Scratcher of heads, rubber of bellies
This was a rare hike I took my big 500mm with me, but thankfully I shot the hoary marmot with a couple of other lenses too as I like this environmental portrait in front of the massive mountain. Sadly it was my last trip to Mount Rainier but it was a great visit.
📷: Canon 7D | Canon 100-400mm
🗓️: September 22, 2014
Raindrops accumulate on the head of a red-winged blackbird on a damp day in the Pacific Northwest. Brings back a lot of memories of finding a favorite spot on the auto tour at Ridgefield, rolling down the windows, and reveling in the rain. I didn’t know it at the time but this was my penultimate visit before we left Oregon.
📷: Sony A6500 | Canon 500mm | Canon 1.4X
🗓️: October 1, 2017
As arctic conditions grip the desert with overnight lows in the 40’s and 50’s, a throwback to a cold New Year’s Day in 2011 when I was watching a bittern work a frozen channel on the auto tour at Ridgefield. Unfortunately for the vole living its best life in the tall grasses, a bittern neither knocks nor cares if you answer. In some ways they remind me of roadrunners here in the desert, both relentless hunters with diverse palettes relying on surprise, the bitterns via stealth, roadrunners via speed.
📷: Canon 7D | Canon 100-400mm
🗓️: January 1, 2011
The water at Ridgefield didn’t freeze very often but I loved being there when it did, this raccoon was using its newfound capability of walking on water to move about Bower Slough. When it reached the edge where the water hadn’t frozen, after testing the ice it backed up and scrambled up the embankment and continued its hunt on dry land.
📷: Canon 7D | Canon 500mm f/4
Date: January 2, 2011
Another one for the “I Take It You Trust Me” collection, three eyes in the back of the head of a male kestrel. Taken on the auto tour at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge, I loved how close you could watch the animals without disturbing them, this little falcon was cleaning his feathers. I see kestrels more often in the desert surprisingly enough but I’ll never see them this close again. Leastwise not until I’m 50 feet tall, I’m doing my stretches but no progress to report.
📷: Canon 7D | Canon 500mm | Canon 1.4X
Date: January 2, 2011
Another reason to mourn the end of our preposterous summers is it marks the end of swimming season for someone who doesn’t like to be cold. I’m not sure what the water temperature is right now since the string on the thermometer broke but I did just take this picture of the pool so …
A buffet of barnacles and limpets for a hungry sea star, with a subtle reflection in the tide pool below. It could just have well been a portrait of me as a child visiting the city pool where my grandma lived that had a high dive, I’d probably still be up there trying to convince myself to jump if not for the social pressure of knowing other people were waiting behind me.
Thousands of years ago a visiting Cyclops commemorated their love of the Pacific Northwest by crafting a self-portrait, the only known example still in existence today. I had the pleasure of photographing it in 2013 and was surprised by how delicate and fragile it was given the powerful force that created it, suggesting Homer’s portrayal of the Cyclopes as ignorant brutes in The Odyssey was little more than slander.
Some more pictures from 2013, this time of a female northern harrier hunting for Townsend’s voles in the big meadow at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge.
While editing old photos like this male bufflehead at Rest Lake in 2013, I was struck by how different my photography life is now compared to then. I took this with my monstrous Canon 500mm super-telephoto, on Ridgefield’s auto tour the size and weight weren’t an issue and I loved how it magnified even the dinky divers and other small creatures. Back then it was my most used lens but I’ve rarely used it since moving to Arizona, I hike with it on occasion where I have a specific target in mind but for most hikes I stick with my beloved and much lighter Sony 100-400mm.
I’ll be upgrading my telephoto system soon since it’s the only part of my gear that can’t do focus bracketing, the big Canon will get traded in once I decide if I should stick with Sony or go all-in with Nikon. I bought it in 2006 for $5500, a heart-stopping price at the time but I got my money’s worth out of this one.
Boolie 