This is mostly another image dump. I’ve just been taking pics of random stuff. Birdies, kitties, dragons, flowers, and the like. The dragons were actually taken while I was shooting video, since they were fighting and vying for territory so I thought it might be a fun challenge. And I was stalking Lucy as well, hoping to test the pet face/eye detect I have programmed into a user setting. It seems to work, even in the shade, though exposing a black cat properly is still difficult.
The camera shots are a GX680III (non-S) with the tilt and shift adjustments. I just got it and decided to try and focus on the stump and the telephone poles at the same time. We’ll see how it came out when I get those slides processed. My goal was to get a shot just as a crow jumped off the telephone pole and swooped down to the trees below, which they were doing every few minutes. If such a picture doesn’t appear here in the next couple weeks, you’ll know it didn’t work out. Until then, enjoy the setup and pics of the new camera.
Driveway dragons are again prowling the pavement. They started appearing this month, and the last week or two they have been arguing about territory. These two bruisers were squabbling back and forth across the driveway, the dark male doing a lot of displays. The pasty yellow one is pretty brave, enough I can get closer than my lens will even focus, though I think the bruiser still has a bit of an advantage.
They were both displaying pretty heavily. I got no video of the blue belly and beard display because he runs around so much and is still skittish. I did get a breathing display from the pasty bellied one. I’ll add video of that when the you tubes is done processing it.
Yeah, yeah, I know it’s shaky. But it’s handheld at 500mm, so it’s not that bad, considering. Behold:
The sun came out this afternoon and the sky was almost blue. Quite an improvement from last week’s smoke and smog. I thought it might be a good time to actually take some shots of birds and lizards with light that worked.
the littler guy is about an inch long nose to vent … and the one on the stump might be a half inch longer.
Not too many examples, but here’s the young guy from the previous post, trying to lay claim to the stump again, and a younger challenger trying to own the steps to the front porch. Note, the little guy on the bricks is just as bombastic as the slightly larger one on the stump, he just does it to the hatchlings. I actually have some video of him showing off for one so small it probably hasn’t even molted yet. A 6 week old bossing around a 4 week old, bossing around a 2 week old. I guess this is the lizard version of shit flowing downhill.
Video later. For now some sample stills. One each, cropped to show how sharp I can get when the sun is shining, and one uncropped to show how much of the lizard actually fills the frame. Remember, the littler guy is about an inch long nose to vent — that brick is only 4 inches wide — and the one on the stump might be a half inch longer.
The one on the stump molted the day after I took the last pictures. So he’s out today in brand new skin and it looks to me like the color around his eye is getting more brilliant. The fact that you can see that with this lens kind of blows my mind. 500mm is quite the reach.
After more pics and videos of the baby dragons I waited a bit for the birds to come out. They like to feed on the berry bushes at the end of the yard nearest the street so I can find them there some evenings. I went out when I heard them chattering to get some shots.
At first I got one or two in the yard, hanging out on the wire above the berry bush and cactus along the fence. I was having issues exposing properly, getting the background more than the bird, but he flew off to argue with his finchy friends before I could switch to spot and try again. There were bluebirds and a goldfinch in the red berry bush so I thought to get into position to see them when all the birds in all the bushes flew away. Dammit!
I took a few pictures of birds on the wires, and even tried to get some in flight, but never got another shot of them in amongst the foliage with the nice green backdrop. Oh well. Here are some samples.
The reason they all bolted? Well, Creamsicle had to take a shit. He was walking up behind me and, though he’s a ridiculously lazy cat who doesn’t hunt much, the birds don’t know that. Lucy is the real hunter and, though I have never seen her take a bird, she has gotten mice, gophers, and more than a few lizard tails.
I think I might back up a bit here. Creamsicle is the orange and white cat that’s always in the yard. Unlike Lucy, who has the black cat habit of thinking I’m her very best friend, Creamsicle has never wanted anything to do with me. He used to see me and run away, in fact, but for the last six months I get his attention when he’s in the yard then just ignore him. Now he knows I’m not going to bother with him so he doesn’t run away. He doesn’t even look at me, in fact, just going about his business. And his business, in this case, is both metaphorical and, well, also metphorical, but in the more scatological sense.
