Visiting My Great Blue Heron

I've been visiting "my" GBH a couple times a week again for a couple weeks in a row, and he hasn't disappointed.



read more...


He's mostly got the pond to himself.



The lower sun angles of fall is nice as is the color of the foliage in the reflections / water...

Unlike many birds that freak at the first sight of a human, this one can be "friendly" and not bothered by people passing by or even directly interested in him.



When I visited him last night he was near his little island, and then flew around here and there, and then I approached him and he was hunting and let me get to around 10 or 15 feet.



This is the same heron that I've been checking on since August! He's the BEST!



-J

Two Months of Fall Remaining 10-21-2009

I took a break in September to regroup, and have been on a good roll since.

With two months of Fall remaining, I need to keep at it and maybe shift it in to the next gear and accelerate a little.



Read on for more.

Last night I went shooting at Great Falls with a friend and we hit a new to me spot, then the falls on the MD side and then walked down the tow path a bit AFTER sunset and I shot this with my Fuji and 80-400mm off a tripod.



My new plan for sharing images and locations is to freely share info on the places I've been shooting for months and months and years. Places like Blackwater and Great Falls, where I've been like 50 times each or more, I'm cool with continuing to share info on the spots I shoot.

But this year I'm also hunting around, finding new locations, traveling farther distances in search good stuff, and not sharing images in real time, and not sharing location info at least publicly. I don't mind sharing some info with friends that ask, but what I'm mainly avoiding is those that lurk and those that would like to get the results but not put in the work required.

A part of me thinks I could give away all m best info and still be ahead of the game, but I don't want to make it too easy on the competition. Like this shot, IDK, I think it took some planning and creative thinking to make it happen.



In the next month I'm planning a couple big trips, which should yield some new subjects and fun new encounters.

The thing I really liked about the last couple places I went was that it was a search for the unknown, an adventure, and it could have been a bust or it could have been great. Risking it, not knowing what to expect, but planning for the best and trying - that's what I like, it was so fun.

Going to the same places with the same approach and nearly the same gear, and actually expecting different and better results - that is just stupid. I'm going to new places, with new approaches, and new techniques and ... we'll see what the future has in store. So far I think I'm on track.

Susquehanna River MD - Oct 18 2009

Mid-October is not nearly peak for bald eagles at the Dam on the Susquehanna River yet, but it's good there.



This past Sunday it was scheduled to be rainy ALL day, like 90% chance each and every hour according to weather.com. I was so jazzed to go shooting that I woke up around 4am and headed out to another spot on the eastern shore of Maryland and then later wound up at the river.



I counted 50 eagles across the river without even trying in like 15 seconds.













Read on for more including a video...









Virtually no one else was at the river to see the eagles when I got there before noon. Within a few hours a handful of folks showed up. It was a slow day, but this time of year slow is still awesome.



Myself and others spotted an adult eagle with an antenna (ie GPS transmitter) - I think the standard is to track location data and upload it once or twice a day to conserve battery power. If you click to view the larger version you can see the antenna coming out of the back of this eagle



There were also a few banded birds, including this one with a green state band (I forget which state that is, MA/Mass. maybe?):





And this adult that had a blue state band (NY):





For me photographywise the highlight was this bald eagle flying by with a large catfish:











Also, one of the resident Peregrine Falcons flew up river too fast for me to catch a shot early in the day, then later (maybe same bird) one flew by and circled overhead for a brief moment and I managed an ID shot, nothing spectular:







I put together a some video from the morning of the eagles along the water, and as the sirens sounded to warn everyone to take to higher ground as the power generation was about to start. I'm a bit upset with myself because a guy was following me around and kept talking as I was trying to record some clean video. I should have spoke up and or walked away - even if just for 5 minutes, but I didn't. And the guy kept saying something like every 20 seconds whenever I'd hit the record button. So I had to chop up the video and remove audio completely from the last clip.... Fortunately the sirens in the video was still cool.





(note it says 11/18/2009 in the video-text but it was shot on 10/18/2009...)

Dropbox - Pretty cool

A friend sent me some files via dropbox and I was impressed.



read on for a bit more info


They give you 2GBs of storage for free. There's a pc/mac client for your computer, and you can drop files in to a folder and it will automagically sync with your other computers. And there's a web page to access your files.

You can pay for more space.

And you can share files with other folks via a URL to the item. So instead of a huge email attachment, or if it is too big to email, you can upload it and share the link....

I think it is a great app. And the basic version is free.

Octobers Past

I took most of September off from Flickr's daily grind of posting and visiting friends photos... And now I am back at it, posting, etc.

October's going to be awesome. Fall is such a great time in this area (Maryland, Virginia, Delaware - New England!, etc. The birds, the foliage, the cool weather, the later sunrises and earlier sunsets - I just love those changes.

3 Years ago I made my first trip to the Susquehanna River in search of eagles and it was a day like none other, with a real drama that unfolded revealing the character present in so many of the photographers there that day (and DNR's extremely slow response).


Read on for more....


We thought that eagle must have hit the power lines and broke a wing and he then drifted down river.



He was left for dead, then rescued and then a couple of days later at a rehab facility deemed too injured to be rescued...

That same day I got one of my all time favorite bald eagle photos. Since that day I've been a ton of times to the river to see the eagles. Peak time for them (mostly migratory eagles) is Thanksgiving to Christmas.



Some of the other places that I've been in Octobers past are Shenandoah National Park, where late October is good for foliage



and Mason Neck State Park in VA where some fog and a walk on the 'beach' gifted me with an brief encounter with a red fox



And some god-beams peaking through the trees early during a walk at Mason Neck



The river and eagles is probably the highlight of Fall here in Maryland, watch the leaves turn and fall and the eagles arrive, hungry for fish, and less afraid of human proximity than locals - it's a great thing.



I like to go with the flow, and plan for trips and get out shooting a lot, often. But when sunrise is earlier than 6am or the day's heat bring temps at or above 95 degrees I tend to save my energy. But it is the welcome Fall season where heat fades, the sun rises later and the days bristle with color that I make that extra push to get out and shoot.



It's October 1st and the next two months are going to be awesome. I just can't wait. Be it 100 miles away or 10 miles away, there's always something to search for in Fall...........





-Happy Shootin'