Lilies

I think these may be just a little late in blooming but I'm not sure. I'm doing good just to know that they are lilies!

Fairweather friends...

"Please, oh pretty please we NEED that hot dog you have in your hand!"

This is about the only time I can get these two to come, sit, stay, etc... Ha ha!

Dude, Got any ...

...weeds?

Just a nasty little thistle plant I saw growing along side the road. 

These are considered a noxious weed in our county and if the county officials see them growing on your property they will fine you if they are not removed.

Unfortunately, the same rules apparently don't apply if the weeds are growing on county property.

Dew

I noticed we'd had a heavy overnight dew a few mornings ago and took a few pictures...

Crow pictures...

I had just gotten my camera gear out and was all set to take some nice Crow pictures when this much larger bird showed up and scared them off... Grr! So I packed all my camera gear up again and called it a day :)

Full house

First time I've ever seen three of the larger Coast Guard vessels at the Port Hardy wharf at one time. It was a bit of a drismal morning when I took the pictures but the fog eventually burned off to reveal a beautiful Sunny day.

Woodpecker

Not real sure if this scruffy bird is a Downy Woodpecker or Hairy Woodpecker. Perhaps someone with a better bird book than mine can tell for sure. Either way I got a couple of pictures of him before he got shy and flew further into the woods.

Field of Dreams

An "artsy" shot of our front field. It's about time for the hay to be cut.

Cedar Waxwings

I finally got some good pictures of a pair of Cedar Waxwing birds that I've seen in the area for the past couple of weeks. They were interesting to see, one kept watch as the other gathered nest materials, then off they would both fly...

Just some old pictures from the past.  Hopefully, I will get some more photos to post after Kauai trip.

"Live to ride...

...ride to live"

Spotted these two on the highway yesterday. Happy my camera was on the seat beside me!

In a Galaxy far, far away...

Just a couple of more photos from the late night this past weekend. 

The first shot is a 173 second shutter using the Ioptron Star Tracker. If you look closely just to the right of the milky way core you will see two small green streaks. This was a lightning bug photo bombing my shot. 

The last shot was taken in my front yard.

  

A daytime picture!

So far no one has talked me into going out at 2am to take pictures in the dark... And I'm not tired today either, ha ha!

I did however have the camera and Sigma 120-400 out a couple of days ago looking to get a few bird pictures. No bird pictures but I did get a nice shot of the Arrow Post on it's way into Hardy Bay. 

You'd think I would know better

The day started like any other, up early and working by 6:30 a.m. but in the middle of the afternoon Aaron calls and asks if I want to go take photos of the Milky Way, at 2:00 a.m.!

Now my first thought was no, well, actually, "hell no, I will be sleeping at 2:00 a.m." but then the right side of my brain took over and I said yes. I couldn't let the young guy get the best of me you know.

I have to say the boy does have some good ideas even though my brain and body are making me pay for it today. It sucks getting old!

The bright lights in the bottom left corner of the second photo are from a small town about 20 miles from from my house where this was taken. The bright lights in the bottom center of the first shot are from another, smaller town about ten miles away.

These first two shots were twenty second exposures with an ISO of 3200. This last shot was something all together different.

This shot was taken with a new gadget I bought about three weeks ago. I haven't been able to use it because it's been cloudy every night since I got it so last night was a treat.

This is the Milky Way with a few wispy clouds passing by.

For those interested in the technical aspects of this photo; it was shot using a Nikon D800 and Nikon 14-24mm f2.8 lens. The lens was set at f2.8 and 14mm with an ISO of 400 (yes, 400!) and the shutter was 155 seconds.

How's that possible without getting star trails you ask? Come on, you know you want to know.

The new gadget is an Ioptron Star Tracker. It mounts to your tripod and then your camera mounts to the Ioptron. Once you have it adjusted properly you can open your shutter for up to six minutes without getting star trails. The tracker does just that, tracks the stars as the earth turns so that your camera is always looking in the same spot in the sky as time passes. 

You are limited to six minutes on the shutter because the Ioptron Star Tracker uses the star Polaris as it's tracking point and Polaris has a "wobble" to it that will affect the photos after six minutes. A shutter of two to three minutes is just about perfect for these kinds of shots anyway I think.

I am more than impressed with how well the Ioptron worked and I will be taking more star photos in the near future.

I think I better stock up on the coffee!

A Charlie Brown Day In Color

This is the same photo as yesterday but in color. 

I couldn't decide which one I liked the best.

A Charlie Brown Day

I almost got a sunset out of the day before it began to rain.

Reaching for the sun

I went out to our local lake last night to try to take some sunset photos. I think I was there for about 15 minutes before it started to rain again. The sun was out but a rain cloud formed right above me. I may have to change my name to Charlie Brown!

Bobbing for a Sunset

I had planned on getting out this morning and taking some photos but as luck would have it, it's raining!

I dug back into the Maui photos from January for these two sunsets taken from the water. I'm still trying to figure out how to keep the water drops off of the port when I take surface photos.

My Apologies

Work has kept me as busy as this hummingbird the last few weeks. I haven't had time to take any photos, much less post anything to our blog. 

Being busy is good I guess. It means I can by more camera equipment! Hopefully it will level out some soon so I can spend some time out with my cameras taking photos.