David's Images of the Day Photoblog
Walkabout in my backyard with a new (at the time) lens. Actually, a 600 mm f/4 lens is a bit too heavy to be used handheld, so I didn’t get many images. A mushroom, a Robin that likes bitter-sweet berries, and a turkey vulture soaring.
Slug Eating a Blue Mushroom. Image taken with a Nikon D4 camera and 60 mm f/2.8 macro lens (ISO 100, 60 mm, f/16, 1/13 sec) + SB-910 flash.
Fungus Among Us!! Since I got back from the Fall Semester at Sea Voyage, everything has been damp and wet. The last two mornings there was a thick fog until late morning. Mildew everywhere – including the seat belt straps in my car. I’ve never seen a blue mushroom before. The images in this post are all from my driveway where mushrooms are abundant.
Squirrel Eating a Mushroom. My sixth day of Retirement. I took a series of images of rabbits and this squirrel while sitting in my car in my driveway while listening to “A Good American” on SiriusXM. Now that I am not commuting 3+ hours a day I can photograph the local wildlife while listening to books on satellite radio. You might wonder why I am in the car listening to the satellite radio — I don’t have a receiver for SiriusXM in the house, and I am hooked on listening to several of the books being read at this time. I was also waiting for UPS to make a delivery of a Nikon D4 camera. The delivery was supposed to arrive last Friday. UPS claimed that I wasn’t present to sign for the package on Friday — but I had been sitting in the driveway listening to “Three Junes” on SiriusXM at the same time (5:03 PM) that UPS indicated that I was not present. I guess that the driver wanted to go home early on a summer Friday. The package did arrive tonight at ~6:30 PM. Unlike the first wave of D4 deliveries, this one did not include a XQD memory card and XQD card reader. Hope to have some images from the D4 to share tomorrow.
Four years ago I was attending a photography workshop on the Big Island of Hawaii led by Thom Hogan . Before breakfast, I wandered down to the harbor and captured a Hawaiian Outrigger Canoe with a Cruse Ship in the background. We spent a good part of the day driving to Volcanoes National Park. We stayed at the Lodge — Volcano House Hotel within the National Park through Thanksgiving. After getting settled, the group went for a hike down into the rain forest from the lodge where I took these three images. The first is a wild yellow orchid along the trail, the next a purple fungus (?) on the forest floor, and the third a palm frond. All three of the images used my SB-800 flash, where Thom was helping me learn how to best compose and use fill-flash to light up the subject of the image. Although we didn’t experience much rain, a few days after we left the park got 13 and 17 inches of rain and we would have been spending our time taking images of the fireplace (which has been burning continuously since 1877). The Volcano House Hotel is now closed. Unfortunately, the fire went out on 01-January-2010. The hotel is now being renovated, and will not open until sometime in 2012.
