“Art doesn’t just happen by accident. It is about pulling out new tricks and trying new things.”
(Nicholas Meyer)

  

Returning to work after taking a real, true break over the holidays combined with our wonky weather again limits the time I can spend working on my photography.  But I am bound and determined to put in more reasonable hours at the office this year and to continue to shoot every day.

Last week began with thoughts about the latest DGrin challenge and some bits of slantingly bright late afternoon light across the fireplace mantle reminded me of a still life I’d once considered but put on the “backup shot” list in favor of then-easily-accessible subjects.  Now, with scant shooting time during daylight hours and a wide open challenge theme, it seemed a good time to at least try it.

My camera will meld multiple images together to create just one so I decided to use that little tool to take this shot.   It’s a marvelous way to create images of fireworks but now each image had to fall onto exactly the same spot in each frame so it was a bit of work for me to get everything locked down solidly since my normal shooting style, even with the tripod, is to have everything very loose so I can move fast. 

After a couple of tries, I got it.  I also attempted using HDR post-processing to achieve the same effect since I’ve been wanting to play with that, but liked the in-camera merge much better.

 

It’s pretty and I got the light I wanted, yet I wasn’t entirely sure about the second candle (on the left) so decided to restage and reshoot the next day using only one.  After contemplating the results, during post-processing I carefully turned the reflection in the mirror into black and white in order to create a more specific focal point in the scene and help inject a sense of drama.

 

Nice and clear and nicely brooding.  But I wasn’t sold on either one for the contest.  The next day, a return to grey and gloomy daylight, I decided to once again try some HDR post-processing on a rather mundane, wee bit of perspective out in the backyard.  Once again, I didn’t like the results but I did like one of the images and again chose to do a bit of additional post-processing to desaturate parts of the image.  It’s a technique I like a lot but don’t use often unless, as especially in this case, it adds to the story element of what would be an otherwise bland and rather nondescript photograph.

 

I suppose it’s a good thing that my personal photography preference leans towards documentary instead of fine art; at this point I was starting to feel a little unfulfilled and antsy.  But I needn’t have worried; whoever it is that seems to think documenting the hawks and squirrels in the ‘hood is my prime directive decided to shift my jealously-guarded shooting time back to feathers and fur and so it was that on the one truly gloriously-lit morning of the week I ended up with some really beautiful photos of our local red-tailed hawk. 

 

This promptly became my choice for the contest.  It would eventually have some of the upper branches cloned out so as to simplify the focal point but to find every bit of clarity of which Matilda is capable ringing through delights me to the point of feeling vindicated in my persistent efforts to harness her considerable powers over the last year and a half.

Then the weather turned on us with a vengeance.  Another big storm began to brew and as if in some sort of pathetic consolation, the pace at work also picked up, pushing my Muse temporarily off to the side.  No sign of hawks, no time to wait for the furballs to perform any kind of unusual antics; I was left with just our very small and now very bleak landscape and to reflect it, went to black and white.

 

 

All day on Friday the snow came down.  First in fits and starts, then a steady stream of flakes accompanied by bitter cold.  The hawks continued to remain absent, but the furballs were out and foraging earnestly in case they’d have to hole up for a day or two.  Bob had dumped the last of the small gourds into the garden, and the weather apparently signalled the squirrels it was time to open them.  This provided me with some great photo ops, of course, but to my surprise, a crop of one photo down to an unintended focal point left me with what has surplanted the red-tailed hawk as my final choice for the challenge:

 

I could nitpick this image from a purely technical perspective, yet even when all the nits are summed up they do not seem to override its unique quality and subtle air of charming unexpectedness.  More snow and a cooperative model allowed a reshoot the next day and I got what I was after originally:

 

Although technically superior, the same emotional appeal seems to be lacking.  It doesn’t seem to tell a compelling story or perhaps it is simply missing the vague sense of urgency as is contained in the accidental version.  And it’s not just me.  The “accident” has received an unusually large number of (positive) comments from the daily photo community.

