From Snow Mountain to Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument

On Friday of last week my view to the east changed. President Barack Obama designated the Berryessa Snow Mountain Wilderness Area as a national monument. This will make it one of the biggest parks in California. It is over 100 miles long stretching from Solano County in the south to Snow Mountain in the North. The area is home to an incredibly diverse amount of wildlife from Bald Eagles and Tule elk to a wide array of wildflowers and plants. I have witnessed the spring display of wildflowers in Bear Valley and it is second to none. Here is my image of Snow Mountain from my bedroom window. It is the taller peak in the background. It will be interesting to see how it is managed to meet the diverse needs of the people who currently use it. God's love and blessings to all, chris Image created with a Canon 7D and a Canon 100-400IS lens #TeamCanon

Touch of Velvet

All the Blacktail bucks in my area have their antlers almost fully grown now and they are covered in velvet. Come late August the velvet will start coming off in anticipation of when they will need their antlers for the fall rut. This morning I was on my way into town to drop off some bags to the Senior Thrift Store when I passed by a bachelor group that was in someones front yard. I stopped as one of the bucks was standing in a great spot right in front of a shaded area with dark house siding behind it. I immediately took advantage of this dark background by taking his portrait. The lighting was fabulous.! What a nice way to start my trip downtown. God's love and blessings to all, chris Image created with a Canon 7D and a Canon 100-400 IS lens at 400 mm. Camera was handheld and the camera settings used were. AV mode, ISO 400, F 5.6 at 1/160th of a sec. #TeamCanon, #canonbringit

Catching Up on the Birds

I'm getting caught up now that I can upload images directly to my main computer. Last week I had two great mornings with the birds out in my photoblind in the Little Lake Valley of Northern California. There were a lot of birds and I had a great time photographing them. Editing images isn't as much fun but it is a necessary part of photographic process. Here are my favorite four images from those two days. All these images were created with a Canon 7D and a Tamron 150-600 mm lens. I prefer shooting with a zoom lens over a straight telephoto lens because it makes bird images much, much easier to compose with. Especially when you are photographing from a photoblind and it is difficult to change your position relative to your subjects. The camera was on a tripod and was in AV mode with an ISO of 800. Shutter speeds and F stops varied. Enjoy the images and God's blessings to you, chris #TeamCanon Please check out, "Secrets of Backyard Bird Photography", on Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Backyard-Photography-Chris-Hansen/dp/1937538559

Free

This morning I felt free. With help from Michael the Technical Support Representative from Canon (Thank You) I was able to resolve the issues between my computer operating system and my camera uploading software so that I could once again upload images directly to my computer. I had a backlog of a weeks worth of photography to catch up on. The first images I uploaded were from the 4th of July. What better images to celebrate freedom than that? We went out to the Mendocino Coast that day and road bikes and played on the beach. Thank you Lord for gving us that freedom. Here are a few images from that day. God's love and blessings to all who have helped maintain that freedom, chrisAll images created with a Canon 7Dand a Canon 17-85 mm lens. Exposures varied.

Beautiful Birds

This morning I had a fantastic time photographing birds for close to three hours. The conditions were perfect! It was overcast and the lighting was really nice. Now I have a lot of bird images to process and I can't easily do it because of compatibility problems between software and the operating system on my computer. So here are a few images form this morning. I'll be taking some time off until next week to try and sort these issues out. God's love and blessings to all, chris All images created with a canon 7D and a Tamron 150-600mm lens. AV mode, ISO 800 #TeamCanon

Falling Dominoes or the Domino Effect

Today's blog could also be called trouble and trials come in threes or is it fours and possibly larger.. It all started when I found out that my new lens needed to be returned for warranty work. All of my mages taken with it of birds flying were coming out blurry and now I know why. It needs to have the firmware updated to correct this problem. My first problem was that in order to return the lens I needed to print out a return form. Therein lies a big problem. My printer has been slowly dying and now it wouldn't print. So I searched online and found a reasonably priced printer that could be picked up at an office supply store in the big city of Ukiah. I hooked up the new printer when I got home. Error message from the printer. "This printer is not compatible with this operating system it must be 10.6.8 or higher". I immediately checked my operating system and found that it was 10.3.8. So yes it wasn't high enough. The next step was to go online and download a new operating system. Which with my slow, slow internet connection took something like six hours with numerous disconnects to hinder the process. The following day I went to put the driver software into the computer and the disk sent with the printer kept being ejected and wouldn't mount. The next best course of action was to go online with my slow internet and download the driver. Which I did, success and I was able to print out the much needed form. I thought I was in the clear and went out and did some hummingbird photography. When I went to upload the images i found that they uploaded at the pace of a snail. Roughly one image every five minutes. Now I thought I needed to update my upload software. I went online and downloaded that and installed it on my computer. I blissfully figured all of my little problems must be solved. When I went to upload some images this morning I was notified mid process that my hard drive was full. Oh my what's going to be next? Here is an image from this morning of a male House Finch from my photoblind out in the Little Lake Valley. May you have a smooth day. God's love and blessings to all1 Image created with a Canon 7D and a Tamron 150-600mm at 329mm. AV mode, ISO 800, F 8.0 at 1/200th of a sec.

Chicory, Deer and Hummingbirds

I started off the morning by heading out to the Little Lake Valley to restock the bird feeders. It's been a long time since I have been out there. On the return trip I stopped to photograph the Chicory flowers that were growing in profusion in one the fields beside the road. Following that I looked for deer once I got up into the forest. I found a group of about a dozen deer that were feeding on fallen leaves. They were really chowing down on those leaves! When I arrived at home I went into the backyard and spent some time with the hummingbirds. One of the most easily photographed was one that was in moult and didn't have any tail feathers. I had a pretty nice morning. God's love and blessings to all, chris all images photographed with a Canon 7D. #TeamCanon