and now for something different

First–
We hope you had a Good Holiday
By their nature, blogs are basically “Hey, lookey what we did”. Well, this post is ‘lookey what some one else did’.
Recently we met Wayne Sheridan at the Heron Pond. It was one of the few days that the temps were above freezing but falling fast. Add NNW winds at a steady 20 with gusts to 35 and not too many people were out photographing. Wayne pulled up in the parking lot and Molly and I noticed him pulling out a big white lens. I walked over and struck up a conversation and found out that Wayne was a new bird photographer. I suggested a few camera settings and then left him to his own devices while Molly and I did our thing. It was one of those days when the sky was full of Trumpeter Swans and the only open water they wanted to be in was right there in front of the parking lot.

When the smoke cleared, Wayne came over and thanked us for the information and I gave him one of our cards. I said email me and he said he would. I checked our business email and was pleasantly surprised to see an email from Wayne….and he attached a photo of Molly and I along with his email. One thing led to another and I asked him to show me a few of his images– which led me to ask permission to use them in a blog post.

So, with great pleasure, here are Wayne’s images
( my captions– if the captions are lame– it is on me LOL)
click image for larger version

Wayne is on Facebook and if you wish to contact him, email me and I will forward everything–
I’d put his email on the blog but there is tooooooo much data mining going on these days and I’d hate to have his email spam bombed LOL

Where did the snow come from and will we ever see the sun again :)

Went to Heron Pond this morning to photograph Trumpeter Swans knowing that the day was supposed to start off as partly cloudy and cold. Little did I know that it would snow like nobody’s business. Set everything to Manual and started at 1/60th and ended up at 1/1000th of a second at F4– metered 2 stops off the sky and hoped it would be enough. Panning fast to faster and still missed more than I like.
My right side was covered in snow and so was the camera/lens and tripod–took the camera off the tripod so it would not freeze– shot hand held and quit about 9am.
HAD A BALL.
Regardless of how the mornings images turn out, I consider my self fortunate to be out there in the snow storm.
Words and images can’t really do justice to the scene.

As for the dreary cold weather—

Like my old friend Sam Hampton always said about duck hunting in the flooded timber in NE Oklahoma

Makes you appreciate central heat and a hot shower

stay warm my friends…and clean 🙂

Basically straight out of the camera so I wouldn’t lose the snow to post processing

Quick Swan Photo Gallery

Working on images and it is getting late so just a quick Trumpeter Swan gallery so y’all won’t think we are slacking 🙂