Who’da thunk it?

“This whole world is wild at heart and weird on top.”
(David Lynch)

    

An unusual year came to an unusual end.  Since I’m on vacation and, finally, for once actually behaving as if I’m on vacation, I slept in later than is the norm on New Year’s Eve and casually padded into the kitchen to get my first cup of coffee.  I took one sip, and then decided to take a peek out back.  I don’t know what possessed me to do so other than perhaps instinct, but I was rewarded with the sight of the young red-tailed hawk perched in a rather fine position in the big maple tree of the backyard next door.  And it was a splendidly clear morning with warm, early light beaming down brightly.

There was nothing else to do except grab Matilda and position her next to the window in order to guarantee getting at least one good shot since that early in the day the hawks are usually actively hunting and my stepping outside is cause for them to move on in search of more readily accessible prey.  And to be honest, the angle from the window was perhaps better than I’d get outside since the hawk was sitting amidst a lot of sticks.

I opened the window and fired away.  The hawk was undisturbed by this so having at least a good daily photo I donned my best Southpark attire and headed outside to try for more (and maybe even better).  It was worth the effort.  Turns out the hawk wasn’t going anywhere and I was able to get a great vantage point on it and snag some excellent shots using low ISO and a perfect f-stop.

My original intention and what would be my daily photo was catching the red-tail in the middle of a blink:

 

It seemed so serendipitious since it was, after all, New Year’s Eve and 2008 had blown past in what seemed the blink of an eye.  But I was unprepared for what happened next.  I thought the hawk was about to launch into flight so steadied the camera.  Instead of flying off, however, it looked to be only trying to empty its crop:

 

And sure enough, emptying its crop was its intention, all right.  However, it didn’t warn me it was about to empty the contents of its stomach, too!

 

Only one word came to mind.  Ick!!!  And then, just like any properly goofy youngster, it shamelessly let out what looked for all intents and purposes like one big, final belch:

 

With such a show, I was half surprised I didn’t actually hear something.  Of course, the hawk was then quite pleased with itself and I’m sure that getting rid of the undigestible bits of whatever it had eaten did feel much better.  I considered going next door to examine the pellet and see if I could determine what it had eaten, but it was cold, I didn’t want to bother my neighbor, and part of me was afraid I’d find it had feasted on one of the furballs so decided to postpone such exploration until later.

The young hawk continued to pose prettily, looking at me in sweet innocence, as if to say, “I didn’t do anything weird, lady!”

 

By now, I’d filled the card on the camera so brought Matilda in and went upstairs to pull off the photographs.  While there, I took a peek out of one of the 2nd-floor windows and the unusual events of the morning were apparently not yet finished, for there, suddenly, on the other side of the big maple tree from the young red-tail, was perched the adult Cooper’s hawk!  It was most decidedly a very rare occurrence for both these predators to be sitting in the same tree so I raced downstairs and grabbed the other camera, mounted the next-largest lens onto it, and promptly flew back out the door.  By the time I got there, though, the young red-tail was taking off.  As I watched, an even rarer scene then began to unfold in front of my surprised eyes – the adult Cooper’s hawk chased the young red-tail out of its territory! 

I watched as the red-tail tried to maneuver through the trees; at first it seemed to be thinking simply reperching in another tree would be enough.  But red-tails are nowhere near as nimble as the Coop, who is by design adapted to chase and catch smaller birds as they attempt to tuck themselves inside the safety of branches, so with the Coop staying so close on its tail, after making effectively a large, deep circle through the neighboring backyards, the red-tail had no choice but to finally lift and head out towards more open space in order to get away.

The adult Cooper returned not long afterwards, giving me only a stick-picking ID kind of shot of it.  But to have seen it in fast flight, hard on the tail of the red-tail hawk was enough.  It was surely quite the spectacular ending to this rather incredible year of up-close-and-personal encounters with our urban raptors.

