No Photography this weekend but a big trip coming up.

This weekend I did not do any photography. I decided to ride my bicycle instead and try to get back into shape. Yesterday I had a nice 40-mile ride down to Ashland Missouri and back.

I'm leaving Wednesday for Kansas and will return on Sunday. I am going to spend 4 mornings in a row in a blind on a prairie chicken "lek" or booming grounds.

I'll try to update this blog daily on my progress and put up lots of photographs.

Trip to Eagle Bluffs

Yesterday I left downtown at about 11:30 and rode my bike to Eagle Bluffs Conservation area. I had my blind and camera set up at about 1:30 and stayed until 7:15 pm before riding the two-hours home.

As it turns out I picked the wrong spot as I saw a group of pelicans fly over but they choose another spot and even the ducks that were in the pond never made it close to me. I did however enjoy a very peaceful afternoon watching and listening to the ducks while enjoying a good book.

I ended up taking about 200 photographs but none of them are great, mostly because everything was just too far away.

Here is a sample of what I got.

Please help me choose-click to enlarge.

I hope to get one of these framed sometime in the near future. I'm only going to frame one of these. Right now I am leaning towards the shot of the coyote looking back over her shoulder. I think most people would instantly think of the one where she is looking towards the camera but I think there is something wrong with it. Something about the face and the hair just did not turn out right. I also think that she had something wrong with one of her eyes which in turns make it look out of focus.

To give you an idea of what these shots looked like before I processed them a bit I am included one right out of the camera. The conditions were AWFUL for photography.

Grand Canyon - from December

This shot is from the South Rim at the Grand Canyon. We stayed until dark so we could capture the sunset. The sun was setting at our backs and since it takes a couple of days to hike the 10 miles to the other rim; we had to stay where we were. : )

I just sent this off to get printed to see what it really looks like before I do anything else with it.

Letter I read in Audubon Magazine

Your photo awards issue is a prizewinner, with wonderful pictures. I have a small camera store and have been selling photo equipment since 1941. In a tally of your winning pictures, I see Canon users outnumber Nikon users by two to one. I also found that many of the winners have $7,000 cameras, and almost all use a 500mm lens, which is another $5,000. Almost half use a 1.4 teleconverter, adding another $500. If you have to spend some $12,000 to win a photo contest, I think it would be easier and cheaper to draw pictures as Audubon did. Just a thought.

J.R. Patterson
Volant, PA

Makes me wonder. I've spent $12,000 and have yet to win a major photo contest. LMAO

Command Post

These are the photographs of the dump truck on my dad and stepmom's farm that I used the other day. It made a great blind because it has been there long enough that the animals are used to it.

I recently purchased a Kirk window mount. It works like a tripod but mounts to an automobiles window. It really worked great in this application. After mounting the lens I covered the rest of the window in camo cloth which made all of my movements invisible to anything outside.

I have learned over the years to put myself in locations where I may limit my own vision but where I can move and not be seen. This means that I may not always be able to react quickly enough to get the shot or I may not alway be able to keep watch. For example, in this situation I was only able to peek out under the lens every once in a while to see what was going on.

Finally got my coyote!

Cia and I are in SW Missouri for a funeral so I took the opportunity to get up at 4 am and head out to my dad's and stepmom's farm. All week I have been thinking about how to get a shot at a coyote and I came up with an idea that I figured would either fail or I would have a good opportunity to get a good shot.

My dad has a dump truck that has been sitting in a field for several months. I decided to take some chicken out and dump it about 50 yards from the truck. I'll post more about my "set up" later on.

This coyote never made it to the chicken and I'm not sure if it was the smell of the meat that attracted her or not. I got 18 pictures of her before she split. I would have had more but I had a pretty slow card in the camera and I had to stop taking them for a few seconds.

The light was AWFUL, it was cloudy and drizzly this morning so everything looks really cool (blueish and greenish).

Still these are the best coyote photographs I have ever gotten and I'm really happy to have them.

Bad photographs but a cool experience

Yesterday I drove out to Eagle Bluffs wetlands. It was rainy and cloudy so I knew I would be unable to get any decent photographs but I had access to a car so I went for it.

I saw a pair of Sandhill Cranes which I had never seen before. They were hundreds of yards off in a field picking up grain that had escaped the combine. No doubt, eating whatever they can to fuel up as they head north.

I also saw a large (maybe 200?) group of pelicans.

Both of these photographs are just tiny crops of the full-frame. They are not good photographs but show what I saw anyway.

Tomorrow I hope to try to bait a coyote with some chickens.

Total Failure this evening

This afternoon I decided to try my honey hole near McBaine. This is the place where I am usually overrun by turkeys in the springtime. I loaded up my gear in the trailer and took off down the trail.

The trail is muddy and you have to exit near Scott BLVD and ride about 3 miles out of your way to get across the two bridges that the city is replacing.

After parking my bike I walked the .6 miles across the huge field and set up. I took this photograph of me with my cellphone (explains why it sucks) waiting on what I thought was going to be a very successful evening. After about 2.5 hours 15 deer came out into the field and ran all the way across the field lengthwise and then turned 90 degrees and ran all the way across the field that direction. They had to have easily ran a mile. I have no idea if they smelled me or if they were running for some other reason. I never heard any of them blow so I'm not sure. I was hoping that BIGFOOT was chasing them and I would capture it the whole thing but that did not happen.

I sat there until nearly dark and then started the over 1 hour trip back to town. Hopefully in a couple of weeks there will be something worth eating in that field. Right now its just mud and dried bean stocks....neither are probably real appetizing for the turkeys.

The Cedar Waxwing is not from today, its from a luckier day. Enjoy your weekend.

Went to Eagle Bluffs this morning

This morning I went to Eagle Bluffs Conservation Area. I had read on a birding listserv that there were large bird feeders there. My plan was to set up my blind near one of these feeders and stay until 11 am or so.

After arriving I searched and searched for the feeders. After giving up I just drove down to the wetlands and took a few pics from the car. Even resting the lens on the car window and having image stabilization inside the lens I was still too wobbly to make really crisp images.

That brings up a good point about this blog. Someone once said that the key to being a great photographer is to show people very few of your photographs. I think there is a lot of truth to that.

On this blog I am going to show you whatever I saw on my most recent outings even if the photographs are not exactly fantastic.

New Blog

I am going to keep this blog updated, probably once per week, with my latest photographs. Here is one from a few weeks ago in our local park. Many people think that bluebirds migrate during the winter, and most do. However, some stick around right here in Missouri.

I was going to enter this photograph along with many others in the Columbia Parks and Recreation photography contest. I was very confident I would win the nature category and made many special trips to Columbia parks to get ready for the contest.

I knew the deadline was March something and decided to double check on March 2nd. The deadline was March 1st!!!

URGHHHH!!!!