A visit to the Columbia Riverfront Zoo is usually my antidote for depression.  As I grow older I find myself often "lost" with a too long "todo" list but a complete lack of desire to tackle anything on that list.  I guess it is a hangover from the both my Air Force days and my corporate America days when there were never enough hours in the day to complete tasks but this pressure acted as the needed push to organize, prioritize and get things done rather than throw up my hands and surrender to the urge to give up!  The lower back pain definitely doesn't help these days.  But, as with yesterday, when I spend a few hours at the Zoo I often drive home with a feeling of relief and determination. The Tigers, Lions and Flamengos tend to be my "hangout" areas where I can spend hours waiting for those moments of "Eye Contact" when I feel a special connection with these magnificent creatures.

As the tiger wrapped his front legs around a log, one of the zoo keepers said that she had never observed that behaviour by the tiger before!!

Migrating Birds and Pocosin NWR

The Pungo Lake area of Pocosin NWR is a magnet for Snow Geese and Tundra Swan who flock to the area in the thousands to spend the winter in the warmer waters of the North Carolina Inner banks, at least warmer than their breeding grounds in the Tundras of Alaska and Canada. They travel in large noisy flocks numbering in the tens of thousands and are truly one of the greatest migration spectacles easily viewed in the United States. And this year the Snow Geese and Tundra Swan were joined by 7 Sandhill Cranes in and around the Pungo Lake area of Pocosin.


Snow Geese Swarm the Grain Fields



Pungo Lake Impoundments

Tundra Swan flight to Grain Fields

Tundra Swan disappears into Fog

Sandhill Cranes join the Snow Geese and Tundra Swan

Riverbanks Zoo

On overcast and warm days there is no more enjoyable place to be than a well-run Zoo. The Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia, SC is definitely a star among Zoos and this year, their crop of babies is simply outstanding! So that is where you will find me on these nice, mild temperature, slightly overcast, thin cloud days.

Sunday on Lake Marion

Some days are definitely better than others. I recently spent the day on Lake Marion in South Carolina on a pontoon boat with Doug Gardner, the award winning outdoors photographer. At the height of the bird breeding season, I was witness to and able to photograph some beautiful and amazing birds in and around this hugh and beautiful lake.

Winter in the Outer Banks

For my followers who are still around, please accept my apologies for not keeping you posted for such a long time.  There are many reasons for my absence, not least of which is major spine surgery about 18 months ago and with which I am still suffering severe pain, but these are all excuses and I am not good at making excuses.  This year has started off with a bang, including a couple of weeks shooting in and around the Outer Banks of North Carolina and a week of shooting birds in the Florida Wetlands.  The images above are a few of my favorites from the Outer Banks, visiting Wanchee, a nice fishing town, and a great sunrise on  Mattamuskeet Lake and thousands of Tundra or Whistling Swans on Lake Pocosin.  The relative solitude one can encounter in the winter months makes this area one of my absolute favorites.

The Grand Tetons in Late September!

Spent a glorious 2 weeks in Colorado, Wyoming and Montana and now engaged in the seemingly never-ending task of editing over 2000 images made during that time.  I flew into Denver International and rented an SUV for the 2 weeks.  I have often wanted to take the scenic Wyoming Rt 287 from Rawlings to the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone so timed my trip to stop and spend an overnight in Rawlings  before tackling the drive to the high country.  The weather was perfect and it was impossible to drive for more than 30 minutes without the scenery compelling you to stop and photograph.  Consequently, I left Rawlings at 7am and did not arrive in West Yellowstone until 7:30pm, aching back and all!!  In spite of all the rain, the fall colors this year were spectacular and this is the scene that awaited me when I came to the Oxbow Bend area of the Grand Tetons National Park.

