I promised no eagles on today’s post and so I will show you some random images that I took during last weekend with the exception of the one above.  This is actually one I shot Tuesday evening after work.  I like the image for two reasons.  One it was light enough at 5:15 pm to make this image at ISO 200.  And I like the sky and sunset that center around the tree.

Saturday at the pond in Dubuque I was sitting on the down hill-side of the bank and pretty close to the water (well actually the ice) when these three ducks came walking by.  They didn’t seem to mind me being there and were undeterred in their search for bits of food.

I like the way the sun shown on their feet and made them a really bright orange.  The male Mallard’s head looked royal blue sometimes depending on how the light struck his head.

Finally this pair of swans were there for an hour or so.  I had never seen a banded swan before.  It looks rather uncomfortable on his neck.  I couldn’t get close enough to him to see any markings on the band.

Pretty close to the time the sun was going down the swans started water walking and then took off.  They flew a sweeping circle over the pond and then headed towards the river.

I tried to capture their flight but the low light caused my shutter speed to be slow so I got nothing but white blobs.

That’s it for today.  Enjoy your Thursday.  Hope we don’t get too much snow.  Thanks for stopping by and be careful.

Okay I promise tomorrow no more eagle pictures.  I won’t promise for how long because Thursday my 3rd replacement lens comes in and that means Saturday and Sunday I’ll be back in search of eagles.  But at least tomorrow sans eagles.

However I will finish up with the battle for food between the three eagles from yesterday’s post.  For all his huff and puffiness the eagle on the left became pretty tame for a while, especially after the other two gave him a couple of wing clips to the noggin,

After a brief res-bit and some posturing things took a dramatic turn in favor of the intruder.  One of the trade offs for 11 fps is the buffer fills up pretty quick and then I have to wait for the camera to write a RAW file to the card and empty some of the buffer.

So this is the last image of the scuffle and then I had to wait for the buffer to clear.  You can see by the image below that some stuff happened between images.

Yes he was successful in getting some of the food from the other two eagles.  What I cannot show you is that in a few minutes a juvenile showed up and pretty much cleaned house.  At least he grabbed the food and successfully fended off the three adults.

Great fun for Jeanne and I to watch all this.  It was reasonably mild temperature wise and the light was beautiful.  Anytime I can watch eagles in nature it is a wonderful time for me.  The opportunity to photograph them is just a real blessing.

Enjoy your Wednesday.  Thanks for stopping by and be careful.

These images are from last Saturday’s shoot.  It was late in the day and we were losing the light so my shutter speed was slower than it needed to be.  As a result some of the action images below may be too soft for the purest among you but they do tell a story.

The two eagles above are preparing to defend the food stuff they have acquired.  What you can’t see in this images is what has them all in uproar.

I watched this eagle circling around the two on the ice and it looked like he was very interested in what they had to eat.  I’m not sure if he intended to try to hit the eagles or was just trying to make a good show of it but he came in too high and too fast.

He hit the ice hard and the ice shards flew as he kept on moving.  I really couldn’t see the look on his face but I would have thought he was thinking “damn I messed that landing up.”

He kicked up a lot of ice particles and did about a 90 degree turn on the ice.  It was pretty funny, which is why the camera was probably shaking a bit.

He finally came to a stop on the ice about 3 -4  feet away from his enemy.  You can see the ice particles still being kicked up by his talons digging into the ice for traction.   It took him a couple of seconds to compose himself and get himself ready for battle.

There was a pretty good tussle that ensued.  I captured most of it (that is the beauty of the D3 and its 11 fps burst.)  The bad news is the shutter speed was so slow that it just looks like brown and white blobs mushing together.

Fully composed now and ready to go after the food he musters his most fearsome pose and starts at the other two eagles in the first image.  Of course he lost his footing a couple of time before he got there but it was a pretty good fight for a while.

The one I really wished I could show you was when these three adults took on one juvenile and got it handed to them.

