Day’s End

House Finches have been very scarce here for the past couple of years so I was really glad to see this Male watching the sunset while perched in a River Birch Tree near the Wetlands.   Here’s wishing you a great weekend.  Thank you for the visit.

Off The Hook Reds

Or Red Orange to be more precise.  A Japanese Maple putting on its annual November Show here on the farm.  Thanks for the look and have a great evening.

Worth the Hike

This was the dawn on the 27th of November which followed three days of rain.  The pink clouds were worth the cold hike to the field.  Have a Great Evening and Thanks For the Look

 

 

Wild And Blue

A clump of blue wildflowers growing along the edge of the Wetlands.  Thanks for the Visit and Have a Great Evening.

 

 

October 31st

Dawn on Halloween Morning, October 31st.  Year in and year out, the dawn and sunrise on the last day of October always seem to be worthy of a photograph.   Thanks for the Look and Have a Great Evening.

 

 

 

The Wetlands and back to Windows 7

One of my favorite views of the Wetlands here on the farm showing one of the Wood Duck Boxes that dot the large beaver pond.

New Computer

My HP Pavilion Elite Computer with the crash prone Windows 64 bit Vista Operating System is coming up on four years of service in early 2013  so I’ve been shopping around for a replacement for sometime.   The Black Friday Sales enticed me to intensify my search. Some of the deals on computer hardware were almost hard to believe.  Printers going for 50 bucks and such.   I got some hands on experience with a desktop loaded with the new Windows 8 Operating System.  You know, the one with all the pretty colored tiles on the “Start” screen.   I watched a demo which convinced me that  Windows 8 will no doubt prove to be marvelous on those touch screen pads and phones that are all the rage.  But what about those of us who do real work on a desktop PC with no touch screen but rather mice and keyboards.  After about 20 minutes I began to sense  unmitigated disaster.  It took me 10 minutes to find the “Start” Button only there’s no button.   And trying to turn the machine off was a nonstarter, no pun intended.  I  began wondering if it was too late to customize a new PC with Windows 7 instead of 8.   A quick query to HP yielded a quick “NO” it wasn’t.   They had a handful of fully customizable towers all loaded with the Windows 7 64 bit  OS.  After two days of researching what I wanted … primarily as much RAM and hard drive memory as I could afford … I finally pulled the trigger this afternoon.  It’ll be here by mid December.  I’ll let you know how it all works out particularly with the Adobe Software I’ve ordered.  Now I’ve got to start remembering how to move all these files to a new rig.  Thank God for External Drives.   Have a Great Evening and thanks for the visit.

Path To The Field

This was taken at sunset with the view east toward the ocean.  Thanks for the Look and Have a Great Weekend.

 

 

 

Shooting Flowers with a 300mm

 

So there I was, freezing in a Bird Blind taking shots of Dark Eyed Juncos.  My feet were just about numb and my shutter finger was stiff as a board.   I needed to get my blood moving so I snapped the quick release on my tripod, and took  my camera and lens to go for a walk in the Camellia/ Sasanqua Beds.  That’s where I got this shot of a huge red/pink Camellia bloom.  I don’t ever recall using a 300 mm lens to shoot flowers.  For one thing, the minimum focus distance is a good six feet and for another, the thing is heavy.  But its sharp as a tack and it will flat reel in an image.  Even more so with a Nikon D7000 which has an APS-C Sensor.   Putting the 300 on that camera converts the lens to 400mm+.   It’s why small sensor cameras like the D7000 are so  better for shooting wildlife than full framers.  Their reach is incredible.  This bloom must have been 25 feet up in the bush. I read in one of the photography magazines a while back that if you find yourself in a rut you should go shooting with a different lens to improve your boring perspective.   The big Nikon 300 mm did more than that for me.  It thawed my frozen feet.

Thanks for the look.  If you’re stateside, Have a Great Thanksgiving.  Wherever you are, Have a Great Evening.

The Last Zinnia

The last Zinnia of the cut flower season.  They, and the Cosmos which are in the background,  thrive in the cooler temperatures of the early fall until the first frost which came this past week.  Thanks for the look.   And Have a Great Evening.

Birds of Winter

This, of course, is a Dark Eyed Junco.  It’s also known as The Snow Bird here in North Carolina which is a bit odd because it hardly ever snows here.    Other than Sandpipers and other Waterfowl down on the coast, I don’t do a lot of Bird Photography during the warm months.  I find the foliage, leaves and so on to be a distraction from the bird.  The starkness of winter is more suitable I think.  The bird is the star of the show.   This was taken on the edge of the Wetlands here on the farm.  The Junco was passing the day in a bare River Birch Tree.  Thanks for the look and have a great evening.