Chuzhao Found

 So, I misplaced my Chuzhao "toy" camera a while back, and finally found it today.  In the center console of my car, if you care.grabbed a couple of photos wandering around, but also found a few that I had taken during our March trip to Southern Illinois.  Which led me to notice that I never posted photos from that trip here.  Shame on me, I'll need to rectify that.

Meanwhile, here's 3 photos from Cave-In-Rock state park, from the Chuzhao.  I will say that I have a very strong preference for the in-camera b&w (+ sepia).  Very minimal Lightroom rweaks.

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Pano!

Recently, I was wandering around at Highland's Silver Lake Park.  Just a short-ish little walk, <2 miles.  But that's what I had time for.  During that wander, I got to messing around with my camera's pano feature.  Good fun, here's some "keeprs".

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So, time for a vote;  Which one should I use for my Facebook banner?

• #1:  Old Dock
• #2: Path on left, lake on right
• #3: Path on right, woods on right

Put you vote in comments!

Sweetwater Creek State Park

 During a recent trip to Atlanta area, we visited Sweetwater Creek State Park, about 20 mile east of Atlanta (GA, USA).  We had been there a year ago, and decided on another visit.  Very good time, and some photos I'm pleased with.

Here's a couple:

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I'm going to put together another photo-essay for Youtube, with the whole series, I'll post a link here when it is done.  In the meantime, you can see all the photos at this Flickr album.

https://www.flickr.com/gp/lsqrd/aaiu62Tg6W

Margined Calligrapher on Slender Yellow Woodsorrel

aka: Tiny fly on tiny flower!

Just a slice of the backyard on a pleasant Friday morning...

Ups and Downs

Just a little something taken with the iPhone a few days ago.  The type of image that I really like, but that rarely seems to get much attention.  But I'm well past counting "likes" to measure my self worth.  Well, mostly past.  That said I got a huge boost at one of the comments this received over at 365project: "Beautiful! It reminds me of an Eliot Porter photograph."  That really made my day.

I cropped this 5x5 for instagram, I should go back and try other crops, maybe get this one printed.  Or maybe this is perfect?  What say you?

There's nothing deep and meaningful to the title.  This song from the dB's popped into my head while I was trying to think of something.

Cades Cove

 We took a long weekend recently and went to Gatlinburg / Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  Our "excuse" was to go see Jake and Mikayla, who were playing at Ole Red in Gatlinburg.  But visiting the GSMNP was also a key part of the trip.  We could've seen Jake and Mikayla lots of places closer to home, after all.

Anyway, fun trip. Here's a few photos from Cades Cove, one of our favorite places:

Black Friday - No Shopping

 I don't know if Black Friday is as big a deal as it used to be, with the rise of internet shopping and the expansion from a day to a week, etc.  But I do know that I've tried to avoid shopping on the day after Thanksgiving since my cousins dragged my brother and I to their local mall in 1970 and overwhelmed me.

Anyway, last Thursday, I went hiking with my daughters, their spouses and the 2 grandkids.  We went to Valley View Glades, in Hillsboro, MO.  A bit over an hour from us, but a really nice spot.

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Little Flowers

Nice walk recently at Beaver Dam State Park.  There were lots of wildflowers, I especially liked these two:

Red Cloumbine

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Bluejacket

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National Selfie day

 So, apparently yesterday (6/21/2021) was "National Selfie Day".  Predictably, I missed it.  I suspect a lot of other people did as well, since I didn't see any trend on social media.

Here's a photo I took yesterday, pretend it's a selfie, or that it at least provides an insight to my soul...

Watershed Nature Center, Edwardsville, IL

Viceroy

Bot too long ago, I posted a photo of a Viceroy butterfly, taken at Columbia Bottoms.  I thought it was a good, if somewhat "clinical" photo.  The butterfly was sunning on a rock, and the bright sunshine really showed off the wear and tear to the wings.

So... the other day I was up at Watershed Nature Center, late afternoon on a day with a solid, but thin cloud cover.  And I found this Viceroy being much more cooperative about posing, in a much more appealing settings, with more conducive lighting.

I quite like the results:  

 

Standing Tall

 

Just back from a quick trip to Pittsburgh and Cleveland...  This groundhog was hanging out in my brother's back yard...

Making Something From Nothing?

Not an especially dramatic photo, but I'll go with the term "subtle"...

This was taken at Columbia Bottom Conservation Area.  It was overcast, around 50% chance of rain, unseasonably cool (70's) and a bit breezy.  But we had the grandkids for the weekend, and decided to take a chance to show them the sunflower fields.  Anyway, once we arrived, I decided to grab a shot of the open bottomlands, with the low clouds skating along.  I was even deliberate about setting my zoom to get a 50mm equivalent, just because....  But I realized the "straight out of camera" probably wouldn't meet my expectations, and that notable post-processing would be needed.

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There's actually a fair amount of work here.  Starting with a slight leveling, and the normal brightness / contrast adjustments (Levels). Then adjusting white balance.  I had the camera set to "Daylight", and there was a distinct blue cast.  Then I decided to crop from the starting 4x6 ratio to a panorama ratio.  This is 2.44:1, "standard" seems to be 3:1.  Oh well!

