The sun comes up every day, of course. In my life, there have been close to 21,000 sunrises and sunsets. On a small fraction of those 21,000 days I have been out with my camera. And on those rare days that I have my camera, it is rarer still to have the luck of good timing and photogenic skies.But this was one one of those mornings.
Here's a thought: this bird is related to the common sparrows that are plentiful in South Dakota. The evolutionary difference between this colorful bird and a sparrow is the environment their ancestors developed in. In the case of the sparrow, there is plenty of brown.In the case of this Mexican bird, though, the tropics have much more color, such as Hawaiian shirts and colorful bikinis. It's all about blending in . . .
The prescription was a week of sailing on Lake Oahe and I gladly complied. My ailment? Nothing really, given that I have a good life.But being on my boat for a week is my meager excuse for ignoring my "Photo A Day" blog. I should have called it "A Photo Once and A While."(Thanks, Alexis, for scolding me into action.)Oh, and what you are looking at is birds in flight. And, as astute observers might notice, I have applied my favorite new Photoshop process, which is top secret for the time being.[smugbuy gallery="http://scottshephardphoto.smugmug.com/Fine-Art-Photography/Fine-Art/21122937_fHW9Lh"]
You probably get bored with my photos taken out of airplane windows. But I can't resist.
This is Deb, who is intense in everything she does - including searching for shells. A few minutes after I took this photo with my iPhone, I found an iPhone half buried in the sand. Really. A 3GS. Anyone missing an iPhone after a day at Huntington Beach in California?
We were somewhere over the Grand Canyon on our way to California when I took this with my iPhone.
This is another example of serendipity in a photo shoot. In the days before my photo session with Brian and Katie, I had imagined some of the photos I would like to take. Unfortunately, few of those worked the way I had planned.But I did manage to take a photo or two that were totally impromptu. One has already appeared here. And now here's another. I was getting my camera ready for something and one of our many assistants held out Katie's veil to straiten it and this is what I saw. I said, "Hold it!" and Katie stuck a pose.I rarely use on-camera flash but this photo needed it, since strong sunlight was coming from behind the subject.
This was taken early in the morning on the day we left beautiful Lake Bohinj in Slovenia. It was damp and quiet when I stepped out of the car to take this photo and the only sounds were or a few birds who were already up and working. And the drip of night rain from the branches and leaves of the trees.
Yes, this is my Ford F150 pickup truck. The story is that I was out taking photos of an old farm around sunrise and when I finished, I turned towards my truck and there it was, looking like an advertisement.And so I took this photo. I promise something better tomorrow, though it's hard to match the beauty of a pickup truck at sunrise.
I haven't posted a flower photo for a while so here you go. . .
Deb in I had a little extra time in a small town in Slovenia called Lesce Bled before our train was scheduled to leave for Vienna. We had coffee at a small cafe and then went exploring. This beautiful church was our best discovery.There were many things that struck me about this place. The first was that, though the church was unattended, it was also unlocked so that anyone had free access. But the most striking thing to me is that this church is only one of thousands that are scattered throughout many small towns of Europe. This church would have been this town's pride and joy when it was built. And I think it still is.
There are times when I take a photo that I can't wait to see what it looks like on a screen bigger than the one on the back of my camera. Such was this case with this and yesterday's photos.When I went out driving on this particular morning, I wasn't necessarily looking for a sunrise shot since I felt I had enough. Frankly, I was looking for silhouetted trees, though I had those, too. One has already been posted on this blog, but I thought I could do a better job.What distinguishes this photo, or course, isn't anything that I did. It's the amazing sky. And with sunrise shots like this, timing is everything.