brandon

I was presented with some good lighting this morning so once again I targeted waterfowl. enjoy Drake Mallard Female Mallard landing Female Mallard bathtime Drake Mallard Drake Mallard in flight Drake Mallard Landing Pair of American Wigeon And the next bunch are Bufflehead

actually not romantic at all........woke up early to shoot some waterfowl and stuff......lighting was sub-par but since I was already up I went anyways....enjoy American Wigeon GBH Bufflehead The next 3 are a pair of wood ducks in a tree......I've wanted photos of them in a tree for a while now and finally got lucky today....not the way I was plannin though......hopefully next time I see them in a tree I have some better lighting to work with And finally a Northern Harrier with a meal

Kevin, Blurring the background of a photo while keeping the foreground in focus is done with depth of field. This is controlled using the aperture of your camera. A Larger aperture (smaller number ex. 2.8) will keep the background nice and out of focus....but make sure the subject is a decent distance away from the background. On the other hand if your trying to keep everything in focus, a smaller aperture (larger number ex. 22) will help out with that.

Canon Canon Canon

now your on to somethin

congrats man....what program did you get into? theres a bunch of us fish and wildlife grads kickin around here...i'm sure you'll get some good info on places to fish. I had most of my luck just in the river.....or make friends with somebody with a truck/boat and hit simcoe or scugog

hey mike......no camo needed for those...the resident birds are pretty used to people so it all just comes down to learning where the birds are going to land/take off and positioning myself near that area with the sun at my back.......really tests your patience but in the end is definitely worth it

thanks guys.....hey Dirk.....I took those photos with a Canon 40D and a 100-400mm lens

I went out to take some more waterfowl pics today.......here is what I got American Wigeon Hooded Merganser Canada Goose Mallard Mallard Mallard Mallard American Wigeon Northern Pintail Bufflehead and once again......a Mallard enjoy

lol thanks.....I use a Canon 40D

incredible display of the power of nature......great pics

looks like you could set yourself up for a lil nature reality tv show......"The Box"......although that name could be misleading

lookin good......the new camera shows much more detail......congrats on the new purchase

The weather here today was crystal clear....no more fog......no rain......no snow....just awesome weather. So this morning I headed to a place I haven't been in a while, the Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary, to photograph some waterfowl. I wanted flight shots but man were they ever hard to get. Finally I started to learn their patterns and was able to predict where they would be landing but I still didn't get as many flight shots as I was hoping for. Pintail female Mallard playing peek-a-boo female Mallard drake Mallard drake Mallard coming in for an icy landing After coming home and reviewing the pics from this morning, I was off to Lighthouse Park. If any of you remember my photos from a while back, there were quite a few of Lighthouse Park. But I haven't been in a long time and had a few ideas I wanted to try out......one of those ideas was slow shutter speed. This meant hanging around until the sun had set but I think it was worth it. Portrait Landscape And I started off this weekend with a sunrise picture so it was only fitting to end it with a sunset photo. Now I'm not sure who these 2 people in the photo are but without them this photo wouldn't have happened so I would like to publicly thank them, even though I doubt they will see this. I did however thank them in person and told them to drop me an email and I would send them the photo file in thanks to them unknowingly being part of my photo...... thanks for lookin

Dan, My 3 lenses are a 17-85mm, 100-400mm, and a 10-17mm fisheye. The 17-85mm is my landscape lens and my all around lens. It's wide enough and has enough zoom making it a pretty versatile lens. Now the 100-400mm Lens is my wildlife lens, however I do use it for some landscape shots, just to bring the scene closer("Fire in the peaks" sunset photo). My fisheye on the other hand has very limited use, but in the right situation, it can produce some pretty cool shots. I also use my fisheye as my macro lens because it has a minimum focusing distance of 5" at all magnifications. Now for your lens situation. The 70-300 will pretty much cover all of the important focal lengths. But as RAF said, a tripod is a must, and a good tripod at that. I used to have a 70-300 for my first DSLR and even with a tripod(crappy one) at 300mm I was still getting lens shake. Also as RAF said, good lighting is very important, especially with the 4.0-5.6 aperture. Increasing the ISO will help compensate for that however you will start to notice noise. When I had my XTi, I used to never shoot over 400iso because the noise would become too much and ruin the photo. With my new camera though the noise is much less....same noise at about 1600iso with my new camera as there was at 400iso on my XTi. So I guess the ISO you can get away with depends on your camera. In conclusion, if you get the 70-300, get a tripod. The monopod will help but it won't be enough at full zoom. hope this helps

ya i'm with Dan on this one...first 2 are AWESOME

i think todays high is around 0.......but this last week it's been around 5 to 7 degrees.......i feel bad for all you back in onterrible this winter......i hear its been a chilly one

