In a world of so many great photographers and writers, I am venturing into some unknown territories, leaving comfort zones, finally very willing to practice the art of seeing. By maintaining the practice of posting daily photos, I hope to continue learning about the possibilities that I trust are out there for the taking.
It was a duck kind of morning.
Normally we chase the ducks away as they leave a mess. This area is where we throw bird seed and the ducks have found it.
What's a little dirt if there is food to be had.
Food and water....these guys are quite happy. And I get some photos. Win/win.
I didn’t get up with the 5am alarm to shoot in the morning light. However, while at the kitchen sink (after coffee and breakfast), I couldn’t resist heading out with the 70-200mm lens once spotting this Great Blue Heron land by the 15th green lake. I shot a couple of frames before the Heron became disturbed by my presence. I followed him as he flew off to the 16th fairway, landing by the lake’s edge.
By 8:00am after having shot over 325 shots of baby Heron (of which I only selected 80 for another review), my sore back from the weight of the heavy lens, convinced me it was time to return home.
An immature (young) Great Blue Heron.
Walking towards home, I spotted something moving in the lake. It was a solo one or two day old duckling swimming and calling out in the water maybe a foot into the lake. I never see ducklings without a mom around. Strange. I picked up the heavy camera and lens one last time (I thought) to capture this little bitty guy. Just as I was attempting to focus the lens I was startled by a big splash and reflexively depressed the shutter, capturing this photo below.
Under this splash is a large (more than 12 inches) fish with baby duckling in its mouth. The fish dove under taking the duckling down with him. I was furious. I was sure that was the end of the duckling. Until, mere seconds later, baby was swimming, seemingly not at all harmed, toward the shoreline. I just knew the fish would get the duckling again before the duck got out of the water.
So far to swim to shore.
But the duckling did make the shore.
I still thought the fish would appear.
Come on.
Alas. The safety of land. HA!
Phew.
Isn't he cute?
But now what? Baby duckling is all alone without the protection of mom. I don’t see any ducks nearby. I don’t know what to do. I’m trying to figure out if I should take baby home and research how to feed and raise him. But what if mom is looking for baby. How sad would that be.
I decided to leave the duckling, all alone.
As I walked along the lake shoreline toward home, off to the right in the lake, I spotted a mom and two tiny ducklings that were the same size as MY baby. I hurriedly walked back to baby, ever so gently picked him up, walked back and deposited him on the shoreline opposite where mom and her other two were now swimming away, out toward the middle of the lake. Great. Now what do I do? Mom hasn’t a clue that her third is still alive and in need of her.
It was getting hot. I couldn’t stand feeling helplessly sad for baby. I gave up, hoping for a good ending.
Now hours later, I’m afraid to go back and see if baby is still out there all by himself, or worse, dead.
Some afternoon shots following a day of enjoyable reading David Ziser’s new book: Captured by the Light.
Different view of our condo.
View north out our bedroom glass doors.
7pm lakeside palm tree reflections.
First ever infocus panning shot I've taken.
Won’t spend time and emotion explaining the particulars on how Scottie, my angel from heaven, spent 3 hours using Gotomypc (where he had control of my computer from his house) except to say that he did find a solution for the corrupt Outlook .pst file which prevented me from accessing all my Outlook information. I’m up and running on Outlook again.
I needed to get out and Ray didn’t hesitate when I asked if we could go play some holes of golf now that the earlier gale force winds had stopped.
Habituated ducks running towards us for food.
Alana, our neighbor, feeding ducks while I'm shooting away.
Couldn't resist getting us both in this shot.
What a fantastic day I had doing just what I wanted to do. I spent a large portion of the day reading, and practicing what I was reading, in Scott Kelby’s The Adobe Photoshop CS4 book for digital photographers. This is the first time I shot raw photos and worked them in Adobe Camera Raw. Actually, that isn’t true. I just learned that using Adobe Lightroom 2.4 in the Develop mode is a Camera Raw program.
I practiced on the photo below.
hmmmm. Our 3rd photo class assignment is “Curves”. I wonder if this photo qualifies? Ninety percent of the photo should be curves so I doubt it.