Archive for the 'Photography' Category

An unremarkable, though rather pleasant, picture of the creek near my parent’s house in Missouri.

What is remarkable or, at least, exceptional about this photo is that it was taken about 30 seconds after I fell in the creek (slick rock) and dunked both my iPhone and my Canon DSLR (t1i) underwater for a good 5 to 10 seconds. While bummed that it happened, I wasn’t really angry — it was inevitable and, given how much joy the various photos have brought the family and how much educational value they have had for Roger, the risk has been worth it.

This was the last photo the camera took for quite some time and, at the time, the last photo I expected it to ever take. My iPhone was in similar dire straits. Upon removal from my pocket, it had flipped out; cycling between screens, waking sleeping, etc.. Water drained out of the headphone port.

OOops.

Same with the camera; had to dump water out through the lens mount, through the battery compartment and out the SD card slot.

Leaving them in a sunny spot in an air conditioned, and thus relatively dry, house, the iPhone started working just fine, though the camera lens had a bunch of moisture on the inside. That dissipated within a few days and, save for the occasional mysterious “GPS on all the time” mode, the iPhone seems completely normal now.

The camera took longer to return to normalcy. For the first few days, it would power on to a “set the time” screen and I would then turn it off, remove the battery, open every door/compartment/etc, and let it dry some more. After the first week, it mostly just worked, but the flash stopped popping up for a while. Now even that seems to work.

It seems I got lucky. This time.

What is often lost in all the nature documentaries is that every critter must die eventually. More often than not, said deaths are generally brutal.

One of our favorite beaches is Bean Hollow State Beach south of Half Moon Bay along the northern coast of California. Dog friendly and abundant with wildly different environment ranging from sandy beaches to monumental rocks, to flats full of tide pools with the occasional freshwater pool.

While visiting, it was mentioned that the southern entrance to the state park — we have always stuck to the northern (but will head south because of the awesome beach) — led to an alcove where a dead whale had washed ashore.

This was, of course, far too tempting of a site for Roger to resist, so down the road we headed.

What we found, though, was absolutely monumental. And stinky. Very, very, stinky.

The creature that had washed up was huge. Hundred+ feet long and 80 feet long, 75 tons, and clearly dead for a while as there were bits and pieces here and there.

And the smell. We made the mistake of parking down wind. Doh!

Roger made it just about 2/3rds of the way to the carcass before heading back to the car.

After we hit the road, we drove upwind and found a path that we could walk upon to overlook the scene without having to smell it.

Regardless, the stench stuck with us on the drive home. Or not. It may have largely been Ruby’s (the Dog’s) wet doggy stench from having waded in a couple of swampy puddles.

Sadly, it wasn’t just the one adult whale. On the shore was a whale fetus — I hesitate to say baby since it was so relatively small and pale — that was also dead.

Clearly, this was a mother whale and baby. Given the presence of the floating mass of intestines and the general destruction of the carcass, the whale likely didn’t die naturally. My completely uneducated guess is that it was hit by a cargo ship, an all too common death amongst these magnificent creatures.

I’m pretty sure this is a blue whale.

Sad though such a death is, I can’t help but consider — and explained to Roger — the unbelievable energy source such a carcass is to that particular coastal area. If the carcass were left to decay in that location, it would both take years prior to being fully decayed and those many tons of flesh and bone would likely grossly increase the population of crabs, birds, and other critters.

I’m going to try to contact the park services to find out what they might do– if anything. If the carcass is left to lie (or blown up to accelerate the process), we will revisit the site in the near future to see what the critter density looks like.

Apparently, this is the first blue whale to wash ashore in Northern California in more than 30 years. The Santa Cruz Sentinel has an article about the event.

Pelican (170mm, f/5.6, 1/1250th, ISO: 160)

Earlier this year, we went on a trip to the Galapagos with Linblad (National Geographic) with a goal of immersing our 9 year old son, Roger, in the natural laboratory that is the Galapagos Archipelago.

And, no surprise, one goal was to bring back tons of pictures as it is exceedingly unlikely that we will ever re-visit the Galapagos.

I don’t remotely pretend to be a competent photographer, but I do OK and I have dedicated some time to understanding the science of photography and learning the limits of my equipment. One limit, in particular, was no really long lenses of great quality. The 55-250 is a great lens for the price, but isn’t that long, nor of the world class quality that a world class trip demands.