Printing makes your Images Real

Pyrrhuloxia Portrait

I can view images all day on the monitor and they just don't seem real to me and like jelly have no permanent form or shape.  What happened to the days when we would drop our negatives off at the corner drugstore and wait breathlessly to receive a package of prints.  Our parents took those prints and pasted them in albums and carriend them around in their pocket books until they disintegrated.   I long for the days of real photographs...Prints.   I have been participating in digital projected juried exhibitions for a couple of years now but this year decided to see just how close I am to becoming the master printer I would like to be.  My prints cover almost all possible space on the walls of my home but I wondered how they would fair when pit against other print lovers and lovers of the craft of print making.  I 5 print categories, I submitted 4 prints each for a total of 20 prints.  12 of them were accepted into the 2014 PSA International Exhibition.  I was overjoyed, especially when I learned that my print of a Pyrrhuloxia Bird from South Texas gave me the PSA Gold (Best of Show) in the Small Color category.

I have had this love affair with Zoo's for a very long time.  I remember driving for hours off my route to visit a Zoo that someone had given a favorable review.  I asked the Zoo keepers over in Columbia to let me know when the Flamengos had babies and received a call last Monday.  Despite a painful lower back, I packed up and drove over to Riverfront and spend a great afternoon watching the Flamengo behaviour when this new baby made its debut.  Each year the Zoo shovels out into the Flamengo enclosure piles of dirt.  The Flamengos then somehow know how to build the little mounds of dirt (2 or 3 feet high) with a flat top with a small depression on the top.  The females then settle down and lay eggs. BUT, the Zoo then takes the real eggs out and replace them with dummies.  They take the real eggs inside and put them in an incubator thus depriving the raccoons and snakes and other creatures from eating them at night.  When the eggs hatch, they are presented to the Mama who miraculously assumes responsibility as though it had hatched underneath her.  It was interesting to me to see that any number of adult Flamengos manage to produce the crop and will take turns feeding the young'uns.  The chick here is less than 2 days ole and still not strong enough to stand on its own for extended periods.

Cedar WaxWings

When I see the holly hedges next to my driveway heavy with berries I know that that Cedar Waxwings will be visiting soon bringing with them their honor guards of Robins.  I think the Cedar Waxwings are the prettiest birds we have on the east coast but don't see
them often.  But every year like clockworks when the
holly berries are ripe they swoop in and when they leave not
a single holly berry remains. I have a big tree outside the
front door and it gets so weighted down with Waxwings and
Robins that it sags.  They eat the berries, fly off
over my walkway, dropping their loads of digested berries, fly down to the creek and drink gallons of water and then go back for more berries.  My wife is already complaining so tomorrow hopefully the temperature will rise above 20 and I will hose down the walkway and part of the
driveway where the holly hedges are.   Some years I
just open the garage door and photograph for the couple of hours
it takes them to clean the bushes. They are tough to photograph because of the sheen on their feathers is very easy to overexpose. They always arrive together, the Waxwings and the Robins.  I will see Robins all year but not a peep out of the Waxwings until
next year this time!!   

The seaside views in the NorthEast Unitied States are visibly different than the views we grow accustomed to in the South.  In the South we have learned to expect and assosiate sand with the beach, nice smooth easy on the feet sand.  In the Northeast US the seasides are mostly rocks and cliffs, big rocks, little rocks, dangerous rocks, but incredibly beautiful. 

Exploring New England

The Photographic Society of America held it's 2013 Annual Conference in Portland, Maine. I used this as an excuse to visit areas I had never photographed before that were stuck on my bucket list. Even though I had attended school in Connecticut and flew I and out of Boston many times in my career, I had never visited the many outstanding photo destinations there. I visited the Portland Head Light in Cape Elizabeth several times. In fact, I think I photographed it from every possible angle including from a lobster boat. This is one of the ones that I liked...

I spent several days on Cape Cod and enjoyed discovering it's many delights. Provincetown sits at the very tip of Cape Cod. The pilgrims first landed at Provincetown but after a skirmish with the native Indians they moved on to Plymouth. After having my daily Lobster Roll and a Sam Adams I stepped outside the Lobster Pot in Provincetown to this brilliant sunset scene.  

The next morning after a disappointing sunrise I drove over to this beach scene. I was awed by the cloud formations and this made up for the like of color in the sunrise location.

Now back to the job of editing the thousands of images captured during a 6-week discovery tour up and down the eastern seaboard.

