Our Great Dane, Duchess turned ten years old yesterday. I know for average and small sized dogs that’s not a big milestone…but for a giant breed dog…it’s huge. She’s all white (with two small spots on her body) so you can’t see how completely white with gray hairs her muzzle would be. Her breath stinks, her back end is weak, she slobbers more in her old age, but she keeps going strong and we love her dearly.
She’s not fast enough to chase the wild rabbits in the yard, she can’t keep up with our other Great Dane, Earl… but she is happy doing what she does best….eating, snacking on carrots, trying to steal a lick of soda from our glass, sleeping in the sunshine as it streams through the front windows, and snuggling with us at night when we watch TV.
We adopted her when she was four years from The Humane Society of Broward County. At the time I worked there as a vet tech and owned one other Great Dane (Gunther, who passed away last summer) and I fell in love with her. I remember the day my husband brought Gunther in to the shelter to meet her for the first time to make sure they got along. Gunther thought he’d found heaven in Duchess! He was in love. She got spayed, tattooed and we brought her into our lives.
I miss Gunther terribly….not a day goes by I don’t think of him. Earl, our Dane pup (he’ll be one year old in a few days!) reminds me so much of Gunther with the way he looks at me, and wants to snuggle with me. Of course Earl is WAY more active, braver and actually smarter than Gunther was so he’s filled Gunther’s shoes and then some.
I don’t think I will ever be able to be without a Great Dane in my life since having these three. They are amazing. Of course I don’t think I’ll ever have more than two at a time!
*You might be wondering why her name is spelled wrong. Normally you’d spell Duchess with a ‘t’ after the ‘u’. But, that’s how it was spelled on her paperwork when she was surrendered to the Humane Society, so I felt the need to keep it spelled that way
I’ve met so many absolutely wonderful friends and photographers through flickr over the last four years. It’s amazing how one website can bring so many people together and have them become friends. Everyone shares photography tips, the best places to go to find whatever bird or mammal you’re looking to add to your ‘list’ of images and we always have wonderful photography meet ups.
JMW on flickr, also known as Michael is one of those contacts. He’s been a contact of mine for awhile now but we never had the chance to meet, until this past weekend. He invited Michael Pancier, Claudia Domenig and I out on his boat for a tour of the bird rookeries along the Peace River. I had already met Michael Pancier and Claudia at previous meet ups, but this was the first time I met JMW.
JMW put his boat in the water and we all climbed in with his help. I’ve got to say, I haven’t been in a regular boat since I was probably ten years old. Oh I’ve been on a ferry that went from Wales to Ireland, cruise ships, smaller ferries, etc… but it’s been a long time since I was on a regular boat. This is one tidbit of info I didn’t share with the group, I didn’t want them to think I was going to get seasick (I know my husband was worried about that). Quite the opposite, I had a blast! On the way back, speeding through wakes from other boats was like a roller coaster ride, and to me that’s the best!
There were a bunch of pelicans out there, I just love those birds. As goofy and big as they seem, they’re actually quite graceful in flight and fun to watch.
Our first stop was where there were some Yellow Crowned Night Herons nesting. They had nests but we couldn’t see any babies. I was able to get one of the herons as it took off, they’re such unique birds.
Our next stops were several other rookeries that were filled with Cattle Egrets, Woodstorks, Great Egrets, Anhingas, Cormorants, Night Herons, Ibis, and all kinds of other birds including Grackles, Cardinals, etc.
At one point JMW maneuvered the boat into a little horseshoe bend section of one of the rookeries. We were literally surrounded on three sides with nesting birds. It was amazing. I’ve been to bird rookeries in the past, but they weren’t like this. Usually you’re on a boardwalk with a bunch of other people. This time it was just the four of us, in a boat, with all these birds just going about their business of building nests and feeding babies. I was pretty awestruck to be smack dab in the middle of everything. Mother Nature put on a show for us that day!
One of the most beautiful things about breeding/nesting season are the colors these birds get. As you can see above the Cattle Egret is literally BURSTING with color. This is the only time of year this happens, the rest of the year they go back to being plain white birds that follow cows around eating bugs in pastures (or even rooting around in the landscaping at your local McDonalds). These are birds that most of the year people probably don’t even notice. We saw a lot of Cattle Egrets getting sticks and ‘posing’ with them before moving on to wherever their nest was that they were building.
The biggest population of birds there at the rookeries we visited had to be the Woodstorks. They were EVERYWHERE and most of them had babies of various ages. To photograph the Woodstork babies was actually a first for me! Obviously the adult Woodstorks are not the supermodels of the bird world, but they are sure cool to look at….and seem very prehistoric to me.
They were also very busy gathering sticks for their nests. I’d like to think this one Woodstork (below) was going for more of a Martha Stewart decorating motif of his nest, this is actually quite a pretty branch
Woodstork babies. Again, not the supermodels of the bird world. But they are really cute in their own way.
Extreme close up of the same baby above…
I mentioned the colors before of these birds. Here’s a Tri Colored Heron in his breeding colors, how blue is that beak?! I call it Smurf blue.
We had a fantastic time out on the water with JMW. He does do tours if you’d like to head out onto the river and witness Mother Nature at her best! You can visit his website HERE for more information on the tours he offers. If you haven’t visited a bird rookery by boat, you should!
I’ll leave you with some Woodstork babies that are in more of a ‘cute and fuzzy’ stage…..
