A Moving Day At The Refuge

I decided to reward myself for two days worth of chores around the house, with a morning of photography at the refuge. Today, I decide to focus on improving my video skills. I What I am finding is that using your camera for video is even more challenging than still photography. There are so many more ways to make mistakes - audio, motion, etc. I editted down the keepers to a short video of my visit.

It's been a while

It is interesting who life always seems to get in the may. I haven't been visiting the refuge as much recently. Othen when I do it is to participate in the weekly bird survey. I don't always bring my camera. After the brown twig & stick season isn't very interesting.

With spring in full force, I knew I would want to take my camera. While still focused on birding I did take a few snaps of things that caught my eye. I hope you enjoy them.





















I know it's been a while, so remember that you can click on the image to go see a full size version. Also you may notice something different about these images. They were all taken with my Panasonic Lumix GH3. This camera is also very good at video (expect to see some in the future). I have been playing around the 16:9 aspect ratio that video is shot in, even for my still images. Let me know what you think of them.

It's All A Blur To Me

The other day I was at the refuge. The sky was cloudy. The light was meh! If there was any wildlife activity it was under the cover of the lotuses that blanket the impoundments. Frankly, it would have been a better morning to head to Dunkin Donuts than to try to take photographs.

But I was there. I had my camera, there had to be something to do photographically. I decided to play around with some techniques that I had heard at a recent workshop. Rather than holding your camera still, with fast shutter speeds and wide open apertures to free the action you do the exact opposite. You use long shutter speeds of 1/8 - 1/15 of a second (or longer), narrow apertures, and you purposely move the camera to create artistically blurred images.

Now I've take my share of accidentally blurred and out of focus images, but would you believe it is a lot harder to do it intentionally and end up with a pleasing result.

So here is a different view of the refuge. Hope you enjoy it. If you don't stop back again. I promise to take some "normal" photos of the flora and fauna.

Here are some horizontal panned views of the impoundments.





Vertical pans of cattails & loose strife.





Finally some rotary pans or zoom pans.