Flicker Checks Out a Hole in a Tree (Dry Brush Filter)

The holes in the tree were preexisting, at least, they were there before the Flicker came poking around. What was interesting to me was that the Flicker came and poked its head into the hole; maybe there was something in there worth finding? (It's a little too high up for me to check - ;) Thanks for stopping by!

Bird in a Tree, Maybe a Phoebe?

Here the Phoebe (I think it's a Phoebe...) was posing very nicely for me in the tree. I like the quizzical look on the bird's head as it is looking in my direction, probably wondering what I was doing....

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Juvenile Bluebird (Dry Brush Filter)

A couple of days later (after yesterday's picture), the juvenile bluebird landed on top of my lamppost and posed for a few pictures. I dry brushed the background and pasted the original as a second layer, erasing everything around the bird for today's picture. Thanks for stopping by!

August Juvenile Bluebird (Dry Brush Filter)

On the other side of the tree (from yesterday's photo), I saw this juvenile bluebird resting. (I don't think that they were quite on the same tree at the same time, but they were on two different sides of the same tree on the same day.) Thanks for stopping by!

August Bluebird (Dry Brush Filter)

I was really surprised when I saw the bluebirds come back again in August. I hadn't seen them around for a little while, at least, not in my backyard. And then, the kids said, "Hey, there's a bluebird!" So, I got out my camera, and... here's a bluebird! Thanks for stopping by!

Yesterday's Bird, Preening (Dry Brush Filter)

The dry brush filter makes this look like an abstract image. I really liked how the bird was preening, but the movement was such that the bird was blurry in the picture. With the filter, the bird is still blurry, although, the filter application makes it look like some wild creature in the branches. I like it. Thanks for stopping by!

Bird in the Tree Leaves (Dry Brush Filter)

I know that I've seen (and identified) this little bird before, but at the moment, its name escapes me. I like the way that it's kind of hiding out in the leaves here, probably hoping that no one will notice it. The picture reminds me of a puzzle, or maybe one of those "Where's Waldo" games that I used to play. (Ok, maybe not as sophisticated as Waldo, but it's still fun to find the bird in the image.) Thanks for stopping by!

Gopher in the Grass

It was great to look outside one day and see this gopher, standing in the grass. It reminded me of a trip to the zoo in which we saw the prairie dogs. The prairie dogs held a similar posture, many of them even moving in unison, which was kind of crazy and cool all at the same time. There was only one gopher for me to take pictures of here, though. Thanks for stopping by!

Female House Finch in the Grass (Dry Brush Filter)

Whenever I see house finches, there is usually a male and a female together; rarely do I see either of them separately. This was one of those rare instances, when a female house finch was combing the grass. Almost immediately prior to this picture, she had grabbed a leaf with her beak and tossed it, probably looking for worms or bugs. Thanks for stopping by!

More Purple Flowers (Dry Brush Filter)

As winter begins to settle in upon us here in Minnesota it's nice to be able to go back (to July) and look at pictures when the weather was warmer and the flowers were blooming. Thanks for stopping by!

Purple Flower (Dry Brush Filter)

The bumblebee having flown away, I was left with this image of the flower. Even without the bumblebee, I liked it well enough to share it with you as my picture of the day. Thanks for stopping by!

Bumblebee at the Flower (Part 2) (Dry Brush Filter)

Of bees, the bumblebee is probably my favorite. (Honeybees are cool, too, though.) If I had to put my finger on a reason, it's probably because, long ago in some now forgotten memory, I enjoyed a children's story or poem in which a bumblebee made its appearance. Nothing so memorable that I could call it to mind today, but memorable enough to make some kind of favorable impression. Thanks for stopping by!

Bumblebee at the Flower (Dry Brush Filter)

It was fun to look at the bumblebees this past summer. (It wasn't necessarily so easy to get a picture of them, weaving in and out of the flowers.) I liked the shape of the flower here, although the bee was just a little bit fuzzy. (When you process things through the dry brush filter, everything gets a little bit brushed over.) Thanks for stopping by!

Woodpecker on a Tree

Today's picture comes in two version, the faraway and the close-up. The bird is a woodpecker, although, what kind of woodpecker, I cannot say. Using Google's "search visually similar images" feature, the most similar bird that I found was the juvenile version of the Red-bellied Woodpecker. (Although, that bird lacks the white stripes that you see around the eye and leading up to the beak on this bird.) Hmm... mystery woodpecker. If you have any ideas, leave them in the comments. Thanks for stopping by!

Things Are Looking Up -- Woodpecker (Dry Brush Filter)

I knew that this was some sort of woodpecker, but the best that I can come up with for a more specific identification is a Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker. No, the belly doesn't look yellow (at least, not in this picture.) However, what I'm going on here is the head, with a red tuft both on the top and underneath the beak. I'm not completely convinced, but going from my bird book and from the pictures that I found online, this was the best with which I could come up. Thanks for stopping by!

Two Birds with One Shot (Dry Brush Filter)

This picture reminded me of an old saying about killing two birds with one stone, except that no birds were actually harmed in the taking of this picture. ;) As a bonus, both birds are even looking in the same direction! :) Thanks for stopping by!

Eastern Bluebird, Juvenile with Yellow Background (Dry Brush Filter)

I followed my juvenile bluebird from the other day to another spot, this time where there was a yellow building in the background. (I was able to crop the building out for the picture that you see above.) Thanks for stopping by!

Juvenile Eastern Bluebird in a Tree (Dry Brush Filter)

Being right now on the verge of snow, it's kind of nice to look back at the warmer days of summer (this picture is from August) when the bluebirds were out. This juvenile has such deep blue colored feathers; I don't think the feathers are quite that dark in the adult birds. Thanks for stopping by!

Woodpecker on a Birch Tree (Dry Brush Filter)

This bird was in the process of slamming its head into the tree when I took this photo. Actually, this particular photo was kind of cool, as the bird looks as though it is introspectively studying the tree. (Actually, it really was slamming its head into the tree; I set the camera to speed priority and this happened to be one of the frames that I got.) Thanks for stopping by!

Phoebe Looking Back from the Branches (Dry Brush Filter)

Here are two edits of an image of a Phoebe that I saw earlier this fall. (Yes, I know it feels like winter already, but technically I think it's still fall until December.) I like the way that the bird is glancing over its shoulder here in this image. The first edit is with Adobe's Dry Brush Filter, which I like to use. The other is the image without the Dry Brush Filter. (Looking at the smaller images, it's not as easy to tell the difference between them. The difference is more apparent when looking at the images full size. I tend to like the effect that the filter has on the pictures, but... it's not for everybody.) Thanks for stopping by! 

Here Comes Peter Cottontail (Dry Brush Filter)

Although, from the perspective of this image, you might not be able to tell that it's Peter Cottontail. In fact, if I didn't tell you that this little brown mound in the grass was a rabbit, you might be a little hard-pressed to tell just exactly what it was. (It really was a rabbit.) Thanks for stopping by!

Chipping Sparrow by the Sidewalk (BW)

I tried this image first in color. I'm not sure what exactly I didn't like about it, but it just wasn't doing it for me. I think that maybe the shading kind of made the bird look a little bit dull. (Not that a chipping sparrow is an especially brilliant colored bird...)

So, I tried the image in black and white, processing it as an HDR in Photomatix. I think that I like this one a lot better. With everything else being even in terms of color, the bird stands out a little bit more, and the fact that it was shaded in color doesn't seem to come across so much here.

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Sparrow at Attention (Dry Brush Filter)

I shot a series of photos of this sparrow as it was moving its head back and forth, looking all around. I don't know what it was looking at, or whether it was just paying attention to its surroundings, but I liked this angle on the bird's head the best. Thanks for stopping by!

