Two more shots from my visit to Burlington last November…
Category: Animals (page 8 of 13)
I took this photo on November 1, 2013, during my visit to Burlington, Iowa.
Actually, it’s only the back yard…
Amy released a pair of owls at the Nursery Tank on Saturday night. These were young owls who had been either injured or abandoned. Amy hopes that these owls will stay in the park, hopefully near the Nursery Tank.
This is Nick, the male owl.
Holly, the female owl is bigger, though I didn’t get a shot of her spreading her wings.
Holly was reluctant to leave. Amy had to try a few times to get her to go.
This shot was taken a moment or two before she flew away.
I saw this girl with her kitten at the Moline Airport. She told me that she had just gotten this kitten and that it didn’t have a name yet. She was traveling to California to visit a friend.
I took this photo, below, on the way to Denver.
We saw this snake during our hike today. It started out on the ground, but then raced off, climbing into the tree. Bob identified it as a red racer.
Marie noticed Tiger lying on his back earlier tonight:
He was so relaxed that he allowed his belly to be rubbed by both Marie…
…and Joe:
Meanwhile, Tiger’s sister, Freckles, was perched by the fireplace looking inscrutable.
I was playing around with the Sigma 50-500mm lens last night at 500mm in manual focus mode. I was unhappy with the focus that I had gotten yesterday on the kitten, so I decided that I had better learn how to focus more accurately. In the photo of McGonagall, below, I focused on her right eye (the one that’s more open). Exposure parameters were ISO 1600, f/6.3, 1/20 sec, in aperture priority mode.
It probably would’ve been a more pleasing photo had I not done an in-camera crop of her ears, but I wanted to use the lens all the way out at 500mm since that is what I’ll need to do to get photos of outdoor wildlife. That said, using a somewhat shorter focal length would have provided a somewhat wider depth of field. Perhaps it would have been enough for McGonagall’s nose to be in better focus. Note that her eye is tack sharp though.
Below is one of Minstrel’s kittens, from her most recent litter. This was shot from inside the house, through the (not very clean) glass of the patio window at 500mm, f/6.3, ISO 3200, 1/640 sec. I went with a higher ISO to try to get the shutter speed up. For this particular shot, I could’ve probably dropped it down to ISO 800, but I was shooting a mix of kittens on the patio and some out in the yard or on the wall. I needed ISO 3200 for the patio shots.