A few more eagle pictures coming.  In case your interested I had a good conversation with Adorama today.  They put another lens out for shipping to me today and apologized profusely.  I suppose it is possible they had a bad defect in one of their production runs.  A special thank you to Andreas for taking the time to give me some ideas about what might have caused the problem.  He has an engineering background so his suggestions and thoughts were very helpful and I thank him for that.

We’ll see as the saga continues.  Stay tuned.

By the way you can click on any of the images to enlarge them. Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your Tuesday and be careful.

Another beautiful day for photography yesterday.  I thought about going to LD # 14 again but I received an e-mail from Burt and he said there were no eagles there.  So I decided to go our lock and dam instead.

First stop was at the 14th street stream.  Lots of Mallards there today and there were some young children standing on the bridge with their parents throwing bread crumbs.  The image above shows how much the ducks and geese were enjoying the free meal.

I shot about 100 images at the pond.  I originally started out with the 50 – 500 mm lens on the D700 but I couldn’t get it to focus sharply on anything.  Everything I took looked soft.  So I put it back on the D3 and everything looked great.

After about 45 minutes of shooting Mallards I decided to go over to the lock and dam.

There were a lot of people there and it didn’t take long to see why there was a crowd.  There was one eagle sitting at the top of a tree in full view.  He didn’t seem to mind all the people coming close to him.  This is the closest I’ve ever come to an eagle.

There was another one sitting in a tree a little South of him but he was really hidden by the branches.  I then went back to the body of water where we found the eagles Saturday and they were there again.  I was very excited because there were two eagles on the ice and two flying over head looking for fish.

I got the camera set up and started to take some images and it happened again.  The damn lens froze up.  It was like the focusing motor was fried.  Couldn’t get it to work with either camera.  Ugh!!!  The flying eagles were very close too. 

I tried the lens again last night before going to be and it is toast.  It won’t focus or make any type of movement.  I’m done with Sigma products.  My only other alternative is Tamron.  <Sigh>

Enjoy your Monday.  Thanks for stopping by and be careful.

Jeanne and I had some fun yesterday afternoon.   I wanted to go out and test the latest lens from Sigma to see if I was going to have to send it back.  For the most part it performed well and most if not all of the trashed images were as a result of faulty technique on my part or improper camera settings (also my fault.)

We started out about 3:45 pm and I was not looking for eagles.  I just wanted to do some test shooting with the Sigma 50 – 500.  What we found instead was a group of 5 eagles sitting on the ice trying to share some food.  They actually do not play well together when there is food involved. 

I like the first image (even though it is a little soft) because instead of flying over to the fish laying on the ice this eagle did the slip and slide walk over to the fish.

He raised his head a couple of times and the fish was gone.  I realize this is not a well composed image but I wanted to include the ducks in the picture.  Unfortunately the ducks were looking one direction and the eagle the other.

It wasn’t long until some buddies showed up to share in some of the other food that was on the ice.  There was a lot of eagle talk and a lot of action as well.  There were some spectacular fight scenes that I captured between three older eagles and a juvenile.  Unfortunately by this time my shutter speed was down 1/60 sec (even at ISO 800) so I got a lot of bury black and brown blobs.  Once during the tussle the juvenile was on his back about 8 inches off the ground locking talons with the mature eagle on top.  I wish I could show you that image. 

I shot 820 images (of course with the 11 fps burst rate of the D3 that is an easy thing to do) and of those I kept 200, which isn’t too bad.  Of those 200 maybe half will make the second cut but all things considered including all the mistakes I made I’m very happy with the way the lens performed.  I just hope it doesn’t freeze up in cold weather like the other one did.

If you like eagle pictures stop by tomorrow and most of the week for that matter.  If not (I’m sorry) because that’s what I have a lot of to process for a while.

Enjoy your Sunday.  Thanks for stopping by and be careful.

Today is my Friday.   I’m taking a day off tomorrow for some personal business and that will also give me a 4 day weekend!!  Monday of course is Presidents’ Day and the Federal Reserve is closed.  When they are closed, most banks are closed. 