Bluebird Redux (Long Version)

I posted a version of this bluebird image back in August. (The picture itself was taken in June.) Where I had cropped the image shorter before, I think that here I like it a little better in the vertical/portrait position, showing the tree branches upon which the bird was perched. I like bluebirds and enjoy the opportunity to take pictures of them whenever they're around. Thanks for stopping by!

A Sparrow in the Grass is Worth Two in the...

For photos like this one, I usually go through a two-program process. I take the image file over to Paintshop Pro for its cropping feature. (there's something about it that I like better than the crop in Elements; in Elements, I always feel like I'm trying to hang on to the dotted box, and if I accidentally drop it, I can't resize it without starting over. In Paintshop, adjusting the dotted crop box is more intuitive.) Then, I take the cropped image file over to Elements (where I like the filters and editing features to adjust the image much better.) The sparrow here started out as a fairly green image. Even though I played around with the saturation and hue sliders, the overall picture still has something of a yellow hue to it. I didn't want to completely remove it, because I like the color on the bird. Hmm... Well, thanks for stopping by!

Sparrow Step Lightly (Dry Brush Filter)

Having caught this bird on camera in mid-step, I thought that it made for interesting subject matter. What the other bird was pecking at in the parking lot, I couldn't say. Certainly not worms. But, there was something there that caught its interest. Thanks for stopping by!

Looking for their Next Meal (Dry Brush Filter)

On this particular late summer day, there were several birds out in the field, looking for their next meal. These two birds happened to be in the same space. I liked their pose, where they both seem to have their attention fixed on the same thing, whatever it might be, (probably dinner). Thanks for stopping by!

Eastern Cottontail Rabbit, I See You! (Dry Brush Filter)

Since rabbits are not particularly known for their bravery, this is the "I'm going to close my eyes and pretend that you're not really there, even though I know that you are standing there looking at me" look. Or maybe the rabbit was just tired after eating all of that grass?

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Eastern Cottontail Rabbit (Dry Brush Filter)

As I was scrolling through my rabbit photos from this past summer, I started wondering about where the rabbits go during the winter. An informative article from the Lincoln Park Zoo can be found here. In a nutshell, they stick around (at least, the Eastern Cottontails do.) They'll forage, usually at moments of milder weather (such as at dawn or dusk). Will I see one? Probably not until next spring, but... who knows? Thanks for stopping by!

Pretty Orange Bird, Preferences Learned While Processing Vacation Photography (Dry Brush Filter)

This orange and black bird was one that I saw while on vacation. It had a very pretty song.

While on vacation, I took hundreds (probably thousands) of photos, shooting all of them in RAW. If I understand it correctly, the advantage to shooting in RAW is that you have more hands-on control over the processing of your image, as opposed to the image being processed according to whatever has been preset inside of the camera.

The downside is that RAW photos take up lots of space on those memory cards. From my NEX-7, they work out to 24MB each; the NEX-6 shoots 16MB image files.

After returning from vacation, this meant that I needed to spend some significant time with my photo editing programs (Corel Paintshop Pro and Photoshop Elements 12). Needing to make the process quick (my wife having a Shutterfly coupon that expires sometime soon,) I basically applied a four-step process involving Photoshop's "Smart Fix", "Levels", "Contrast", and "Color". (Thank you Adobe for putting the shortcut key references into the program; this made things go much, MUCH more quickly than if I had to tap into the menu bar.) I realize that applying the Adobe preset might not be much different than letting my Sony camera figure it out (and save lots of space on those cards!), but I did like having the control, of being able to say that I wanted a certain look to my photos. One of the things that I found (in processing HUNDREDS! of photos) was that I tend to like warmer colored photos better than cooler ones. There were times when a cooler tone worked for me, but - more often than not, I went with the warmer hues. (Hmmm, I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that a Minnesota winter will soon be upon us here?)

Those are my musings for today. Thanks for stopping by!