Archive for the ‘Pets’ tag
Baseball Beavers Boxes & Logan
Click for a few more pictures
I didn’t plan on doing much on Sunday. I never do.
I did want to go to a local flea market to visit with my Uncle Jack and have a look around. Kieran and I showed up around 8:00 to find the place hoppin! We visited with Uncle Jack for a while and then took a walk around to see if there was anything interesting out there. I did end up finding an old Dads Root Beer crate. Perfect size for storing all my clamps, tape, and misc stuff.
We got home around 11:00 or so and chilled until the Sox game started. They have been on a tear for a month now with a 24-5 record since early June. No one is more surprised than me! Not only did they win Sundays game against KC, they thumped them 15-5! With Detroit losing to Minnesota, the Sox also go into the All Star break leading the AL Central!
After the game was over we met up with Wanetta and Logan for an afternoon walk at a nearby lake. Wanetta called me earlier in the day saying the she saw the beavers out swimming around and wanted to see if they would come out again. About 5 minutes after we arrived at the beaver lodge we heard a big splash and then a pretty big beaver appeared. Couldn’t tell if it was protecting its territory or if it thought Logan was a big black beaver. Logan was fetching sticks and the beaver kept patrolling. After about an hour, it started drizzling out and we headed home with plenty of time left to relax!
Baby Pictures for May 2010
Click on Gracie for a few more baby pictures
It’s been a pretty cool 24 hours!
Last night I stopped by my sisters house to see the new addition to the family. Gracie was celebrating her 9 week birthday in fine form! She fits right in over there and spent the evening messing around with Libby and just doing the explore thing around the yard.
Best of all, she doesn’t seem to mind being photographed! Liz was my VAL for the evening and did a great job. I used a 16″ softbox with an sb600 for these pictures and was pretty happy with them. Gracie stayed in any one spot for approximately 4 seconds so things moved pretty quickly and it was actually more fun watching her wander around than it was making pictures. Very cool pup and I look forward to making some nicer pictures down the road!
This afternoon I stopped over at my friend Wanetta to see what’s been going on. Wanetta is a bigtime hiker and bird watcher and has shown me more cool things in the woods around here than I could have found in a lifetime. She also has the most interesting dog in the world, Logan! Well, I’ll have to put this afternoons conversation into the I didn’t see that one coming category for sure.
“Hi! Hows things been going? Anything new?” “Not much, same old stuff. I have a brand new fawn in the backyard” Huh?
It seems mom gave birth last night and a neighbor thought there was a fox in the backyard and came over and told her about it. The mom took off and the wobbly baby just sort of wobbled towards the back of the yard.
Wanettas back yard is a miniature nature preserve so it didn’t surprise me all that much for some reason. But a fawn? I had never seen a brand new one before. She said it was in the high grass in the back and I asked her to call me if it got up or if mom showed up. She called me this evening as I was picking Kieran up and we stopped over to see the youngun. Kieran didn’t know what to expect when we went back there and was pretty surprised at what he found! I only made a few pictures and while they aren’t the best, they are my first baby deer pictures. We didn’t want to freak her out too much and left quickly.
Hopefully mom will be back tonight or Wanetta will be breaking out the baby bottle and some goats milk!
Well, that’s all I have to share for now. Hopefully I will make some interesting pictures this weekend to share. Have a great Memorial Day weekend!
Morning Update: I talked to Wanetta this morning and the youngun is gone and all the food she left out is also gone. Good news on a Saturday morning!
Another Update!: I got a call from Wanetta Sunday morning. She was looking out the window this morning and saw mom nursing the fawn. Looks like the fawn will be around for awhile! Maybe some more pictures to follow depending on if I can get close enough without causing problems.
Some Cool New Places I Have Visited!
Click for more pictures!
It still amazes me how many cool places there are around here that I never knew existed! I’m not talking about a long drive either. More like a 15 minute drive. Ok, there are some nice walks involved after the drive but they are pretty cool walks!
Saturday was a pretty lazy day. I just opened the windows and hung around the house but did take a ride over to check on some Owls down the road a bit. It was sort of breezy out but I made a couple of decent pictures. Mom was in the nest and the younguns were sitting pretty low. I could only see one. Those nests are a little deceiving. Much deeper than they look! Later on in the day, I made a few pictures of Simba, a neighbors dog, while we sat outside enjoying the weather. Later on, my neighbor came over to let me know a skunk just walked right by her! Couldn’t pass that up. I grabbed my camera and an sb600 and made a few pictures before he/she disappeared. I still have no idea where it went. Pretty crafty animal I’m thinking.
