Auto ISO do I like it or not?

Grain bins on the Montana prairie. They kind of looked like little hats sitting up there on a hill. That cloudy sky set them off to perfection. I took this photo last night. Most of the time, I use all manual settings on my camera. Sometimes I miss a shot because I don't have time to change settings as the situation or the light changes.  Last night, I decided to use auto ISO and change f stops and shutter speed as needed. I didn't miss any shots, as far as exposure goes, but I did have to lighten most shadows. I will now have to master exposure compensation. In this hobby of photography, I sure have a lot to learn.

I took this photo last night, using auto ISO also. It was fairly close in exposure although I did lighten shadows again. The golden light was beautiful and made these ordinary looking trees shine!

This photo was from last night also. The light was gorgeous, and streaked the land with warm and cool tones.  I did adjust color vibrance and lighten shadows to create what I saw when I took this photo.

I took this photo Christmas Day. I think this moment was our Christmas present! It was wonderful to see these rams connect with such force. I was using all manual settings that day.

This is another photo from Christmas Day.The ram and ewe were in the cool light shadows of the forest floor. 

Not sure if I like this photo. I thought if I placed it here, it might help me decide. It seems very blah to me. It still seems that way even after I see it here. What do you think?

So on the topic of auto ISO I guess I will keep that setting on my camera. It does help a lot to keep from totally missing a shot. At least the ISO was close enough, that it only took a small adjustment in Lightroom to correct the photos.

Do you like using auto ISO? Do you use manual settings on your camera?

We have Montana photos of landscapes and wildlife on our website. Come on over and check it out! Affordable images for your home.

Photo trip to Freezout Wildlife Game Management area.

Our bison, published in Montana Outdoors, photo issue this year. The magazine is out on the stands now. I feel so honored to be a part of that issue.

I took this photo during a snowstorm, so far the only one we've had this winter! It's the grass and willow branches along the Sun River, at the Largent Bend Fishing Access site.

This looks like a funny bug but it was debris caught in the willow branches after the flood. It has snow on it's back here. I loved the way it looks like there are legs sticking out in all directions.

This is looking toward Ear Mountain from south of Choteau, Montana. A storm was brewing over the mountains. That was a fascinating bank of clouds.

The same cloud bank from a new angle, I was east of Choteau when I took this one.

Love these yucca weeds when they're all dried out. 

We've had 50 degree weather for most of this winter so far. It seems odd to go out without a coat, and be warm in January. The country is very dry, I hope we get more snow before long.

Donna

Montana Photos Today

As I was driving along a country road, I spotted tracks in the snow along side the road, then I saw a gopher plowing through snow and he disappeared. I stopped the car, got out with the camera and walked along to where his trail disappeared into the snow.

I stood there facing a canal bank wondering if the gopher would come out, so I gave a sharp whistle. I waited and he returned my whistle! I thought give him a few seconds and he'll pop his head out of the snow and I'd better be ready. Sure enough, out he came, and I clicked the shutter.

I thought he was really cute, peeking out of the snow like that, looking me right in the eye.

A little further down the road, this horse was sound asleep in the bright sunshine. He doesn't even know we're looking at him right now.

This horse was far from asleep, he was standing at attention!

This holstein steer had a bad dehorn job at some time in his life.  Sometimes a horn grows weird like this when dehorning paste is used, or when the person running the dehorn tool doesn't get a deep enough grab on the young horns. The lopsided horn gave him rakish look.

I have a hard time catching pheasants with my camera, today I got lucky. He didn't run before I got the photo!

Hope you enjoyed this little group of pictures from my travels today!

Donna

Isn't this rabbit cute?  He came out from under the post pile at the ranch to chew on some grass and I took his photograph.  He posed so well!

 One of the foals at the ranch had such a beautiful mane.  There's nothing so soft as baby fuzz on a foal.  And do you see the perfect cheerio circle there at the top of his forelock, next to his left ear?

These two are some of the older horses on my cousins' ranch.  Bunch and Murphy.  They spend many hours in summer, just scratchin' and being scratched.

We went to the ranch to clean the calving barns.  We always take our four wheelers and this year, my son met us there, so we had the added bonus of his delightful company.  We went fishing, took a tour of Swift Dam, had some great meals with friends and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly!

You can find these and other photos in Donna Ridgway's Gallery of Photography and Art on Red Bubble.  My Red Bubble gallery is a place where you can purchase my images in cards, giclee prints and a few t-shirts.  Their prices are friendly and shopping is easy!  You can also include framing with your orders.

I hope you're staying cool this summer...
Donna

A Few Birds

In this photo, I fell in love with the blue coloring and the patterns formed by the tree branches.  It has so much rhythm and movement, it's like watching Dance with the Stars.

I was sitting in my little blind along the Sun River when these ducks came floating by.  I sat and watched them for quite a while.  I took a few photos, and they didn't notice me at first.  Finally, one of the ducks became uneasy.  I don't know why, I think the noise of my camera shutter  got to him.  When he took off, the other duck went into panic mode also.  It's awesome to see them walking on water before they actually take to the air.