I am finally making a bit of headway on the images I captured and brought home with me from the Western US parks I visited last September and October.  The problem is that every time I come across one that impacts me, I can't resist processing it to align with the way I remembered the scene and the next thing I know it is 3am again and time to get some sleep!!  The Elk which can be found in most of the parks continue to pique my interest.  First of all, they are massive animals and the males are huge with massive antlers....huge!!!  The males hang out together most of the year and completely ignore the females but for the fall breeding season when their attention fixates on the females and they work night and day on building their harem of females and keeping them intact until bred properly.  That is a tough job because they don't settle on a few females but seem to be driven to claim every female in the territory.  And, of course, this causes interesting conflicts resulting in exciting battles between the males.  It is such a spectacle that folks come from thousands of miles, bring their lawn chairs into the parks and line the meadows where the Elk usually bed down for the night and the shenanigans serve as entertainment to thousands and a big photo op for photographers who emerge from every corner of the earth. This big buck had gathered a harem of about 14 females and these 4 had wandered away attracting another male who tried to herd them towards his harem.  This bull successfully chased him away and is now (I imagine) chastising the females as he prepares to drive them home!!

Yosemite in September

Yosemite is one of those places where great images are always in front of  you and the challenge is to find a way to let everyone else see what you see and hope they think the same.  On the other hand, I find myself more often in the  situation where I like what I see and don't care whether anyone else does or not.  This is one of those times.  As I rounded the bend towards the Cathedral group this field of flowers with the mountain cliffs in the background seem to sing to me.  So I stopped and joined in the chorus!!

Red-Winged Blackbirds

  

Visited a nearby wildlife refuge today. PeeDee NWR near Wadesboro, NC.  Normally this time of year there are thousands of ducks of all shapes and types. They are busy flooding the cornfields which are the feeding pens for the migrating waterfowl.  But no ducks, no geese, not much of anything except thousands of red-winged Blackbirds gorging themselves.  The migrating water fowl must be really confused by the weather still being so warm up north and deciding why fly that long distance!

Hart Square Village

Hart Square Village is a period village in the foothills of Western North Carolina.  Hart Square in Catabaw County NC is open to the public one day per year and tickets go on sale the first Monday of Oct for the event on the fourth Saturday of October. Hart Village has molasses making, wood fired Pottery kilns, Horse drawn cotton Baler and Moonshine still...and tons of photo opportunities.  My first visit, I went with my mind set on making some good portraits of the period characters in the village for possible entry into Exhibitions and in the portraits category.  It was all that I had ever heard of it and I had a fantastic day and even succeeded in making a few credible portraits.  These are 2 of my favorites.  If you look carefully you will see that the first one has a bit of a "self-portrait" component.

We often search for something weighty to say for our blogs and when nothing comes to mind we often don't say anything.  I have received several slight jabs lately asking me why my blog is silent these days and I am at a loss to have a good answer.  Except when I think of it, I often have nothing important to say and don't want to bore what followers I have and ... say nothing!  It occurred to me when I was returning home from the Blue Ridge area of the Appalachian Mountains that most folks follow me for the opportunity to view my images more than listen to me wax eloquently about nothing important.  So this post is simply to share with you the above image.  I spent 2 fascinating hours at a site close to the Blue Ridge Parkway and only left because lightning joined the thunderstorm and I thought it would be wise to get out from under the tree that was giving me pretty good cover from the rain.  I was amazed when I finally got around to downloading the images to find that I only clicked the shutter about 30 times during that 2 hours.  The rest of the time I stood rooted watching and enjoying this big patch of Turks Caps in peak condition and hundreds of butterflies flitting about enjoying the nectar.  I have seen and photographjed Turks Caps before but I had never seen before such a BIG field of them and the butterflies were an added bonus.  I feel blessed for having been guided there by Cindy Probst, an Asheville photoghrapher, who is intimately familiar with the Blue Ridge and the Smokies and every flower and plant that grows there.  She shared her "secret" location in one of her email journals and I will be forever grateful to her for this one!!

