Some of you stick your tongues out at me?!?!? You beautiful, entertaining, shameless creatures! I conscientiously clean, sanitize and refill your fake flowers with deliciousness. You will be loved, forgiven and cared for in the usual manner. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️.
These tiny winged creatures are so much fun to watch and quite difficult to photograph. Speed-lights work overtime to catch them frozen in flight. No masterpieces but still fun to try.
The National Automobile and Truck Museum in Auburn, Indiana. It's a treasure, along with the Auburn, Cord, Duesenburg Museum right beside it. If you're anywhere near Auburn, Indiana it's well worth your time. With my cameras in tow it took me all day to get through both museums.
This wasn't my first time, I might add. Pick your pace. Definitely worth your time, especially if your a car/truck/beautiful old machine freak. See more in my planes, trains & automobiles gallery.
We've set up five hummingbird feeders in the Spring for several years. They seem to always find their way back to the red fake "flower" feeders. As most people know, they are fun to watch, mesmerizing.
Although Indiana has a couple other species that pass through and hang out occasionally, our predominate hummingbird species is the ruby-throated hummingbird.
Hummingbirds are very territorial. They will defend "their" feeder, dive bombing intruding hummingbirds and other birds as well. We set the feeders so each is out of view from the others. We clean and refill the feeders at least once a week. During that process I have noticed that they seem to prefer two locations of the five as there's always less nectar left in those two feeders.
On several occasions while working in the gardens, I hear them nearby only to realize when I turn to find them that they are hovering right behind me, not happy that I am working between them and their precious fake flower food source. It's a bit unsettling at first but a slight wave of the arm and off they go. I have no idea if they'd actually be aggressive enough to dive bomb me but they do make quite a fuss. I'm not too excited about being impaled by that beak. I finish up whatever has me close to "THEIR" space and quickly move on to other parts of the garden.
Today was the day that I finally decided to get out the long lens, set up a couple of remote flash units and give this a go. It was a painful wait but my Kindle provided the necessary patience. During the three hour time period two birds arrived. Round one was a male, beautiful colors and that gorgeous ruby throat. Results from round one were pretty awful! I made some adjustments and hoped and waited for round two. She finally arrived. There are no masterpieces here but, even if I do say so myself, not bad for a first try.
I used to love being out with the cameras on "mild" winter days. That came to a quick, unplanned end a couple years ago when a devastating injury from a fall on the ice took me completely off my feet for close to six months. Many of you know that story so I won't bore you with that again. It has created an ongoing fear of outdoor winter excursions.
This and several following posts will briefly break that cycle. It's not so bad when there is snow around...deep, deep snow. We donned the snow shoes and headed to one of many of our beautiful county parks. Great trails take you through a winter wonderland. In addition, we just got home from a mid-winter warmup in Hawaii. When I say we just got home, I mean JUST! We arrived home as the snow flurries began which then became over 20" of snow over the next 18 hours. Snowfall and Hawaii. Stay tuned.
I couldn't help it. I watched this guy fiddle with his smartphone throughout most of the whale watching. The other two? They had a wonderful time at the front of the boat taking it all in.
How would you whale watch?
We went whale watching with the Pacific Whale Foundation. This is a wonderful organization. All profits support Pacific Whale Foundation’s research, education and conservation programs to save whales, dolphins and our oceans. Every trip is led by certified Marine Naturalists who provide a truly unique, educational and fun adventure at sea. It was a spectacular adventure! We were there right in the peak of whale season. Whales in every direction. It was an amazing experience that we'd do again and again.
I have learned over the years not to let my cameras spoil the experience. I am not the kind of photographer who spends the whole day looking through their camera. It's fine if you do that, it's just not my style. As a result I miss getting images of some things. By that I mean I miss catching it on camera. I'm OK with that when I have experienced it with my own eyes. I prefer that to constantly waiting for the perfect shot while missing the total experience. We did see the iconic whale breeches. Several of them. I'm glad I didn't miss seeing them because I was waiting for them to breech exactly when my camera was aimed. Someday I'll go back and approach it differently now that I've experienced it. Maybe I'll get lucky and catch a breech with my toys.
PS: Why the moon with the whales? We left the dock before sunrise. We arrived early. I grabbed a shot of the moon while were waiting.
Since I rarely post when we're traveling it's gonna take several days to get caught up so stay tuned.
We spent several days in Honolulu and then on to Maui for 5 days. We have friends in both places so it's difficult to take a 9 hour airplane ride and not try to see friends in both places. While on Ohau we spent one day exploring the island and one whole day at Pearl Harbor. Stay tuned for more Pearl Harbor images of the inside the Missouri battleship and the Bowfin submarine.
Almost every year we end up in Chicago the week after Thanksgiving. I have a lot of fun with the cameras. A bit of Chicago street photography.
McCormick Place, Chicago's gargantuan expo complex, is one of the few place in the world large enough to host RSNA. When this group meets it's around 50,000 people. In addition, high tech medical equipment vendors are demonstrating and selling their latest and greatest medical imaging devices. My husband is a radiologist so we're here almost every year. He gets me a family pass to attend. I roam around looking at amazing machines about which I know very little. Still fascinating and the cameras love it.
I guess it's in the name of improvements. Looks like destruction to me. Fun to photograph around giant machinery,
