Water Dancers

I shared this photo a little while back, and since then, one of my favorite art critics and historian looked at it and thought there might be some 'dancing' occurring.  With that in mind, I made some small additions in Photoshop and present it here now as "Water Dancers"

Beautiful hunter

This past summer we had many Sharp-shinned Hawks visit us in search of food; some successful and some not.  Here's one sitting in the grape vine waiting until the right moment to attempt to catch his dinner!

Tulips again

Once again I return to forms and shapes and light with color. Something about this arrangement of tulip petals, randomly arranged by nature, with a bit of pollen scattered on the tabletop below some of them - a visual treat!

Living Planet Aquarium tour

I met Mom and company at the Living Planet Aquarium Monday afternoon for a tour. I'd not been to this facility before and from the outside, it is not very impressive - but WOW, inside watching the otters play and the penguins show off and all the snakes and alligators and frogs and everything - it is quite a treat!
I wanted to share a few shots, since you cannot get these in the wild, usually, without paying a lot of money or being very lucky!
Everything was shot without flash, usually at 3200 iso and often close to 1/6 sec handheld.  I'm amazed that so many turned out good. I love the alligator!

Jellyfish

Mom loves to watch the kids!

A beautiful grouping of colors and shapes.

Ominous!

Playful!

Flowers - life and death

Diana bought tulips about 2 weeks ago; they have lasted quite well. The colors are wonderful and I love the juxtaposition of the life and death of the tulips; there is so much beauty in each phase!  Here's what I saw:

Tulips in pastel glory.

Sun on the snow

The storm broke for a day and the sun shone - very brightly on the snow. Makes you think about how to take a photo when so much brightness is usually somewhere in the frame.
Murph and I went back to the refuge again - as usual, a few gems showed up, some repeated from another time and others just waiting for us. In addition to the birds, there were some nice landscape shots.

The Rough-legged Hawk caught us on the way out.

Peaceful and beautiful.

This gives new meaning to the phrase "Ice Fishing"! There is no open water within 100 yards of him!

American Kestrel - male (orange on the top of the head).

The ubiquitous Canadien Goose - such gracefulness, almost swan-like in his pose. 

Rainy Day

I wanted to see the Wildlife Refuge in the rain (yeah, pretty dorky, I know) so went up today before the snow came. You never know what you will see!
A Great Egret fishing, one Bald Eagle in the shallow water and lots of Harriers with a few kestrels were all out in the rain, doing their thing!  A delightful day, even if the front of the lens got water on it and softened the photos a bit! You can see the rain drops hitting the water in the photos.

Coyote again!

I took a drive through the wildlife refuge today before the storm comes in; no eagles at all!  Lots of Northern Harrier's, a coyote and a raven working the flats, and a wonderful Rough-legged hawk that posed a lot!

Follow your intuition

It was close to lunch today and I had a strong feeling to take a ride out to the Great Salt Lake and around. I put it down to my desire to escape from the cube, but, since I had taken my camera, I went anyway!
Two coyotes wandering around were one of the prizes, and the sticks in water reflection is another.

Follow your intuition (and take your camera with you)!

Sometimes the simple views

Are the ones that work best.  I work too hard at finding the "perfect" photo sometimes and just want to relax and share the beauty that I saw.  Here's a view from the front yard yesterday evening looking west.

Diana at work

I don't publish very many photos of Diana on the blog, one because I am forbidden to publish most of the ones I take of her!!! and two, she, like most women, does not like any photo I take of her!
But here's one of her at work - she was the celebrant and preacher at the Christmas eve 7:30 pm service.

Sunset on the Cathedral of the Madelaine

Saturday afternoon, I shot a wedding of friends at St. Mark's Cathedral. As we left the Cathedral of the Madeleine loomed large against the early evening sky with a warm sun on it. I love the spires against the sky and the colors of the roof and stone.

Cathedral of the Madeleine, Salt Lake City

Hawaii Sunrise HDR

HDR is the acronym for High Dynamic Range, the descriptor of photos like this that have a wide range between the darks and the lights. Cameras don't handle these situations very well normally although there are a number of techniques to use if one doesn't want to use an HDR function in the software.

I used Photoshop CS5 Merge to HDR on this, still learning all the tweaks but getting closer.  Kai and Maile are exploring in the foreground, a classic morning during our stay in Hawaii.

A different view

Still reviewing Hawaii photos and came up with a couple of different views for you. They are the unique moments of beauty that are there just for a moment but can be captured.

20 seconds of exposure

Back in sunny but dry Salt Lake City and reviewing photos from Hawaii; here's one that I like from our early morning at black sand beach at Punaluu.  A 20 second exposure smooths out the water but also shows some star movement.

Stuck in LAX

We left Hilo yesterday evening on a United flight; unfortunately the flight left about an hour late due to mechanical problems and today we are stuck at LAX until early evening. Flying is different today, it seems, with full airplanes almost always and that translates into challenges if your flight gets delayed. So we are relaxing here and making the best of it.

Yesterday was our last day in Hawaii and it was truly the most beautiful! Warm, sunny with billowy white clouds made a wonderful exit day for us. After packing up in the morning, we went to Volcano National Park - first the art center there that has a really high quality collection of many diverse artists and media. Next we stopped to look over the Kilauea crater, a spectacular view from the stop to witness the steam vents.

Birds, clouds, VOG and just beauty were the order of the day!

Happy New Year 2012

Rick and I were up early this morning to be at the Punaluu Black Sand beach for sunrise. We arrived in the dark, and had fun with some time exposures and stars.  The transitions in light kept us hopping as we photographed from 6am to 7:30am.  A number of good shots and here's a couple of them.

Volcano puffs of VOG.