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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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DSC_8154 hoey bees
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DSC_8154 hoey bees

Snug HarborStaten Islandspring

  • DSC_6892 spring scenes from Greenwood Cemetery
  • DSC_6897 honey bee
  • My 55mm micro is one of a couple of my Nikon lenses that are considered classics. It is a lens by which most others are judged for image quality and craftsmanship wise.<br /> Made to take a beating and still last two lifetimes. I’ve owned this one for 30 years at least, and used it on every Nikon I’ve ever owned, and it still looks nearly brand new. I wish everything in life were this well made. I love it’s tiny size, and image quality. It’s deeply recessed front element makes it almost impervious to flare.<br /> <br /> It’s also quite versatile. Since I’ve gotten my D810 I’ve been using it mostly as a stand in for a 50mm standard lens. I can even use it as a portrait lens on my D500 if the need arises and I don’t have my 50mm 1.8 DX lens on me. I’ve already gotten several wonderful candid shots on my D810 with it (The black and white of the 3 girls crossing the small stream in my preview gallery is one of my favorites, with even better ones to come from that scene waiting to be edited).<br /> <br /> One thing I haven’t done with it lately is use it as it was originally intended, as a closeup lens, as it simply excels at it, though at its maximum magnification of ½ life size you’ll find yourself right up in your subjects face. This makes it impractical for most live subjects. <br /> <br /> But if you don’t need magnification that extreme like in this shot, you’ll find it works just fine. And while I had my 105mm micro on my D500 zooming in to autofocus on the bees as they zipped in and out of these roses here at Snug Harbor, on this fabulous spring day, I had my old 55mm micro on my D810 to give me a more pulled back perspective when the need arose.<br /> <br /> Is it difficult trying to get a crisp shot of a busy bee with a manual focus lens? Yes it most certainly is, but not impossible. Lots of us used to use this classic beauty to do just that back in the day before auto focus was invented, and yes I definitely had to reacquaint my eyes and muscles to the task again today. Totally worth it. And a very wonderful way to spend a lovely spring afternoon.
  • DSC_2512 honey bee
  • DSC_2541 honey bee
  • DSC_2550 honey bee
  • DSC_7434 birds from Snug Harbor
  • DSC_7559 Japanese wisteria
  • DSC_7669 bumble bee
  • DSC_7692 honey bee
  • DSC_7742 honey bee
  • DSC_8365 muskrat
  • DSC_8154 hoey bees
  • DSC_2738 Dyer's broom
  • This was my 3rd and final trip to Wave Hill this spring. I had failed to capture to my satisfaction an acceptable image of the Dyer’s broom that grows here in a nice little corner of their herb garden. I’d never seen nor heard of the blossom before photographing it here last spring. And now that I owned a Nikon D810, I wanted to train it’s 36 mega pixel sensor on those little orange beauties.<br /> <br /> I left the house early enough to catch the low raking sunlight on the flowers, a thousand times better than sunlight at noon. But it wasn’t good enough. And I planned to come back to them in the afternoon at a point when the suns trek across the sky would put part of the bush in sunlight and part in shadows, a potentially fabulous way to record them on film.<br /> <br /> After getting shots of everything else, I had time to kill until the sun reached that point, and I did have one more pressing item to take care of on my vacation that had nothing to do with photography.<br /> <br /> Two weeks ago the inverter to my solar panel system went kablooey, and the system wouldn’t start working again until they put in a new one. Since it had already been established that the inverter was defective and had been malfunctioning, so it turned out, for several days before it blew out the power to my whole house, getting a new one from the company to replace this defective one should have been a matter of formality.<br /> <br /> However when I checked the day before to see when the new one would arrive at the office of the company that made my solar panel system I was informed that the owner that designed my system hadn’t even ordered it yet, and I hit the roof. I needed to find out what the hold up was from customer service now right away today, no more delays.<br /> <br /> I wasn’t willing to stay home and speak to customer service before leaving for Wave Hill for that would mean I’d loose all the early morning light I needed for the Dyer’s broom. But now that I had some free time I could call customer service and find out what the hold up was, if only I could find a nice quiet spot to do it in.<br /> <br /> Well there are a million such spots here at Wave Hill, I just wanted one with a chair and some shade from the hot sun. The first place to look was the Pergola overlook right near the main entrance. Several chairs and trees and a magnificent view of the Palisades to boot. But everyone had the same idea and all the chairs were taken.<br /> <br /> Walking down the road I knew there were some of chairs in the Shade Border in the Northeast section of the garden. But as I approached them people came and just beat me to them.<br /> <br /> Turning west I remembered seeing that someone had taken a pair of chairs down the slope past the café, and tada there they were, let me grab one - nope as I cleared the shrubs blocking my vision of the chairs, I saw a man taking one and he had someone with him, and taking the other one would have been so wrong since I knew he wanted it for her, so I moved on.<br /> <br /> Well that was all the chairs there were, so where to sit, unless I went back to one of the outdoor cafés that would be noisier due to lunch crowds? Well there’s always the gazebo.<br /> <br /> Quite isolated it was likely to be empty. And the gazebo would provide shade even if there had been no trees, so off I trekked and found it empty, and reaching into my camera bag, I pulled out my phone and called Solar Edge’s customer service.<br /> <br /> The wait lasted forever, so it seemed (about 45 minutes). Though they were very friendly and quite helpful once I got them, shipping a new inverter out directly to my house when they discovered Leo still hadn’t given them his business address so they could ship one out to him.<br /> <br /> During the long wait on hold I looked around admiring the woods and the ornate gazebo roof itself. As I looked around the roof of the gazebo I heard a chatty bird call, quite pretty call in fact. Couldn’t see who was singing it at first, but then I briefly saw a dull brown colored bird maybe sparrow sized, maybe a little smaller, flash in front of my view then take off into the woods before I could even guess what type of bird he was.<br /> <br /> Oh well back to the phone I said silently to myself. A few minutes more though and I heard a bird singing again over my left shoulder fairly close this time. He had an impressive speed and variety to his songs. But I couldn’t locate him through all the dense branches, and then I heard him take off.<br /> <br /> More waiting on the phone, then a few minutes later the songster was back over my left shoulder again. Using his last general position as a starting point my eyes and ears hunted a path towards the likely branch he must be near and whalla, I found him!<br /> <br /> He was no sparrow with his long slightly curved beak and spotted wings, and song prettier and more varied then any sparrow I’ve ever known. I grabbed up my camera and tried to grab a shot of him through the all the leaves but he took off before I could.<br /> <br /> But a few minutes later he was back and this time my eyes and ears combined to find him almost instantly. I had set one of the many programmable buttons on my new D500 to let me switch from it using a few dozen focus points to try and locate it’s target, almost all being thrown off by the flitting leaves, to just one focus point, which with its great new thumb stick let me aim it right through a tiny break in the leaves onto the avian songster’s head and pressed my shutter release.<br /> <br /> Wow what a camera. Got to get a decent super telephoto lens though, this 70-300mm while wonderful for street photography, just rots when trying to capture nature shots. As I’ve said before this is not a lens Nikon would put on a table in front of a group of professional nature photographer’s as part of their lineup to entice their business. So I’ve got to get a good one and let this lens do what it’s best at, taking shots of people.<br /> <br /> But at least it did let me capture a half decent shot of the little guy. Love to know what type of bird he was. But showing him to the staff at the garden provided no luck. However if your lucky enough to run across him one day your ears are in for a real treat.
  • DSC_8468 pint sized songster
  • DSC_2757 spring flowerrs at Wave Hill
  • DSC_2755 pansies
  • DSC_2789 purple gerbera
  • DSC_2801 dyer's broom
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