Happy New Year!

Here's my songster wishing you a 'Happy New Year"!  Be safe this weekend.

Enuff Grunge?

OK, here's the kids together - no Keegan grunge shot here!  12-30:  I realized that perhaps not everyone reading this blog will know these guys - my niece Kenzie and nephew Keegan! They were in Utah over Christmas vacation, headed back to Minnesota on 1/2/11. 

Uncle!

I spent a bit of time with my niece and nephew today (more with my nephew as we took a tour of Farmington Bay refuge).  Here's a couple of shots of them, plus a GBH that was being very sneaky (but we caught him!).

Looking up

In the morning, I go out on the deck with the animals, often to sit and drink coffee and enjoy the quiet of the day.  Plus the antics of our kids!  I'm in the habit of looking up as I come out from under the porch, up and to the east as the Wasatch mountains are immediately east.  This morning I looked up and decided to take a picture.  Despite the city lights, still lots of stars show up.  I often see shooting stars in the late evening, plus the various satellites crisscrossing the sky.  Here's the view from the porch this morning: (a 20 second exposure).

Yesterday Murph and I visited the Farmington Bay refuge and saw lots and lots of harriers and kestrels!  Also grasses covered with the hoarfrost from the morning. Later on we visited the cemetery close by that houses black-tail deer - this one seemed like she wanted a treat!

Here's the refuge beauty that I captured:

FINALLY!!!!!!

Finally, I found someone who thinks about taking photographs like I do!  Jay Maisel - watch this video and see:
http://bit.ly/g6ASD3

Gerry

The Watcher

Diana and I went to Lisa's Christmas morning for breakfast and opening gifts.  'Harlequin' was fascinated with the boxes and paper and piles of stuff and watched us curiously most of the morning! She did wind up in Sean's lap for awhile, purring loudly.

Merry Christmas

This year Diana and I created our own cards and had fun doing it  The photo on the front is from a local park (Sugarhouse) after a heavy, wet snow.  A little work in PS to create the greeting and away we go!
Best wishes to all for a joyous and lively holiday season!

An Honor!

Sometimes when I look at a picture I've taken I feel honored to have been allowed to capture and share such beauty!  This morning was such a time.
We are staying at a B&B in Midway, UT, that has ponds on the property - and on one pond are swans. This morning it was snowing a bit but the swans were curious about me so they swam around well within image-making distance.  Here's one that makes me feel honored to have been able to take and share the photo.

Wishful thinking!

Cloudy skies and windy, cold weather today has me thinking wistfully of summer flowers.  Diana and I are working on a Christmas card and in doing so I found a few flowers from this past summer.  Such beauty and so available!

Hanging out in the refuges

Today was a great day and Murph and I spent it hanging out at Farmington Bay and the Bear River Wildlife Refuges. While a bit of driving, we also did quite a bit of walking despite the wet conditions. Far too many pictures to put up in one post, so I picked a few that show the beauty as well as the "keep your eyes open 'cause you never know what is going to pop up!"

This meadow lark is normally not around during the winter - but here he was singing his heart out!  Look at the beautiful 'braid-like' feathers on his upper back~ 

 Above, Murphy and I return back from a jaunt down a byway!  Those are the Wasatch mountains just behind Ogden.
Below is one of the several GBH that I saw - they are so beautiful it is hard to choose between them.

Backlit grass with Murphy on his way somewhere in the background.

Beauty is where you find it - lines, shapes and colors are everywhere.

This little guy is not easy to capture with any degree of clarity - but this one hung out till I got it.

Here's another pay attention to your surroundings picture!  Murph and I were walking down a path where I could see deer prints; I had turned around to start back when I hear a faint, familar noise; turned back and there is the buck quietly trying to disappear in the grasses!  Nice rack on him!

Back to the out of doors

I recently volunteered to be a monitor for The Nature Conservancy's Great Salt Lake Shoreline Preserve. Duties are to spend time there - one day a month in the winter and a couple of days a month in the summer; clean up, talk to people, record data and make repairs as possible or report items needing repair to the preserve manager.
Those of you that know me immediately realize that this is an ideal situation for me! To spend time out of doors, taking care of an area and sharing it with others is perfect! Plus I am alone a lot out there and can take pictures and experiment with photos etc.

It is vast country, filled with shapes, colors and patterns that are very hard to capture but so pleasing to the eye and the spirit.  Here's one.

Diana's Ordination Anniversary

Today is a special day for Diana - it is her 16th anniversary of her ordination to the priesthood of the Episcopal Church!  The ceremony was held in Pittsboro, North Carolina, where we were living at the time, and her sponsoring Bishop came from Nevada to perform the ordination ceremony!
It has been a good 16 years of being a priest for her; and it is a calling that she loves.
Our friend Rick Rosen videotaped the ceremony, and I recently digitized it. The photo below is a clip from the video, and is at the point in the ceremony where the laying on of hands and consecration of the individual to God's work occurs.  It is a very powerful ceremony.

