Backyard Springtime Nature in New Jersey and Local Farmers Market.
Birds at the bird feeder and the first Montgomery Farmer’s Market. Individual images can be viewed here.
Category: Food
Views of food from around the world
Friday (01-June-2018) — New Jersey
Backyard Springtime Nature in New Jersey.
While mowing the backyard, I found an Eastern Box Turtle at the edge of the grass and beginning of the wildflower meadow. The last time that I saw one in my yard was nearly 20 years ago. The back section is wet, and I recently found some May Apple plants — so had hoped to find that the turtles still existed on my property. There were frogs and dragonflies at the pond. The frogs jump into the pond before I can take their picture. Back on the patio, the plants in the Garden Towers are growing very fast. I have already started harvesting some of the lettuce. Individual images in the slide show can be viewed here.
Four-Years Ago (18-May-2014) — Texas
South Texas Birding Photo Safari with Jason Odell Day 3.
Male Northern Cardinal Feeding Breakfast to a Young Cardinal in Southern Texas. Image taken with a Nikon D4 camera and 600 mm f/4 VR lens (ISO 140, 600 mm, f/5.6, 1/1000 sec).
Thursday (17-May-2018) — Japan
Gone to See Japan. Street Photography Workshop with Steve Simon and Soichi Hayashi. Day 1: Tokyo.
May 17th is the day that Norway celebrates its independence. There was an article in the newspaper delivered to my hotel room where Japan congratulates Norway, and comments on the shared goals of both nations — especially having to do with the sea and fishing.
The sun rises very early here in Tokyo — at 04:35. Combination of latitude, and not adjusting the time in the summer (daylight savings time in the US). I am not sure how the local residents use this daylight time in the morning. I did see a group doing stretches and exercising in Chuo park near Niagara falls at 06:30. I took some pictures of the group from my hotel room (on the 20th floor, distance about 400 meters). Then played with the scripts/statistics function within PhotoShop to try to indicate the motion. Later on after breakfast I went for another walk in the park.
The Street Photography workshop started at noon, with a lunch and initial classroom session. After an initial greeting and orientation we got to look at some samples of the workshop participants work, and expectations of what we would be doing for the next eight days. Each day we would have a review session of the images taken the previous day. We also needed to decide on a theme/subject/story line for what we would be photographing. The definition of “Street Photography” can be nebulous. After the classroom session we did a photography warm-up walkabout in Shinjuku. There area is visually overwhelming, and I was having trouble even deciding on what to shoot. During the classroom session, Steve suggested using prime lenses, aperture mode (relatively wide open with a narrow range of focus), a high shutter speed of > 1/400 second (to stop motion — both subject and photographer), and auto ISO (up to 3200 depending on camera sensor). The two cameras that I am using for the workshop (Leica CL, and Leica TL2) do not react and focus as fast as some of the Nikon Pro cameras I am used to. I selected the mirror-less cameras and lenses that I would be using based on their lighter weight (both for travel and being smaller and less conspicuous for street photography). I set the cameras to display the B&W image. I also chose to mainly work with B&W images for this workshop (although I saved the raw images so I can get to the color images). As you can see from the street walkabout images, I was struggling.
Individual images in the slide shows can be viewed here.
Monday (07-May-2018) — New Jersey
Backyard Springtime Nature in New Jersey.
A Blue Jay near the Copper Fountain, May Flies on a window, the Garden Tower with new (purchased) seedlings, and the fountain at night.
