A ring-necked pheasant stands tall among dried grass
Last week, I went to Byxbee Park (part of Palo Alto Baylands) looking for some of the wintering water foul. I saw plenty, but also came across three ring-necked pheasants, all in different areas of the park. I had seen them several times here before, but never three in one day! Usually they hang to the thick bushes, but occasionally they come out into the open to forage. The beautiful colors make this a stunning bird to watch.
I have quite a few full body shots, but I liked the portrait the best. I’ve included a couple other shots below.
A ring-necked pheasant stalks close to the groundA ring-necked pheasant walks through short grasses, with a wary eye for predators
The photo of a ring-billed gull below will appear in the upcoming October issue of Bay Nature, a quarterly magazine dedicated to the intelligent and joyful exploration of the natural places, plants, and wildlife of the San Francisco Bay Area. The photo will appear in an article about the region’s various gull species, and how they are impacted by a changing habitat.
Ring-billed Gull portrait in soft evening light at sunset
Red Foxglove grows alone in a clearing in the forest, Corbett, Oregon
This week I’m posting a wildflower shot. I don’t often get out to specifically shoot wildflowers, but seeing pristine foxglove like this, standing out against a green forest backdrop makes it hard to pass by.
I was up visiting my parents who live near the Columbia River Gorge outside of Portland, Oregon. I decided to photograph portions of their forest, which is mostly Douglas fir, and can get pretty dense in places.
Because the forest was thick, it was dark, and a tripod was required. For this shot, I used a polarized filter to cut any sheen from the vegetation. This really allowed the greens to pop. I also wanted to isolate the flowers, so I used a wide aperture (f/2.8) and the telephoto end of my 24-70mm zoom lens. In general, the longer the lens, the shallower the depth of field, so if I’d shot the flower at 24mm, even at f/2.8 the background foliage would have been much more in focus. With 70mm, all the busyness of the forest disappeared into a sea of green.
Below is another shot from the same trip, though of a different foxglove in a different part of the forest.
Two canada goose siblings stand side by side, waiting their turn to drink from a puddle
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.
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.
