Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Mallard duck slowing for a landing-2.

This is another photograph of ducks taken in late December on a cold and windy day.  This drake mallard was fighting the wind as he came in for a landing in the snow where another duck was already resting.  These birds have a lot of  speed on the approach and it is difficult to track them with the camera.  But they slow down very rapidly as they backpedal the wings.

This image was recently added to my gallery at Imagekind.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Pheasant shooting sequence

This is a composite of four photographs of a ringneck pheasant flying, being shot and falling.  These four are from a motordrive sequence of the same bird.  I am compiling images from several hunting trips that I've photographed to make a calendar with a pheasant-hunting theme.  This image will work for one of the months and I likely will add another similar sequence.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Waterfowl in Flight

These mallard ducks have just taken off on a bitter cold day at the end of December.  There is ice on the head and bill of the drake.  Also, his feet are tucked forward into the down body feathers rather than pointing rearward toward the tail.

The limited depth of field of a 400mm lens is noticeable as the hen is quite out of focus while the drake is tack sharp.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Winter Pheasant Hunt-2

This is another image from the recent winter pheasant hunt on a private hunt club.  This dog is one of two golden retrievers working for the hunters.  The dogs were valuable for finding, flushing and retrieving the birds in the deep snow.

Heavy overcast sky, exposure set manually.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Winter Pheasant Hunt

I photographed a group of pheasant hunters this past weekend.  Very difficult to get nice photos of the birds in the air as they seemed to blend in with the trees in the background.  The dogs, however, cooperated nicely.  These two golden retrievers worked as a team, flushing and retrieving the pheasants.

I didn't want the images to be underexposed in the snow.  The sky was overcast but the light was consistent so I set the exposure manually and used the same setting most of the morning.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Whitetail Deer - 6 pt. Buck

This deer is a 6 point whitetail buck photographed in early November.   Although he isn't a trophy, I really liked how he is naturally framed by the trees.  For this reason, I recently placed the photo in the Imagekind gallery (see link to the right).
This is another case of being in the right place at the right time since the buck paused in this spot for only a moment before moving on.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Mallard duck slowing for a landing.

Here is a drake mallard duck backpedaling as he slows his speed for a landing.  A bitter cold day with very high winds made it uncomfortable.  I had planned on being in the creek bottom to get photos of a flock of ducks on the water.  I would have been sheltered from the wind.  The water level in the creek was too high, though, so I climbed out and got some photos of ducks coming and going.  It appears there are drops of water on the duck's head but when enlarged on the monitor I can see that it is actually ice.