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Best of 2011 – Wildlife

Jan
14
2012
January 14, 2012
By 25 Comments

While looking through the 2011 photographs, I realized that I shot very few wildlife images last year. Part of it has to do with the fact that I was too busy testing equipment, but I also realized that I just did not get out locally as much as I used to in order to photograph birds and other wildlife of Colorado. A large number of great wildlife shots from Yellowstone and Glacier NP were lost during my two week trip across North-Western US as well, due to my own fault. All in all, 2011 was just not a good wildlife year for me. Hopefully I will do better in 2012. Enjoy!

Tricolored Heron

1) Tricolored Heron 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

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Local Hawks

May
1
2011
May 1, 2011
By 11 Comments

It has been a while since I photographed birds. A couple of weeks ago, I went to a local park to scout for some birds. Although I did not get a good opportunity to photograph small birds, I found a couple of hawks that were willing to somewhat cooperate. The first one let me watch him on an electric pole for a little, right before he dove down to get a dead rabbit:

Hawk #1

Too bad he turned the other way…would have been a nice shot. The rabbit was pretty heavy, so he did not make it very far. I guess food was scarce and he just decided to feed off the rabbit carcass. After a short while, he abandoned the carcass and went back to sit on a tree branch:

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Raptor Photography

Jul
23
2010
July 23, 2010
By 11 Comments

I really enjoy raptor photography, definitely much more than any other type of bird photography. Birds of prey are powerful, aggressive, fast, agile, precise and even at times ravenous, having no mercy on their targets. They are also tough to photograph and get close to, since most of them (especially adults) do not like people and their presence. I have been studying raptor behavior and habitat during the last 3 years and have traveled to various locations both in Colorado and in other states to see and photograph these beautiful creatures. In this article, I will show you some of the latest pictures and videos of predators I took during the last month and will give you a few tips on photographing raptors.

Red-tailed Hawk in Flight

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Filed Under: Digital Photography, Photography Articles, Wildlife Photography Tagged With: , , ,

Florida Birding Near Orlando

Jun
27
2010
June 27, 2010
By 14 Comments

This article is about birding in Florida, where I will share my birding photography techniques and discuss some of the best birding spots in Central Florida, near Orlando. The below pictures are from my most recent trip to Orlando – the best bird images can be found in my Bird Gallery.

Florida Birding

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Great White Egret in Flight

Jun
17
2010
June 17, 2010
By 12 Comments

I have just finished reviewing images from my recent trip to Orlando and I will be posting some images of birds tomorrow. I figured it is a good time to do it now, since I will be heading back to Orlando next week again. Here is one of my favorite shots:

Great White Egret in Flight

This above image was shot with the Nikon D3s + Nikon 300mm f/4.0 AF-S lens with a Nikon 1.4x TC @ 420mm. To freeze the bird in flight, I had to use a shutter speed of 1/1600 of a second at f/5.6 aperture (wide open with the 1.4x TC). ISO was set to “Auto ISO” with minimum shutter speed set to 1/1600 and maximum ISO set to 6400 and I shot in Aperture Priority mode. As for metering, I used spot metering – my normal metering mode when shooting birds.

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Nikon 70-200mm VR II for Birding

May
8
2010
May 8, 2010
By 19 Comments

I took the Nikon 70-200mm VR II + TC17E II (1.7x) with me during the trip to Puerto Rico just in case I encountered something I wanted to photograph from a distance. As I was walking close to the shore, I spotted a few different types of birds and I decided to try out this combo and see what results I would get.

Birds #1

And here is a 100% crop of the above image:

Birds #1 Crop

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Birding with Nikon D3s

Mar
24
2010
March 24, 2010
By 17 Comments

I took Omar and Ozzy on a quick road trip today for some nearby birding at Barr Lake State Park after work. On the way to the park, I spotted this Ferruginous Hawk on a pole and took a picture of it:

Ferruginous Hawk

The focus was dead on and all sequential images came out tack sharp, as expected.

As we arrived to the park right at sunset, we found a deer, along with a killdeer roaming around the park :)

Male Deer

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Zone-tailed Hawk

Feb
1
2010
February 1, 2010
By 5 Comments

I have been trying to get a good shot of a Zone-tailed Hawk for quite sometime now. For some reason, the ones I see are very shy and fly away as soon as they see me.

This guy took off right away, but flew over me for about 10 seconds before flying far away, so I was able to snap a couple of pictures of this beautiful bird:

Zone-tailed Hawk 2

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Best of 2009 – Birds

Jan
14
2010
January 14, 2010
By 8 Comments

I had a hard time picking my favorites and I’m sure I didn’t do a good job, but anyway – here are the non-raptor bird pics that I liked from 2009:

Tricolored Heron

1) Tricolored Heron 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

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Best of 2009 – Birds of Prey

Jan
13
2010
January 13, 2010
By 2 Comments

I’m starting to upload the “Best of 2009″ images for your pleasure :) I apologize that it took me so long, I just didn’t have much time to go back and look through all the pictures. Hopefully you will like these – I’m providing them at high resolutions, so that you can use them as your desktop wallpapers.

More to come tomorrow!

Rough-Legged Hawk

1) Rough-Legged Hawk 808×1200 Vertical Wallpaper

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