Yearly Tradition

(September 8th) Today I headed to Detroit. I don't often venture into D-Town, but the Inernational Jazz Festival is one of my favorite music events and it has become a bit of a yearly tradition for me to attend. Great music, good time of year, and the waterfront - a near perfect combination. This is the Renaissance Center, perhaps the most distinctive building in the waterfront area of Detroit today.

Shooting the International Jazz Festival is a great challenge - as a spectator you are far from the action of the main events. There's little light and you're handholding while shoulder-to-shoulder with others. I was quite pleased with the sharpness of the images I wound up with, even handholding a 200mm for 1/45s in some cases. Of course, the most fun was listening to the fantastic music. The highlight act that we saw was a big band performance. Some years the orchestra has been huge, this year it was a little bit smaller. But every year they do a phenomenal job and the crowd loves it.

One of the best things about jazz is the improvisation. It's there in the music, but it's there elsewhere too. The musicians interact with each other freely and naturally, and they interact with the audience in the same way - even during their pieces.

The musical side of the improvisation often takes the form of solos. During a solo, a single musician will take the reigns and exactly what is played is something that hasn't ever been played before. The rest of the group follows along and harmonizes with the musical ideas that the soloist gives. As always, the Detroit International Jazz Festival was a blast in 2009 - if you are ever in the area around Labor Day I strongly urge you to check the event out!

Making the Photo You Want

(September 5th) At first I thought making great wildlife photos was a matter of being in the right place at the right time and mastering all the technical skills. This really isn't the case though - the best photos are made rather than just happened upon. Today I was fortunate to make one of those photos that I like and it took quite some time and a little bit of luck. First of all, you have to have the animals well and where they'll be when. For shooting some of the shorebirds I wanted I headed to a great location called Pt. Mouilee and began lying in mud before dawn. This is so the birds will be accustomed to you and come quite close. You must also know the light. I know well where the sun will rise, so I made sure to lie in spot that the sun would rise in the right direction over the spot that the birds would likely be. Lastly, you need to have the composition visualized beforehand. For this shot, I knew I wanted to work into the image the Purple Loosestrife that you see here - a killer background in my mind.

You don't usually see flowers in pictures with shorebirds, so this kind of opportunity is rare one. Everything has to line up right. As I'm lying on my belly, the birds need to be in just the right spot, with the right body angle. A few inches to either side and either vegetation will be in the way or the background will be out of balance. In the end I was able to make a shot that I really like of this Lesser Yellowlegs. It's not perfect, but the image came together in a great way. In a sense, I started working on this photo a year ago when I learned much about the behavior and favorite haunts of the Lesser Yellowlegs during their fall migration through Michigan.

There were plenty of other shorebirds around to keep me occupied while I was waiting for the Lesser Yellowlegs shot to line up. There were many Least Sandpiers around, poking and prodding at the mud looking for food buried beneath.

Beauty is in the Details

(September 4th) Today started off with some excitement as a Red-tailed Hawk was right above me in a nearby tree. No good pictures came of it and the hawk flew off pretty quickly, but still being at the range was quite a thrill. After a little bit of shooting ducks and swans, I looked in some of the songbird locales. To my surprise I found a Downy Woodpecker eating some berries - not the food source you usually associate with them. The woodpecker flew right near me and gave me some great views. Most of the time you don't notice the color of birds' eyes, but many of them have colored eyes. The eyes of the Downy Woodpecker actually are a very dark red that you can see if the light is right.

No Gold for Me

(September 1st) When taking macro shots yesterday, I noticed that some American Goldfinches were feeding voraciously off seed from some flowers. Yesterday I had scared them away, but I decided to go back and see if they would be there again. Sure enough, they were but the only stuck around for a handful of seconds until a jogger scared them off for good. So I occupied myself with a some of the flowers nearby. I worked in some backgrounds like this one that had some color in them, but stayed clean.

Last Days of Summer

(August 31st) By the end of August, there's not much of summer left in Michigan. One of the things this summer has meant for me is macro photography. I just love to bring the small world we rarely see to the forefront. I headed out to my favorite macro location in town. Not many butterflies around here anymore, but there are still some flowers and lots of bees and wasps. One of the first subjects I found was this grasshopper on a milkweed leaf.

You normally think plants don't move, but your opinion changes when you take macro photographs. Plants move a lot then - mostly due to the least bit of wind. Combined with an extremely narrow depth of field and manual focus, it means getting sharp images is tough. It's a fun challenge though as the subjects are generally plentiful and you can try many times. This aster was one of the prettier flowers remaining.

Bees and wasps were everywhere today. I saw over 10 species in a small patch - of all sizes, shapes, and colors. Of all my shots of the day, this one of a Honeybee was my favorite. Although it wasn't one of the unusual species, the composition just came together perfectly and the image sharpness was spot on. Insects are an essential and fascinating part of our ecosystems - pollination is just one of many of the roles they play.

