Month: February 2018

What do you do when you’ve finally finished processing all the photos from your vacation and it’s still cloudy and rainy?

Try to get out between showers and accept the challenge of getting the best shots you can. Perhaps a brightly-colored male Green-Winged Teal will lend a little color to the drab mud-flats.

It’s a good time to revisit old skills like panning while taking action shots.

and I’ve been doing this long enough I still think a little blur creates a sense of speed rather than being a serious photographic flaw.

Subtle, gray backgrounds fade away, leaving a sense of calm and serenity,

the exact feeling I often get while walking in the fog or under overcast skies.

Although sunshine was forecast for much of the rest of the week, it was cloudy our last day in Santa Rosa. Undeterred, I took my camera on our walk along the Santa Rosa creek.

If I’d known what I was actually looking at, I would probably have been thrilled at sighting a small flock of Western Bluebirds, a bird I only occasionally see in the mountains. Truthfully, I didn’t know what it was until I opened my shots in Lightroom. It was hard to tell what was sky and what was bird until I maxed out the controls and was left with a grainy, but recognizable, shot of a female Western Bluebird.

I probably should just have junked the shot, but it looked so much like a watercolor that I decided to play around with it in Photoshop and ended up with a picture I liked.

This shot of a Yellow-Rumped Warbler

was actually saveable, but I liked the Bluebird treatment so much that I decided to apply the same effect to this shot and liked this better than the original picture.

Though I’d prefer that every photo I take turn out to be magnificent, the best thing about being dissatisfied with the shots you’ve taken is that you know that, given another chance, you’ll get better shots. After all, the most important belief for any photographer is the belief that their next shot will be their best ever.

The weather gradually improved during our Santa Rosa visit, and our next outing this White-Tailed Kite was awaiting us at the Laguna de Santa Rosa Trail, blending in superbly with the foggy skies.

At least it was bright enough that I could use a faster shutter speed and capture it as if gave me a fly-by

and appeared to be checking me out.

It was even brighter on our way back, but the Kite insisted on keeping the sun to its back so that the white wings appeared to be gray.

I’m convinced raptors purposely swoop down out of the sun to frustrate their paparazzi, though it might have more to do with confusing prey.

Still, one of the three White-Tailed Kites we saw did me a favor and circled around to hunt again, giving me great light.

I felt blessed to see so many Kites on this visit, considering that I’ve only seen one in all my previous visits.

Although the Kite was the main attraction on our beach walk north of Bodega Bay, there were many supporting actors. All I know for sure is that I wouldn’t have wanted to be a mouse on that stretch of beach.

This Red-Tailed Hawk didn’t seem too happy with our looking down on it,

but it didn’t have to suffer too long because it was quickly displaced by this Vulture that landed on the same rock while we were standing there.

We didn’t walk too much further before we encountered this Kestrel sitting on an even higher rock.

At first we thought this was either the Kestrel or Red-Tailed Hawk, but its flight pattern quickly revealed that it was neither, but, rather, a Northern Harrier.

Just in case there were scraps left over, there was a pair of Ravens perched on fence posts near the parking area.