I learned recently from the lady next door, who Lucy actually lives with as opposed to just inviting herself in like she does everywhere else, that Creamsicle is a stray. He just showed up one day so she gave him some food. He comes for a meal (or two) every day now. And generous meals they are, he has gotten rather rotund in the half dozen years I have known him. Creamsicle isn’t his real name, it’s just what I call him because there have been so many cats hanging out in the yard over the years my usual moniker for the cat that is usually hanging out in my yard, “Neighbor Kitty, ” wasn’t specific enough.
In the afternoons, however, Creamsicle “does his business” in the front yard. And by that, I mean he has decided there’s a specific spot in the yard to take a shit.
I kind of wonder how it is that it is so common an occurrence the last dozen years — that a cat has taken residence in my yard — that I need monikers for them. But this has been the case ever since the original Neighbor Kitty at my place in Oceanside. I’m pretty sure they’re trying to tell me something, but I intend to ignore the message for as long as possible.
Creamsicle spends time almost every day sleeping in the back yard. He has, at various times, found a nice place atop the shed, on a rickety wooden bench, or just on a bed he has stamped out of the grass and I can generally see him out the kitchen window when I’m getting a cup of coffee. This is the busy life of a stray cat. Get breakfast, find a nice place to sleep, rinse, repeat.
In the afternoons, however, Creamsicle “does his business” in the front yard. And by that, I mean he has decided there’s a specific spot in the yard to take a shit. Why that spot, and why here, I don’t know, but after I dug up some of the weeds to plant wildflower seeds this winter he chose one of the cleared areas as his new litter box and has been visiting it a couple times a day since.
This afternoon’s visit to the gentleman’s rest facilities completely disrupted the birdwatching session as he came sauntering past me. And sauntering is all he does any more. Maybe an amble, or a trudge now and again, but now that he isn’t afraid of me he doesn’t hurry at all. He won’t even look at me.
Oh well. Birds done, cat pics on deck. I almost think I need to make him scared of me again so he’ll look my way for better photos, but with this lens I decided to get in touch with my inner Marlin Perkins and take some photos like I was watching a lion stalking on the Serengeti.
The day ended with a sunset, for the first time in weeks. These are straight out of the camera, no crop. The view from the kitchen window compressed by the 500mm perspective.
I got my hands on a 200-500mm f/5.6 lens a few days ago. It’s heavy, and bulky, and big, and kind of enormous.1 But 500mm reach is interesting to me, and I am looking forward to experimenting with it.
I’ve almost forgotten how to deal with auto-focus, oddly, as I’ve been hand-focusing my vintage lenses all spring and summer
I have taken a few photographs to test it. The light in these will look sickly and awful, but that’s because it is. Smoke from the fires, and haze from the sea are making good old fashioned smog like nobody’s business. The air is terrible, and everything has an awful, brown tint to it. While better than it was last week, it looks gross. Like living in Delhi, or east of Los Angeles in the late 70s.
But I took pictures anyway. I’m learning to use this beast, and all of these are hand-held and auto-focused. I’ve almost forgotten how to deal with auto-focus, oddly, as I’ve been hand-focusing my vintage lenses all spring and summer, and I am finding a few quirks. It will hunt quite a bit when trying to get it to grab a lizard, going all the way out to infinity and then having to come back, which isn’t exactly fast. There’s a lockout from 6M to Infinity, I kind of wish it was 5m to closest focus!
It seems modestly sharp when I can get it in focus. The image stabilization works pretty well, allowing me to take hand-held shots at 500mm in marginal light. Alas, what I really got it for was taking pictures of birds in flight or maybe action shots of surfers, but zero visibility and smog kind of throw a kink in that plan, so dragons it is. Maybe we’ll have a blue sky next week.