Anyway I digress.  Well actually I guess I haven’t even started.  On my birthday I spent a good part of the day shooting images.  I drove a lot of miles and looked at a lot of things but my main focus was capturing images of eagles.  I didn’t have much luck with that so here are some of the other images from that day.

The image above was taken on the Wisconsin side of the river over by the fishing barge near the lock and dam number 11.  This vantage point allows the opportunity to get close to the water if eagles happen to be fishing (which they were not on this day.)

This was also the first time I had taken the new Sigma 50 -500 mm lens out for shooting.  Up to this point it had preformed well.  Although the first image in this post was taken with the 28 – 300 mm lens the one above is with the Sigma.

It was later in the day when I noticed the first glitch with the auto focus of the lens.  But for the first couple of hours it did a good job.

I tried the above image in color and it looked okay but it just kept saying to me that it needed to be in black and white.    The area where these images were made is a little difficult to get to in a car.  Especially when the ground is a little soft like it was on this day.   The two times I’ve been over there I’ve only seen 4 wheel drive vehicles.

Well, that’s it for today.  After I finish my appointments tomorrow morning I have 3.5 days to shoot images.  Hope the weather cooperates.  I might have to run down to LD #14 sometime over the next 4 days if the eagles are still there to test out the replacement lens.

Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your Friday  um I mean Thursday.    Be careful.

I had a different set of images to post today but I had a fun thing happen at work yesterday so I thought I would talk about that instead.  A friend told me that something special was going to happen around 2:00 pm and could I be ready with my camera.  “Well of course I can and would be delight to do so.”

So at 2:0 pm a group of young people from the Maquoketa High School Choir showed up and sang a melody of love songs to one of our employees.  The gift of song and the flowers above were from their spouse.  The Music Department raises money for equipment and other needs by renting out the singing ensemble on special occasions.  What a neat idea.    I took a lot of images to preserve this wonderful sentiment forever.

On another note.  My 3rd Sigma lens came yesterday.  I hope that number 3 is a charm.  If this one doesn’t work I’m going back to a Tamron.  Much cheaper lens but at least it worked.  Anyway the above image is right out of the box and hand-held (which I don’t do very well.)  But it demonstrates that it will at least focus reasonably sharp, which the first one would not do.  So now with some practice and testing I’m hopeful my long lens saga is finally over.  More on that this coming weekend. 

Well that’s it for today.  If you want to see some great eagle pictures head over to Andreas’ Blog.  He was at Lock and Dam 14 both Saturday and Sunday.  He sent me a nice article this morning on sharpness (what we all strive for.)  It was a great article written by noted wildlife photographer Moose Petersen.    Thanks Andreas.

Thank you for stopping by.  Enjoy your Wednesday and be careful.

Happy Valentine’s Day to you all.  On Saturday Jeanne and I were getting ready to do a fix up project when Angie called and said that her and Joshua were in the neighborhood and they would like to drop by.

I like this image of Josh.  Sitting on one of the breakfast stools sipping on some apple juice and laughing at the funny faces his Mother is making.  He was in such a good mood and everything was a new discovery to him.  He is really observant and curious about everything.

As a mode of transportation walking is okay.  Still a little unsure and a little unsteady on his feet but able to go in the direction he wants to, turn corners, and reverse course.  When he falls down he can get himself back up.  However crawling is still the most expedient and efficient mode of transportation for Josh right now.

It was a real treat having Angie and Josh stop over.  Ben was working so they were out running errands.  They only stayed an hour but it was a delightful hour of exploration and fun watching Josh explore everything.

Enjoy your Tuesday.  Adorama told me to send the lens back and they are sending a replacement lens.  I should have it by tomorrow.  Hopefully the third time will be the right one.  I’m getting to be on a first name basis with the UPS man.

Thanks for stopping by and be careful.

I had an interesting weekend.  Saturday I was going to work on a home project but Angie and Josh stopped by and we had an absolute ball watching Josh explore his world.  He is walking full bore now and is curious about everything.  I’ll have a post about their visit tomorrow but it was just a delight to have them.

