photoartflightMute Swans Swimming In Gull Pond
Posted on January 11, 2021
On our recent trip to the Brigantine Division of the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge in Oceanville, NJ we saw 2 groups of a pair Mute Swans. They usually do not stay around this long as it gets colder this time of year. One pair were in Gull Pond by the 2 way section of the Wildlife Drive and the other pair were in the water by the end of the Wildlife Drive in Doughey Creek. It was fun to see and be able to photograph them swimming in the waters at Gull Pond. I was not able to photograph them at the end of the Drive because so many cars were blocking the view of them waiting to photograph them so we just drove past the cars to go through the Wildlife Drive again.
Snow Geese 30 Image Panorama From Brigantine
Posted on January 3, 2021
We decided at the spur of the moment to take a trip in state to the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, Brigantine Division. We thought that concentrating on just driving & photographing on the Wildlife Drive we would not be close to any others visiting there. We were surprised how many people were there, but it was fun to get out and photograph again. It was a Great Day and was fun to take your mind off Covid-19. The cloud formations were Great in the am and there were quite a few birds to photograph. I was mainly looking for large flocks of Snow Geese to photograph. Usually they are in multiple groups in the water scattered along the Drive and flying around the Refuge. But on this day they were mainly only in 2 very large groups quite far out along the Drive and not flying through the Refuge. Except 1 or 2 that flew by far out in the distance. So on the one large group I decided to shoot a panorama that turned out to be 30 images shot with a Tamron 150-600mm @ 600mm on a Canon 1D mkIV, handheld. I wished I had used the Canon R instead for finer detail, but I was using that with a Wide zoom lens.
Immature Black-Crowned Night Heron
Posted on May 16, 2020
I found this Immature Black-Crowned Night-Heron hidden in the shade along the trees off Wildlife Drive at J.N. Ding Darling NWR. I was using a 100-400mm lens @400mm. Luckily it did not go deeper into the trees as another one did that was next to it.
Waving Great Blue Heron
Posted on April 3, 2020
We were setup on the Wildlife Drive at this popular spot at J.N. Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge. It is a fairly wide open area with sandbars where birds tend to land and flock to. Plus a lot of activity in the water around it. A lot of people also fish here so it gets very crowded for photographers! Sometimes there are up to 40 or more people here photographing the birds. This Great Blue almost looks like it is waving to us. I also liked the Cormorant swimming by in the background. Image taken @800mm.
Cattle Egrets In Breeding Plumage
Posted on March 3, 2020
I am still going through older images and cleaning up my backup hard drives. The images here are from a older trip to the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge in Oceanville NJ. We noticed a few Cattle Egrets in breeding plumage. Usually we do not see Cattle Egrets here, so it was fun to photograph them. The featured image is one on the top of a small tree along the start of the Wildlife Drive. The other images are from various locations further along the Wildlife Drive. All images are @ 800mm using a 400mm DO lens with a 2X teleconverter.
Cattle Egret in Grasses along Wildlife Drive
Cattle Egret Flyby @ 800mm
Tree Top Cattle Egret @ 800mm
Osprey Nests On Platforms At J.N. Ding Darling NWR
Posted on August 10, 2019
As we were driving on the Wildlife Drive at the J.N. Ding Darling NWR, we noticed the Osprey Platform was occupied. If you had a long lens and got fairly far down the road you could get some interesting images of them on the nest. The first few images were from closeby, looking more up at the nest. You can see they were looking at us. But I did not like how the nests looked messy and did not like the angle.
Closeup, Different Day
Views of different nest from farther away, along the Wildlife Drive. The nest looks cleaner and has nicer sky and more of a side view.
Brigantine Early Morning Landscape
Posted on February 19, 2019
We went to the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, Brigantine Division to see what we could find to photograph. In the early morning the clouds were amazing and made for interesting photo opportunities. It started out with darker looking somber clouds then brightened up as the morning went on. The featured image was shot @ 12mm on a Canon Camera. The series of clouds over the Wildlife Drive below were shot with a m43 format camera @14mm. When doing panoramas with wide angle lenses on a m43 format camera you need to overlap your images for the panorama a lot more. It is better to have more to choose from than not have enough. It seems if you have too few frames you tend to get some strange distortions (at least using Photoshop to assemble) in the blending of the images.
12mm Clouds & Sun image along Wildlife Drive with Atlantic City on the horizon in the distance.
9 image (Horizontal) panorama, 14mm, (28mm Full Frame FOV) m43 Olympus
6 vertical image panorama, @14mm m43 Olympus
2 image panorama, 14mm m43 Olympus
7 vertical image horizontal panorama, 14mm, m43 Olympus
Multi-image panorama with dark clouds earlier in the am, 14mm, m43 Olympus
Clouds over Wildlife Drive, Single image, 14mm m43 Olympus
Snow Geese Flight At Noon
Posted on February 12, 2019
As we were wandering around the Blackwater NWR looking for photo subjects I saw these Snow Geese taking off, but stayed low close to the water. The sun was really bright on the water so the white Snow Geese sort of disappeared against the bright reflections in the water, but I still liked the Snow Geese that stood out against the darker tree line.
Blackwater Bald Eagles
Posted on January 20, 2019
On our photo trip to Blackwater NWR we were hoping to see a lot of Eagles. Winter is when they have the largest concentrations of Bald Eagles, so we were hoping for the best. We saw quite a few in the distance but not many close by. I saw one on the ground across from pool 3a, looking around with some feathers around so I assume it had a meal. This Eagle then flew into a nearby tree. Then, I believe the mate, joined him. This Eagle was on a snag in the water, on the other side of the Wildlife Drive. They were now a little closer, but I still needed to change my 1.4x teleconverter to a 2x to get even closer. Then I got my tripod and stacked the 1.4x teleconverter with the 2x teleconverter to try to get even closer. I was using a Canon 1D MkIV with a 1.3x crop factor (from full frame DSLRs) so with this combination I had a field of view equivalent to 1120mm @ f/11 wide open, so I stopped down to f/16 & f /22 for a series of shots to see what I could get sharpness wise. Luckily my subjects cooperated and were fairly static movement wise. It was a somewhat dull day so I had to up my ISO more than I like to use. They cooperated for quite a while and they attracted quite a few other photographers, so we moved on.
High Flight Of Snow Geese At Blackwater NWR
Posted on January 2, 2019
We went for 2 days to photograph at the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge in Cambridge, Maryland. Early in the morning, along the Wildlife Drive on the second day we saw a huge flock of Snow Geese flying out under a heavy cloud cover. They were quite high and took a few minutes for the waves of them to pass by. Probably 500 to 700 (or more) passed by in multiple waves.
14-140mm lens @ 14mm with Olympus OMD Mk1