Next Steps

As with most folks that work in a creative media, I've been thinking about the next steps for my work for a while. This ties into my 'vision', which is slowly emerging as I experiment and get feedback on my work.
For example, I think how many times can I take a picture of a Northern Harrier hawk? I get bored with bird pictures at times. Then I get an idea and see it through and I am excited all over again. Below is an example - because when I am focusing on the bird with my camera, I see nothing else.  However, to have some context the photo has to include other items - the questions then begin to assemble: how much, what form, sharp or fuzzy or dark or light and on and on.
Much of what I do is experimentation, as I am learning about my tools.  Plus, the same actions with a different photo yield different results, sometimes dramatically.

Enuff talk - here's what I saw!

 To carry the experimentation on a bit further, add a frame from OnOne Photoframe and see how that feels!

Hands

What story do older people's hands tell?  What emotions do they evoke in you? Why?
Visiting Mom today I took three different pictures of her hands. I've done this before, but today they were more striking for me, for some reason.  Perhaps because she seemed so frail today, who knows?
What do they say to you?

 Above - reaching for Murphy.

Resting in the chair.

Nap time.

Poof Parade!

Carmensita visited us today and brought her 'Poof' stick (magic wand). After some inside play we headed out to her favorite backyard area - the steps where she can get a handful of small rocks and throw them into the fish pond. According to her, she is feeding the fish 'bubbles'!

Today she had a couple of assistants, Fuzzy and Murphy. They love to play with Carmen and she loves to play with them.  Here's a sequence that I enjoyed!

Here she goes, with a handful of stones, under the watchful eye of her first assistant!

And the final journey to the resting place of the rocks is accomplished alone, holding the Poof stick in front of her to clear the way! I think she will be an acolyte when she gets old enough - she holds the stick well!

Bird day!

Monday after the big snow, Murph and I toured around Sugarhouse park, mostly on a hunch that something might be worth shooting.  And, of course, there were many things worth shooting!  Here's a couple of bird shots from that day, along with a jay that I captured this morning.

The pigeon deserves a bit of drama!  As I inched down the snow-packed road, attempting to position myself to take a picture of 100+ pigeons on a phone line, about evenly split on either side of the pole, I finally stopped and opened my door.  Now the birds were on the left of the door, so I swung the camera-lens combo around and just got it focussed on the birds when they all decided to take off and visit ME!
Unbeknownst to me, they thought I was going to feed them!  As they swarmed down around me, I had Hitchcock's "The Birds" running through my mind and briefly wondered if I should get back in the truck and make a run for it!!
They were everywhere - and this pigeon was sitting on the hood of the truck right about 2 feet away from me.  They have beautiful colors and I love their eyes!

A little bit later we heard the Canucks coming and got this photo - it could almost be Santa and his reindeer!

Finally, I moved the bird feeder up next to the deck today and put fresh peanuts in it.  The Jays have an early warning system that tells them that food is out within 29 nanoseconds of you putting the food out! This guy showed up right away and posed a little for me.

Snow Beauty

With and additional 10+ inches of snow overnight, there are a lot of snow scenes today. The snow is light and fluffy and fun to walk in. Unfortunately for Murphy, it now comes up to his belly and he does not like walking in it - running through it is another deal and he loves that, dipping his nose into the snow as he runs.
Here's one shot this morning that I really like - shot with auto white balance shows the blue in the snow.

Sunshine in the snow storm

We've received 10 to 12 inches of snow at our house so far today, a grey day where it never snowed heavily, just constantly. First real shoveling effort of the season - 'course for a Minnesota boy that feels good!
I wanted to bring a bit of sunshine into the day, even if only on the blog, so here they are. The church is the Catholic Cathedral of the Madeleine, that sits on the north side of South Temple street and always calls me to raise my camera!

This is a sunny day in the early October, looking back up the Wasatch from the entry of a canyon. There had been a bit of rain, therefore all the green, along with some coolness accounting for the change of color of the oak trees.  Once again, the clouds and the light are fascinating to me.

Inside shots

Cold here in SLC - comparatively speaking. Middle and lower teens these last few nights, and the cats have hung out close to home. Which is good and bad - nice to see them, but they get bored very quickly and then cause trouble - especially Fuzzy!  Leo had to escape from him several times yesterday.

Diana's morning tea makes a wonderful picture, backlit by the sun.  The slight counterpoint in the top left was done while cloning out a bright spot (in Lightroom). I set the size of the clone circle very large and it moved over and picked up the top of the cup and a little steam.  Looks like a reflection and nicely breaks up the large black area without distracting.

Diana spotted this mouse running across the front bench outside (thank goodness). He's the size that I regularly find in the cat's food dish in the morning - partly eaten.

Leo wants to stay in but not be hassled by Fuzzy; here's one of his places to hang out.  He is a very regal being.