David's Images of the Day Photoblog
Views of the sky. Sunrise, sunset, clouds, and weather
Morning Reflections in Iceland on the way to Cape Ingolfshofdi (ingólfshöfði). A private nature preserve on an isolated headland on the coast half way between Skaftafell in Vatnajokull National Park and Jökulsárlón ice lagoon in Iceland. Composite of 3 images taken with a Leica X2 camera (ISO 100, 24 mm, f/11, 1/640 sec) combined using AutoPano Giga Pro.
Arctic Tern hovering while looking for fish in the Jökulsárlón Glacial Lagoon. Image taken with a Nikon 1 V2 camera, FT1 adapter, and 80-400 mm VRII lens (ISO 160, 116 mm, f/5.6, 1/800 sec).
The group did a high-speed RIB Safari boat tour to the islands around Vestmannaeyjar. We needed to get into arctic survival suits, and had shoulder harness belts holding us in our seats. I strapped a camera to my chest with a fisheye lens and set it to automatically take images every few seconds. At times the boat was traveling at 40 knots with lots of heavy bouncing. We went all the way out to Surtsey island that I remember reading about as a kid rising from the sea as a volcano. At one point we saw a whale, so slowed down and stopped to take pictures. While stopped the boat rocked a lot, causing one or two passengers to lose their breakfast.
Silhouette of Sun Voyager (Sólfar) at Sunset. From wikipedia “Sun Voyager is a dreamboat, an ode to the sun. Intrinsically, it contains within itself the promise of undiscovered territory, a dream of hope, progress and freedom.” Image taken with a Nikon 1 V2 camera and 10 mm f/2.8 lens (ISO 160, 10 mm, f/8, 1/400 sec).
I had no control over the folks crawling over the statue, the bikes parked, or the folks fishing – but still like the image.
While moving some of the wood being used build the stairway to my patio, I noticed some holes in the ground with a relatively large cicada larva. It had spent the last 13 or 17 years in the ground, and is waiting for a rain storm before crawling to the nearest tree. There it will crawl up and got through the final metamorphosis to the insect phase. We can expect the loud noise of the cicada in the near future as they look for a mate.
Later in the afternoon, I saw a scruffy Cardinal at the bird feeder. Probably an immature bird just getting its adult red colored feathers. There were a large number of deer in the backyard. At least four fawns with spots, four or more doe’s, and one buck with its new antlers.
After dark, I could see both the waxing gibbous moon and mars peaking in and out of the clouds. I couldn’t get both in the field of view with a Nikon D4 camera and 600 mm lens. Switching to a Nikon D850 camera and 500 mm lens I was just barely able to get both in the same image. The image of the moon was sharper with the Nikon D850 camera since it was shot with the mirror up, silent mode. With the exposure being used, Mars was just barely visible as a disk.