This is the goose I call Heman.   He's very masculine.  Totally protective of his mate.  He's putting on a display here, showing the other geese how powerful he is.  I think they were properly impressed!

This is one of the yard birds in the cottonwood tree in front of our house.  They're colorful and cheery.  This time of year, they're hungry and it takes a lot of sunflower seeds to keep them happy.  We decided they're worth it.

As always, if you'd like to purchase a photo for your home, or a gift for a friend, click Donna Ridgway's gallery.  Shopping is secure and easy, you can purchase one card or 50, prints on paper or canvas, framed or unframed.  If you'd like to see a photo there, I haven't uploaded, just let me know and I an add it to that site.

I hope you're having a wonderful day!  Spring is almost here in Montana and we're enjoying a day of sunshine.

Donna

Conversation with an Osprey

 Purchase Conversation with an Osprey

Osprey: I’m a little bashful, talking to you like this, you’re not my usual choice of companion…
Me: I know, I’m invading your world, but I won’t hurt you.
Osprey: Ok, then I won’t hurt you either, I could you know- my talons are strong, and my wings are powerful.
Me: I appreciate your strength, but I’ve only come to admire your beauty, and enjoy your resourcefulness. Look at the way you raise your children in that nest you’ve built!
Osprey: Yes, it is a beautiful home, isn’t it? I placed every item myself, with the help of my mate. And look at my kids, they’re almost ready to fly. It won’t be long after that, they’ll be hunting on their own, I can’t believe how fast they’ve grown..seems it was only yesterday they were eggs…
Me: My kids are grown, they left home a long time ago…I miss them.
Osprey: Sigh…yes it’s lonely when they fly the nest, and then I worry about them. I’m afraid they’ll try to eat a rattlesnake before it’s totally dead, or they’ll hit the water to hard when they try to catch a fish.
Not to change the subject, but what’s that black thing in your hands? And why does it click like that?
Me: This is my camera, it clicks when I catch an image of you. It sees you, the way I see you, but the picture of you stays, it doesn’t fade like memory does. It shows how wide your wings spread, the color of your eyes, it shows your black feet, and I can use this photo to show other people how beautiful you are!
Osprey: Cool! How do you think they’ll like this pose?

I hope you're enjoying Montana photos by Donna Ridgway! :)

"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.

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!

Montana photo shoot, Arpril 6, 08, continued.

"Rack and Ruin"
This grand old barn is falling in......has lost it's stately dignity.....it's earthly usefulness is long gone.

"Right Angle"
I live the way your eye travels up this bush, and is forced to make an abrupt right to the graceful swoop of snow drift sculpture.

"The traditional Montana Meadowlark"
I've longed to capture the meadow lark on the post for a while, they've been illusive to my camera. Yesterday, we hit it lucky for not only is this one your perfect example, I also like the line of the fence and the pattern of the weeds.

"Montana Meadowlark"
Here's another version of this bird. I liked the way this fellow was turned toward me, curious, before he flew away.

The Owl
It's not ordinary to see an owl out hunting on a day such as this one was. The sun was awesomely bright, and light reflected and bounced off the snow, until it hurt my eyes! But when you look at this owl in very close up detail, on the enlarged, original, photo, you can see his pupils are very tiny.

Once again, I hope you're enjoying the photos from yesterdays' Montana photoshoot.
Donna and Robert Ridgway

Montana Photos, My new website, wildlife, horses, scenery.

I love taking photos of dogs in pickups. They exhibit all kinds of doggie behaviour. This one has such wistful longing for his master to return. He hates sitting there, guarding the truck, feeling self conscious. This is a very "doggie" moment, captured forever with the camera.

The line these mule deer created on a hillside interested my creative mind. I liked their path in the snow, and the way their dark shapes followed it.

This little group of mule deer, trotting through the snow was cute. I liked their single minded determination and sense of purpose.

Echoes of the past...an abandoned grain drill.

Here we go again, another version of the dog in the pickup.
These crows almost got us killed. Robert spotted them and they were about to take off in flight. He slammed on the brakes so hard, while yelling, "Look, Look, Look!" We get so excited when we see some critters, we loose all sense of logic or thought of where we are. The guy behind us will agree with that.... Thank God he was an alert and defensive driver. We'll do much better next time.

I have been working away for days, creating a photo site from the thousands of photos we take. I realize in all sensibility, I can not paint them all. And for goodness sake, why should I? Some of these images stand alone, they don't need to be turned into paintings!

On the other hand, I also realize there are many artists out there who can not spend the time or don't have the camera it takes to get images for their paintings. So I've also created a photo reference site for artists' use. If you're an artist, check it out and see if there are photos there you can use.

Sales have been brisk and hopeful at this point and the site has only been live a little while. I also have a page, where I'm placing links to artist's sites-if the artist has used my reference photos, and if he/she wishes to be placed there. I do charge $5 one time fee to place the link as I need a little something for the time it takes me to do the work. But this will give you a good SEO link to your site.

I'll include an image of one of the paintings you created from a ref photo on the site if you wish.

