Birding Seabeck

I’ve been hearing about the Bald Eagles that gather at Big Beef Creel near Seabeck for several years now but have never had enough details to get there at the right time. This year fellow birder and photographer Dave Goudy filled me in with all the details I needed to finally get there at the right time. Unfortunately the best time was 6:45, which meant I had to leave home by 5:30. That turned out not to be a problem because I woke up by 5:00 AM. Not surprisingly, I was almost the first one there.

Not quite, though, because I was greeted by a classic three-year-old Bald Eagle perched on a telephone pole right above the creek.

Immature Bald Eagle

And there were several Great Blue Herons already standing on the shore of the creek,

Great Blue Heron

which I focused on at first because they were so close.

Before long I was serenaded by several Bald Eagles from the tall firs overlooking the creek.

 Bald Eagles

This lone eagle

Bald Eagle

was so close to the road that it was impossible to ignore it and Dave and I must have spent nearly 30 minutes taking shots of it, moving closer and closer and it never moved, though it did seem to glare at us at times.

About 45 minutes after I’d arrived more Great Blue Herons began to land in the shallow waters as the tide went out.

Great Blue Herons

It wasn’t too much longer before our eagle launched itself

Bald Eagle

and began to circle the beach.

Bald Eagle

It was the beginning of an exciting morning where I captured some of the best shots I’ve ever gotten of both eagles and Great Blue Herons.

Looking At the Roses, Really

Despite the fact that my favorite flowers at the Point Defiance Rose Garden are seldom roses, the roses were definitely the main attraction on my last trip there, even if the yellow and white iris was my favorite shot of the day. Simply put, the iris were quickly disappearing, while the roses were nearly in full bloom, even if there were a few late bloomers still not showing flowers.

I continue to experiment with the HDR technique, and it produced some eye-popping colors even though I only chose among the presets labeled “realistic,” and more often than not chose the “natural” one, not the photographic one. My aim isn’t to produce the most striking photograph I can, but, rather, to produce a photo that recaptures as closely as possible what I saw when I took the picture. In fact, I suspect one of the main reasons I’m not fond of the rose garden is that there are so many garish colors in the varieties represented there. That said, the more you play around with the software the more you realize just how arbitrary the colors are in photographs. If you try to reproduce the pictures you see on the screen in a print, you’ll see just how arbitrary colors really are.

That said, here are my three favorite shots from the day, in no particular order. You’ve probably noticed that my favorite roses are usually orange and yellow, like this one.

rose

I do realize, though, that a “rose” color is usually a pinkish-red, so I snapped a few shots of red roses, too.

rose

I wish these roses were actually growing in my yard so I could take my computer outside and see how closely this color matches the real color of the rose.

 rose

Somehow I remember it as being more yellow than this, but I shot so many roses that my memory could be totally off. If nothing else, I love its shape.

If you live in Tacoma, it’s time to get down to the Rose Garden because it’s peak season early this year.

Back to the Iris Garden

On my way to the Point Defiance Rose Garden, I first stopped by the Iris Garden across the street because it was closer to where I parked. I could immediately tell that many of the Iris were past their prime, and the garden wasn’t nearly as striking as when I first photographed it several weeks ago.

I’ve been taking flower photos since I moved to Tacoma around 2005 and am finding it difficult to improve on shots I’ve already taken. So, I decided to try using a tripod and HDR to better capture the full range of colors in the flowers. Since I recently took Iris shots using my new camera handheld, I thought this might provide a nice basis for comparison.

I thought these two iris were particularly striking, this one

Iris

primarily for its vivid colors, which I was able to accentuate through the use of Photomatix Pro. I suspect that using HDR did do a better job of capturing the full range of colors in the flower.

My favorite shot, though, was this simple yellow and white iris; here is the “normal” shot I got when if I took a single exposure with my camera.

Iris

Here’s the shot I got by combining three different exposures in Photomatix Pro. There’s definitely a lot more detail in this version and the background is much blacker than in the original.

Iris

I like this HDR version a lot. Except for the dark background, this comes much closer to the flower I saw when I took the picture.

Of course, perhaps a high-quality f1.4 lens would bring even more of the flower in focus at this range and perhaps make it an even more striking picture, all without the use of HDR. Photography constantly presents new challenges and, like any art, constantly demands that you see your subject in new ways.

When You Get Out of the Ruts

When I arrived in the Theler Wetlands parking lot Monday, I thought I’d hit the jackpot as there was only one other car in the parking lot. Unfortunately, it didn’t take me long to discover why there were so few people there. They’ve finally started breaching the dike so the main trail is temporarily closed, though they have provided an alternate trail through the Salmon Recovery area.

My first response was to just go home, and I seriously thought about doing that. However, it was a sunny day and I’d just driven 20 miles to get there. So, instead of leaving I decided to go to the areas that weren’t affected by the construction.

Dike Removal

I spotted a pair of Mourning Doves in the field just before the dike.

Mourning Doves

Back at the visitors’ center, I loved these azaleas.

azalea

I walked out on to the boardwalk and despite the fact that my hard drive is filling up with Marsh Wren shots

Marsh Wren

I spent fifteen minutes listening to him and taking a whole new batch of photos.

When I looked at my pedometer it read a little over a mile and a quarter, not nearly enough walking for a day. So, I finally decided to ignore the machinery and take the alternate path through the meadow. I didn’t see any birds no matter how hard I looked, but I did enjoy the Lupine I would normally never have seen.

Lupine

Once I got back on the old trail I found the small flock of Cedar Waxwings I’ve seen the last few times I’ve been at Theler.

Cedar Waxwing

Considering the construction, I thought the day had gone well, and I’d walked further than normal, nearly five and a half miles. But as I was passing the visitors’ center I heard crows mobbing something. I had to check out the area behind the center, an area I seldom explore.

The forest was actually quite dense, surrounding me with a dense green light, challenging even my new camera’s sensor. Still, this photograph of a Swainson’s Thrush

Swainson’s Thrush

is quite a bit clearer than it appeared to me in real life.

It took a bit of wandering but I finally saw the owl the crows had been harassing, though it turned out to be TWO Barred Owls, even though I could never quite fit both in a single frame.

Barred  Owls

After I spotted the owls and had taken a picture, I had time to appreciate the beauty of the light that managed to filter through the dense canopy of this Old Growth Forest.

Leaves

What started out as a disappointing morning turned out to be a remarkably good morning.