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all creatures great and small

birds and bees,flowers and trees, dogs and cats and things like that...
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One of my first experiences with how poor a performer my 70-300mm nikkor was at nature shots at distance. I was easily over 50 ft. from this heron as he hunted his prey, and there's nothing I did wrong to get such a soft shot.<br /> <br /> Animals that I can sneak up on under 25ft away, the lens performs like a champ. Over that image quality starts to erode and eventually fall off a cliff. With shots of people, it's not nearly as much of an issue as your rarely trying to record every hair and pimple on a person's face from 50 ft away. <br /> <br /> So bad is this my longest auto focus zoom at taking nature shots, that I've had to resort to pulling out my 25 year old manual focus 300mm nikkor. Ancient and not optimized for digital sensors it still takes great shots paired with my digital camera (assuming I can focus in accurately on a moving target - most of the time I can't), even if it's a robins nest 50ft away, because that's what Nikon's engineer's designed it to do. Wish I had the time to set up my tripod and use it on this scene.
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One of my first experiences with how poor a performer my 70-300mm nikkor was at nature shots at distance. I was easily over 50 ft. from this heron as he hunted his prey, and there's nothing I did wrong to get such a soft shot.

Animals that I can sneak up on under 25ft away, the lens performs like a champ. Over that image quality starts to erode and eventually fall off a cliff. With shots of people, it's not nearly as much of an issue as your rarely trying to record every hair and pimple on a person's face from 50 ft away.

So bad is this my longest auto focus zoom at taking nature shots, that I've had to resort to pulling out my 25 year old manual focus 300mm nikkor. Ancient and not optimized for digital sensors it still takes great shots paired with my digital camera (assuming I can focus in accurately on a moving target - most of the time I can't), even if it's a robins nest 50ft away, because that's what Nikon's engineer's designed it to do. Wish I had the time to set up my tripod and use it on this scene.