I had been thinking of going a little farther from home Sunday and see if the Pelicans were still around but decided to hang out with Wanneta for awhile. She was going for a walk on a trail that was supposed to be pretty cool and asked if I wanted to check it out. Sounded good to me and it was pretty close. I met Wanneta and her friend over there and was amazed that this place was right under my nose all these years. I used to go mountain biking near there but never went that far west. Now that the county has paved so many trails around here I didn’t know that and single tracks that long existed anymore. Boy, was I wrong. Read the rest of this entry »
Spring Tease?
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You gotta love March! It’s that time of year when you know warmer weather is on its way but just aren’t quite sure when it will actually show up. Tuesday we got a taste of whats to come. Mid 50′s for the first time in a long long time! A little rain, but who cares? Mid 50′s!
While I am by no stretch of the imagination a bird watcher or photographer, I have always liked knowing what wildlife lives or visits my neck of the woods.
I stopped by my friend Wannetta yesterday to see how she was doing. Wannetta is a big time birder and loves to hike all over with her faithful companion Logan. She said that a couple hundred Sandhill Cranes were over at the wetlands Monday evening and that she was going to stop over there in the afternoon to see if they were still there. I told her I might stop by too and see what was happening. Before I left, I just had to make a picture of Logan. He was kind enough to hop up on the picnic table for a quicky portrait. I only had my camera with 1 sb600 but I think it worked ok. Logan is a great dog. He loves to fetch stuff and is always trying to drag huge branches around. Pretty funny to watch that! I think he would be a very good frisbee dog. Very agile and quick. Good lookin too!
Patience
I take a lot of animal photos. Take a look at my photoblog and you will see. I enjoy it. Very rarely will there be a time when I don’t have a good time, and that is more than likely due to a pet owner wanting to see their pet in a perfect pose.
One thing I can tell you for sure though, is that you may never see that perfect pose. It all depends on the animal. And your patience! Some pets, like my Moms’ dog Scarlet, want nothing to do with it and freak out. I have yet to get a decent photo of her. She sees my camera and goes nuts. It’s a shame too, as she is a good looking pooch. But alas, the world may never see her.
On the other end of the spectrum is my son Nicks’ dog, Bosco. Give him some time to sniff around and make himself comfortable and you got yourself a willing model! I have captured a few good photos of him. He is one of those dogs who sees no need to move fast. Unless, of course, there is a snack around! Great to photograph and always seems happy.
Nick and Bosco came over for a visit one night and I quickly set up my background stand and put a roll of seamless paper on it. Bosco was right there checking it out but seemed distracted and just kept turning around, sniffing, turning around. I got a few shots off and he wandered off. Not even remotely interested.
He wandered into the frontroom and looked out the window for a bit. We tried coaxing him back but he just didn’t feel like it for some reason. I could have given up right then and there. It wasn’t like I was never going to see him again. But I was determined to get a decent shot. I had to change the game plan a little.
I put a LumiQuest Softbox III
Bosco hasn’t been over to my place that many times so he would set for a bit and then get up and wander around a little. My plan was to catch him when he layed down. I took a few shots to make sure I had the lighting dialed in. Now it was time to try capturing him with a good expression. The keeper came when he settled in next to my Lazy Boy. I took 3 frames but the best one was when he looked up at Nick. The Lazy Boy is right behind him in this shot. My lighting choice paid off for this one.
The point I was trying to make in this little story was that you shouldn’t freak out or give up if you have a good subject that isn’t cooperating. Just be patient, change gears and try taking a different approach. I’m not saying it works all the time, but if I had put everything away when Bosco refused to pose I wouldn’t have gotten this shot.
I posted this one on Flickr and within a day, Bosco was on the Explore page. I entered this in Syl Arenas Exciting Light contest on Pixsylated and got an honorable mention. None of this would have happened if I wasn’t patient. Try it some time and I hope it works for you too!
March. The Month of Parades.
It wasn’t like there wasn’t anything to write about this month. I’m just a slacker I guess. Perhaps I should get in the habit of multi tasking and write a little while I’m watching the Blackhawks play.
March is a pretty unpredictable month around here. Warm one day, freezing the next. We got a taste of the freezing weather on the 2nd day of the month when we went to the Tinley Park St. Patricks Parade. To say it was nippy would be an understatement, that’s for sure! Cold and windy but still a lot of fun. Tinley Park puts good parades together.
On the 14th, we went to another St. Patricks parade and this one was a small neighborhood parade, also in Tinley Park. It was in a subdivision and every family that participated had their own banner and did a couple of loops around the neighborhood and were cheered on by the rest of their neighbors. There was a fire truck and a police car to make some noise and it all ended up at the Gibbons house for the post parade party. They had a tent for the adults and a couple of those inflateable jumpy things for the kids. The weather was sunny and mild. Good day for a parade and it looked like everyone was having a blast. This was the first one and surely not the last!
