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Thursday, April 15, 2010

Raptors

Editing of my raptor shoot is now complete!  It sure takes a lot longer to process images when I only have nap times to work, but that's ok!  I had a great shoot last weekend and got a ton of shots.  I only wish it had been a bit overcast so that I didn't get such harsh shadows.  Overall, lots of fun though!  I think the barn owls are my favourite:)  To me they always look like they're smiling! 

I use my ol' Nikkor 75-300mm lens when I'm shooting birds.  It's an old push/pull lens but it does the trick and is sharper than my newer Sigma lens of the same focal length (which I have now sold because I never used it).  If I had the money I would definitely buy a nice big, fast lens, but for now I'll make due with what I have.

Here are some of the shots, feel free to let me know what you think!

If you want to see the rest please go to my site: http://emilymacdonald.weebly.com/raptors.html

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Raptor Shoot

I had a wonderful raptor shoot yesterday so I will upload the pics once I have them processed!  Have I mentioned how much I love birds of prey?!?!  They are so majestic!  And, my camera loves them too heehee!

P.S.  The whale from the previous post sadly died of starvation:(

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Grey Whale

A grey whale washed up on shore out in Sooke over the past weekend, so of course I had to go take a look. It's not very often, if at all, you get the chance to get up and close with one of these giants.  It was sad to see one dead, especially one so young, but it was a great learning experience.  There's still some discussion between the biologists as to what caused the juvenile male's death, but one of the more prominent theories is that he was attacked by orcas.  He has big parallel gashes on his body that are the calling signs of orca bites.  Although I can't help but wonder why they didn't finish the job?  Apparently there was a grey whale spotted in the area over the past 12 days...my guess is that he was sick, but obviously I'm no expert.

There were lots of kids out there looking at him.  Two school busses over the couple of hours I was there and tons of parents with children.  If my daughter was in school, I would have pulled her out to go there.  It was really neat seeing the baleen close up and all the barnacles on his body.  I heard some kids say his skin felt like plastic, but I didn't touch him.


It was hard to get any good shots since it was so busy down there, but here are some of the ones I did get: