Gwendolyn

January 23, 2021January 23, 2021 Timothy Price46 Comments

Gwendolyn is more adventurous than Glenda, but not into modeling like Glenda. She doesn’t hold still for long unless she is napping in a cubby or lounging in some other difficult to photograph location. She is always playful, but when I get the camera out she skedaddles under the bed, behind the couch, under a chair, wherever she is out of camera range. This afternoon I got her to come out from under the bed and give me some cute poses. Thank you, Gwendolyn.

Intermission: The wild sky this afternoon.

Moon in the rough. January 23, 2021.

Spunk Approves

January 21, 2021January 21, 2021 Timothy Price63 Comments

Murder over the bosque

Lavinia asked if I had used a telescope to photograph the moon last night. Lavinia never lets me down on being observant and asking questions when something seems different like a whole lot of detail in the moon photo. As I answered her, I did not use a telescope, I used a 400mm lens that is equivalent to a 640mm lens on my Canon 7D Mark II body. I have been considering getting a long telephoto lens for quite some time.

I was originally looking at the Canon 100-400mm lens, which is one of Canon’s best telephoto zoom lenses for mere mortal photographers, such as myself. However, the 100-400mm lens is ƒ/4.5 to ƒ/5.6, which is a little slow for as much low light photography as I do. I really needed a faster telephoto lens. I seriously considered both the Canon 400mm ƒ/2.8 and the Canon 300mm ƒ/2.8 lenses. The problem with those lenses for me is their weight. The Canon 400mm ƒ/2.8 weighs in at 12 pounds, and the 300mm ƒ/2.8 weighs 6 pounds, 1/2 the weight of the 400mm ƒ/2.8, but still a heavy lens.

I ended up compromising on speed for lighter weight and bought a 400mm ƒ/4.0 DO lens with Refractive Optics, which enables Canon to put a 400mm ƒ/4.0 lens in the same body as the 300mm ƒ/2.8 lens, shaving 2 pounds off the weight in the process. At 4 pounds, the 400mm ƒ/4.0 DO is easy to handle, and fast enough to get decent images hand held in low light. In the photos of the owls below, we could only see outlines of the owls with our bare eyes like in the first photo, but not nearly as close up. The new lens is able to focus on the owls in relative darkness, through the branches and get an amazing amount of detail.

Spunk loves my new lens

Preening

Spunk’s a lens hugger

Intermission photographed using a Fuji XE-1 with 27mm ƒ/2.8 lens

“Who are you calling a ‘lens hugger?’ Stupid Paparazzo!”

RAW image of the owls before I cropped the image and adjusted the exposure, contrast, color balance, etc.

“Oh my! The paparazzo found us again.”

Mirroring

The streak photographed using a Canon 5Ds with a Canon 70-200mm ƒ/4.0 lens

A little over half a moon on 01/21/21

The Pterodactyl On The Tangle Heart Tree

January 20, 2021January 20, 2021 Timothy Price54 Comments

On the 29th day of January, the Owls said to me: “Look! There’s a Pterodactyl on the Tangle Heart Tree.” I turned around and sure enough, the Pterodactyl was perched on the Tangle Heart Tree.

The Pterodactyl flew off into the sunset.

I checked out the cranes grazing on the east bank of the Rio Grande.

After the clouds cleared the half-moon hung in the sky.

Yesterday’s Birds

January 18, 2021January 18, 2021 Timothy Price43 Comments

Moon in Tangle Heart Tree at sunset

We have cloud cover tonight with snow predicted by early morning. Therefore, I’m posting the birds I photographed yesterday.

Flicker at the tiptop of Susan’s Tree at dawn.

Actually, there were two flickers at the tiptop of Susan’s Tree at dawn.

The other flicker.

Owls’ Backs

The Canadian Geese complained that I have not been giving them enough attention.

The Pter in a tangle.

Downy Woodpecker

Grazing

Cooper’s Hawk in the top of a cottonwood between the clearwater ditch and the irrigation ditch.

Landings

January 14, 2021 Timothy Price71 Comments

“How do you like my impersonation of a Crane?” Oh, Spunk! I think you look more like Chupacabra. “What do you know stupid Paparazzo?”

“We think Spunk looks a lot like a Crane.” Who asked you Daddy and Mama Owls?

Sandhill Cranes landing at sunset. Another colorful sunset. The sliver moon was just above the trees after sunset.