I, like most people say, don’t know what I did before I got the iphone! Seriously. We bought a radio for our jeep that has a USB port in it so we can hook up our phones and listen to our music on them. I love this. I don’t know if I’ll ever use a CD ever again. Then, with the camera, the camera apps, the HD video, the GPS, and all of the other cool apps…I’m in heaven.
Back to the songs… here’s a few random ones that are on my iphone. Maybe you’ll find some you forgot about adding to your music library, or find something new to add
Cheryl Crow, Soak Up The Sun.
Chuck Berry, Johnny B Good…. I just love this song. Probably because of the movie, Back To The Future…or because I grew up going to car shows with my family and all they played was 50’s and 60’s music at those things.
“Chuck? Chuck? It’s Marvin, your cousin, Marvin BERRY! You know that new sound you’re looking for? Well, listen to this!”
Another ‘oldie’ on my ipod is Jerry Lee Lewis’, Breathless. Again, I think the movie Great Balls Of Fire (with Dennis Quaid and Winona Ryder) probably pushed me into liking Jerry’s songs.
A song I found through the movie, P.S. I Love You, got me liking Flogging Molly’s, If I Ever Leave This World Alive. Plus, it just brings back memories of actually visiting Ireland this past year. ”I’ll be here when it all gets weird.”
Louisiana Saturday Night, I have the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band version on my iphone but I couldn’t find a video on youtube for it, so here’s Alabama’s cover of it below. I like country music, I admit it, but I only like the old stuff.
Another oldie on there is Stevie Wonder’s, Living For The City.
I’ve got a ton of songs on there, and add them as I hear stuff on the radio (using the shazaam app on my iphone so I don’t forget which ones I want to get).
I get asked quite a bit what type of camera and lenses should someone buy for wildlife photography. Let me tell you, it’s NOT the high dollar DSLR’s that will take great photos, it’s YOU. My first DSLR was the Canon Digital Rebel (300D) the first affordable DSLR Canon came out with back in the 90’s. That camera, to this day takes GREAT photos. Currently my brother has it, I lent it to him with some lenses and he’s taking great shots with it.
Here’s a photo I took with the Digital Rebel and the old kit lens, the 18-55mm. It’s a long exposure of 30 seconds and I had the camera on my tripod.
And one more with the Digital Rebel:
If you’re considering moving up from a point and shoot into something more advanced, but aren’t sure if you’re really going to go gung-ho with the DSLR, definitely consider buying a used one on Ebay…check out the old Digital Rebel, the XTi, etc. Once you get hooked, and learn the settings and how to shoot in manual then go to one of the newer camera bodies.
As for lenses, it just depends on what you want to shoot. If you’re going for birds, I really think you need at least a 300mm lens. When it comes to lenses, you do get what you pay for. I highly recommend the L series lenses from Canon…but if you can’t afford those, try to get something as close to it in the 300mm range that you can. A couple of options that will keep you around the $1500 range for a lens is the Canon 70-200mm f4/L non-IS lens and the 1.4x teleconverter (you can add and remove the teleconverter depending on how close or far away your subject is) or the Canon 100-400mm f4/5.6 USM IS L, which is what I shoot with.
If the camera body you have is still good and mechanically sound, I suggest you don’t spend the money to upgrade to a new body, spend the money on your lenses. The lenses will last for years, through all kinds of new camera bodies that Canon comes out with. Get your good lenses now and save up later if you want a newer camera body. I also suggest keeping the older camera body, even if you get a new one. It’s always nice to have two camera bodies so that you can put your zoom lens on one and a macro or landscape lens on the other. There’s nothing worse than changing lenses in the field and finally seeing that one bird you’d been looking to photograph and you’ve got the wrong lens on your camera. Trust me.
Now, not to say that the less expensive Tamron and Sigma lenses are bad. Quite the opposite. I used to have a 70-300mm Sigma zoom that also had a macro mode. It did really well for being under $200. What I have found with the cheaper lenses is you usually have more bad shots than good, where with the better quality lenses you’ll have more good than bad images if you’re familiar with your camera and photography. Also, if you’re going to go with a cheaper lens, you really need to shoot in manual mode…you can control so much that way and guarantee better images. The cheaper lenses do tend to focus slower, and you really want the fastest focusing lens you can afford when you’re shooting wildlife.
This was shot with the super cheap Sigma 70-300 1:4/5:6 which runs just under $200, in the macro mode:
Now, Sigma DOES make some pretty darn good lenses these days. When I went out to New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado a couple years ago, I rented the Sigma 10-20mm wide angle, that thing did a phenomenal job!
Don’t dis the kit lenses. When you go looking to buy a camera body, they usually offer two options. Camera body only or the camera body and one lens. I’ve kept the original 18-55mm kit lens that came with my digital rebel and still use it to this day. It makes an excellent landscape lens. I also took that out west a couple years ago and it was the one I ended up using in Upper Antelope Canyon in Page, Arizona. I took this shot hand-held (no tripod) with that lens.
So, when you go looking to buy a camera…and you need lenses, check out which ones come with the camera you’re looking at, you might actually like it.
There are some other good cheap options. If you’re considering getting a macro lens, but aren’t sure if you’re going to stick with macro photography. Try a screw on filter. They sell those really cheap on Ebay, you just need to get one that’s the correct size to fit on the lens you’re going to put it on.
This was taken with the digital rebel, the 18-55mm kit lens, and a screw on bower macro filter. I think I paid maybe $20 for the filter?
Of course, I got hooked on macro photography and purchased the Canon 100mm f2.8 macro, here’s a shot with that lens:
