Boy Scouts Hire New Spokesdeer

This morning was rather crazy. Too many things to do and not enough time to do them all. First, I dropped Annika off at school and I beat up my body some by working out. Then it was off to the hardware store to buy some wood screws. A quick stop to do some grocery shopping and then off towards home. Oh, and don't forget to go to the bank and get some money too. On the way home I saw some deer and stopped to get some more behavioral pictures of them browsing. This was done on the fly and I was there less than five minutes.

Next on the list was fixing my Mom's steps. That was what the wood screws were for. When I was finished as I was heading home and I saw a sign I hadn't noticed ever before. I almost didn't stop but then I decided to stop and back up and take a couple of
images. It might be an interesting image. There was a sign encouraging boys to join Cub Scouts. Lo and behold there was a deer feeding right next to it. I couldn't resist that.

The rest of the afternoon didn't slow down much as I had to pick up Annika and take her to the orthodontist. Come to find out she had forgotten her retainer so we had to rush back home and then back down to go to the big city (Ukiah) for her appointment. It was a whirlwind of a day. I think it's time to light a fire in the woodstove and have leftover stew for dinner.

God's blessings to all,

chris

Spring is in the Air?

It is supposed to be spring. Then how come it was snowing when I pulled into my driveway after church yesterday? Man it was coming down. Winter hasn't given up its grip yet . But the signs of spring are showing up everywhere. There are wildflowers popping up on the hills. My apple tree is blooming and my pear tree is budding out. The migratory birds are coming through and the turkeys are starting to strut their stuff.


The turkeys are fun to watch. They fan out their tail,then puff out their chest and then strut back and forth dragging their wing tips on the ground. It is truly a beautiful sight. When I first moved to the Willits area in the early 90's you hardly saw any turkeys at all. Now I see them in the Little Lake Valley in flocks of up to fifty birds.

I went and tortured my body some more by working out and then spent all morning working on a bird photography book I have in the works. I made revisions to one chapter and completed another. It is coming together chapter by chapter. So todays image is from the files. It is of one of our local toms strutting his stuff for the local girls.

God's love to all,

chris

MMMMNNNN Good!

Okay, I will admit it I'm a Chocaholic. I love chocolate in almost any form. Well not all forms. I do tend to like dark chocolate though I'm a bit fussy if its too dark. Anything over about 60 percent needs to be toned down a bit with something. So really dark chocolate goes really well with a nice glass of port.

As far as run of the mill dark chocolate I like Cadbury dark chocolate bars. I buy a few each week and keep them stashed in various places around the house to keep them hidden from the other chocolate eaters in the household. I'm not stingy and I do share with them. It's just if they are left out in the open for all to eat they mysteriously disappear. I like to cherish mine over a period of time. Ok, let's just face it the other members of my family are just a bunch of chocolate thieves!

On to todays image. I was looking through one of the photo sites I frequent and the weekly theme was chocolate. There was one image of chocolate and a cherry. It looked pretty cool so I started thinking of an image I wanted to create. I like chiles and dark chocolate once in a while so it finally came to me what I wanted to create. I made a simple cove out of white tagboard and placed the dark chocolate on it. I then drizzled chocolate over it and placed the chile on top of it. I kept things simple by using a single front lit flash.

I had three final images that I liked so I decided to present them in a triptych. I hope you like the final result.

God's blessings to all,

chris

Kickin' Back on Sunny Day

Today was far from sunny. In fact it was pretty cloudy all morning until the skies opened up and the rains fell most of the afternoon. A good day to just hole up by the fire and read or go through and edit some images on the computer. I chose the latter and I went through a lot of humming bird images today. The vast majority headed for the trash. Wrong wing positions, eyes not sharp or even no hummingbird in the image at all! A pretty fruitful time was spent overall.

My next duty today was to clean and refill all the humming bird feeders. Not exactly an all day job but it does take some time. Then we all watched Sherlock Holmes on DVD. Overall a pretty good movie. After the movie I sat down to finish off the hummingbird images but my eyes kept returning to a grab shot I took yesterday of Annika's tennis shoes while we were waiting for Lenore to come out of the store while we were grocery shopping.

We were all just laying back in the sunshine when Annika put her foot up on the windowsill of the car. For some reason I was drawn to it. It just looked cool up there in the sunshine. Sort of symbolic of summertime laziness. So I grabbed my camera and took four images before she noticed and started to ham it up. So later at the computer it just dawned on me what a cool image it was again.

Sincerely and God bless,

chris

Home Day

Annika had a sleepover last night so it was a sleep in day for everyone. I was up late keeping my daughter and her friends from mischief. Not a difficult task as they are all great kids. So I didn't crawl out of bed until after eleven Oclock. Not that common for me as I'm an early riser.Today was declared a home day by Lenore. In simplest terms this means little or no photography as there is work to be done around the house. So we swept and vacuumed etc. until the house was once again in reasonable shape.

I finally picked up my camera around four thirty or so with hummingbirds on my mind. I had been watching them fly by the windows as I was working on cleaning the living room up.I set up a patio chair on the deck about five feet away from the feeders and shot away with a single flash. Every once in awhile a hummer would land on the clothesline that the feeders were hanging from and turn towards me in display. An Anna's humminbird in display is an amazing sight even if you have seen it before. It is positively beautiful. The problem was when they would do it it seemed like it was always too close for my camera to focus.

Finally though it happened. A male Anna's landed near the end of the clothesline turned towards me and let it shine. I quickly turned my camera towards him, composed and took two quick shots. I couldn't wait to see them on the monitor. Later on when downloading it turned out to be my favorite shot even though it was on a clothesline.

God's blessings to all,

chris

First Hummers

Over the past week the Hummingbirds have begun arriving at my feeders. Now they start coming in force on their migration north up the coastal range of California. This has driven my resident Anna's Hummingbird crazy.All winter long she has had the feeder pretty much to herself. Now she is wearing herself out trying to drive off all these interlopers.

I helped her out by adding my whole smorgasborg of feeders that I put up in the summer. I usually keep about six feeders up until late fall. It takes a lot of work keeping them cleaned and filled. But it's worth the effort to see these winged jewels flying by.

There has been an interesting mix of mostly Rufous and Anna's along with one dark hummingbird that I have only gotten glimpses of and haven't identified. Hopefully it will stay around long enough for me to figure it out. So far all I can tell is that it is larger than an Anna's and it has a little bit of purple on it.

Today I just stood by the feeders and took a few passing shots with a single flash just to see what I could capture. Here is the result with a flower added where the feeder had been. Later on I'll set up my lighting system with backgrounds and flowers. A lot of work but it yields better results.

The best site for hummingbird photography is found here.

http://www.rpphoto.com/howto/hummer/humguide1.asp

Ralph is an incredibly talented photographer.

God's Light and Blessings to All,

Meal Fit for a King

The past few days have been pretty much totally photo free at least for a person like me anyway. We were off on an Easter trip to visit our friends Bonnie, Nick and their two children Andy and Anna. Luckily for my two kids they are almost the same ages. So they call one another cousins and they get along really well.

Bonnie is still struggling with cancer and it was difficult for her to communicate with us when she was awake. Luckily she still has a beautiful smile and she expresses herself quite well with that when she really likes something. She also could blink when she meant yes for some things. She is unable to write as she has lost most of her muscular coordination to be able to do that. She is one amazing woman. Please keep her in your prayers.

Bonnie's brother Scott and his girlfriend Shelley came as well as Bonnie's mother Diane. Together they and chef Scott prepared a meal that was fit for a king. I had fun photographing the dinner as it was being prepared. Trying different angles of the table settings and the dishes themselves.

In the end I was really happy of one of my image of Chef Scott. So I made a mock up of a cover of a Chefs Magazine for he and his girlfriend as a present.

Blessings to all for He has risen indeed,

chris