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all creatures great and small

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I trekked out to Clove lake early yesterday to scope out the morning lighting conditions on a large fallen tree that had numerous plants and flowers growing on it's toppled over base. If the weather and lighting conditions work in my favor I'll come back another day around sunrise to photograph them.<br /> <br /> With that potential shot tucked into the back of my mind, I left to head for another lake all the way on the other end of Staten Island. On the way out I made sure to pass by yet another fallen tree in the park. I had noticed the day before, that one of the cormoran's that inhabit the park liked to perch on it, and sure enough it was back again. Fortunately I had brought along my old manual focus 300mm Nikkor and 1.4x teleconverter.
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I trekked out to Clove lake early yesterday to scope out the morning lighting conditions on a large fallen tree that had numerous plants and flowers growing on it's toppled over base. If the weather and lighting conditions work in my favor I'll come back another day around sunrise to photograph them.

With that potential shot tucked into the back of my mind, I left to head for another lake all the way on the other end of Staten Island. On the way out I made sure to pass by yet another fallen tree in the park. I had noticed the day before, that one of the cormoran's that inhabit the park liked to perch on it, and sure enough it was back again. Fortunately I had brought along my old manual focus 300mm Nikkor and 1.4x teleconverter.

Clove LakesStaten Islandbirdscormorant'sspringnatureNYC

  • dsc_1995 looking for an edible twig
  • After capturing lots of shots of those snow monkeys I'd waited so long to get when it snowed, there was a lull where no really good photo opps presented themselves. So for a little while I stepped into the tropical rain forest house, to warm up and capture one or two pictures of some of the other of the zoo's inhabitants.
  • DSC_2260 snow monkey eating twig
  • dsc_ 2266 female snow monkey eating twig
  • DSC_2319 female snow monkey cleaning leg
  • DSC_1909 monkey in the mist
  • DSC_2044 snow monkeys
  • DSC_2377 sitting by the heated pool
  • DSC_1949 snow monkey
  • DSC_2350 snow monkeys sitting on a branch
  • dsc_2389 group shot
  • At the rate I'm going I'm never going to capture nice sharp shots of birds in flight. Their erratic movement requires quick reaction times, and better technique when it comes to auto focusing then I currently possess. But the more times you try something the better you eventually get, however as flighty and and impossible to sneak up on as subjects birds tend to be, makes opportunities to improve a bit hard to come by. About the best chance I can find to improve this skill comes right here on the back of the ferry. Many times they follow us looking for food tossed at them by the passengers or just lazily looping back and forth on the ferries jet stream, giving me willing target practice.<br /> <br /> I take a dozen or two shots as they dive and rise into the water and sky, then review them to see if my success rate is improving. Afterwards I erase them all and start again. This time my practice exorcise was to try and capture a sharp shot of one of them with the cityscape as a backdrop. As I stood on the back of the boat reviewing my success / failure rate for this exorcise I felt that this particular shot didn't deserve the delete button.
  • dsc_3233 gull gliding in the afternoon sun
  • For the most part I've had sub par success capturing sharp pictures of birds in flight. So on the occasions that I venture out into the city to do some shooting, I often take the opportunity to hang out at the back of the ferry and practice photographing seagulls as they dive and climb and float back and forth on the jet stream the ferry creates. After I record 10 or 20 shots I look at them to see if my percentage of sharp shots is improving, then I delete them right afterwards, as their aesthetic value is minimal. But today this early morning shot wasn't totally deserving of the trash bin.
  • I traveled to Central Park on this spring afternoon hoping to capture a nice scene of a road or path lined with cherry blossom trees in bloom with people walking by them. However it would take a few more weeks before I found such a spot. I had packed my wide angle lenses in my bag specifically for that kind of shot, and I kept searching, with no luck on every road I walked down. But when I was walking through the twisting paths near Belvedere Castle I looked down and noticed these beauties at my feet under a rustic wood fence. Fortunately I also brought along one of my micro lenses, just in case I ran into an opportunity like this one.
  • While practicing capturing gulls as they rose and dove by the ferry on my trip home one day, I noticed this one dive into the water to grab some food in it's beak. Looking close as it rose nearer my position I discovered what it was that it actually had in it's beak. Before the other gulls that were pestering it for this note, caused it to drop it's booby prize back in the water, I grabbed a shot of this humorous sight.
  • In my 20 plus years of living here on the Island I can only remember going to Snug Harbor once before today, and that was 7 years ago when I went there to seek out the services of their aborist for my ailing pear tree. This time I came with my lenses for the sole purpose of scouting out the sprawling 83 acre gardens & cultural preserve, to see if I'd like to make it a regular place to come photograph.<br /> <br /> Almost all the buildings were closed and much of the grounds were under repair from the long harsh winter, so it didn't set the juices flowing wildly through my veins. But the potential is definitely there. Hopefully in a few weeks they will finish their spring cleanup and the fountains & pools will have water running in them again, and I'll go back and try once more. But as for today several pretty little pops of color dotted the landscape here and there, and this one was good enough to finally coax the camera out of my bag.
  • I trekked out to Clove lake early yesterday to scope out the morning lighting conditions on a large fallen tree that had numerous plants and flowers growing on it's toppled over base. If the weather and lighting conditions work in my favor I'll come back another day around sunrise to photograph them.<br /> <br /> With that potential shot tucked into the back of my mind, I left to head for another lake all the way on the other end of Staten Island. On the way out I made sure to pass by yet another fallen tree in the park. I had noticed the day before, that one of the cormoran's that inhabit the park liked to perch on it, and sure enough it was back again. Fortunately I had brought along my old manual focus 300mm Nikkor and 1.4x teleconverter.
  • I never realized before that these cormoran's posses such amazing turquoise colored eyes. They're absolutely startling! Now for anyone curious of the equipment I used for these 2 shots, you should know that the manual lens components I used threw off some of the embedded EXIF data. I didn't use a 400mm lens. What I did use was my:<br /> <br /> 300mm f4.5 ED-IF manual focus nikkor<br /> 1.4x nikkor tele-converter<br /> <br /> 1/400th sec<br /> f8 - effective aperture f11<br /> ISO 400<br /> <br /> Boy am I glad I sent my old lenses and tele-converter to Focal Point Inc. to remove all the heavy fungus that I thought had surely ruined them. As you can see they did a phenomenal job cleaning them.
  • DSC_4670 mallard in the shallows
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