Big O(random)

This weekend I took some time to go through old photos that I had never yet reviewed. I found a few that seemed like they might be interesting to put online. It’s just a grab bag of miscellaneous images, but mostly macro photos, which I notice that I don’t have many of online yet. I need to remedy that!

A garden spider that spun it’s web in my yard a few years ago.

A bee gathering pollen from a Mexican plum tree flower.

A beautiful fungus growing from a tree stump.

Giant sunflowers in a field down the road from me.

I was once again at Sheldon Lake State Park this past Sunday. On this trip I was able to get my first decent photos of a woodpecker. There were 2 or 3 of them pecking on dead branches in the trees above the park area next to the Rangers’ office. After trying without much success to get close to one, I noticed a particular branch that seemed to attract them, so I set up and focused my camera on that and waited for a few minutes. Sure enough, one of them came to the branch and I was able to get some good shots. Below is the best of them, along with a close crop showing the bird in more detail. I also got photos of a little blue heron, and a great egret as they waded in the fishing ponds looking for a meal.

Last night I wasn’t feeling well and went to bed early, so this morning I was able to wake up just after sunrise. Feeling better, I decided to go to the nearby Sheldon Lake State Park to see what birds might be active. The birds are still not there in great numbers but I did find a pair of yellow-crowned night herons standing by one of the ponds and I was able to get some nice photos of them.

The first bird was also in a spot where the water reflected it very nicely. Here it is both as I saw it and inverted to make it look right-side-up.

Though I did not notice it at the time, the second bird was also sitting right next to a snake! I can’t tell what kind of snake it is, but it’s interesting to see how such different species can get along with each other like this.

Brazos Bend State Park is one of the busiest locations in the Texas State Park system. For one thing, it is located just a short distance southeast of Houston, and for another it is a large and diverse park with lots to do. Among it’s other qualities the marshes attract lots and lots of wildlife making it a prime spot for bird watchers. When I went there this past Sunday afternoon to do a little photography I encountered people from Germany, Sweden, and Japan who were there to observe the birds, as well of plenty of local people too.

And the birds did not disappoint! I only walked along about one mile on a trail by the edge of 40 Acre Lake and there was so much to see that I often had to choose among several different photographic opportunities. Do I get a picture of that group of ibises, or that alligator, or maybe the egret behind me? Decisions, decisions!

In the end I took more than 300 photos and have now edited them down to the best ones. Enjoy!

No, not a rocket launch. Just my first attempt at astrophotography. Tonight I set up my telescope and camera to take a photo of the waxing half moon. First, the photo itself and then a description of how it was made.

I’ve never seriously tried astrophotography before, so this was a bit of a challenge. My telescope is a simple one. An Orion Starblast 4.5” EQ, which is a very nicely performing beginner’s telescope. I originally bought it because I wanted something inexpensive, easy to use, and lightweight (hence more likely to get used!), but with quality optics, and the Starblast EQ fit the bill.

For the photo, I attached my camera with an eyepiece projection bracket. I used a Celestron 12mm Plössl eyepiece in the telescope. The camera just had my normal lens (Canon EF-S 17-55mm zoom set to ~30mm) attached focused to infinity. Sadly, I forgot to set the f-stop and it was on f/6.3. I could have done better, but my habits kicked in – most of my photos are taken with manual focus lenses that either have a fixed f-stop, or that I almost always leave full open because of low light conditions. Ah well, we learn best from our mistakes.

After initially lining up the telescope using a 20mm lens, I swapped in the 12mm lens with the camera already attached, rechecked the alignment, and started taking photos. There were lots of photos taken in order to get the one above, and I’m still not too satisfied. Focusing was hard, since the light passing through the camera viewfinder made the image a little dimmer and fuzzier than the direct view at the telescope eyepiece, but I could not swing the camera out of the way for focusing: the tripod and head for the telescope are a bit flimsy and the weight of the camera causes the telescope to be pulled slightly out of alignment, causing the Moon to move out of the field of view. Still, after much trial and error I got a few shots that satisfied me.

The view is a bit dim. More exposue tended to leave the brighter parts of the Moon over exposed, so I decided to live with some under exposure. The end result is a bit too dark but for a first try I think it came out well enough.

I have a couple of other camera adapters that I want to try out next – one that lets me attach the camera more solidly to the telescope, though at the expense of not being able to use large eyepieces, and another that lets me eliminate the eyepiece and put the camera at prime focus. Those will be fun to experiment with!

I travel to work each day along a stretch of US highway 90 that passes by woods mixed with some open land, and I frequently see birds of prey sitting in the trees scanning for something to eat. This morning I got some decent photos of 2 birds, a hawk and an American Kestrel. The hawk appears to be a juvenille red-tailed hawk, although I’m not certain of that.

It’s starting to be early spring around here and some of the birds are beginning to return to Sheldon Lake State Park. When I was there Sunday I saw a lot of cardinals, as well as the usual great egrets and white ibises. I also saw a few little blue herons and one great blue heron perched in a treee. Hawks and vultures are all over the area most of the year, and I got my first photo of a red-tailed hawk while on my way to the park, though it’s not a very good image. There’s an osprey that I often see in the mornings about the same place I saw the hawk. At least, I think it’s an osprey – I’ve never gotten a very close look at it, and my one photo so far is not good enough for my untrained eye to really identify it. I hope to have a better image soon since this bird is so reliable about showing up in the same spot each day.

Update

A co-worker asked his father – an avid birder – to look at the last photo for me, the bird I though might be an osprey. He thought it was most likely a white-tailed hawk, and that seems to make a lot more sense.