The 11th is the new moon, but this is the last moonrise of the first moon of 2021 that I will see.
5% waning crescent moon 6:15 am February 9, 2021.
Pensive owl
Tag: clouds
Splash Landing
Splash landing at dusk
“Non che male! Almost as good as ‘Diving @ Dusk’!”
35.1% waning crescent moon 6:15 am February 5, 2021.
Divine Dumpster
Wishful thinking for Downtown Albuquerque.
No moon this morning. It was hiding behind the clouds at dawn.
I attended a meeting about a conservation project in north Corrales where runoff and treated wastewater from Rio Rancho dumps into the Rio Grande. The Nature Conservancy is working with various agencies to use the runoff and wastewater to retore the area into a wetland. Therefore, I did not get out to say hi to the owls and cranes tonight.
Of Cloudscapes and Cats
The clouds over the Sandias this morning made beautiful cloudscapes, some with rainbow colors made by the rising sun reflecting off ice crystals in the thin clouds. Other clouds cast shadows as the sun rose above them.
Sasha
Silver
Loki
Spunk
Gwendolyn
Intermission
Marble
Ice crystals reflecting colors in the clouds.
Glenda
Moon in the western sky before sunrise.
Moon behind Mama Owl before sunrise
Mama Owl at sundown
Daddy Owl watching the birds flit around below him at sunset.
Mama Owl hopped over to another branch so I could get a shot of her from the levee after sunset.
Paint The Sky Fantastic
Through the Mist Darkly
Geese Nebula
The Wave
Through the Tangle Heart Darkly
Crane Borealis
Owls
Moon @ 99.5% Waxing Gibbous
Thinking About Snowing
A dusting of snow on the Sandias
Following in someone’s footsteps
Snow on trees. Towers in the clouds.
Southwestern sky
Not so lonely dove
Snow is forecast
Owls were well hidden tonight
The moon is starting to get full of itself
Gwendolyn
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
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
Copter & Crows
Helicopter flying among the crows.
The snow that was forecast for today ended up only cloud cover with a lot of cold wind.
Sandias after sunset.
Daddy Owl after dark.
Crane Dance
Sunset on the Sandias with cranes in the foreground from Southbend.
Just after sunrise one of the cranes made quite a show of dancing for another crane. There are 21 photos in the sequence with three intermissions. At the end of the post, I included an animated GIF that shows the crane dance in motion.
Quarter moon at sunset.
Daddy Owl slept through the show.
Off Center & Not Even 