“In wisdom gathered over time I have found that every experience is a form of exploration.”
(Ansel Adams)

 

The 12 days of Christmas have now come and gone, and while most folks spent them hunting for stuff to put into boxes, I instead followed my plan to get out of my box as much as possible and have to say now that the figurative stretching felt really good.  Under an unusual blessing of deep snow that the more stereotypical cold Christmas Eve rains could not bring to a full surrender of a rare and true White Christmas, I found it both pleasingly challenging and somewhat frustrating to try to capture the holiday spirit.  Not only the technical challenges of shooting at night when the artic blast that overstayed its welcome like a bad guest caused everything to freeze within moments, but simply finding suitable subjects was hard; likely due to the horrible economic conditions there were far fewer displays of the seasonal revelry than in years past. 

But I think I managed to “make do” well enough.  My first attempt was to head out for a short walk in the bitter evening air to tackle a polar bear, one of a pair that graces the front steps of a house in the front of the Woods:

 

The next day the big, bad, wicked winter storm arrived in earnest and travel, even on foot, was a treacherous and foolhardy idea.  But I was lucky enough to snag the elusive adult Cooper’s hawk right in our own backyard:

 

A brief lull in the storm the next night allowed for a quick trip out to tackle one of the sights that was, in large part, the inspiration for my little project:

 

I ended up going back the next evening in order to catch all the lights turned on.  By this time, the single-digit temperature and a wind chill that pushed that temperature down into double negative digits required serious bundling up for the short walk.  It was a hoot, for it had been years since I’d ventured out resembling one of the kids on Southpark.  As an adult, even when out skiing in -20° weather my winter attire was more, shall we say, fashionably streamlined.  (The difference being, of course, your blood circulates a lot faster to keep you warm when you’re moving, unlike the stillness required to take photographs.  This also put a new pair of Really Serious winter boots on my list.) 

 

We awoke the next morning to be greeted by some much-welcome sunshine.  The morning light was thrilling, energizing and brilliant but the wicked wind continued to blow fiercely, warning everyone to stay put.  So it was only brief forrays into the backyard for me.  And for the wild residents.  I found my littlest wild fox squirrel friend waiting patiently for me to arrive with her foodstuffs, trying her best to bravely soak in some of the sunshine as the driving wind beat at her with drifting snow:

 

The starlings have returned en masse and while their lack of manners at the feeders is the bane of my existence, they are beautiful birds and so one high up in the pine tree gulping snow became my daily photo:

 

As hard as I try to avoid going out during the last, frenzied holiday shopping days, errands could not be postponed forever, so I took full advantage of the early darkness for some daily shoots, using the partially-opened window of the Jeep as a makeshift tripod.  It is testament to why I so love my Wrangler that the engine runs so smoothly I could keep it on and therefore stay warm while shooting:

 

On Christmas Eve morn the frigid arctic front finally started to move on and the more normal Michigan holiday season rains finally began.  The red-tailed hawk had been making daily appearances and, after having to be content with mostly stick-picking, to my surprise it glided into the trees in our backyard and actually stayed put for a while.  I had to don a rain poncho and cover Matilda, but even so, by the time I finished the shoot, I was as sodden as the hawk with jeans wet nearly to my knees from standing and then jumping around in the snow.  (I’ll leave it to your imagination and likely one of Bob’s blogs to picture my attempts to encourage the hawk to move on when the squirrels and I had finally had our fill of its menacing presence.)

 

On Christmas Day I prepared a delectable herb-crusted pork roast, Bob cleaned while I set a festive holiday table then picked up my mother, and the three of us happily ate our Selves into a very merry little stupor.  After I took my mother home I stopped to take the last daily photograph on my list, as I’d planned it:

 

And so at last came the Morning After and The End:

 

Now that these self-made “12 Days” are over, I look back and am very glad I set a goal with this project.  I feel as if I’ve accomplished something more with my photography, and certainly there has been learning with each day’s attempts.  Learning that will be put to good use in the days ahead.

Merry, indeed.