Photography

  This was no ordinary day out on the field at Mason Land Preserve with the (old fart man who is Al D ) .  I am making fun of him in good way because soon,  I will be the quarter century photographer Al.  Which means it will the golden year for me. We spotted this Juvenile Blue Heron along with Painted Turtles and had to do slow drill to catch close up photos of what they were  acuatly doing with their animal behaviors . In this photograph, I did slow drill to photograph Painted turtles on the logs during the hot of the day which was very cool to see them sunning themselves from the heat. We then went to The North Carolina Botanical Gardens. Where we did the nature trails. I better think that Al D did not do this shot of the fall leaves on this tree with roots on this tree also.  This years color for fall foliage was very different than in the years past. It was very hot this summer. This made conditions harder for the foliage to peak

I have been really off track with the blogging lately. A few weeks ago in the begging of November my mentor and I decided to go back to his old stomping grounds where he used to live on the eno river in Durham but this was a different section that I have never been in before. This means I did my very own pictures that I wanted to include in this post. Which means the Old weathered  Man walkabout Al D will probably see this maybe. I am trying to still beat him on the blog posting. So we will see if I can finally beat him on his on blog of posting soon.

This October the abstract is the fall leaves with across taken during a sunset shot a few weeks ago. I have never done fall leaves with across for a silhouette before for an abstract for October before. So this year I decided to do it and really came out really interesting with the sunset colors behind it. Happy Halloween!!

The night before had been cold so I decided to take advantage of the dew photography with my mentor at Mason Land Preserve in Chapel Hill, NC. The dew conditions today were perfect to photograph dew on webs, insects, spiders and wildflowers. Dew Photography is very interesting to do in these conditions. You have to be sure to get up early in the morning when the dew has already settled and time it with sunrise which makes really cool photographs to do. I am still doing a lot of macro work and now I am getting much better at macro work seen in this photograph of the dew on a spider web taken early in the morning.

Todays Wednesday Color # 23 is a sunrise picture I took on my trip to the North Carolina Mountains a week ago. As you notice I waited for the sunrise colors and the humidity to get brighter for the colors to get them where I wanted them to be. I hope everyone is enjoying the fall colors already!

I finally made it to the North Carolina Mountains this fall to photograph the peak of the fall colors. It has been a very enjoyable and photogenic trip to remember. The berries you see in this photograph are called Ash berries. I decided to blur the background of the mountain behind it to make it look very cool for a photograph. I adventure out to 2 different waterfalls and the Grandfather mountains where I climbed all the way on top of the rocks. Here in the mountains of North Carolina the leaves are in peak season while in central North Carolina they are behind this year due to the rain and the hurricanes we had in the past couple of weeks. In the mountains,  the weather is very different in different altitudes here. The fall foliage,  here in the North Carolina mountains , have been very outstanding this year along with the scenery here too. The scenery is breathe taking along with the waterfalls here. This was my first time in the North Carolina Mountai

It is  Wednesday Color # 22 just like Taylor Swifts song "22". Todays Wednesday color 22 is a Great Blue Heron taken at the Nuese River this year in August , when i was finally free from camp. The Great Blue Heron was giving me and my mentor great animal behaviors and many different qualities and sounds it has when it is spooked or looking for its mate for mating season.

Happy October Everyone. Its hard to believe its October 1st already! Today the conditions at my neighborhood pond were clear and sunny. I decided to the advantage of the warm weather and go out to find and produce photos today. I came upon this Garden Spider which is very common in this area. This year has been very different for the garden spiders this year.  Last years Garden Spiders were more productive and more that I was able to photograph. This year, however, I only found 3 garden spiders at my pond which is very rare this year. Maybe next year, I might be able to find even more garden spiders  around my neighbor pond and see the babies hatch and I might get photos of them. Photographing spiders hatch will be very difficult to do but I might succeed next year in photographing the hatching stages of then. Peace Out.

Taken exactly a year ago today a Northern Water Snake in my neighborhood pond. Which was very cool to post this today exactly from the day this picture of the Northern Water Snake was taken. Peace Out everyone!

Its hards to believe fall has already begun again and its the end of September already. The end of September Abstract, t this year is the tree stump probably many of you have seen on my blog in the past. But this time it was different abstract to it for this month. So I decided to photograph the stump with a growth coming up it and a nut which probably a squirrel had earlier in the day for it snack. Int was very cool to photograph this time. Hope you are enjoy the beauty of fall already with cooler temperatures on the way!

