Category: Special Places

I’d rather think of myself as a Renaissance Man than a dilettante, but there’s no doubt that if I don’t find ways to rejuvenate my interest in an area that I tend to lose interest rather quickly and move on. When it comes to photography, though, I’m more apt to shift my focus than abandon it.

When I began taking photographs, I was mainly interested in scenics, and I’ve never totally lost interest in that. However, since buying my first Canon digital SLR a couple of years ago, I’ve been focusing on birding and expensive telephoto lenses, and doing without a “scenic,” i.e., wide-angle, lens. Perhaps I’ve never owned a decent wide-angle lens, or even felt the need for one. After reading several reviews, though, I decided to buy a “good” 17mm-40mm L series lens.

I bought the lens mainly for the mountains and the coast, but I couldn’t resist taking it with me to Nisqually Friday. Good thing, too, because there was very little “birding” going on, even though I got there by 7:00 to see if I’d have better luck than I did last Sunday. If I’d gotten some better pictures of birds, I would never have included these next shots.

This shot was taken from the McAllister side of the loop trail, looking back into the center of the preserve. If nothing else, it reveals what a beautiful day it really was.

This one was taken looking out toward Puget Sound and the snow-capped Olympics:

Neither of them strikes me as particularly good, but at least they offer a starting point, and I’ve found that the best way to improve is to start taking pictures and building on my mistakes.

My main lens, though, will continue to be my 400mm lens, and I’ll still be featuring close-ups like this one of the red berries that lit up the shadiest spots in the preserve,

or this one of daisies who couldn’t quite hold all the sunshine falling down,

and pictures like this one of a Flycatcher, perhaps even a Pacific-Slope Flycatcher, which obliged by flying up on a branch right in front of me just as I was leaving. At least I saw one bird that I haven’t seen for awhile.

Although the daisies have been around for awhile now, I haven’t managed to get a photo that I was happy with, so I carried another camera with a close-up lens when I went to Nisqually Sunday. Guess that’s what I needed, because I like this:

As long as I was carrying the camera, I decided that I also needed to update you on what has happened to Goatsbeard, or Salsify, which I showed earlier, which has now turned into a giant puff ball, just as Jamee suggested it would:

I think the above weeds appeal to the mathematician in me, but I’m not sure why these Fireweed also appeal to me:

Perhaps their appearance in clearcuts and recent forest fire burns symbolizes Nature’s ability to begin to heal disasters through natural Beauty.

The sun finally decided to come out about 1:30 Sunday afternoon, so Leslie and I went to Nisqually. I’ve never been to Nisqually in the late afternoon, so I was curious how it might change birding. Of course, I hoped that the birds that insisted on staying in the shade in the morning would be in the sun in the afternoon. Yeah, as if.

What I did notice was that there were a lot more butterflies flying around then I’ve seen in the morning. Even though they seemed more skittish than usual because of the considerable number of people, I managed to get a few shots:

It also seemed that there were different birds out in the afternoon than in the morning. For instance, this is the first Western Wood-Pewee I’ve seen this year, and he seemed to be enjoying the sunshine. Of course, it might actually be the increased number of mosquitoes that he was really enjoying, because there seemed to be considerably more of them than I’ve noticed in the cooler morning.

Nor have I gotten a picture of a Downy Woodpecker before yesterday, though I have seen glimpses of them in the morning. They were everywhere yesterday but still seemed to seek out the darkest shade, at least while I was trying to photograph them. Do the bugs they feed on tend to hide in the shade?

This photograph comes to you through the miracle of RAW, Aperture, and Photoshop, because about all I could see in the original was the shadow of a woodpecker. I’m sure if I keep going back I’ll finally get a shot of one in the sunshine and I can delete this series.

My favorite shot of the day, though, was this one of the same Hooded Merganser I shot last week, though this one has the advantage of having the rich glow of late afternoon sun rather than being shot in the dull gray of a cloudy morning. Photoshop can transform a bad photograph into an average photo, but it can never attain the beauty of a shot taken in the perfect light.