Not the Best of Days

(August 25th) Yesterday I tried some things with flash and the swans with mixed results. So I returned to Gallup Park hoping to test out some improvements and new ideas. No swans were to be found. In fact, there weren't was much around period. I had to occupy myself with some Mallards who were bathing and preening. It was one of those days where you aren't quite sure whether or not to make any images. This is a bad attitude though, and you usually don't work the subjects as hard as you should.

The subjects weren't the most unusual, but the light was fantastic, so you just have to press the shutter. Aside from the mallards, the only other things around were some Canada Geese and Eastern Chipmunks. I had taken so many chipmunk pictures earlier in the summer, so it was time to give the geese some camera time. A lot of people give Canada Geese a bad rap since they are everywhere these days, but I still think they are a handsome bird. This one was wearing a leg band.

Growing Up

(August 24th) I took an early morning trip to Gallup Park to see how it had changed in the couple of months since I had last been there. Summer is definitely almost over. Most of the birds are on their second or third brood and these offspring are almost already grown. I saw a Barn Swallow who had just left the nest. It didn't make it very far and was resting in an oak. It squawked constantly to its parents to beg them for food. The parents were feeding this full-sized 'kid' non-stop. It was great fun to watch and try and get some action shots. I tried for a slower shutter speed to capture some of the frenzy of the activity.

Introduced species can be a big environmental problem. Mute Swans were introduced from Europe a while back and have spread through some of the Northeast and Great Lakes region. The tend to be fairly aggressive birds, driving many other waterfowl away. But I have to admit, they are pretty birds. I tried to capture some of the soft intimacy of this swan that was preening in front of me. I used the opportunity to get some good practice at fill flash on a white subject - the white can reflect too much of the flash light if you're not careful.

Trip Across the Border

(August 13th) This morning I took an early trip to Canada to check out Pt. Pelee for the first time. Although Pt. Pelee is primarily known for migration season, I had never been there before and was curious to see what it was like. I spent most of the morning being hounded by hundreds of biting stable flies. After fleeing the beach from them, I spent some time in the marsh area. Here there were some young Black Terns circling around and giving me some nice views.

I ran into this Northern Leopard Frog on the boardwalk. These frogs are one of a couple of species of northern frogs that are heavily spotted (the Pickerel Frog is the other). As a child, I used to run into these frogs regularly in our garden, so they can stray a distance from water when they want.

After I left the boardwalk, I decided to check out the western beach at the National Park. A flock of gulls was resting there while some human visitors enjoyed the water. This Herring Gull had found a hole in the sand to huddle in.

Excitement in the Sky

(August 11th)

I headed out again this morning for some shorebird photography. Little did I know that I wouldn't be shooting any shorebirds. I was treated to a nice sunrise over the Detroit River, so I snagged a few shots of it. I'm always a sucker for sunrises and sunsets...

As I walked in further, I spotted some ducks in the water. I was watching them, wondering how I could approach them for some shots. Ducks (aside from your park mallards) are usually quite skittish and one of the trickier subjects to get close to. As I was formulating a plan, something dive-bombed one of the ducks, frightening them all. It was a Peregrine Falcon about the same size as the duck it was attacking. The duck took off flying, but only a few inches above the water. The falcon touched it but wasn't able to grab it. It all happened before I had any idea what was going on. Then the falcon circled around a couple of times. With all my settings not prepared for this, it was a wonder I got any photos at all. It was an amazing thrill to see this speed demon attack a duck that surely outweighed it. For some unknown reason, it was a dead day at the shorebird spot, so the remainder of the morning was pretty dull.

Lying in the Muck Again

(August 6th) I headed back out to lie in the muck for another morning with the shorebirds. It was a different mix of species today - tons of Killdeer and Lesser Yellowlegs. Killdeer are a bird you see all the time, all of the country. I've definitely photographed them a few times already. So when you shoot them again, you need to do something different. You need to improve somehow - better composition, better background, more attractive pose, more action, etc. Today the Killdeer were often chasing each other away. This happens in a blink of an eye and was pretty hard to predict. I didn't quite get the perfect action shots, but I learned a lot about their behavior today.

This Lesser Yellowlegs is in the midst of a molt to non-breeding plumage. That combined with the muck in the water give this shot a gritty feel to me. They are amazingly quick and agile with their long legs and bill.

On warm, sunny days the butterflies come out. They aren't early morning risers like the birds, but they get going as the day warms up. Today there were lots on the walk out - mostly Monarchs and Red-spotted Purples like this one. Sure the shot would have been better with a macro lens and shallower depth of field, but all I had with me was the huge bird lens.