Until then, behold:
The first gallery is random shots just before sunset from the day the lens arrived. Extremely low light, but you get a new lens, you take a pic. It’s the rule. The telephone pole is nearly 400 feet away, and you can read the markings clearly with a 500mm shot, handheld, in very low light. I took a picture of the sun to give an idea of just how icky it was.
The Stump Dragon was molting on Sunday. Again, light was bad, like it has been all week, but I never seem to see a molting lizard at the same time as I have a camera in hand, so I took some shots. I actually was lucky to get these as I spotted the molt Saturday, when all the scales on the front half were opaque, but it was while he was running to hide in the crack in the stump. Gone before I could retrieve a camera, alas. I would have liked to have gotten pics then, as they look almost like they are covered in fungus or something since the skin comes off of the scales rather than in one smooth shed like a snake.
In the past the lizards I spotted molting would be out of sight for a day or two and not reappear until after they’d shed. But this time I got to see stumpy here changing out of the worn out duds and putting on the Sunday Go to Meeting clothes.
My favorites are the ones facing away. You can see half the skin is old, half new.
Early this afternoon as I was headed out I caught the stump dragon showing off some. There are interlopers trying to steal the range from the stump to the chair, including a tiny but ridiculously brave male who is only three molts in and thinks he’s king of the world. So after shedding the old clothes, it was time to get out there and defend some territory.
For this and the following galleries, I have included both images cropped to refine the composition, and full sized, to give an idea of just how much of the frame these little guys are actually taking. You can get mightily close with 500mm of reach!
Also, nothing is photoshopped. Mostly I clicked “Auto” for sharpening and saturation in Nikon Capture, cropped, then dumped the file to jpg. What you see is what I got.
These first images are just after noon on the brick that sits half way between the stump and the chair — the range the Stump Dragon seems to have claimed the last week or two.
And here’s the young buck. This male has been around about two months, and is still barely more than bite sized. I’ve seen three color changes, so he may have molted three or four times, but that’s all. I actually have pics of him before the most recent molt around here somewhere, but for now the ones I took this evening.
He’s belligerent. Has been since the very beginning when he didn’t even have any color, which is kind of hilarious. Doing pushups and acting all threatening when he’s an inch long. Who knows if he’ll last long enough to make a breeding season after he matures, but for now he’s trying to make his presence known.
He’s also a special challenge as he tends to run around a try to be threatening to all of the others — the Trash Dragon, the Cardboard Dragon, and the Cactus Dragon — so he’ll sprint from one perch to the next, stopping and raising his tail or puffing up his neck before facing a different direction to try and intimidate the next guy. I get a few seconds or maybe a couple of minutes to compose and take some shots, then he’ll start sprinting around and I have to compose and focus quickly, hope I get a shot, then try to follow him to the next place he runs.
Of course, he is only running around and acting tough when Stump Dragon is elsewhere as, again, he’s literally bite sized. He wouldn’t survive an actual challenge.
My favorites are the last two, where he’s posing facing northwest, toward the Garbage Dragon. He’s saying “Rawr! I’m a Dragon! Fear me!” I don’t know if anyone else outside this territory actually cares, yet. It’s not breeding season anymore and most of the others are far more timid than they were in the late spring when they were courting. But the little guy is trying.
The ones with the neck display are facing northeast, for the benefit of the Cactus Dragon, and the ones atop the flat log are facing south, keeping an eye out for the Cardboard Dragon.
The one that DOES care is the Dragon who claims this range. After seeing the belligerent baby showing off on the stump, the full sized Stump Dragon chased him off and hung out there for a while.
Looking good with the fresh new skin! I get it. New clothes, you want to show ’em off to the world.
I also took pics of a hatchling in the evening. I think this is the one I had to escort out of the house a few times last week after a molt. This is a VERY small lizard, likely only two weeks out of the nest, and usually found hiding in the planter next to the steps to the front porch.