So today I got outta bed nice and early and drove to a lookout up Mt. Seymour to photograph the sunrise. The sky wasn't as clear as I was hoping but I still left with something decent..... After about a 4 hour nap I decided to make a quick drive to Cypress Falls Park and re-take some photos. Not the exact photos, obviously, but the same spots. Now that I've started shooting RAW, and have better equipment and more knowledge than when I originally shot these same scenes, I figured it was time to update the Cypress Falls part of my portfolio. I only did about 1/4 of the trail today only because the NHL skills competition was on and I wasn't missing that. Maybe tomorrow I'll go back and photograph the other 3/4 of the trail.....anyways here is what I came up with

Yep......it's called Camera Raw 4.2......Most of the other companies that make DSLR cameras probably have RAW drivers as well

I downloaded a driver from the Canon website and when I opened the RAW photo in photoshop elements, the RAW editor popped up and away I went

Only 1 photo again in this post but I have some words to go along with this one. Alright so last night's sunset was pretty cool........the photo turned out decent as well but it was still boring......just silohuetted mountains with an orange backdrop......still, nothing wrong with that, but I have been wanting to include some clouds in the photo. The weather here, above the blanket of fog, has been crystal clear the last few nights. The weather forecast is calling for some precip near Vancouver Island. So with that in mind I headed up Grouse Mountain again tonight to look for the sunset avec cloud photo I wanted. I've also been talking to lots of other photographers lately and they all praise about the joys of RAW shooting. And for those of you who don't know much about RAW, here is what I have gathered. RAW photos are basically just that, the RAW uncompressed file. Why is this good? When shooting JPEG files, the camera automatically compresses them and you end up losing valuable data that is lost for good. With RAW, you not only have that data, you have much more room to make adjustments and, have the ultimate control in deciding what the final product will look like. So tonight I made the jump to RAW......well not all RAW......I had my camera take a RAW and a Large/Fine JPEG photo at the same time......that way if I wasn't a fan of RAW I would still have the JPEG to use. Well goodbye JPEGs. I couldn't believe how cool editing the RAW photo was. From now on all my landscape photos are going to be taken in RAW. JPEG will still have to do though for sports and other times where I'll be taking tons of photos as the RAW photos are more than double the size of the JPEGs.....anyways here is the photo from tonight.....hope ya like it RAW

photo says it all

Well finally most of the fog has lifted in North Van so I took advantage of this beautiful day and went for a hike in Lynn Canyon. I've posted numerous pics from this place before and most im posting now are probably quite similar to those before but.......new camera, new lenses, new filters........so why not take some new photos right?...... so first off is just some trees...... this next bunch is all of lynn creek Here is a Merganser on a rock in Lynn Creek Small waterfall in colour Small waterfall in b + w Photo of some cool lookin frost......pun intended And a Pano of the lower mainland And Lastly.......a sunset from last night

All of southwestern BC is covered with a low lying cloud right now and has been for the last couple days. This in turn has created an inversion layer and what this means is that the mountain peaks are a lot warmer than at sea level. Today at the top of Grouse Mountain (1100m above Vancouver) it was 14 degrees.....Vancouver got to about 5 degrees......so it's quite a difference. Anyways I've been snowboarding on Grouse these last few nights and the view is very cool when your looking down on the clouds.......so instead of my snowboard, I brought my camera tonight...... here are the clouds I'm talking about The sunset photos didn't turn out as well as I was hoping so tonight I went and bought a gradual neutral density filter so I'll try and make the pics work tomorrow......there was just too much contrast difference between the white clouds, the dark mountains, and the orange sky......but I did take some photos of "The Lions" which are west of Grouse Mountain..... This first one is an HDR gone overboard.......but I like the "artsy" feel it has These next 2 are of The Lions themselves......one in colour, one in B+W hopefully more to come in the next few days........

amazing detail........just goes to show ya that you don't need the big fancy cameras to take great shots......well done