Saturday, July 24, 2010

"Talons, Osprey in Montana" Fine Art Print by Donna Ridgway [5605940-1] - RedBubble


"Talons, Osprey in Montana" Fine Art Print by Donna Ridgway [5605940-1] - RedBubble:

We visited the osprey nest near Freeze Out Lake last night (7/23/10). One parent is gone teaching the first baby who left the nest how to hunt and fly with skill. The other parent is watching over the nest with the remaining baby.
I caught this as she was settling in for the night, she came down above me, with her talons outstretched…an awesome sight. It was late evening, so the sky was darkening, the remaining light shone through her incredible feathers…

I hope you enjoy Montana photos by Donna Ridgway.

Photo taken between Fairfield, and Choteau, Montana with a Nikon D300, 70-300 Tamron lens.

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A great shift in creating....

I've been learning to use the manual settings on my camera.  This is a big breakthrough for me, as I've been scared to death in the past, to change my menus from automatic.  I just knew if I changed something, I'd never get the thing back to where it was, and I'd never be able to take another photo!  I'm psycho....:)

When Henry and Pedro left to go to new homes, I needed another, over riding passion in my life, so I turned to my camera.  And I learned how to do the things I wanted to make it do...

The above photo is one of the results of my learning to set shutter speed, ISO, and other important settings.

It's also the result of many hours of patience, and hundreds of photos.  When photogs say "nice capture", they truly mean, this is a "capture".  It's like baiting a trap and waiting and waiting for results....at the perfectly correct moment, you pull the string, and you catch something!

In this photo, the parent bird came down with a bug who had long, flowing, string like appendages, I'm not sure what the bug was!  The baby caught one of the antenna of this bug, before the parent could get the bug into the babies mouth.  The parent knew the baby would lose the bug, if something didn't change, so she began to fly backward, tugging her head downward, to pull the bug from the babies mouth.  You can see that happening in this photo!

When the bug came loose, the parent made another swooping pass, coming into the bird house and plopping the bug firmly down the little bird's throat!  It was such an awesome thing to see, and an even more awesome moment to capture!

So you see, my artistic focus has changed, from painting images, to capturing them!  I think it's the basic hunter in me, coming to the fore.

I hope you've enjoyed this "capture" of the swallow, feeding her baby bird!

Feel free to comment, I love hearing from you.

And look for more Montana photos!

Birthday party for a one year old.

One of our great grandsons had his first birthday party on Saturday. He's such a good little guy, and he's full of action, so it was...