This week’s photo was taken last month a couple of hours after sunrise, from the north of the mountain. The Mount Shasta area is very photogenic, with numerous waterfalls and views of the mountain.
I was blessed with a clear morning. I had planned on a sunrise shot, but my progress out of the Bay Area was severely hampered by a grass fire closing the freeway. As a result, my wife and I got into Weed extremely late the night before. Even though I missed sunrise, I managed to get the shot before the harshest light of the day.
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.
Flapping its wings repeatedly, a california gull dries its feathers after submerging its body in water.
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.
Not until the wings are fully extended can one appreciate the surface area required to keep these birds aloft.
A white pelican spreads its wings as it takes off from the water
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.
A white pelican spreads its wings as it takes off from the water
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.
Perched on an underwater stump, an american white pelican throws its head into the air, twisting it back and forthSwimming through a slough, a white pelican preens its back feathers by rubbing its bill against themA white pelican perches on an underwater stump in the midle of a slough, Byxbee Park, Palo Alto, CA