Thus, I picked up the Canon EF 100-400mm f4.5-5.6L IS USM Lens
. That is, a zoom telephoto L-series lens with a minimum zoom of 100mm @ f/4.5, a maximum of 400mm @ f/5.6 that features image stabilization.

I.e. one serious piece of glass.

All images taken with a Canon T1i
and, obviously, the aforementioned lens.

Juvenile Flamingo (400mm, f/14, 1/500th, ISO: 500)

Of course, with such a long lens, the first question is “How well did it perform in capturing images of things really far away?!?”

In short, the lens performed very well in this regard. The flamingo at left was, maybe, 80 meters away; 200+ feet.

The lens focuses quickly at that distance and the camera + lens generally do a good job of selecting an appropriate aperture and ISO to achieve a pleasant picture (I generally use a fast shutter speed when shooting wildlife that is moving about).

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Mid-Missouri is a hummingbird destination.

That is, these tiny, but incredibly energetic, birds treat mid-Missouri as a destination for breeding and, as a result, are extremely territorial in their presence (I’m still trying to grab a few good frames of the epic battle around the feeder amongst 4 hummers).

Apparently, other hummers aren’t the only territorial species in this particular area….

While watching hummers feed upon the shore line pond flowers, I noticed that the birds were quite commonly being buzzed by dragonflies!

That dragonfly in the upper left followed ever move of the hummingbird and, beyond that, dove in to seemingly tag the hummer regularly. This annoyed the hummingbird considerably and much aerobatics came with each buzz-by from the dragonfly.

We spent a good chunk of saturday wandering about mid-Missouri, touring the various homes and towns of my Mother’s family.

While wondering about Mom’s home town of Jamestown, Missouri, we found Cave Springs Road.

“Road” is a bit of an exaggeration; it is a rather winding gravel/dirt road through the hills and river bottoms of the area. It also happens to pass by one of my Grandparent’s old houses.

While continuing on said road, I caught something out of the corner of my eye and asked my sister (who was driving) to stop the car.

Upon seeing this pond, our cousin from Austria exclaimed, “This pond is being invaded by Doctor Seuss plants.”.

The plants do look a bit Seuss-esque. Especially the seed pods.

They are American Lotus or Yellow Lotus. While considered a native species, they are extremely invasive and can easily entirely consume a pond in vegetative growth within a few years (depending on pond depth).

While “native”, the working theory is that these plants are not really naturally propagated nearly as widely as they are without human intervention.

In particular, much of the plant is edible. As far as anyone can determine, American Indians would carry seeds and/or roots of the plant as they moved about, planting any random ponds to establish a food source if the tribe happened to pass that way again.

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Of all of the excursions we took on this trip, I personally found this one to be the one that captured the essence of the Galapagos more than any other.

Life was abundant, the land was harsh, and the contrasts between lifeless and teeming were distinct.

This was also the hike that drove home exactly how harsh life on the islands can be for any given individual animal, while the population, as a whole, thrives. More on that in another post as the pictures are rather brutal.

Isla Fernandina is the most active volcano in the archipelago (and one of the most active in the world).

Thus, it is an island of many fresh lava flows intermingled with the green of new, and sometimes relatively old, growth.

As the rich sea upwellings strike the island, it supports a diverse and rich ecosystem at the shore.

Much of which we were about to see.

Looking across the lava flow and beaches from our Zodiac, it looked like the entire island was covered ancient weathered logs.

Not so! There were hundreds and hundreds of marine iguanas. Thousands, actually.

Piles of them everywhere.

And, oddly, in the late afternoon sun, they largely align themselves in the same direction towards the sun. As mentioned in a previous post, marine iguanas are cold blooded. They regulate their temperature by both pressing their bodies against the hot lava rocks and/or controlling the cross section of their bodies exposed to the sun.

As can be seen in this photo, the iguanas were entirely un-phased by our presence. Actually, the bigger risk was to us!

Namely, after the iguanas spend time feeding in the ocean, they sit on the rocks, warm up, and sneeze out salt water. If you are posing like Roger was in this photo, you run the very real risk of being sneezed upon!! No surprise, Roger spent a bunch of time trying to get sneezed on!

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Not only did we do a Zodiac tour of the coast line and cave, but we also hopped in the water for some snorkeling in the calm, almost bay-like, shallows near the shore of Punta Vicente.

