Frosted Garden

Following on the footsteps of our foggy mornings I posted about earlier was one of my favorite weather phenomenae: ice fog. While living in Alaska I came to know it as hoar frost but as the linked Wikipedia article informed me there are loads of names by which it can be known by. Not matter what you call it, ice fog creates some of the very best conditions for garden photography especially if it happens when life is just starting to spring to life.

It didn't take long once outside my door to see how a thin deposit of ice crystals had transformed my plain old yard into something special. There was just a hint of wind (thus the very shallow depth-of-field in this series) but otherwise all was still. No birds flying about, even the farm animals were surprisingly quiet.

And my prize of the morning was a single rose that had been frosted, almost painted as if by Jack Frost personally that sat at the far end of the garden. One could almost see thousands of tiny jewels reflecting the scant light of the early morning. It was simply stunning.

A complete gallery of images from this morning are available for viewing at my ImageKind gallery and co-incidentally is the first gallery to utilize the newest ImageKind product line of greeting cards from within this gallery.

Unexpected Guest

Soon after arriving in England and finding this wonderful house I began researching the wildlife I could possibly encounter while performing my vocation. Walking around woods and fields in the wee hours of the morning trying to find the perfect angle and lighting means you can run into some interesting creatures. Alaska was full of adventure from large mammals, most notably bears and moose. The Azores had the elusive least weasel to try and find (which I did). England has a selection of deer (have seen both the red and muntjack varieties), the fox and badger (not seen... yet) and lest I forget: the hedgehog.

Despite being covered in 6,000 hard spiked spines, the hedgehog (Erinaceus europaeus) doesn't top my list of creatures to be feared while "in the wild" much to the disbelief of some of the Boy Scouts I work with. While camping on Terceira Island in the Azores, Portugal I had one crawl inside my tent and wake me while sniffing around the opening of my sleeping bag. When I realized what it was, I went back to sleep and lived to tell the tale the next day.

This guy was almost flattened by my van as I pulled out of the driveway. Luckily he survived and later in the day I was able to photograph him (or her) whilst rummaging through the flowering hyacinths for bugs and slugs. He's welcome in our yard anytime and quiet honestly would love for a group of them to move in, as long as they sleep in a place where I wouldn't accidentally run over one with the mower.


Cheers!

~James

The Exploding Tit

We have gotten a cold snap! A week ago we were outside flying kites and riding bikes on the patio (ok, the KIDS were riding bikes) and it seemed as if summer was on the way. NOT! Today we have snow showers, sleet storms and a brisk wind out of the north. Cold, cold, cold.

Despite being covered in down and feathers, the birds feel the cold as well. Winter finds them in need of high-energy food and the reason suet cakes exist (bird feed in cakes of lard... YUM!). A trick they use to keep warm is to fluff-up their plumage. The spaces between the feathers holds in the heat they generate and is the reason why poofy down jackets are so warm. This little guy (a blue tit) was fluffing-up and looked like he was about to explode!

We also have a new neighbor; a cow in the buildings behind our house delivered a calf over the weekend. I'm doing a sort of "farmer apprenticeship" program with the father and son who run the farm, what fun! I'm sure it will provide the meat of many a future post. Stay tuned.


Cheers!

~James

The blind: one step closer

While sitting in front of the square-eyed devil known as my computer a wave of realization came over me.

Birds are cool.

Most of the people I know would agree but have already conjured mental images of bald eagles, red tail hawks and the like. I'm referring to the little guys that are coming in ever-increasing numbers to my back yard feeding station.

Blue tits, robins, sparrows, blackbirds. THOSE birds. Plain old ordinary residents of everyday backyard feeders. If you have the time and can sit and watch then, it can be quite a laugh.

Our yard has what I refer to as a "yard boss" and he is the smallest of the three robins I see regularly. But there is no doubt that HE is the boss, HE controls who comes and goes to the feeder from his perch on the bird bath. He squawks, he jumps, he flitters and chases if he were a child of mine I likely would have tied him to a tree just to hush him up. He is quite comical to watch when he gives chase to a blackbird 3-4 times his size AND WINS.

They say that when you pet an animal it releases 5-6 different pleasure hormones and helps lower blood pressure. I haven't given bird-petting a go but I will say that as the "yard boss" does his thing and the blue tits burst into a furious fit of movement (see photo) all seems right with the world for just a moment, and sometimes a moment is all you need to make it through the day.

Cheers!

~James

Bring on the Snow!!!!

As you may or may not have heard, England is suffering from one of the biggest snow falls in 4 years.

Well, most of England is.

Knowing that chance favors the prepared mind and that mine is nice and new (I keep it in a box so I don't use it un-necessarily) I set up Jill's nifty little Canon S3 on a tripod in hopes of recording a series of images showing our yard filling with with a glorious gift from the clouds.

And yes, the titles are on the correct images.

The top photo was at 9:30am. The bottom one at just before 11 as I returned from my accountant's office.

The kids got out of school early.

They had a 2-hour delay today.

They got sent home just after being picked up.

There is LESS snow in my yard now.

I love the Brits but they don't know JACK about snow.


Cheers.

Happy Happy Happy Joy Joy Joy!!!!!

There are times when being a photographer is exciting and the basis for campfire stories: hanging out of helicopters and airplanes, navigating avalanche-prone mountain roads or avoiding an angry mama moose.

But most of the time its work, work, work. Keywording images for stock publication distribution (boring). Cleaning camera equipment or backing up image libraries (more boring). Filling out paperwork for governments or accountants (the worst).

Somewhere in between those two extremes is time spent creating designs based on the images captured during the exciting times (made possible by the work done in the boring times). Yesterday I was in front of the dual-screened devil known as my computer creating note card designs and as usual took a short break to peer through the curtains into the backyard to watch the birds at the feeder. My spirit soared with delight at the sight of fat fluffy flakes of SNOW falling from the sky.

Just a couple of posts previous to this I had lamented at how my winters seemed doomed to be remembered as the time of extreme rain and wind storms instead of lawns filled with the main ingredient of a well-built snowman. Now, a million unique designs a minute were washing away my cares. I was rejuvenated.

Design on, photographer. Design on.


~James

The Real Partridge Family

I am constantly amazed at how I can be doing something quite technically amazing (say, utilizing a broadband connection to share a Google Earth .KMZ file with friends and family) and in an instant be observing a wild animal turning the tables on me and observing... ME.

Case in point. This morning I was sitting here at the keyboard hard at work on the latest version of my photography website (OK, OK, I was multi-tasking and playing the My Little Pony game at the same time as Emmalea who whipped the pants off me) when that all-too-familiar bit of movement out of the corner of my eye made me pause. Just outside the office door looking quite intently at us was an honest dozen red-legged partridges (Alectoris rufa). All of them for what seemed like forever but was likely only just a couple of seconds. I felt rather violated. Here I am grinding my nubby fingers to the bone pecking at keys and THEY'RE LOOKING AT ME. Insert shiver HERE!

Well, we'll just turn the tables a bit. I knew they would scatter as soon as I moved but I did anyways, slapped on the 300mm lens as well as a 1.4x teleconverter and cranked the ISO up to 800 (digital, what a God-send for adverse light situations) and snapped off a few frames as they bolted across the yard and into the side bed of plants.

Similarly we had a beautiful pheasant cock do the same last night, but at least he was polite and looked away when eye contact was made. Thank goodness I'm not one of those aberrant naked E-bay fanatics. I always keep my socks on. ;-)


Cheers!

~James