Grey Kingbird

February 8, 2010 in Avian, Photography, Photoshop, Vacation | No comments

I believe this is a gray kingbird in non-breeding plumage. Gray kingbirds are found through out the southeast USA down through the Caribbean and into norther South America and is a Tyrant Flycatcher, As the name suggests the bird feeds mainly upon insects. It is also a fierce protector of its territory attacking large birds such as red tail hawks and mammals that enter it’s range. For this reason it has been adopted as the symbol of the Puerto Rican independence movement.

Taken with Canon 5DMII, Canon 100-400L f/4.5-5.6 cropped about 30% (I got lucky he was sitting right above me in a branch) Slight contrast and tone adjustment with Nik Software in Photoshop CS4 and sharpened with Tony Kuyper’s action.,

Antillean Crested Hummingbird

February 7, 2010 in Avian, Photography, Vacation | No comments

I’ve fallen off the blog wagon again but I’ve got a few images from our trip to St. Lucia finished up so I’m back to trying again.

This is an Antillean Crested Hummingbird, the other type of hummingbird that we saw on vacation. They sat still even less often than the Green Throated Caribe’s did, but this particular male favored this branch at eye-level under the canopy of a fragrant tree, so it was just a matter of being patient enough. Which was hard since the sun and the surf beckoned me at the same time.

Processed in Photoshop CS4 with the help of Nik Software Plugins and sharpened with Tony Kuyper’s action.

Hummingbirds!

January 24, 2010 in Avian, Photography, Vacation | 1 comment

We just came back from another wonderful week in warm tropical waters. The destination this time was St. Lucia, BWI. This was our second trip to St. Lucia, our first we spent at Rendezvous in Castrides, this trip we went to one of the Sandals resorts the Grande St. Lucian. Since we had been to St. Lucia once before I went with plans on taking a zip line tour and a rainforest tour, but the bus ride from the airport to the resort dashed any plans. The bus ride rivaled that of the old road to Negril from Montego Bay or the road to Whitehouse (also from Montego Bay) which is to say windy, hilly and done in a bus with a driver that is constantly passing slower cars despite the fact the road is hilly, windy and one usually insanely narrow lane in either direction. Oh, and of course they drive on the left. So the week was spent soaking up the sun while walking along the beach, sailing in a wonderful wind in a hobie that didn’t capsize at every opportunity and shooting the local birds. There were hummingbirds galore and royal terns and brown boobies and banaquits. The next few posts will be some of these and maybe a picture or two of the resort along the way.

A green throated carib hummingbird in flight

Green throated Carib

A bit of summers warmth at the holidays

December 24, 2009 in Uncategorized | No comments

I was working on some images today and feeling cold but instead of pushing up the heat I looked back at some images that I took when Mike and I made a not so triumphant attempt at hiking to the summit of Mount Jefferson on the Caps Ridge Trail. Mike and I got married on the “first cap” of the Caps Ridge Trail twelve and a half years ago with two very good friends as attendants and for the first few years we would go up, stay at the ever wonderful Notchland Inn and hike the trail. We did this until I tore my (replacement) ACL (I’ve now had 4 surgeries on that knee – but that’s a different type of post for a different type of blog) and moved onto to less arduous hikes. But this summer we wanted to give it a try again, and although we didn’t summit we got over 3/4 the way there and it wasn’t my knee that made me ask to turn back, which is a good step (groan).

We got a fairly early start, we thought until we saw the dozens of cars in the tiny parking lot at the trailhead. This summer was very wet and the first weekend in August was the first dry weekend that we had in New England and it seemed like everyone was out for a hike. But it was a beautiful morning, the greens were unbelievably green from all the rain and there was a mist rising off the ground. As we came around a corner of the trail I saw this:

I wanted to make an HDR of the image because the tonal range was just too great for a single shot and I’m not overly fond of tonemapped single images, they never look natural to me. I’d brought the 50D with me because I wanted to keep the weight in my pack down and at that moment regretted it dearly. The 50D is not a bad camera as long as you keep your ISO low, once you go above 400 ISO the noise is very noticeable and the process of making an hdr enhances that. Of course since I was keeping the weight down I had no tripod so I did the best I could I got 6 images taken before the light shafts disappeared but the last 2 in each series (+2 exposure) were very blurry – no way I’m holding anything still at 1/6 sec. (f/4.0 ISO 400). So this was a 2 exposure hdr combined in photomatix, adjusted with Nik Software in LR2 and then adjusted and sharpened with Tony Kuypers actions in PSCS4

Happy Holidays to everyone and I hope next year is as full of love and happiness and fun as can be!

The Known Universe

December 20, 2009 in General, Science | No comments

There is a new exhibition at the Rubin Museum of Fine Art in NYC called Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe. The American Museum of Natural History has created this short film that is part of the exhibition. I’m thinking this might be worthy of a trip to the Big Apple.

Twilight, Boston financial district style

December 13, 2009 in Image Processing, Landscape, Photography | No comments

Another shot I took whilst out with Terry on our long hike through the streets of Boston. You can see that “party yacht” better in this shot, it’s a bit of an eyesore against the brick and glass buildings, I wish I got lower to hide it better. I like the way the light illuminates the redish gold leaf on the cobblestones and the seagull waiting for a handout. Another HDR processed in Photomatix then finished with Nik Plugins and Tony Kuypers web sharpening actionTwilight from Moakley Courthouse

Canon 5DMII, Canon 16-35mm F/2.8

Boston Financial District

December 12, 2009 in Landscape, Photography | No comments

I’ve taken a bit of a hiatus from all aspects of photography, the number of unread blogs I subscribe to is well over 1000 and I haven’t even picked up my camera since going down to watch Mike and Jas surf at the begining of November. We even went hiking up falling waters trail in NH and I only brought my little point and shoot and took 3 pictures that I haven’t looked at yet. Part of it is ennui, part of it is Dragon Age, part of it is that I’ve been reading vociferously but I seem to be reviving. I took another look the images I took with Terry when he was up that first weekend of November and started working on a few of them. This is probably my favorite of the series. The wrought iron sculptures of the sailing ships worked nicely to camouflage the yacht that was moored in front of the Boston Harbor Hotel which stood out like a sore thumb. I don’t like the slight haloing around the buildings but it’s there in each of the raw images to some extent, it’s where the light was the strongest I guess. I didn’t feel like spending hours in photoshop to make it go away so I didn’t.

Boston from the Moakley Courthouse

Taken with a Canon 5DMII, 24-105L f/4.5 lens. Merged to HDR with Photomatix and finished in Photoshop with Nik plug-ins and Tony Kuyper luminosity and sharpening actions

Male Boxfish

November 17, 2009 in Critter, Photography, Vacation | No comments

Male spotted boxfish

This just goes to show you that in the fish world like in the bird world the male is the flashier of the two. The females are a uniform brown with white spots while the guys are dark blue and have orange markings across the back and eyes. We saw many more of the females than males

Canon 50D, Canon 24-105L f/4.0, Ewa Marine underwater housing.

Gold Dust (day) Gecko

November 15, 2009 in Critter, Photography, Vacation | No comments

Gold Dust Day Gecko

We saw this little guy as we were walking around the condo area in Kona. He didn’t sit still for long, but I was faster than he was in this case. And he didn’t try to sell me any insurance either!

Hawai’i website is finished and posted

November 14, 2009 in Vacation | No comments

Well Mike and I made a great final push to get the web page for our trip done. You can see it here Now it’s time for me to get serious in deleting all the extraneous images and see what I find that I wanted to include but didn’t.

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