This particular area is well know for the vast number of Galápagos Green Turtle (Chelonia mydas agassisi) that hang out in the water. As there isn’t much in the way of sandy beaches, this spot didn’t really seem to be an attractive nesting grounds.

At least not for the turtles.

The flightless cormorants, penguins and other birds could be seen nesting all over the cliffs and rocky beaches.

Unlike other areas of the world, the turtles in the Galápagos showed no real fear of humans. They were perfectly content to float about.

However, there was one very absolutely strict rule; do not approach or touch the turtles. On the other hand, if a turtle decided to inspect you, that was OK!

And inspect they did!

While Roger and I were diving down to get a closer look at the ocean floor, we turned to our right and this rather grand turtle had swam right up to us for a closer look!

This particular turtle followed us around for a bit, getting within a couple of feet even though we were trying to keep our distance.

While an incredibly impressive creature, this particular snorkeling spot had much more to offer.

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Anchoring off Punta Cicente Roca after our long journey around Isabela Island, we were greeted with quite the geological smorgasbord of coastline.

Beyond this rather stunning point of green with cave below, you can see a much rawer bit of dark lava to the right.

To the north — just beyond that cave — are long stretches of coastline that are largely raw, relatively, fresh lava flows with swaths of green where the lava hadn’t flowed in the last 100,000 or so years. Even in this relatively small bay, there were sandy beaches, weathered cliffs of a sandstone like rock, broken tumbles of lava boulders and dramatic sheer cliffs.

With all of the different kinds of coastline in such a small area, this was clearly a spot worthy of further exploration.

Before diving into one spot (literally), we took a zodiac based tour of the shore to see what critters might be around.




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During the night, we crossed the equator while traveling northward on our way to the westernmost islands of the Galapagos archipelago. Specifically, our destination was snorkeling off Punta Vicente Rosa (Isabela Island) followed by a hike over lava flows on Punta Espinosa (Fernandina Island).

First, though, we had to get there.

At about 6:30am, we were woken by an announcement that a couple of large schools off dolphins off both sides of the ship.

And large they were!

Literally hundreds of dolphins cruising through the water on the way to wherever dolphins go at the crack of dawn.

But not just swimming. Quite a few of the dolpins seemed to want to fly, leaping high out of the water, twisting about, and splashing along.

The captain of the ship circled us about for a while amongst the dolphins and we had nearly an hour amongst these magnificent creatures.

Photography aside: This is when the Canon 100-400mm lens really came through. The dolphin were mostly far off from our boat. Having an image stabilized lens with 400mm of reach on a 1.6x crop factor camera body made these images possible.

That and a bit of patience, a touch of luck, and a willingness to burn through a few hundred exposures before 7am.


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After the wonderful snorkeling in the AM off Champion Island, the Endeavor lifted anchor at lunch and took a short cruise to anchor just off of Cormorant Point (Punta Cormorant) for an afternoon of beach walking and hiking on Island Floreana.

Floreana is a middle-aged island in the archipelago. Thus, it actually has honest-to-goodness beaches while still having volcanic cones and a handful of fairly raw, mostly lifeless, lava flows.

Access to any part of any of the Galapagos islands outside of the handful of human enclaves is extremely restricted in what is, effectively, a gigantic natural park.

Floreana offers one of the few beaches upon which we could wander freely. And so we did prior to taking a walk across Cormorant Point to a second beach that was also the nesting grounds of green turtles.

Upon landing, Roger immediately found something interesting. In this case, a sun-bleached pencil urchin.

On this particular Lindblad cruise, there were actually quite a number of kids.

The free beach time was also an opportunity for the kids to swim about and generally get in some quality beach play.

The waters were warm and, on this beach, quite clear.

Not surprisingly, the kids weren’t the only ones to show up on such a beautiful beach. The ever present sea lions were out and about, too. While the kids were in the water, you would often catch a glimpse of a sea lion or two swimming about near or, even, between various swimmers!

The beach had its share of creatures beyond sea lions, too.

This brown pelican — rather grand brown pelican — was hanging out on one end of the beach.

Combining the lack of fear of humans with the low afternoon light, it made for a very patient and stunning photography model!

I ended up taking about 100 frames of this one bird, varying parameters, angle and framing.

Between the patience of the bird and me being able to take the time to do a proper photographic study of this magnificent creature, I ended up with enough “keepers” to devote a post to this one subject!

What an absolutely incredible creature!

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