Jeanne and I decided to finally go to Le Claire and visit Lock and Dam 14.  Burt has told me so much about the place and I have seen the amazing eagle shots he had made so even though it was about a 90 mile trek one way Jeanne said she would like to go.

I truly didn’t know what to expect.  I wasn’t prepared for what I saw.  There were about 20 – 30 people with all types of exotic lens sitting on tripods and mono pods.  Considering some of those lens cost between $5,000 to $12,000 I was in a state of lens envy almost immediately after arriving.    It was good that Jeanne saw that others have the same condition I do only in some cases much worse.

We visited with some of the photographers for awhile and quickly learned that most of them are really serious about their photography.  One gentleman we spoke with had traveled  over 3.5 hours to shoot at the dam.  It was about this time that Burt arrived.  He came with fish and everyone was glad to see him.  Shortly after he threw some fish in the eagles appeared and started flying over.  It was incredible how close they would fly to us.

This is the best eagle shot I’ve had this year.  Not a very good one compared to the standards of the regulars at LD 14 have but a good for me.    Then it happened.  My lens started freezing up.   At first it was slow to focus on the eagle and I missed a lot of shots because I couldn’t get it to focus and when I did they were so blurry.  After a few minutes it wouldn’t focus at all and would lock up.  In fact the mirror would lock up on the camera when I would push the shutter.

A similar thing happened on my birthday.  I was out in 22 degree weather for about 3 hours and then the lens started getting sluggish.  I went to my car and let it warm up and it was fine for the rest of the day.

This is the last shot I got Sunday and it is pretty soft.   I tried warming the lens up, changing cameras, different settings but all to no avail.  It was like the focusing motor in the lens just failed.

It was about this time that my friend Andreas showed up.  I was so looking forward to shooting with him.  I showed him my lens and he tried shooting with it and got the same results.  @%$%^&@ Sigma Lens!!!!!!  Ugh!!  Such a beautiful day, with wonderful light, two friends to shoot with, lots of eagles and the opportunity to make some great images and my freaking lens fails.  My two week old lens fails.

The good news is that I now know just how good Lock and Dam 14 is and Jeanne said that we should go down for a whole weekend sometime next season.  Now I’ve got to hassle with Sigma again and be without a long lens for who knows how long.

Oh, well as Andreas would say at least we got to see some specular eagles flying, be outdoors and have a camera in hand.  That’s pretty good.

Enjoy your week, thanks for stopping by and be careful.

What a variety of experiences yesterday held.  I had an early morning meeting with some Chamber of Commerce folks and didn’t get to the office until a little after 9:00 am.

When I came in the building the front desk was vacant but that is not unusual and I was still thinking about my meeting.  Then I heard the faint sound of “red solo cup” in the distance and then I started seeing lots of black stuff. 

Most of my friends were there with video phones running and singing happy birthday to me.  They must have spent hours decorating my office.  The image above doesn’t really do it justice.  It took me an hour just to look at all the stuff they had placed in the office and the little notes they wrote.  There were lots of creams, ointments, and suppositories.  The experience was a real treat for me.

This is an “Older Than Dirt” cake.  It looks awful but it tasted wonderful.  My friend and associate Candace made it for me.  Everyone enjoyed a piece of the cake.  No one ate the worms.

Candace gave me this bottle of Lambrusco and two “redneck wine glasses.”  They are made by using a small Mason jar, which is then glued to a candle holder.    Pretty cool, can’t wait to see how the Lambrusco tastes in them.    Note the wheel chair?  That was parked behind my desk when I arrived.

It was a fun day and I really enjoyed and was thankful for all the nice attention and thoughts.  I am very blessed to be doing what I love to do with people who are my friends.

Enjoy your Friday and weekend.  Thank you for stopping by  I have not yet processed many of the images I took on Wednesday so will do so this weekend.  I have a couple of domestic projects slated for this weekend as well but will find some time to get behind the camera.  Be careful.