Category: Wildlife

wildlife photography

Sunset with the 20mm

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Experimenting with the 20mm lens and sunsets. No parking near where I had hoped to shoot at the warm water jetty, so I went south of Terramar.

I had hoped to do some long exposure and get the washed out waves, but the crowd in the parking lot behind me was substantial and every time I’d leave the shutter open more than 2 seconds someone would turn on their car headlights, blowing out the bluff and weeds in the foreground. Oh, well. I’ll try again another night.

The people in the photos were just folks who were there enjoying the sunset. I decided not to move, and they make a good focal point. Alas, the traffic on the highway behind us kind of ruined most of the photos with glare from the headlights, but I cropped the glare out of a couple and posted them for fun. The one where the phone glow illuminates their faces is accidental. I promise I’m not being snarky, even though I have done that before.

Hooded Oriole

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These ridiculously yellow birds have taken up residence in the palm trees over the house. Summertime visitors to the San Diego region, they’re called Hooded Orioles.

I think I got it from someone on photo.net fifteen years ago for $90. Very modest glass, yet… I continue to be impressed by what it can do with a little patience.

I have been seeing them regularly, but since I’ve pursued the landscape stuff the last few weeks I always have a superwide on the camera when I notice them. Today I had the 70-210 on, experimenting with the soft light from the heavy overcast, so when I heard them twittering and bickering, as they tend to do most evenings, I went out and tried to get shots.

Two things. One, shooting just before sunset with low light against a light grey overcast is just the worst possible way to get a sharp picture of these frenetic little guys. It was way darker taking these shots at 8PM than at 4:30 when I was taking lizard pics.

And, B, considering I was shooting high ISO in bad light, it’s pretty cool I was still able to get anything not completely blurry. The wind was blowing, these guys NEVER sit still, and I was hand focusing with pretty long exposure times for 200mm. Seriously, I left the exif attached, so look at the shutter speeds on the palm tree shots. This is hand held, using a 70-210 f/4-5.6 from the mid ’90s, long before things like image stabilization were thought of.

This lens really has been a workhorse for me over the years. I think I got it from someone on photo.net fifteen years ago for $90. Very modest glass, yet between the birdies and the dragons I continue to be impressed by what it can do with a little patience. I can’t imagine what the native Z lens would be capable of, considering how sharp the mirrorless lenses are and how impressive the stabilization is on the 24-70 lens is. One day. But for now this old beast is still fun.

Besides, what are these pics for? They aren’t great art. Not the sort of thing going in a book on birding, or a professional portfolio, but at least I can show people how yellow they are.

I’ll definitely have to try again one evening when the sun shines. 200mm is still a bit too short for really detailed shots, but at iso100 and with a faster shutter speed I am sure I can pull a little more color and detail out of these dudes.

Hatchlings are starting to appear

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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.

Depth of Field Experiments

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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.

And another perspective, f22 through f45.

And a few more just for good measure.

Lucy is a dirty girl

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It has been mentioned that Lucy is surprisingly difficult to get a good photograph of because she’s a very uncooperative model. Not that she means to be difficult, she just has her own agenda, and it seldom aligns with posing for the camera. In fact, I’ve tried video in the past and she doesn’t like having the camera down at her level and will get annoyed and walk away if I persist. The last time I had the camera near her she just ran away, not wanting to be pursued.

The other issue is that she is friendly. Too friendly. This is the cat that spent three years trying to make friends with Nono, who hated her (and almost all other cats and people.) Lucy used to actually knock on the door to ask me to let her in. Literally, I’d be talking on the phone at work, hear a banging noise, step outside my room and find a black cat mewling and doing figure-8s on the porch asking to come inside.

I never purposely let her in, but she snuck in once when I had my arms full of groceries and decided she was allowed in forever more. For the next few years I had to tell her several times a week that she doesn’t live here. That’s just how a cat’s brain works.

When she comes over she will rub against my ankles a few times, graciously accept some pets, then go about her business of rolling in the dirt and weeds until she’s filthy.

So, when I see Lucy she comes running over for attention. It doesn’t take much, even seeing me looking in her direction will bring her over. So it is hard to get a candid shot of her just doing Lucy things. When she comes over she will rub against my ankles a few times, graciously accept some pets, then go about her business of rolling in the dirt and weeds until she’s filthy. Sometimes she’ll rub up against me after her roll in the dirt, as well, not aware that cats are supposed to be fastidious and aloof.

Today I was taking portraits of the Porch dragon, seated on her chair along the upper planter, when Lucy came by and I decided to try again. I had a strategy in mind, and put the camera on the porch then went out into the yard to greet her. I figured I’d get that out of the way, then she’d go about her business and I could follow with the camera. It almost worked. We had a nice little chat, did some petting, and then she started poking around the yard looking for a good place to sit. Perfect!

