A huge brings wildlife photography to new levels – As long as I had a clear line of sight to my subject, I was able to make a great image using Canon’s 800mm F/5.6L IS lens. Some of the birds were at quite a distance, such as this Belted Kingfisher:

This Kingfisher was in a far-off corner of the wetland, carefully watching the waters below it. I snapped the photo when it looked up for a moment. I decided on my evening trip, to wait until sunset when the Cedar Waxwings appeared:

Such beautiful birds to capture full-frame in my viewfinder. The above photo was taken with 800mm + 1.4x extender, manual focus, hand-held. Technically a difficult shot to get, and I was astounded by the quality. Check out the other images below!

Just wanted to let everyone know about some upcoming courses I’m teaching – the soonest being Macro Photography, starting Monday September 19th.

The course is a lot of fun, and you don’t need any special equipment to take a lot away from it. I cover the equipment you need (far less than you might expect), the challenges, subjects, lighting, everything. From Green Sweat Bees (Agapostemon angelicus) like the one above and other insects, to snowflakes, water droplets, flowers, abstracts, etc.

Its a night course at Georgian College Barrie campus, 7-10PM on Mondays (sept 19, 26, Oct 3) with a six-hour daytime outing on Saturday October 1st. No prerequisites, anyone can sign up. CRN 15189, $132.00.

Link to Macro Photography course description + Signup

Only basic camera knowledge is necessary, and we’ll take it from there. The more you know however, the more you’ll understand immediately. Currently I have 5 students, and it won’t run with this few – I need about 7 or so before the course will run. Tell your friends! “Like” this post too if you can, it always helps.

(Also upcoming: Nature & Landscape Photography, October 24-November 12)

As promised in my previous post, here is a selection of wildlife shots taken with the monster 800mm lens that Canon lent me for a few days. Probably my favourite is this group of turtles, photographed from the other side of the marsh:

At first, I noticed two turtles and got excited, set up the camera and by the time I was ready to get the perfect shot… there were three! So, I waited the better part of an hour, photographing them all the while. Eventually six showed up! And just my luck, some of the nearby construction equipment started making terrible noise that got the attention of the turtles and most of them put their heads up to see if there was any danger. Click!

Here’s another good one of a young muskrat. I watched it swim about for a while, pulling up bits of underwater roots and taking them back to a hole in the embankment. I’m guessing that was its new home. A bit of patience and I was able to snap this shot:

There’s a few more in the gallery below – check them out! Also, I have a set of bird photos taken with this lens, and there are definitely some good ones. Check back for them!

Last week was fantastic. My family on my dad’s side all traveled about an hour north of Sudbury to Onaping Lake for a vacation / family reunion. Onaping Lake was the location of my grandparent’s cottage for many years, and it is also the resting place of my father. It was amazing to be back there for a relaxing and fun visit.

Canon let me test-drive a few lenses for that week, one of which was absolutely perfect for night landscapes. This is probably the best image from the entire week:

Taken from the dock of the cottage that we were staying in. The light you see on the horizon is not from sunrise or sunset, but rather light pollution bouncing off of the bottom of a cloud (likely from Levack). The light was so faint that it was pretty much invisible to the naked eye, but the camera picked it up nicely.

Another favourite activity when camping is sitting around the campfire. I’ve always been mesmerized by campfire and love the great conversations that happen around one. Recently, I’ve taken to looking to the sky on these nights to see the beauty in the stars that I rarely ever see living in a city:

The trees are lit almost exclusively by the light of the campfire; The milky way jumps right out. That might even be a faint trace of the Northern Lights in the bottom right of the image.

Now, the “big lens” that Canon sent my way was their 800mm F/5.6L IS lens, with a 1.4x telephoto extender. I was hoping to get a nice moon shot with this, but weather and timing didn’t coopoerate. Instead, I got some outstanding nature and action shots that I’ll be posting over the next week. Check back soon!

And thanks to James for snapping that pic of me – much appreciated!

I like setting a goal for myself when I am out taking pictures. On a recent trip to a patch of wildflowers, I heard something unusual. It was a bee, but with a high-pitched sound coming from its wings. I traced the sound to this little gal here:

After some research, I have concluded that this is a female Leaf-cutter Bee. In the Megachile genus, probably M. rotundata or M. brevis. They store pollen on the underside of their abdomen and not cavities in their legs, like most other bees. This little one was sticking her backside in the air when she entered a flower, likely to prevent any pollen from falling off from abrasion against the flower.

I really didn’t know much of this when I was taking the photos, but I learned a lot about my subject after I took the image! Anyhow, back to goals: I set a goal to grab a photo of this particular bee species in flight. They would jump very quickly from flower to flower, which gave me plenty of opportunities. I got this after about an hour:

Part random chance, part skill, part patience. I would have gotten that shot if I didn’t tell myself exactly what image I wanted to walk away with. I would have been happy with the first one. Macro photography is a great way to learn about nature!