Photo Stories – Page 20

August 17, 2010January 14, 2013

Red Foxglove (Photo of the week)

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.

Red Foxglove petals hang from a green stock

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.