I went to the porch and retrieved the camera and, before I had turned around, she came running.

I couldn’t even get a good pic as she trots over. I use a manual focus 70-210 lens for the lizard photos, so I had to try and track focus and get some shots in before she got too close.

I think the issue was that I was at the porch. She rubbed up against me a good deal, then went up to the front door and mewled a few times. It has been five years since she first snuck in and, though I’ve never let her in since, maybe this time was different, right? Obviously it was worth asking, just in case.

Of course I didn’t let her in. I explained to her that this wasn’t her house and she returned to the yard and started rolling around.

When she doesn’t know I’m there she’ll lie in the grass, she’ll hunt gophers and mice, she’ll sit on the stump or the chair, or she’ll hassle Creamsicle until he gets annoyed enough to chase her. But when I’m there she rolls in the dirt. She’s the cat version of a black Lab, whatever that is.

After her dirt bath, she found a shady place to relax. Again, she’s a bit too comfortable with me and will close her eyes, doing the slow blink that means “you’re OK, I’m not scared of you” in cat. It’s all a strange conundrum. You’d think the friendliest cat in the neighborhood would be the easiest to get a good portrait of, but the skittish Creamsicle will always look at me when he knows I’m watching him. An all black cat without opened eyes is really hard to expose properly. Matrix metering usually does best, though sometimes you have to use spot, usually if you’re close in on her face and her eyes are open. Either way you end up having to nudge the exposure one way or the other most of the time.

At least if she’s sitting still I can try one of each setting to see what happens. So I took my marginal photographs of a filthy cat then left her to her business. I returned to the house to set up a time lapse for the sunset. I hope Lucy got a good nap in before she was called home for supper.

Girls Gone Wild! WOOOO!

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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.

Older Photographs

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Since the only things to photograph here while under house arrest were what I could find in my yard, it was pretty much cats and lizards. So I decided to grab some older photographs for a little variety.

Many of these were taken with my old trusty D70. Extremely modest gear, compared to the current generation of digital cameras, but it’s what I had at the time. Like the old photojournalist’s credo “F8 and be there” it’s more important to take a picture than to take the most technically perfect picture ever.

Some were taken with my 7100, which was wonderful in its day, but on my trips to Taiwan and Italy I carried an 18-200 lens that I never bonded with. Just couldn’t make sharp images to save my life though it’s tack sharp with a 35mm 1.8 or even the 18-120 that camera wore as a walkin’ around lens after I sold the 18-200.

So, soon I’ll be adding some portfolios to prove that I don’t just take pictures of cats. And some pictures of cats.

Let’s begin with dogs. First, some photos of a young and handsome Shadow.

And Chopper and Cookie, plus bonus pics of a little smash faced yorkie who lived with a friend a decade ago.

There are occasionally photographs of actual people, too. Though that’s rare. Not much of a people person.

It’s always interesting to see what you get from a sunset. Or a blood moon eclipse. The eclipse was just the best I could do with the equipment I had, but something is better than nothing and I learned the difficulties of exposing for the surprisingly bright moon. F11 and the inverse of the ISO, a rule for the ages.

I took more than a few snapshots while on the road. I stumbled across some from the summer of 2007, where I started in Boston, DC, Chicago, London for a month, Belgium for a long weekend, Germany for a month, then home for a week before Mexico City… that was a busy year.

I have a lot of photographs from the era somewhere, but here’s a smattering. Some from Chicago, London, Munich, and the Mosel where it is always cloudy yet charmingly beautiful. Or maybe that was all the wine.

Then there were pictures of Doug’s little asshole dog. I hate that dog. Ugly as the day is long, but he makes up for it with an awful personality. The picture in the jeep is pure portrait art, though. I’m actually proud of that one.

Of course, there are about a billion photos of Nono. If I was taking a picture in the house, she’d find a way to get in it, so I often used her as a focal point anyway.

I recall once sitting in a coffee shop with a young girl I’d befriended a couple of years before at an open mic at a different coffee shop and meeting her there was pure happenstance. We had discussed photography in the past, and music, and cat memes, and whatever else it is you talk to 17 year old girls about… actually that’s pretty much all there was to talk about. So when she came over to say hello I showed her my brand new camera, which had arrived only an hour before. Her first comment was “I’ll be disappointed if the first thing you took a picture of was anything but your cat.”

I’d like to say I’d disappointed her, but the first few photos here were on the card when she pushed play. The rest are just random pics that were on this hard drive.