February 2011 Newsletter
Nature Photographer Magazine ipad App
The big news this month is that Nature Photographer Magazine just published the winter issue of their magazine for the ipad in the Apple App store. For you ipad owners out there, here's the link: Nature Photographer Magazine. The App version of the magazine has all of the winter content, plus about 40 pages more. The images literally pop of the screen of the ipad and there is also some slide show content as well.
They used my web article "January App of the Month" article as the opening article in the magazine, as well as the cypress scene they used in the paper version of the magazine. Personally I find it easier to read the ipad version than the paper version, either my arms are too long or my reading glasses aren't strong enough, but I have no problem reading the ipad version. And did I say the images look incredible. For those of you who have other brands of tablets, they are working on other applications as well so stay tuned.
An Owl in the backyard
Late in December I was in the front yard working. While working, a hawk landed on my roof and was extremely agitated. He would stand on the roof, squawk loudly, fly to the backyard and return and then repeat the behavior.
Curious at this point, I went and looked at the back door to discover a Barred Owl in the tree about 30 feet away. Rushing to get the equipment and carefully going out to photograph, I positioned myself about 50 feet away, with front lighting. Ever so carefully I inched my way up to get close, firing a few photographs as I went. The first shots were plagued by the amount of sticks on the tree leading to shots that too cluttered. Working the situation I kept getting closer until I was at the minimum focusing distance of my 600 mm lens, 17 feet away. That close I was able to isolate the owl shooting strictly head shots.
Then the owl, completely comfortable with me at this point, flew from the tree to the ground in front of me. It was so close I had to back up to focus. After a few minutes of that (and a lot of good shots), it returned to the tree and fell asleep. I photographed for an hour and a half, until the sun was obscured from the scene and I couldn't shoot anymore. The owl remained. A wonderful afternoon of photography and no traveling required.
Photographing Roseate Spoonbills
I posted an article on my webpage on photographing Roseate Spoonbills, take a look a photographing this beautiful bird.
Photographing Roseate Spoonbills
Spring Bird Photography Tours
Spaces are still left in each of the Spring tours. However the first has only one space remaining and for those people signing up now we'll need to find alternative accommodations as the Bed and Breakfast is now full.
The Dates are as follows:
April 3-6, 2011 One space left
April 10-13, 2011 Three spaces left
May 15-18, 2011 Three spaces left
My other workshops and tours can be found here: