Mangle

I spent a good part of yesterday spring cleaning our back patio. I needed to clean off scattered seed, perches, backgrounds and some assorted junk. While I was working I heard two Wild Turkeys calling back and forth over the ridge. When one of them got closer it dawned on me that a good opportunity was at hand. I grabbed my camera and ran out to my permanent photoblind in the front yard. Before I could climb in I noticed one of the jakes was right across the driveway from me. Catching my motion it scurried off into the trees. I climbed into the blind and started giving soft hen turkey clucks. (Hard to imagine me as a hen turkey isn't it!) The other jake answered with a couple of gobbles and came running up the ridge less than a minute later. This caused the other jake to come back which pleased me to no end because it was quite a bit bigger. It was looking for that jenny it had heard. It hung around for quite awhile giving me plenty of opportunities to photograph it. The lighting was a bit iffy but I still had a great time. The poor jake never did find his girl. I decided to call him "Mangles" because half of his tail feather were mangled, torn up and missing. God's light and love to all, chris Camera Equipment Used- Canon 7D, Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM Lens Camera braced to blind frame hand held. Camera Settings- AV mode, ISO 400,F stop F5.6,Shutter speed varied

Gobble,Gobble,Gobble

Today dawned wet and rainy. Not usually the best conditions for photography but pretty good for portraits. I planned on finding the deer again and using my telephoto to get some close up portraits. The deer however proved elusive and were nowhere to be found. Turkeys however were out in abundance. So make lemonade and create turkey images.

Even then things didn't go as planned. When I was almost done with the turkeys I noticed that my camera was not set to where I usually keep it on the exposure settings. In fact I was four stops way too dark. Wow! How long had I been shooting images this way? I reset my camera and finished up. When I got home and uploaded my images I discovered that it was at about the halfway point during the mornings photography. Ouch. Nothing can be done but move on as these things sometimes do happen. It will remind me to keep looking at my camera settings as I doing my photography.

God's blessings to all,

chris