Florida Roadtrip 2012

Arrived today in Ft Myers Beach for a few days to visit the many birding spots in the are.  It has been a great trip so far. Last week I was in the St Augustine and spent some time in the Rookery in the Alligator Farm. This is a shot of a young Roseate Spoonbill stretching its wings. Earlier that morning his sibling met an untimely death by falling off the edge of the nest and into the Alligator Pond. He was quite weak since this one seemed to hog all the food.  I wonder if birds can feel remorse knowing that indirectly he caused his siblling's death!

Wow! Events...
When we speak of spectacular events, we often think of events like the great migration in Kenya or the like but all around us are "lesser" spectacular events that take our breaths away!!  In Columbia, SC at the Riverfront Park, each year the shad (fish) make their journey upstream to spawn, passing through an area full of rocks and a dam wherein the rangers have built a fish ladder to help the Shad navigate upstream.  As the shad swim upstream in schools, somehow the birds are informed and arrive in great numbers to gorge themselves on the unlucky shad that happen to not reach the fish ladder and become lunch to gulls, herons, egrets, commorants, terns and other birds that gather at the dam area in anticipation of their arrival.  When the conditions are just right, they are a sight to see!!  I got on the road this morning at 6:30am to witness once again this feeding frenzy!! My friend and I were greeted with this sight!!

A special treat was the arrival of an Osprey and I was immediately impressed by the intensity with which this guy peered down into the water hunting for his lunch.

And then he locked onto his prey beneath the water and dove headfirst into the river only to emerge with this huge fish in his talons.

After that things settled down as the birds waited for a school of shad and then began their fishing in earnest.

How great thou art!!!

Enjoying the Discovery of old Image Files.

Sorry for the silence on this blog for so long.  Since November I have had extensive surgery on my left shoulder and it has been extremely painful to wiggle my fingers on a keyboard and so I have had to pace myself.  I have now started strength training at Physical Therapy and hopefully in a couple of months I will be near perfect.  I had visions of catching up on my image editing while recuperating but now reality has set in.  I have discovered that I am making images way too fast to ever catch up on editing.  The good news though is that I am discovering images that I had forgotten I ever made and now am consumed with editing to the detriment of everything else I have to do.  Over a year ago I spent the week out on Pawley's Island on the coast of South Carolina near Myrtle Beach.  I must go back, why?  This is one of the images made while there and it appears to be a place that I would like to visit for a few days. I have been surprised lately at how popular infrared photography has become.  It seems everyone is getting a camera converted for infrared these days.  It is an area that I have enjoyed for many years and so I thought I would look back at some of my old files.  Wow, some of this stuff is great!!  Why did I let them hide on my drives so long.  Enjoy this shot of an area of Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs.  I call it "A Patch of Light".

I like the way it makes me feel!!

What a wonderful Autumn

As we experience the weather gradually turning a bit cold, I cannot help but reflect back over the last few weeks and months.  It has been a magical Autumn for me this year.  I started the Fall season off with a visit to Cades Cove chasing bears.  The bears disappointed us since they were not as plentiful as we  thought they might be because the cherry trees failed to bloom.  As a result, the bears we did see were obviously a bit underfed and not gaining the weight they need to store up for the winter.  I surely hope it gets better for them.

My travels then took me to Colorado Springs, Colorado.  I lived there in the Seventies and Early 80s, teaching Computer Science at the Air Force Academy.  I spent lots of time in and around Colorado Springs but the highlights of my visit was to the Great Sand Dunes National Park and then to Crested Butte and Trebler and Ohio Passes.  The Aspen Groves in this area was spectacular.  The Shot above was taken alongside the road on Ohio Creek Pass.

And then the last couple of weeks have been spent exploring the Blue Ridge and the Appalachian Mountains for Autumn color and waterfalls and we were not disappointed.  The shot above is at the foot of the Middle Falls in Dupont Forest (NC).  Notice the reflections of the trees up on the bank in the water and rocks down below.  Soon after this shot was taken by my friend Edgar Payne, I slipped and injuried my knee on this hard and slippery slate. It would be an understatement to say that It was worth it but it was!!