So, there are possibilities. It’s not exactly a carrying-around lens, or one of those innocuous do-all lenses that are great for street photography. But I bet I can get a great picture of the moon if the smoke clears out some before it is full again! And, when I get sick of lugging the extra five pounds around I’ll sell it on the e bays and find something else to play with instead.
A new denizen has moved into the stump. Actually, this was the Porch Dragon, whose portraits appeared in the post with mid day sun and dark shadows a few days ago. Porch Dragon moved out to the stump over the last week or so, spending less and less time on the porch and chair. PD now officially claims the stump, hanging out there for all the others to see every sunset. So I guess Porch Dragon is now New Stump Dragon.
That mad rush before last call and the lights all turn on is more universal than we might imagine.
The original Chair Dragon has moved down to the driveway and lives under the saw, where she has been courting with the big, bruiser, dominant male. I think she’s trying to get one more round in before mating season is over. That mad rush before last call and the lights all turn on is more universal than we might imagine.
The chair is now occupied by a juvenile, hardly more than a hatchling, who runs around trying to look threatening and doing pushups like the big lizards. He’s so tiny I’m surprised a bird hasn’t picked him off, as he’s snack sized. But his portraits are for another time.
For now, some studies in dynamic range, depth of field, and bokeh out by the stump. All taken with the 105DC, manual focus. I’m afraid the exif doesn’t record the defocus control setting, though.
Here’s the dynamic range study. Various settings at an angle with difficult light. Note the Bokeh on the f/2 shots with the green halo. A rare unpleasantness in that otherwise spectacular portrait lens, but I guess that’s why you have the defocus control. Spin it out to f/4 and use the DC to wash out the background. Enough writing, you can see it for yourself.
Behold!
And some work with easier light, playing with depth of field and composition.
And some portrait work. Mostly experimenting with exposure and composition here, some are spot, others center weighted. Seemed like an interesting experiment at the time, but after they’re processed the exposure differences are subtle. The composition and the lizard’s pose both make a bigger difference to my eye.
Some dynamic range experiments with the Chair Dragon, who has been hanging out on the porch. Or maybe this is the Porch Dragon who has been hanging out on the chair. One of them is gone, now, and whichever this is has decided everything from the front porch to the gate all the way out to the stump belongs to her.
Some of the first eggs of the year seem to have hatched. I am seeing some hatchlings running about. This little dude was hanging out at the door sill, so I grabbed the camera just to record the little bugger while he’s still too inexperienced to run away from me.
Hatchling on the front door jamb
It’s hard to get context, but these were taken very close. I am holding the camera just a couple of inches away. The body is as wide as a pinky fingernail and length, body to tail, is probably about an inch. Still very small.
For reference, the blue doorjamb is three inches wide.
Here are a few more. Who knows if I’ll see this one for long. They grow quickly, and a lot of them end up toys for cats, meals for racoons or skunks, or just killed by the larger lizards who already hold the territory.
Some depth of field experiments using the driveway dragons. Most of them are with the 70-210, though this exercise began playing with the 105DC and I should be adding more from that lens at a later date.
We begin with the porch dragon, who is pretty much always hanging out on the broken wicker chair in the afternoon. She fought for a few weeks to claim planter from the porch to the gate, and now has to defend it continually.
These pictures are at f13 and f20. Anything less than f13 has a razor thin DOF, but the bokeh is so very nice.
The male that used to hang out on the stump hasn’t been around for the last week. I’m afraid a bird or the skunk that dug up the yard last weekend may have picked him off, but one of the females who lives in the crack still suns herself every afternoon. Here are some pictures from f16, with super creamy bokeh, up to f40.
The southern edge of the planter has been claimed by a belligerent male who seems to have moved down from the back yard. I used him to try some different focal lengths, getting bokeh so washed out you can’t even tell what is behind him, all the way to f40, which still blurs the concrete three feet behind the focal point. He’s brave enough I can get so close I can’t even focus with this lens, so anything less than f25 has a DOF so narrow you can’t get the whole lizard in. At 210mm, f16, and five feet the DOF is only 1.75 inches or so. Spin it out to f32 and you can get more than 5 inches, making it easier to get his eye in focus without the tail being completely blurred.
