Birds

Birds are passing thru on the way north now ... while most of these can be local, the Cedar Waxwings are clearly moving north. These are the first i've seen in NC.

And this showed up yesterday and while native to this area, i rarely see Flickers here. This is a female Northern Flicker, yellow shafted which you can see in the second photograph.

These are always here and are so large they are easily confused with Ravens, however, they are Crows: These are amazingly large birds!

Cotoneaster

Today i have spent most of the day working on macro-photographing an cotoneaster bonsai i started growing last year and now it is growing small blooms and those blooms are opening.

This is the very small bloom on the upper left

and i've wanted to photograph it throuout the day as the different pieces uncurl and stand upright and eventually they will bend outwards.

Humm, this has been six hours 'tween the two shots and there's not so much difference ... i'll see what happens overnight.

Oxalis

I've never tired of seeing this blooming plants. I don't have any now but there are some on order that will be shipped once the cold weather warms up a bit.

O.K. ... 'nuff of the shamrockie flower for now. (no, it is not a shamrock, but often called that as the leaves look like shamrock leaves).

Fluted Black Elfin Saddle mushrooms

I knew i had these photo somewhere taken five or six years ago along the Meeker Slough. I had never seen such mushrooms before and was amazed how much they looked like dog scat. Really! I returned to the same spot the following year in hopes of seeing them again and getting some more photographs of them but never did see them again. They are amazingly ugly, which is a kinda beauty —

I did post them in Live Journal when i first photographed them but haven't been using LJ for some years now. The information on them says the tops, not stems, are fine to eat ... however, the stems can be a bit toxic and give one a stomach ache, hence most people don't eat them.

And the wonderful traditionally looking mushrooms:

More Redbuds

Couldn't figure out why the colors were different as they are the same blossom, just a different angle of view. Then i remember: the first image were lights that are daylight balanced but not strobes (don't flash); and the image above was shot with a twin flash designed for macro work. So i think the above image is the more correct color. Am learning that when i shoot that close to an image the colors change both in intensity and hues. It is why so much money is spent on fancy lighting so that the colors of the it image matches the color of the item - not always so easy to do.

Now for something completely different ... i'm sorta in bird-love with the Pileated woodpecker; yesterday, there was one on the old tree in the backyard:

Love 'em!

Redbud — how...?

More images ... different framing:

I think i like the bottom photo the best, but not really a lot. So ... back to the drawing board. The lightening if from the afternoon sun so some of the problem is that i have to move the blooms so the sun will light them from a direction i like ... table top photography doesn't have that problem and perhaps i should go in that direction - but i really like using natural light, it just doesn't behave the way i want it to.

Pie Day

It was Pi Day, 3.14 yesterday and so S made a pie:

Yum ... a chicken pot pie with yummy veggies.

And then there was the night and morning snow - it was beautiful:

So i worked some more on the redbud buds. You can see the tree in the above photo between the camera and the car. I trimmed it a couple weeks ago and kept a couple branches that were about to bloom ... and they did:

I like both the color and sharpness of the image but think having the blooms coming towards the lens doesn't ... mmm ... well i'm not sure - somehow i don't really like it. Do you have an opinion about the framing of the image? Would you like to see it from a different angle?