I made the trip today to the Zoo in Kansas City to get some photos of animals that you don’t find in Missouri. While it was a nicely laid out, clean zoo, I found myself to be disappointed with it. The animals were well cared for, but mostly they were in cages, rather than habitats. The cage bars, and fencing made it almost impossible to photos of the large animals. The smaller animals were behind Plexiglas. My last trip to the zoo in St. Louis had many of the animals in habitats that allowed view from above, so that the large animals couldn’t escape, but also allowed for unobstructed views.
It’s been a while, weather kinda rainy over the last couple weekends. Last weekend, I went down to the Swinging Bridges, to see if the Great Blue Herons where there again. They were, so I got a few good shots of one of them, there creek was to deep and wide for me to get close enough to the one. So I turned to getting some shots of the bridge.
As I was walking down the creek ran across a crazy lady fishing on the opposite bank. She was standing there holding her rod and was shouting at someone, or something, however there was nobody in site, so I can only guess that she was shouting and throwing out threats at the fish in the water. I made it back to my car just in time to see the down pour start, it dumped about 3 inches of rain by the next morning.
Friday morning, I went down to a boat ramp, just below Bagnell Dam, in hope of getting some birds in flight, only to discover that nothing was flying. I moved to the observation deck at the dam and managed to get several shots of Rock Dove on the wings of the dam, so I wasn’t totally defeated this morning.
Perfect night for taking photos, it was clear and cool. The moon was out, but it was not full, it provided some good light for lighting the trees, and barn. I moved out of the barn yard and out into the north field, so that I could get the barn into the shot with the milky way in the background. I don’t think I have noticed before how many aircraft are flying late at night. At least not until I see the light streaks going across the photos.
I find doing the night shots to be relaxing.
Went out last night and got some more shots of the night sky. I got a lot of great shots, but I feel they are too much like the others I have done. I need to find some new places to do night sky shots; some place darker would be great. I was out for about 2 hours, and it was almost 90 degrees, a little ridiculous that it was that hot that late at night, will be glad when this heat wave breaks.
I went out to the farm today to get some shots of humming birds, as I have done several times in the past. Not as happy with the lot as I could be. Many of the photos came out good, but I should have stepped up the ISO one more, with the clouds right in front of me, it seems that the pictures are a little washed out. I guess I got used to doing night shots, and over compensated how much light I would need. The pictures are coming out good; I just have more adjustments to them is all. Now if I could just get them to slow down and give me time to focus, they are some fast little things.