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July 25, 2010January 14, 2013

Canada Goose Siblings (Photo of the week)

It has been a very busy (and sleepless) couple of weeks for me, as I’ve been trying to keep up with watching the Tour de France while keeping up with my current work load. That translates to earlier mornings and later nights! I’ve been busily processing photos from a recent trip to Oregon, and I’ll have some of those shots posted soon. For now, please enjoy a couple of adolescent Canada goose photos from before the trip.

These goose siblings were lined up behind a long puddle, taking a break from gorging themselves on grass to drink. In the photo below you can see one of the parents looming in the background. To drink, they would sip water to fill their beaks, and then tilt their head backward to let the water run down their throats.

Canada Goose Siblings Drinking — Two canada goose siblings take turns drinking from a puddle. A watchful parent stands guard in the background.

In both of these photos, I stopped down the aperture to f/9 in order to get a bigger depth of field. I knew this was needed to have any chance of catching both geese in focus. In the first photo, the difference in distance from the focal plane was greater than the second photo, throwing the sibling farther from the camera into soft focus. The photo still succeeds however, as the closer sibling is in sharp focus. At least the second goose is easily distinguishable here – if I had gone with a larger aperture, the second goose would have been blurred away into the background.

July 17, 2010January 14, 2013

California Gull Bathing (Photo of the week)

This shot was taking a couple of weeks ago while shooting some of the bay area’s more common inhabitants. I was watching various gulls and mallards, mostly acting boring and just standing around. But this California Gull decided to jump into the water and put on a show. He would submerge his entire body under water, then pop up and flap his wings back and forth to dry his feathers and prepare for preening. After preening for about 30 seconds, he’d dive back in and start all over again. This repeated for about ten minutes. The photo below is another shot of this lively bird.

July 15, 2010January 14, 2013

Geese on the run

Canada Geese Takeoff — With wings spread, several canada geese run across flat dirt in order to get speed for takeoff

Recently I was out by the bay photographing when I heard a commotion off to my left. I turned to see several canada geese running toward me at full speed, wings spread out to the side. I had seen geese take off into the air from both land and water, but never before had I seen them sprinting along the ground for such a distance. I even had time to regain my composure, turn my lens and capture several images before they reached the end of their runway and flew off into the air.

I’m not sure what caused this behavior – maybe they were spooked by something or fighting with each other. But for a split second, it seemed as if they’d go on running forever, running me over in the process, and head off into the sunset.

July 11, 2010January 14, 2013

American White Pelican Takeoff (Photo of the week)

A couple of weeks ago I visited Byxbee Park in Palo Alto, just before sunset. I wanted to explore a slough I had never been down before, and was lucky to see eight American White Pelicans, all swimming together and fishing. The first photo and the next were shot as part of the same sequence of one of them taking off from the water.

You can clearly see a flat horn protruding from the top of the bill. This indicates that this pelican is breeding. After breeding season, the horn will shed off, leaving the bill as it was before.

Usually I try to frame birds with most of the photo empty in front of the bird. This creates a more pleasing composition as it seems to add more room to the photograph. It allows the viewer to visualize the bird moving through the photo. With the above photo however, I knew at takeoff, the pelican would leave behind splashes as it took off into the air. I wanted to capture these in the photo, so I panned slightly slower than the bird was moving so that in this case, most of the empty space was behind the bird.

Below are several other pelicans from the same group. As I was watching one fish, he lifted his bill into a magnificent head throw.