Today I decide to call this Post "Wet and Wild", just like the water park in Greensboro. I got a phone call by photography mentor to do lightning storm photos tonight. By the time we got to his pond the storm was in fully charging with bolts but the rain did not stop us then. At the first location I used ISO  400 and the manual bulb mode to do this shot at my photography mentors pond, right across from were he lives. By the time it had started raining we decided to pack up from his pond location. We then went to  my pond location at my neighborhood We got really good lightning photos at my neighborhood pond. In these photographs done at my pond I used the Manual mode again with the ISO set to 250 which is good for capturing lightning at night. Including some cloud bolt shots with them just like these, that i am about to show you readers that read my blog. Hope everyone got some sleep with this thunderstorm that lasted till 3 'clock in the morning.

Its Wednesday Color # 21. Today I decided to use the Swallowtail butterfly for this weeks color Wednesday.  This swallowtail butterfly was taken at the NC Botanical Gardens where I photographed many other creatures and macro work that day in with my photography mentor.  I can't believe September is almost gone and the fall colors are begging already. 

Its finally back up for Wednesday Color. I haven't Wednesdays color posts for such a longtime. I thought I would bring it back again. Todays Wednesday color #20 is a water lily also know in the scientific name is Nymphaea. I took this water lily picture acutely in the North Carolina Botanical Gardens in Chapel Hill this month. Theres a post about the botanical gardens I did. I decided to over expose this photo to make the water lily stand out more during the sunshine of the day. More Wednesday colors to come.

As you know it the Tropical Rainstorm Julia brought heavy downpours and thunderstorms to the area earlier today and it remains a tropical rainstorm near the coastline of North Carolina. I wonder how many more hurricanes will be making landfall soon enough? We will just see how many storms are left this season with names.  Now another tropical storm has formed and its name is Karl. The storm position is  19.3 North and 49.2 west.The winds of this storm are 50 M.P.H.  Hopefully this tropical storm does not make landfall on the North Carolina Coastline soon. We have had 13 named hurricanes that made landfall  so far this season which is very different than last years Hurricane Season. Todays post is throwback thunderstorm taken over a year ago. The location I was at was a pond behind the Petsmart in Durham, NC with My mentor. This lightning storm was at night which means for dry lightning pictures which is very cool to photograph lightning at night.  I  thought of it earlier tod

Heres some more astronomy photography for the blog this week. Tonight we had a Harvest Moon which is very cool to photograph. It is called the Harvest Moon because farmers at their farms can continue harvesting the crops in the late of the night will the light of the harvest moon which is also very cool. I did some cool photography of the harvest moon. Hope you all got to see the harvest moon tonight and got pictures of it.  Enjoy the rest of the night with the harvest moon!

Today I adventured out to the Botanical Gardens in Chapel Hill with my photography mentor. Which he is not going to win the blog completion this time. This time I am beating the Old Hurricane to it also referred to  as Al D. Today I am the post master. Today was the first time I have seen a Rough Green Snake in a long time for me. The last time I saw one was 1999 in Warrantor,  NC with my dad. We saw different types of spiders including a crab spider and many more different types of spiders, a rough green snake,  many butterflies and , frogs , a hummingbird   and hummingbird mouth today while we were there today. We also spotted two anoles  while were there and taking close ups of them as well. Hope everyone is enjoying this summer like weather.

 I am back from extra special trip from Carolina Beach. I got back yesterday morning. As you can see in the photos I did this time, I was there in the evening when the sunset was occurring and of course seeing the moon. I photographed the moon with the dunes which was pretty cool to do for a composition at the beach. If you do the Dunes with the beach in the background it makes a really cool photograph to remember the beach by. I am getting much better at seascape photography now better than I was back in the days . The next photographs I did were Seascape landscape photograph which is also very interesting to do. You can See I had to under expose to keep the golden sunset colors so you can see them better.  I have learned that you have to under expose the colors a lot in the sky too keep them colorful as they look in the sky when the sunrise or sunset occurs.   I had a great trip down to Carolina Beach, tanning in the sun, playing in the sand and photographing the bea

I am finally on a vacation at Carolina Beach, while my mentor has to work for Auto Zone. Yeah I know Old Hurricane Al D.  He is probably going to see this later on tonight on my blog. I have been photographing here at Carolina Beach for a a long time which is very cool.  I have been doing sunrise photography and many  different types of photography at the beach while I am here. As you can see above the Pelicans were hanging out in the early afternoon .  I decided to photograph them on the pier post just doing their thing . I have photographed Pelicans here before but at a different location at Carolina Beach where we used to rent the Booker Cottage. As you can see with the dune picture  here , I used  dunes as a lead in to the beach scene which is very cool to do in some beach photography. I am getting better at my beach photography now.

