Sunrise at Rochester Ky, and More Heron

My buddy, the blue heron. Lucky for me, he seems to like breakfast and dinner (morning and evening). He caught a fish while I was here but my shutter speeds were WWWAAAAAYYYY to slow to catch that, I got to see it though.

(Above) A big splash with a little sunlight thrown in.

It was surprisingly warm this morning. I was up early, so I thought I would try to make it to Rochester (a little over 30 minutes away) before sunrise. I knew roughly where the sun was to rise - over the falls from the vantage point I have been shooting from.

I got my sneakers, and the knees and rear of my jeans wet from trying to get the camera down as low as I could without dunking it. Didn't bring my boots. Glad it wasn't cold.

I have some inconsistencies in my white balance. I shoot raw, so white balance is pretty much up to me. It was pretty yellow early, and I was there several hours so the later shots will not be as yellow. I think the colder white balance is more pleasing on some, but actually the wet rocks were pretty yellow. I will be taking another look and maybe re-post.

I went a little crazy with uploading and posting. I could tell that each consecutive shot had vastly different water patterns. He wasn't moving around a lot except when he caught the fish so I just kept hitting the remote. I still have over 100 shots after deleting all motion blur and unpleasing water pattern shots. The close ups are at 400mm, with very small aperatures (f22 and higher, to keep the stringy water in focus and slow down shutter speed). The stringy water shots are at 1/3, to 1/2 second.

Rochester Ky. A Heron, over and over again.

I'll be stopping by here a lot. Expect to see more. Yes, I do like B&W, and they did not look like much in color.

Three Minutes of Freeman Lake

Nashville Zoo

From the 'right place at the right time department':

Went to the Nashville Zoo with some friends. Lugged around the big lens all day in the backpack, which is a bigger chore than I'd like to admit. That may, or may not, imply that I am a wuss. Right before we were ready to leave, I finally had a good reason to whip out the big gun. So, in the end, it was worth carrying it around all day. This cougar is playing with a ball that, surprisingly, seems to have developed a small leak. I can't take credit for snapping at the right moment, I was firing in bursts and did get lucky that one shot hit pretty close to home. The light level was a little low - the cougar shots are at ISO1600, maximum aperture.

Moonbow, Cumberland Falls

5 Minute, ISO400
7:33PM CST

Well.... Some days I go out and shoot all day, then pull them all in, and finally, when I see that all of them are crap... I think I must be photographically challenged. (From the looks of that last sentence, englishly challenged also.)

Then, on rare occasion, I go out and shoot all day and get a few keepers.

A polarizer and ND1000 filter were used on all but the moonbow shots. I went overboard with the polarizer on some (mainly the bridge shots). I cropped most of the sky out of those as it was dark and unevenly polarized. (They say that can happen with a wide angle lens - they seem to know what they are talking about. Whoever 'they' are.)

Moonbow:
I was going to leave just as it was getting dark, but the moonbow was starting to make an appearance, even though the moon was only 1/2 to 3/4 full. It was pretty dark. In person, it (the moonbow), looked more whitish.

Next weekend will be a full moon, but the moon is going to rise several hours later so it may be 11pm or so before the moonbow may be out.

20 Second

6 Second

8 Second

8 Second

This is the same photo as above, converted to B&W.

30 Second

15 Second

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More Bear. More Canoe. More Water.

Last Time Was Daytime. This Time Is Nighttime.

Ok, so I have taken tons of pictures here. Here is one more.

Cloudy in BG

My favorite nearby, and easy, shooting spot.
Nice clouds, so I stopped by on the way home.

This (below) was taken with an iphone 4. I originally took it mainly for GPS coordinates, but it turned out surprisingly good, for a camera on a phone.

Bear Canoeing

This is bear. He loves to canoe. He stays up there the whole trip (several hours).

Several campers took pictures of us (well really of Bear) as we went by.

Deer and Turkey

Now that sunrise is happening at a more reasonable time, I am no longer sleeping through the best part of it.

ISO 6400 Shots

Now With More Fog!

I have been on a frog kick for a while, now for a fog kick.

Maybe I have the frog habit licked. Hmmm.

My shots have been sucking substantially lately. I have just gone through and posted several from the past couple of weeks that have slightly less 'suckage'.

Different Butterfly, Different Flower, Different Day. And a Bee.

It's Foggy, and this is a Road.

This is a road, and it's foggy. I think we've got that covered.

Look, no frogs. Amazing.