Photography weekend – Part 2

Sunday was shaping up to be an even better day than Saturday so we decided to slack on the chores and go out shooting pictures again.

I had been hearing a bit about the West 11th Street Park and figured we could go there and at least have a look around. In one of the reports I had heard on NPR they indicated the park had some interesting wildlife.

When we got there, it really didn’t look all that interesting. In fact, we were about to just drive on past it and look for something else when we noticed three ladies coming out of the park toting binoculars. I decided to swing around and ask them if there was any interesting birds in the park. All three exclaimed that yes indeed, there was all manner of Woodpeckers, Hawks and even a Great Horned Owl in that park. They offered to show us the Horned Owl as they had just come from where he was nesting.

The ladies took us down the path and into the woods and we came to the base of a stand of trees. They pointed to the sky and described where in the top of a very tall tree the owl could be seen. Cynthia and I craned our heads skyward and peered into the trees but could see nothing.

After about 5 minutes of explaining which branch off of which tree and so on and so forth Cynthia finally exclaimed that she could see the owl. A minute later I spotted him as well.

Great Horned Owl
Click to see full sized image

Time to see what the new 300mm zoom lens can do.

This was shot a the full 300mm handheld. That is to say, no tripod.

Great Horned Owl
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You gotta love image stabilization.

We admired the owl for awhile and then set off to explore the park.

The next creature we encountered was a hawk.
You could see him flying in circles high above the tops of the trees.

Distant Hawk
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SUPER TELEPHOTO XPEALADOSSHAS!

Hawk
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Again, totally handheld. Amazing.

That allowed me to crop this out:

Hawk
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Even more amazing was the shot Cynthia got with her Pentax with the 320mm telephoto:

Hawk picture by Cynthia
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And from that we were able to extract this:

Hawk picture by Cynthia
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What a wonderful couple of sightings!

As we were leaving we heard the familiar tak-tak-tak sound, indicating that a woodpecker was nearby.
Looked up and sure enough, there he was!

Woodpecker
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We left the park and headed home. But before calling it quits we had one more stop.

Terry Hershey Park

If you get off the main bike trail and onto some of the footpaths you can really have some cool creature moments. I found this Egret hunting fish in a small pond:

Egret
Click to see full sized image

It was a great weekend for taking pictures!

Photography weekend – Part 1

The weather was fantastic this weekend and Cynthia was itching to shoot some pics with her new camera.
On top of that, I had just treated myself to the Sony 75-300mm f/4.5-5.6 Compact Super Telephoto Zoom Lens and was excited about taking it for a test run.

Cynthia and I headed downtown to poke around. We stopped first at “the boots” near Uptown Park because Cynthia had commented on my earlier post and thought it would be a good opportunity to play with her wide angle lens.

Boots!

That worked out pretty good because I had been dying to get a shot of this one particular building at Post Oak and 610. I drive this way most every day and have always appreciated the reflection of the high-rise condos in this one silver building.

Reflections

I had to walk a ways away to line it up and ended up standing in the middle of Post Oak to get the shot.
It’s OK, but seeing it in person is better.

From there we made our way downtown. We wandered around a bit and shot some pics of this and that.

Yar!

It was an altogether new experience for me having a shooting partner. Cynthia was able to help me when I needed to change lenses and vice-versa. This is great practice for our upcoming trip to Spain.

Is that a real poncho or a Sears poncho?

It was 26 degrees when we go up this morning!

Brrr!

We were getting ready to leave the house this morning and Cynthia came out of the bedroom wearing her wool poncho. Man, I love this thing. It’s over 35 years old and she’s the original owner.

There’s also a great story that goes with it. When Cynthia was in high school she was given some money by her grandparents for her birthday. Her parents told her that the money should be spent on a new winter coat as she had outgrown her old one.

Cynthia figured that there was no way her parents would let her go through an East Lansing, Michigan winter without a new coat to wear so she opted to use the birthday money to purchase herself a new guitar.

When her mother asked her where she got the money for the new guitar she told them she used the birthday money from her grandparents. Her mother then asked her how she intended to buy a new coat for the winter and Cynthia replied “I guess you’ll have to buy me one!”

Her mother responded “Oh no I won’t. You’ll just have to make due this winter” and left it at that.

Cynthia protested that she would need a new coat to make it through the winter and her mother let her know that she should have thought of that BEFORE she spent the money on a new guitar.

She was not about to return the guitar and with no new coat and the harsh Michigan winter at hand Cynthia was forced to improvise.

She had this poncho, and while it was made completely of wool, it was certainly not intended for the kind of cold that she would have to endure that winter.

Cynthia spent that winter bundled up in as many layers of clothing as she could muster and topped it off with that poncho and made her way to the bus stop and back each day. She describes it as pretty miserable and I can only imagine just how bad it was.

All that trudging in the snow and day to day use of that poncho did not seem to be a problem, though.
35 years later and it still looks like new!

Cruising with Vista

So I fielded my first Windows Vista Q&A for my Helpline Blog over at the Houston Chronicle.

It’s pretty lightweight but still, it marks a new era in my computer support time-line. I’m sure it’s the first of many, many more to come.

You can read it here if you’re so inclined.

Those who enjoy vintage American automobiles or know about my Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme should be sure to click the link at the very end of the article.

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