 Finally getting back to blogging after a long week. I went out with my photography mentor, who obviously likes to try to beat me in blog posting. Which now I am going to beat him sometime before he posts something again. It was very nice and sunny day to explore the Neuse River and get more pictures of that area including different types of birds and wildlife that live in that area of the river front. We spotted 3 Great Blue Herons and got pictures of them and along with that many ducks and a king fisher that live in that area. The blue heron shown below was giving us many different poses for pictures we took . We saw the blue heron cleaning and grooming itself. I did different compositions of moving water while I wadded in the river which was very cool. I used the ISO 100 to do moving water photos and it blurs motion in the pictures of moving water.  Moving water is very cool to photograph if you know what you are doing. You must use a tripod to do this. It takes a lot

Finally back outside doing more nighttime exposures and astronomy pictures for the first time in August. I have been back from camp after being gone for 12 weeks, which was very hard and exhausting and also working two jobs for the past 12 weeks. Camp ended August 13th. This was a very hot and humid summer this year! In the past it was very hot in the summer 2008 when it made it over 100 degrees. Something you need to know about astronomy photography is you have to use the  manual mode and go down to the bulb mode. The different thing about astronomy photography is it takes time to do star photography and planet photography. I am still learning how to do star and planet photography.

I guess you can say it.. Rain showers in the area bring double rainbows early this evening. Today I noticed outside my man cave window a double rainbow which is very rare to see. I grabbed my camera and headed outside to what kind of compositions I could do with this rainbow. I did this flower composition with the rainbow in between it. I think it came out very cool and it was very different than other photos of rainbows I have done in the past. I had to overexpose some and underexpose some for some of the photos of the rainbows when sunset occurred here tonight. Heres another composition I did with the rainbow that is reflecting on my neighborhood pond which is a very cool thing to do with rainbows over water. Hope you got to see this beautiful double rainbow tonight!!!

Sorry about this late post.. Its been a very long time since I updated the blog last time.  Lets checkin with our geese friends this week. These geese  have had their babies and are doing great at our neighborhood pond. I have been keeping a close eye on them all through the stages to adulthood stages in their life. I have been doing a lot of photographs of them turning into adult geese which is very cool to photograph. Peace Out and enjoy the warm summer weather.

My  photography mentor and I  went to Duke Forest early in the morning to beat the heat today and today was my first time taking copperhead photos in the wild! The copperhead in North Carolina is venomous  snake and you have to watch its natural behaviors in its surroundings around you while you are walking in the habitats. The copperhead gets its name from its fittingly copper red head. Copperheads are medium size from 2 to 3 feet long in size and female copperheads are bigger than the male copperheads. Copperheads have very different distinct  colors and patterns compared to the other snakes we have in North Carolina. How you can tell a copperhead snake is the head shape and the hour glass variations on its tail. Thats how you can tell it apart from other snakes. They are most likely to attack if you go to close to them and the will bite you and you will end up with venom in your system from it and of course the venom is mild and most there bites are rarely to kill human

This weeks color wednesday is a bull frog i photographed back in 2014 at my neighborhood pond. Hope everyone is enjoying hearing all the frogs at night during the summer time!

Happy wedding Day to my best friends Matthew and Laura who recently got married on June 4th. I have the couples permission to post this on my blog about Wedding Photography. This was my very first time ever doing Wedding Photography and by the way its different than other types of photography I am into. They are a very kind, sweet, and very loving couple that are part of my life now. Congratulations Laura and Matthew on getting married!!

Heres Wednesday Color 18 taken at Lake Gaston. Its an Osprey hunting for fish and acutely i got to see it do it in real and photograph it. It was very interesting to see this in the wild and capture it on camera. Hope you are having a great start off to June !

Today is Color Wednesday. Wahoo Happy Color Wednesday!  Todays Wednesday Color was taken at Bolin Creek at the Rose Garden years ago. So I decided to use it as the is weeks color Wednesday! Happy Wednesday and enjoy the great outdoors!