Clove Lakesbirdsfallgreat blue heronStaten IslandnatureNYC

  • DSC_6135 looking around
  • This Spinyback spider was even more colorful than the one that I photographed the day before at Spanish Point. It's large web with it hanging upside down beneath it, caught my eye above the dozen or more of it's fellow spinyback's scattered everywhere I turned. We have these spiders back home in the woods away from the cities, but none that look as exotic as this one. <br /> <br /> The time I spent taking this shot, here at the Spittal pond nature reserve, surrounded by strange and beautiful tropical plants, photographing an exotic cousin of a spider I'd never find back home, was the most emotionally satisfying time I had on the whole cruise.
  • Turns out the singing from the birds that were hidden in the thick trees of Sherwin's nature reserve, were coming from these guys. Kiskadee's aren't even special to the tropics. You can find them back here in the U.S. too.
  • I was hoping to capture some photo's of exotic birds while on vacation in Bermuda, but the best I ended up doing was getting some shots of some Kiskadee's, which I probably didn't have to leave NY State to find. But at least the park I shot them in was very pretty. Quite picturesque, Par-La-Ville park was once the private garden of William Perot.
  • Another example of why I love to bring my equipment to Clove Lake. But on this occasion I didn't hang back far enough, and this Great blue heron uncomfortable with my attention, took off with it's breakfast prize in it's mouth.
  • dsc_8535 Great blue with catfish
  • One of my first experiences with how poor a performer my 70-300mm nikkor was at nature shots at distance. I was easily over 50 ft. from this heron as he hunted his prey, and there's nothing I did wrong to get such a soft shot.<br /> <br /> Animals that I can sneak up on under 25ft away, the lens performs like a champ. Over that image quality starts to erode and eventually fall off a cliff. With shots of people, it's not nearly as much of an issue as your rarely trying to record every hair and pimple on a person's face from 50 ft away. <br /> <br /> So bad is this my longest auto focus zoom at taking nature shots, that I've had to resort to pulling out my 25 year old manual focus 300mm nikkor. Ancient and not optimized for digital sensors it still takes great shots paired with my digital camera (assuming I can focus in accurately on a moving target - most of the time I can't), even if it's a robins nest 50ft away, because that's what Nikon's engineer's designed it to do. Wish I had the time to set up my tripod and use it on this scene.
  • As I recorded these shots of it's successful hunt I hoped no one walking a dog would come by and have it bark or run after it and make the heron fly away. But this is a peaceful park and my luck held.
  • dsc_8567 Heron on the hunt
  • DSC_8714 heron resting on a log
  • dsc_8758 relaxing amoung friends
  • Having gotten all the shots I hoped for this day I had just one thing left to do. I had recently sent some of my old manual focus lenses and my old 1.4x teleconverter to be cleaned after they were badly damaged by fungus. (Don't ever store your unused equipment in the basement unless it's in a positively airtight case with some industrial strength absorbent packs - if you must even do that). My 300mm f4.5 ED-IF took it the worst beating with heavy stains all along the edges of the front element as well as the fungus. Sending them to a company called Focal Point Inc. in Colorado, I got them back in amazingly good condition, as if nothing ever happened to them at all. Even the focusing movements were still smooth as silk. All that was left was to take them out into the field.<br /> <br /> Late in the afternoon I happened upon this heron all the way on the opposite end of Clove Lake from where I photographed the heron and the catfish earlier in the day. I needed to stay as far back as possible to not disturb this scene. So I grabbed my newly cleaned teleconverter and 300mm just like old times and waited (about 2 hours) for the right moment to get this shot. Most of the time there were no ducks and the heron had it's head buried from view. A picture is worth a thousand words and this photo eloquently speaks to the job Focal Point Inc did cleaning both the lens and the teleconverter.
  • DSC_8816 balancing act
  • Watching this guy for several hours I saw his plumage change from grey to blue depending on what kind of lighting fell on him. It was quite interesting to behold.
  • After taking this my first ever full length walk through Clove Lake some 25 years ago, along with my first ever photographic record of the trip, I finally came out of the other end of the large park, and made a sharp right turn on Martling ave which brought me to the front gate of my destination, the Staten Island Zoo. I took my first trip to this zoo a year or so before this so I could checkout their famous (among zoo's anyway) collection of snakes, supposedly the largest in the world. Being a member of the Bronx Zoo for several years I found it hard to believe that this "little hole in the wall" of a zoo in the forgotten borough of Staten Island could possibly have a finer collection of snakes than mine - one of the most famous zoos in all the world. So I had to see it for myself.<br /> <br /> The trip from my apartment in the Bronx was so long I didn't have much time to look around the small zoo. But what time I did have was enough to make me fall for this delightfully charming place. Add in the lake and relaxing ride on the ferry, and a little prodding from my best friend Scott, and I was charmed enough to move to Staten Island a few years later. Peacocks had the run of this place as much as the people. It was like a giant petting zoo - and yes it did have a huge collection of snakes, more than even my Bronx zoo. But what really got me was the sight of what had to be the FATTEST group of prairie dogs you have EVER seen. In keeping with the charming people animal interaction of the whole establishment, the zoo kept a gumball machine by their habitat filled with prairie dog treats. People would put in a quarter and toss in a bunch of treats.<br /> <br /> Now in the wild prairie dogs are not normally this chunky, at least certainly not the whole lot of them. The need to scurry far and wide looking for food, and ducking quickly into one of their holes to avoid becoming food for their many dessert predators keeps most of those in the wild a bit trimmer. But with all the foxes and hawks safely in cages and people constantly tossing in food, their instinct to keep slim and trim, got replaced by the interest to eat till they pooped. They were simply too adorable. Just as twitchy and active as their slimmed down cousins in the wild they were just too cute not to photograph, but it was late the zoo was going to close and I had to take the long trip back to the Bronx, so those pictures would have to wait - until today.<br /> <br /> Asking my best friend Scott who lived in Staten Island if I could sleep on the living room couch of he and his two roommates apartment for two nights, they responded with "absolutely". Now I could sleep over, get up in the morning, take a quick bus ride to the zoo, have all the time I needed to photograph everything I wanted to at the zoo, then go back to the apartment and spend the second night on the couch. Then I could go home to my apartment in the Bronx the next morning.<br /> <br /> My plan went along without a hitch and after taking several shots of them I finally saw that one perfect image which would capture their cute faces, social natures, and big fat butts, to perfection. When I triggered my cable release for this final shot, my grand adventure was complete.<br /> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /> Nikon FA<br /> Ectachrome 200<br /> nikkor 300mm f4.5 ED-IF<br /> 1/30th sec.<br /> F4.5
  • My very first camera was a little Nikon EM lacking any manual controls. I had to continuously change the "ASA" dial up or down to trick the camera into giving me the correct exposure for a shot. But it was the least expensive way to get your hands on some high quality Nikon glass. It came with a basic 50mm kit lens. All the lenses made for this camera were dubbed the "series E line" which denoted Nikon's budget line of lenses for beginners like me. Not up to the rugged build standard of Nikon's famous professional line of Nikkor lenses, their cost was attainable to we amateur photog's. However they were still quite good optically.<br /> <br /> When my finances finally allowed I added their 70-210 series E zoom, which opened a whole new way of seeing the world beyond my 50mm lens. And even after I had added many nikkor lenses to my arsenal, I didn't replace it as it's modest price belie it's superior image quality.<br /> <br /> By the time I took this shot here in January of 85', I had been enjoying my favorite hobby of photography for two years now and had already replaced my "EM", putting it away permanently in it's box, after serving me well, with a more advanced, albeit used Nikon camera, which had been refurbished by Nikon for the reasonable sum of $900. Here I put it to use at the reptile house of the Bronx Zoo of which I am still a member to this day. As I have said before there was almost always something I found at the reptile house worth capturing. Today it was this African plated lizard in it's neat looking display, which my series E zoom made for all the world look like I had trekked all the way out to the dessert to capture on film, rather than hop on the number 2 train to the zoo - nifty!<br /> <br /> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /> Nikon F3<br /> Fuji 50<br /> 1/15th sec.<br /> nikon 70-210series E f4 zoom<br /> F8<br /> Nikon SB-16 flash
  • DSC_1834 sparrows perched in Central park durnig Feb blizzard
  • Finally snow on my day off, so I headed out to the Central Park Zoo to get those pictures of snow monkeys I'd talked about so much.
  • dsc_ 1942 snow monkeys by hot spring pool
  • dsc_1986 getting a bite to eat
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