There are a couple of shots at the extremes of my camera kit’s capabilities – based around my Olympus E510.
Both of these were taken in Gilbert Lake State park in New York. The first was the view from our campsite looking straight up. This is was shot at a focal length of 14mm (28mm equ), the widest I can get with one shot. Auto focus, programed exposure, the works.
Camp Site Canopy
The next was taken with the E510 too, but this time mounted on it was my old Vivitar 100-300mm zoom lens from my OM series cameras (I’ve been through a few in my time). So that of course means manual focus (how retro is that?) and only Aperture priority exposure mode available. Nevertheless, I think this picture clearly shows the benefits of in-camera optical image stabilization. This picture was shot hand held at 300mm, which on the E510 is the equivalent of 600mm. Shot at 200 ISO, the exposure time was only 160th of a second with the lens wide open at f5.8. Still pretty sharp if I say so myself. 
Dragonfly at rest
Here is a whimsically edited shot of a hawk that I took a couple of weeks ago. It is posted in response to the request for photographs about ‘red’ from the Digital Photography School.
Juvenile Red Tailed Hawk
The original looks like this…
It’s been quite some time since my last missive here. But better late than never.
Lucky us: we got to go to Florida again this year, and even better, had Elliott in town for company. We took him out to the place where we saw all the heron and pelican and what not activity last year, the E G Simmons county park. Unfortunately there was precious little activity there this time. A few pretty butterflies and a single great blue heron was about it. Thought there was an Osprey on it’s (artificial) nesting site.
Blue Heron in the Mangroves
After that anticlimactic day Gerry and I returned to another site from our 2008 visit, John Chestnut Park. Last year is was warm and we saw alligators (5 to 6 foot) and cardinals and maybe an anhinga. This year is was much colder. We drove into the park and the first thing on out minds was to pick out a table close to a lake where I thought I might have seen an ibis last year. We had hardly arranged our picnic on the table before these two fine specimens flew directly into our space and proceeded to beg for food.
After a while (well after we packed the remains of our picnic away) they returned to fishing in the pond behind us. While watching the great blue walk back to the shore, I notices a biggish bird flying rapidly between two trees on the opposite shore. Using binoculars it was clearly a Banded Kingfisher, and in the gallery below there is a crop of a very bad of picture which was taken at the extreme limit of my zoom and hand held. So that picture is there just for ID purposes. Also spotted (who could miss him) was a large Ibis, patrolling round the margin of the pond.
As we walked around the pond to get a little closer to the ibis, I saw a little blue heron fly in and perch on a post. By a roundabout way behind some trees I managed to get close enough for a couple of reasonable pictures of the gorgeous bird, about who’s face it is all too easy to anthropomorphize.
It’s been a while since I posted anything to this blog of mine. A blog that nobody appears to read, except for me I think. ;-(
Well anyway enough of that. At least I get the satisfaction of going through the zillions of shots that accumulate relentlessly and pick out one or two successful ones.
After our maiden camping trip (with our new kit) in July, August and September found us enjoying the great outdoors in Columbia county, New York, and here are a few botanical shots, including some from those trips.
One of the great things about camping is you see so much wildlife. Even rank city slickers like us.
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Then there are these few more city oriented shots.
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And lastly a few more abstract pictures.
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The middle of July found Gerry and I at Housatonic Meadows State Park. We were trying out our brand new, luxurious standing room all over tent for the very first time.
We had had quite a rush to get there on the Friday evening in time to beat the sunset at just after 7:30. The prospect of putting up a new tent in the dark was not welcome. As it happened, we got to our site with very little daylight left and we completed the tent errection by lantern. Phew.