The ordering system is basic. Email me with the jpg numbers you'd like to use for reference photos. I'll send you a paypal invoice for the amount. When I receive payment, I'll email you the images. The jpgs you receive will be aprox 3000X2000 pixels and 180 dpi so make certain your email can receive the images before I send them.

In our photo shoot yesterday, we got very close up to the meadowlarks, an owl, an eagle who flew over, swooped low, and took a good look at us (we have that on film!) cattle drinking from a river, some nice horse photos, many photos of mule deer, the dogs in the pickup, some cute spring calves and other things. We had a good snowstorm here, so the photos are all of the snow, so that was fun for us, as we've not had snow for quite a while.

I'll be uploading the photo shoot later on today, hope you enjoy our Montana photo site.
Donna and Robert Ridgway

Montana nature photo, storm on the mountain.

In some of my photos below this post, you'll see horses covered in snow. This was the storm that snowed on them. We were high on the mountain watching the beginnings of the storm move in when I took this photo.

I've spent hours alone in the mountains, watching storms come across the earth. I put on some Carhardts and my outback duster and sit under a big tree, watching the first of the snowflakes falling. There is no other quiet in the world like you own when you're in a place like this.

Most people avoid being here at a time like this, so you aren't bothered by chatter. The animals have gone to shelter so you don't see much wildlife...you have the most wonderful alone there is.

As a word of caution, I don't go unprepared into the mountains. Now that I have Robert to share these adventures with, I'm glad he believes the same as I do about carrying food and gear. We take plenty and try to plan for emergencies that could arise.

He spent so much time in the mountains, logging, he knows when to use caution, and when to go on. Yesterday, we were in the Yukon, which doesn't plow through deep snow very well. We had a hard time deciding, when we hit the first big snow drifts, if we should go on or turn around and go home. Sometimes we dare each other to go on, other times, we listen to a strong instinct and turn around. Yesterday was one one of those "instinct" times.

We turned around and left the high country. Before we got down to the first cattle guard, the snow was falling thick and fast...if we'd gone on, we'd have had to use all our food and equipment before we got back down the mountain! We might have been there a long time....

I guess that's part of why we go, when you're in a position of making decisions of grave importance, it adds spice to live that isn't there in day to day living.

If you click this photo, you'll see a larger version, if you order the photo, the copyright notice doesn't appear on your photo.
Donna Ridgway

Email Meif you have questions, or want to inquire about purchasing a painting.

Remember, you can find horse art, Western art, Mule and Donkey art
wildlife art, cow art, and animal paintings, for sale on my website.

Montana Nature photos, deer jumping.

Imagine these little jumpers, one on either side of the large mirror in your living room!

These fawns were 2007 babies, still following their mom, who had jumped the creek, then jumped the fence. As I was clicking away with my camera to capture the action, I caught one of them preparing to jump the creek and one preparing to jump the fence.

I flipped the photo of the one jumping the fence so they faced each other. If you click on the photos, you'll see a larger version. I had posted the fawn jumping the creek with my post yesterday, but decided these guys were so cute, they needed their very own post! So I edited yesterday's post, took the fawn out of the line up, and put him here.

Here's mom, trying to coax her children across the creek...

It's such a high to get out in the country to find wildlife, and watch them doing the things they do. I loved the way this doe coaxed her babies not only over the creek, but also over the fence, to join her in the next field. She didn't make many noises, as the deer sometimes do, she just used body language and they understood!

Part of the joy Robert and I find in chasing down photos like these, is the fun of sharing them. We hope you're enjoying what we found for you yesterday...
Donna and Robert Ridgway

Email Meif you have questions, or want to inquire about purchasing a painting.

Remember, you can find horse art, Western art, Mule and Donkey art
wildlife art, cow art, and animal paintings, for sale on my website.

Montana photo, west of Augusta. "Storm Coming In"

This is one of the photos from yesterday that I especially liked. When you look at it, you can feel the cold, harsh, climate we sometimes have. I liked the stark, simple, beauty in this scene.

I believe if you click on this photo, you'll see a larger image. My copyright notice won't appear on your photo.

This photo can be ordered on canvas, gallery wrap, or on paper as a print. Email me if you'd like to have it in your home.
Donna Ridgway
Email Me if you have questions, or want to inquire about purchasing a painting.

Remember, you can find horse art, Western art, Mule and Donkey art
wildlife art, cow art, and animal paintings, for sale on my website.

Montana nature photos. Wildlife, scenery.

This pair of geese nest on this haystack each year. We look for them every spring.




It was snowing hard and fast when we saw these horses. I can't wait to do some paintings of them. I liked the groupings of horses that occurred as they moved around the field. The wind was blowing and my hands were frozen by the time I decided I had enough photos!




We drove as far up Willow Creek as we could go. When the drifts got deep, we had to turn around and come back. As it began to snow really hard, we decided we'd better come back down off the mountain, but it certainly felt good to be there again, even if it was for a little while.




Hope you enjoyed today's photo shoot as much as we did!

Photos are for sale, with double mats and in a clear bag, for $40.
Donna Ridgway