Once I settled all that, it was time to take the big swing with effects.  I use Topaz Simplify for range percentage of my photos, because I like the suite of controls.  I usually either tuen off the simplify filter, or tur it way down.  It has great ability to to work with dynamics, structure, saturation, etc.

In this case, I couldn't get happy with a single version where the sky and the field suited me.  So I did a separate edit for the sky, and combined them in Photoshop (Elements).

Anyway, here's the "Straight From Camera" version:

SO:  was it worth it?

Prairie Flower

Taken about 2 minutes before yesterday's post.  There's a good bit of effects going on with this one.

Last Legs, Last Light

The coneflowers are losing their luster as we lurch along towards August.

This was taken at Watershed Nature Center over the weekend, just a few minutes before the sun dropped behind the hills.

Female Cardinal at the Feeder

I think she's moving empty sunflower shells out of the feeder. Either that or she dropped a full one.

I was watching her at the feeder, with ger back to me, hoping for some sort of shot.

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Some technical details on my bird photos, for the geeks out there.  The bird feeder is about 16.5 ft from our picture window, I general stand anywhere from 2-4 ft from the window.  So I'm just under 20 ft from the bird.  (If I get too close, they spook, especially the cardinals).

I'm using my Fujifilm X-T3, with the 55-200mm zoom at 200mm.  The Fujifilm has a 1.5 crop ratio, so that's a 300mm equivalent.  The resulting image is 6240x4160 pixels,  or 26 Megapixels.  I've been shooting bird photos at pretty high ISO in order to get good shutter speeds.  And frequently in burst mode, to try and catch the action.  In this case ISO=2500, F/4.8 gave me 1/1000th sec.  The X-T3 does great at high ISO, and I'm able to do a significant crop and still have a crisp / clear photo.  There's some minor post processing on the computer to clean it up, but not much.

Here's the original, if you want to compare.  Click to see larger.

White Breasted Nuthatch

New visitor to the backyard feeder. Just caught him/her before they left.  I first saw this bird Saturday, when the grandkids were helping me de-poop the yard. (They're good at finding the dogs' packages, except when they get too competitive about it).  Anyway, we were at the back part of the yard, and my granddaughter noticed this bird picking in the bark of one of the pine trees.   We were probably 10' away, but I didn't have my camera.  So I was pleased to see it at the feeder Sunday.

Not the best photo, but sometimes you take what they give ya.

Trio

A trio of baby birds...  The nest is on top of one of the porch lights beside our front door, nestled between the brick wall and the top-piece.  This is a "blind" shot with my cell phoneheld above my head to see in the nest.

I originally thought these were baby Robbins, after doing some baby-bird googling.  But after further review, I've decided they're more likely House Finches.   Logic as follows:

There's a pair of house finches (male/female, presumably the parents) that have been hanging out in the nearby trees, raising a racket whenever anybody is on / near the front porch.  Yesterday they were more on less presenting themselves, acting more bold than normal..  I think they were trying to draw me away from the nest.  Here's the male:

Also, when I googled "house finch nestlings" I found several articles noting that house finches do not clean up the baby's poop, simply pushing it to the edge of the nest (as opposed to carrying it away).  That's certainly the case here, as the edges of the nest (and spilling to the ground nearby) is a mess.

Anyway, the top photo is from 4 days ago, which was 11 days after I first noticed the very new looking babies.  I saw one of the baby's fly from the nest yesterday, so I guess they're fledglings now.

Coming in....

Tis one's a few weeks old....   the holly bush right outside our window was buzzing with bees; pollen season!!

Tufted Titmouse Tasting an Orange

I've never put fruit out for the birds until a couple of days ago.  My sister-in-law mentioned it, and we had some past-prime clementines.  I haven't seen a lot of traffic yet, but the pulp is getting eaten.  This was the first bird I've actually seen eating.  I'm hoping to attract some more variety of birds....

This is "just" one of our regulars, a tufted titmouse.

I rather like this photo, though.  The background is the big oak up front,, and the little oak behind.  Nice blur with the the shallow depth of field.  I like the overall grey feel, except for the POP of orange.

Technical notes:
This was shot with my Fujifilm, X-T3 mirrorless, with the long zoom (200 mm, which is 300mm equivalent @35mm).  There's also a healthy crop, but not extreme.  It was pretty late (~6:30 pm) on an overcast, wet day, so the lighting was pretty flat.  I was shooting aperture priority, which I don't do often.  But trying to catch birds, I like not worrying about exposure.  ISO is all the way up at 1250, due to the lowish light.  Really pleased with the X-T3 in this regard there's not much noise.  I was shooting in "continuous" mode, this is from a burst of 5-6 shots.  Shutter speed is 1/110 sec, pretty slow for moving birds....

Philadelphia Fleabane

From a social-distancing walk in the Nature Preserve at our nearby University (SIUE). This wildflower is pretty common around our area, but still still beautiful. The flowers are small maybe 1/4" to 3/4" across.