Grizzly Bears!

I've been looking at bears this evening on a friend's blog, AK07. John is living with a bunch of bears in Alaska this year and working for the park service. Great photos!

the golden gate

My mother-in-law said she was disappointed that the bridge was not gold when she went to San Francisco . The postcard we sent her over the weekend will confirm the bridge is still red-orange, not gold. Low clouds kept my photos a bit dark and hazy on the day we spent hiking the coastal trail and walking on the bridge.

Wild About Wildflowers

Fairy Trumpets

(can you hear the music?)

1/800 second (wind!) @ f/8, ISO400, 200mm

The wildflowers are fantastic this year. Rain almost every afternoon this summer has kept the color show going throughout the forest, meadows and along the roads. Early morning is a good time to photography wildflowers. You can find sunlit flowers against shadowy backgrounds before the sun gets too high and the light too harsh.

Bell Flowers

1/400 second @ f/5.6, 200mm, ISO400

I like to photograph the flowers after a rain or whenever the clouds soften the sunlight and shadows. The images below were captured under cloudy skies.

Wild Geranium
1/125 second @ f/8, 60mm, ISO 400

Paintbrush
1/125 second @ f/8, 60mm, ISO 400

Wild paintbrush glows with the beautiful colors of sunsets. A story is told of a young man who wanted to paint the summer sunset. He was given brushes dipped in all the right colors and painted a beautiful sunset. When finished he tossed the brushes to the ground and now each summer the wild paintbrushes grow red, pink and orange.

Here Comes Trouble...

Let the hummer wars begin.

Rufous is here now guarding the flowers and feeders and chasing all others away. The broadtails are sneaking in to the feeder when they can for a quick sip and early this morning before there was enough light for photographing it, a male calliope hummingbird was here for a drink.

Rufous sits on the tip of a dead douglas fir branch to keep an eye out for intruders. He doesn't seem to know that he's the intruder here. The broadtails arrived months ago.

Rufous is like the grade school bully who thinks he has to make up for his small size by being faster and meaner than everyone else. For those of you who haven't met rufous, you can see how small he is in the image below where he sits on a feeder with a 5 inch tall bottle.

Rufous will stay for about a month and then he will move on. He's already 'summered' in the north and will continue his southward migration sometime next month. Rufous hummingbirds nest as far north as southern Alaska and winter in Mexico. They travel northward in spring through the pacific lowlands and make the return trip mid summer through the Rockies to take advantage of peak wildflower times.

The male rufous' gorget (the iridescent throat patch) reflects bright orange-red when light hits the feathers. The feathers of the gorget direct light in a single direction so that the color seems to change from dull brown-red to bright orange-red as the bird flies about.

Rufous is a little harder than the broadtails to photograph on the wing. I need bright sunlight so I can get my shutter speed quite high. My most popular rufous image can be seen here.

Wildlife in Como

This bunch of rowdy outlaws showed up in Como for the 4th of July parade. I was setting up when I saw them gathered behind my booth smoking smelly cigars and waving their guns. What could I do? I drew my camera and shot them there, but like the blanks in the guns they carried, my shot harmed no one. The outlaws were shot at 1/320 second f/11, focal length 38mm, and an ISO setting of 200.

the red columbine

Here's a close up of a small red columbine I photographed Father's Day weekend in June.

Sorry to have been neglecting the blog recently. I've been busy selling my images at local festivals. Tomorrow is the 3rd one for me in a month's time. After that, I'll have a month's break and more time to spend photographing and posting here in consworld.