Moon Eyes Venus

January 11, 2021 Timothy Price39 Comments

Mama Owl. January 11, 2021

Sandhill Crane. January 11, 2021.

Travel Photo Challenge Day 6 “GOAL!” 8 Days in Paris

December 27, 2020 Timothy Price77 Comments

The neighbor’s cow was itching to get into the spirit of football…

Day 6 of the Travel Photo Challenge takes us to Paris, France in 2018. We were in Paris for 8 days in July 2018. Laurie gave a paper at the 2018 Internation Conference on Construction Grammar. Laurie and I were both going to present papers at the 2020 Internation Conference on Construction Grammar in Antwerp, Belgium last August, but it was postponed to August 2021 because of COVID.

We did a lot of exploring, including meeting up with a fellow blogger, Anne, who hasn’t posted in a couple of years, and she gave us a long walking tour of the 10th and 19th Arrondissements. We arrived in Paris the day France played and won the World Cup by defeating Croatia 4-2. The Parisians were celebrating in the streets.

We stayed in a hotel inside the roof of a hospital that was rebuilt in 1380 and then remodeled in 1801 to remove the church-like façade. The hospital is catercorner to Notre Dame. The hospital is a labyrinth and it was very difficult to find the hotel when we first arrived. After 8:00 pm security had to ring us in through a side door, and we often had a heavily armed military unit follow us into the passage. One day when the military unit was making its rounds through the hospital, one of the men broke guard, stopped me, and asked me about my cameras and lenses. He was into photography and we chatted for a few minutes then we rejoined the unit.

There are 79 photos broken up into the World Cup celebration, Fashion Wheels, Where we stayed, On the town, Château of Vincennes, and Notre Dame. We were there the year before Notre Dame burned. We got up in the bell towers on our last day in Paris. We are very fortunate to have been able to go to Paris in 2018 and stayed so near Notre Dame.

Moon through the clouds. December 27, 2020.

Jupiter, a few of Jupiter’s moons and Saturn on the lower right. December 27, 2020.

The photographer of the day is Inge David at https://ingedavid.wordpress.com/portfolio-2/. I don’t know where Inge lives, but it’s somewhere in northern Europe. She is an excellent photographer and loves cars, architecture, and nature.

GOAL! France won the World Cup in 2018.

…She painted herself like a Frenchman.

People were sitting in the streets all over the neighborhood we were in watching the game.

Fashion Wheels

This family, each on their own wheels were adorable, and the young woman on the right was very fashionable.

Where we stayed.

We had a small, comfortable, modern room with our own bathroom and air-conditioning. Not bad for a 640-year-old building.

We were in the last room in the third wing on the right.

On the town

Graveyard cats

Château of Vincennes
We walked five miles east to Château of Vincennes, which is outside of Paris proper. You can learn more about it in my post A Long Walk into the Past at https://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2018/7/a-long-walk-into-the-past

Notre Dame

On The Eve Of Conjunction

December 20, 2020 Timothy Price80 Comments

Our neighbor’s star reflecting on conjunction.

Mia’s tree (center), clouds moon, large cottonwood.

Susan’s Tree, Teagan’s Trees, Gabriela’s Tree, and Tiffany’s Tree from the levee looking northwest.

Shey’s Tree with the moon above.

Tangle Heart Tree embracing the moon.

Saturn and Jupiter. 6:15 pm, December 20, 2020.

Twelve Hours

December 19, 2020December 19, 2020 Timothy Price44 Comments

6:00 am. Venus rising in the dark at dawn.

Glenda looking cool on top of an armario at noon.

Sasha napping at noon in the new hammock that replaced one of the worn-out burlap hammocks.

6:00 pm Saturn and Jupiter closing in on each other.

A closer view of Saturn and Jupiter at 6:00 pm. The lights coming off at an angle from Jupiter might be a few of its 79 moons.

The Wilds

December 18, 2020December 18, 2020 Timothy Price60 Comments

Wild moon

Saturn & Jupiter in the Tangle Heart Tree. I had to get way back into the wilds of the dark bosque with coyotes and chupacabras nipping at my heels to get the shot.

I made my way back onto the levy at the same time as the coyotes.

There were two of them and they paid little attention to me even though we were close to each other. After I lightened up the photo, I could see the coyote on the left had a bad case of mange.