the last time. I focused on one pigeon as he flew near and snapped off three quick shots. Unlike today, I had no idea whether I captured anything worth keeping, but when I processed the film, I was very pleased with this image.
I was learning to use the darkroom at the same time and I remember focusing a lot of my first few days on this image. I tried many different techniques, but in the end, a straight forward, normal exosure was all that was needed.
Cardinal In The Park
Riverside Park – Hartford, CT
Every once in a while, I will grab my camera on my lunch break and take a walk along the CT River out of Riverside Park in Hartford. I’m never sure what I’ll see there and quite often, due to the high noontime sun, it isn’t very much photographically. But on some days there might be a boat passing by or a row team practicing for an upcoming regatta. Herons are sometimes perched on the trees lining the river and there is a pretty cool train bridge a short walk from the parking area so always worth bringing the camera just in case.
Cardinal In The Park
On a late November walk back in 2010 there was very little to photograph as I made my up the trail. I had switched to my long lens plus a teleconverter early on because it was clear that a wide angle shot wasn’t happening with the bright sun. As I was getting ready to turn around and head back to my car, I heard the chirp of a bird behind me. I like taking photos of birds, but I am not a “birder” so I had no clue as to what it was. I turned slowly and found this guy right in my viewfinder. I snapped off a few shots before he took off and was gone. 
One from Devil’s Hopyard State Park tomorrow.
Duck Soup at Hubbard Park
Hubbard Park – Meriden, CT
Located about 20 minutes from me in Meriden is this wonderful park that is home to numerous waterfowl and other wildlife. I have been going there ever since I took up photography, mainly because it is one of those places that’s different every time you go and it seldom disappoints. This is where I go when I have the itch to take photos, but can’t think of anywhere to shoot. The park is great itself, but there is also a road and hiking trails that lead to a tower called Castle Craig, where you can climb the observation deck and peer out at Meriden and beyond.
All four seasons offer something new. The summer has a wide variety of birds, from gulls flying above to swans gracefully swimming past the fountains. The fall brings amazing color to the otherwise green surroundings, and during the holidays, the park transforms into a nighttime treat for both kids and adults alike in its “Festival of Silver Lights”. Then comes my favorite time of year at the park. Early spring brings in hundreds of mallard ducks and always me with my camera.
Duck Soup at Hubbard Park
On March 6th, 2011, I stopped for one of my usual photo fixes. A couple of young children were throwing bread in for the ducks to fight over and I hurried over to capture the action. I am proud of this image on its own, but a lot of Photoshop work went into it to get it this way, so I have a little extra appreciation for it.
I carefully removed all of the flying bread that was all over the scene. I also removed a couple of the green headed troublemakers that didn’t understand composition fully. Finally, I went into the normal adjustments of color, but with this image, it seemed to go on forever before I was pleased with it. Images like this one are why I get so behind in editing and have a backlog of some shoots going back to 2010.
I’ve created an album on the Facebook page so you can view the original photo. See for yourself.
To Crop or Not to Crop
Writing the 4 posts for the Newtown the Beautiful series took a lot out of me, so I will be writing very little today and in most of my posts this week. I will still be posting a daily photo unless something gets in the way of that.
Free Newtown Images
I mentioned at the end of the last post that I would be making the images from Newtown available for download. You can get them here.
Cropping
Cropping refers to removing unwanted areas from an image and depending on who you listen to, there are many viewpoints on the subject. One of my favorite photographers to follow and listen to is Moose Peterson. He has a great post on why he doesn’t crop here. That’s right! He doesn’t crop his images at all.
I often think about Moose’s philosophy when I photograph and edit. Then I crop anyway if it suits me. Why? Because for me, it is a benchmark to attain, but it doesn’t stop me from making my final image as good as possible. The downside to that is it limits what you can do with your final image.
The deer play fighting in a field happened so fast that I had one chance to turn the camera, focus and snap as many shots as I could before it was over a couple seconds later. Unfortunately the little guy decided to take a pee right in front of the action and I was left with an unusable set of photographs. That is until I cropped out the offending action. I also made it a vertical image because after cropping the right side off, there was too much empty space over on the left. I am much happier with the final image, which for me, is enough to say the cropping was justified. But cropping doesn’t come without sacrifice and the final size of my image is much less than the original 16.2 mega pixels. A large print goes out the window, but I wasn’t going to make a large print of the peeing deer either.
Tomorrow? One of my favs from Vermont and a little more on HDR.
