Birding at Magee Marsh

Magee Marsh is a great place to go in May to capture migrating birds in the spring.  I will be posting a few migrating birds that I have found.  I think I will start out with some pairs. First is the Blackburnian Warbler.

Male (f11 1/1000 sec ISO 1600 no flash)

Female (f8 1/1000sec ISO400 flash)

This is a favorite because of its flame-orange coloring in the throat.  It has a triangular black cheek patch and a white wing patch.  Females color is more washed out.  They winter in the mountains of northern South America and summer in eastern southern Canada and northern United States from the Great Lakes to New England area.

Magee Marsh Intro

I finally made it to Magee Marsh after bad weather last year cancelled us out. The weather was great! The birds were great! The camaraderie with all the birders was great. I will be adding birds as the days go by. Today I start with two birds with similar names but very different. What variety! I am starting to get as addicted as the birders. What an amazing creator God is!

I was asked to share info on camera settings on the pictures I take, so here goes. When I shoot birds I use shutter priority mode, especially little 3-4 inch warblers that flit around I use 1/1000 sec and an f-stop from 400-3200 to give enough light to use an aperature of f8-11. I shoot with a Canon 7D II which has a crop sensor. I use a 100-400mm lens with a 1.4 teleconverter that equals 560mm. Some birds at Magee are close and I can fill the frame. Others are high up in the trees and the birds only fill 1/4 to 1/6 of the frame and I crop. I love if the birds have sun shining on them, but that is not always the case since the foliage coverage can put them in shadows. Therefore, a lot of times I use flash with my Better Beamer so it can throw the flash way up in those trees to reach the birds.

Black-throated Blue Warbler- male

Black-throated Green Warbler-female

Serenity

There is a painting at our local Culvers that I have always liked.  It is a picture of a large faded red barn with pasture and sheep walking toward the barn.  To me it is such a peaceful scene.  The picture here I took in Iceland has become one of my favorites and I realize it is because the scene reminds me of the painting at Culvers.  It is quite different but I see the sheep walking down the road and I remember that this was a rather quiet section of the highway, not much traffic at all.  I see the fields in the background and the barn which is quite small in my photo but it still reminds me of home for the sheep.  Then you have the mountains and the waterfall in the background.  What more could I have asked for.  Oh yeah, Jerry Hug you will be happy to know I took this photo with my iPhone (not my Canon DSLR) out the car window to quickly catch the shot before the sheep had a chance to move on. As Jerry would say, "The best camera is the one you have with you."

Yard Work

Working at home makes it easy to go outside when you can just look out your window and see that things look calm.  How many times have I gone to the prairie a few miles from me and found that it was not like at home, but quite windy and so almost impossible to photography the moving flowers.  You can also keep a close eye on what condition the flowers are in without travelling far.  It gives me a good chance to practice my macro photography on the spur of the moment and more often than if I had to pack up all my gear and take a ride. This was a week of lilies and roses.  I like the long stamens on lilies.  In the first picture I tried to accent the stamens against the lighter color of the flower.

With the Michigan Lily, I liked how the petals curved around the back of the flower and so I took this shot from a different angle to show that. It is always a good idea to look around your subject and take pictures from different angles.















Working at home makes it easy to run for supplies.
For this white rose picture I ran to the garage and got a blue piece of plastic to put behind the rose to make it stand out more than the light tan storage shed that was behind it.
















This pink rose attracted me because of the petal near the center that circled around the stamens in the middle.  When looking for subjects, look for something that is a little different than the normal.

What if Your Trip Flips?

We have all planned that dream vacation.  We have seen great photos of our destination and we just can't wait to capture our own spectacular shots.  What happens if you get there and your first four days are overcast, rainy, windy and your pictures look something like this?  So it happened on our trip to Iceland. You have a couple of choices.  You can throw them all in the recycle bin or shut the computer down for a few days and then come back to them when you are in a better mood and try to do something with them.  I opted for the latter.

On the original photo the exposure for the water is ok, but that means the land is dark.  Fortunately, I did shoot this for HDR.  I have one darker for the brights in the water and sky and one lighter where the water and sky are blown out but the land has a good exposure.  I combined them in my HDR software and did a little tweaking on the color and contrast and came out with this:

It is better but not quite there.  I then added a layer mask of the sky, gave it more contrast and darkened it to give it that stormy look.

But, I so wanted blue skies.  So I made another layer of the photo and then did a selection of the sky.  I found a picture where we did have blue skies in Iceland and  did a select all and copy and then went back to this photo and did a paste into selected area command and voila, blue skies.

I then decided to try a monochrome version of the tonemapped photo from the HDR program and here it is below:

So, all is not lost.  If you have done your best to capture the scene, a little computer work at home can help save the day.  You may even like several versions of the photos you have experimented with.

Making a Difference

Yesterday I went with our senior group "Encore" from Journey Church to the Billy Graham Museum in Wheaton, IL.






It is across the street from Wheaton College were Billy Graham went to school and met his wife Ruth.







The museum shows the life a Billy Graham and his influence around the world.  It is amazing how he started from humble beginnings and with his love of God and his wanting to share with everyone the great hope he found, he has had such a great impact in the lives of individuals- thousands of individuals.

The museum also shows the history of evangelism in the United States from it's very foundation as a nation.  What a revival these individuals and organizations brought about in the country.












Oh to have such a positive influence on people around us and to make a difference in the world.

You Can Do It With Enough Determination

Even though circumstances are not what you may have hoped for, you can still reach your goal with resolute determination.

We had wanted to take the RV we had purchased out for a test camping experience.  We chose to go a couple days to Starved Rock State Park which is a few hours drive from us.  The problem is that is was about the hottest week of the summer- in the 90's.  We wanted to do some biking and I wanted to do some hiking in the canyons.  I was hoping to take our dog with me so he could get some exercise.

The situation-
Temperature in the 90's.  Too hot to take the dog out hiking.
The park was a couple of miles from our campground.  Too hot to take the camper and park it at a trail head to go hiking.  Both my husband and our dog would be miserable in the camper while they waited for me to finish a hike.  We had to leave the camper in the campground connected to electricity for the air conditioning.  So this meant riding our bikes in the heat to the park if we wanted to see anything.

Solution-
I rode my bike in the early morning, when it was a little cooler, down back gravel roads to get to the east side of the park and go hiking on that end.  On the next couple of mornings I rode my bike to catch the trails in the middle and then on the west end. In the evening when it cooled off a little we took our dog out around the campground for a little run.


During the middle of the day, my husband and I rode our bikes the 2.5 miles each day into the park and spent time in the air conditioned hotel for lunch, took a bus tour in the air conditioned trolley, and sat in the shade to see a nature program about hawks. Mind you, when we got back to our RV, we were soaking wet in sweat.  Whew!








But we did it, I hiked, we biked, I got some nice pictures of the canyons and it is a vacation to remember.