Here are some examples f45 down to f20
And some more from a different perspective, f22 through f45. At f22 the tip of the tail is out of focus, but the background sure looks nice.
Since I started taking pictures of the lizards, I have found the females to be harder to get close to. They are generally more skittish, and don’t do as much for territorial display as some of the more colorful males.
But they do display, and they do bicker over territory. And, with some patience in the afternoon, I can occasionally get close enough for a decent shot by waiting quietly at a favored location, and sometimes I can get a display when another lizard appears behind me.
Actually, that’s true of the males, too. They display most when another lizard is around. If I see pushups and posturing I can often turn around and find an interloper doing the same.
One favored spot is on the furniture dolly, which sits on the western side of the driveway across from the center of the planter. This dragon has been trying to claim it ever since the Central dragon moved north, where he now tries to defend the territory along the driveway from north of this wooden dolly to the end of the motorcycle garage. You can see her here posturing. Head erect, tail in the air, and deeply tanned — they tend to be lighter in color when cold and darken up considerably when they’ve been warming in the sun for an hour.
One reason for the posturing is that this fat bruiser of a female, who lives in the middle of the planter, will often posture from the wall or even run and chase others away from the favored wooden perch. Here she is hanging out on the wooden perch.
I didn’t get many pictures here because she became agitated and started running around. Alas, her posturing was beneath the wooden perch and I was unable to get any usable images before she ran to the wall of the planter. These little bastards are fast, twitchy, and quite hard to capture when they’re agitated.
The reason was an interloper, who was so brave she came to within two feet of me. I actually had to back up to be able to get me lens to focus on her. There’s a reason she doesn’t have a tail, and it’s not just because she used to live in the back yard where the neighborhood cats hang out.
Her appearance on the wall, a good 10 feet north of where she is usually allowed by the Planter dragon, caused the Planter dragon to move to the wall and adopt threatening postures.
Even when there are not nefarious interlopers to do pushups at, the Planter dragon will generally hang out right at the step in the middle of the planter. It is where I most commonly find her, and likely a good place as Bootsy takes Doug for a walk a few times a day and being as he is a dog of diminutive stature the elevation makes it a lot easier to avoid his notice and escape. Bootsy likes to try and eat anything that moves, and more than one lizard has ended up in his mouth — though, strangely, he’s too stupid to know what to do with them once he catches them.
I hate that fucking dog.
Here’s the Planter dragon on her perch and playing gargoyle from a different day. Seems to be a great place to take in the sunset on a bright afternoon. On this day I got a little too close after the first photograph and had to sit in the driveway for twenty minutes before she returned for the second. The gargoyle shots were from later that evening as she was peeking out to see if it was safe again after Doug and Bootsy passed by on their walk.
It has actually become a little easier to take pictures of some females since we mowed the front yard. The stump in the middle of the yard has a couple who peer out of the crack, cautiously, while the belligerent male sits on the top of the stump, showing off his blue to everyone in the vicinity. He and his two girlfriends live in a split in the middle of the stump and you can sometimes see all three lounging in the sun.
Mostly, I have been taking video of the goings on. Several other lizards like to try and sun themselves on the stump or assert their dominance and the resident male is often forced to chase them away, so there’s plenty of interesting interaction to try and capture.
I have gotten one or two good stills while I was at it, and may try some more if I’m bored on a sunny evening. The first pic is the larger female that lives in the main split. The others are of the dominant male, patrolling to assure the Trash dragon and the Cactus dragon don’t get any ideas that they can invade his territory. They’re here just to whet your appetite, but I’ll leave the colorful poses and territorial displays for another post.
As a side note, I’ve broken out the D7100 so I can set up two cameras. I have been videoing from two different angles at the same time, to try and better capture some of the more interesting interaction. I notice I haven’t updated the EXIF data so my copyright notice is two years out of date. Rest assured, these were taken in 2020.
