So you're probably sick of osprey....

... but frankly, I'm not, and this is my blog, so nyah!

A few weeks ago, I stopped in at the Ijams visitor center, and talked to Dr. Stephen Bales about where I could find some eagles and other raptors.  Well, today, I finally got out  to  one of the spots he recommended, near the downtown waterfront area.  Wow!  I think I arrived at pretty much exactly the perfect time.  I initially didn't see any birds, but I was able to spot the osprey nest pretty easily.  I figured I could get a shot or two of the nest, and that would be pretty neat.

I spotted one of the pair about a minute later, although it was at least as far away as the osprey from a few weeks ago.  Well, I'm not sure what happened, but its mate showed up shortly thereafter, and landed in the nest very briefly.  So yeah, cool, I got a shot of that as well, from way far away.

Apparently one of these osprey is a total ham for the camera.  Check these out!

First, just perchin' behind the bridge (Cropped from this view):


And then taking off!  Looks like some mad aerial acrobatics!



But this is really one of my favorites of the ones I have looked at so far.  I wish I had been able to frame it better, but it's hard to keep up with an osprey with 5lbs of camera pointed straight up!



I'm going to work on that last one a little later and see if I can darken it up some while preserving the detail.

Anyway, I was literally grinning like a moron once I started checking these out on my computer (and probably while shooting them as well).  Raptors are just so cool!  It was a great way to end the afternoon.

Wow!

I'm happy with this shot.  

Still need a longer lens....

Poor thing missed...

I hope it wasn't going for the turtles....




This was such a cool little side trip.  More photos of Mr. or Mrs. osprey to come.

Another nice osprey shot

Just cruisin' for fish....

A preview of later tonight...

I like this shot - you can really tell the osprey is on the hunt!  Need longer lens....

Great Blue Heron

Here's a heron.  I don't know WTF it's doing with it's neck.



And this is me trying to do something artsy with a poorly-exposed photo:

A quick HDR

HSo, here's an example of where HDR comes in useful.  This is from one of my hikes on vacation.  The scene was kind of neat, nothing spectacular, but I couldn't get a good representation.  The white clouds and the dark water made it difficult to get one exposure that pulled out all the details of both.  Enter HDR!  I took 3 photos, each separated by 1.7EV (iirc, don't feel like doing math tonight.  The first image gets all the detail in the water, but the sky is quite washed out:



Now we've got an underexposed image, but can see a bunch of the detail in the clouds:



Here's the correctly exposed image:



It's a little better than the overexposed in terms of detail in the sky, but it's still pretty bad.  Lots of the water detail is lost as well.

  With HDR, I can combine all these exposures into a much more faithful representation of what I saw that day.  This still has a little bit of that "unearthly" look that a lot of HDR has, but that's mostly because I did it quickly.



Anyway,

Red-winged blackbird

Just a quick shot I got of a red-winged blackbird while visiting my brother in Pennsylvania.  It was quite a ways out, but I always enjoy seeing these birds and their unexpected flash of color!

Shack in Bear Brook Park

Here's another HDR I did, this time from the Hall Mountain Trail at Bear Brook State Park.  It didn't look like it was 100 years old, maybe more like 30 or so.  There was plastic among all the waste.  Anyway, pics!



And converted to black and white:


I'm not sure which version I prefer yet.  I might try desaturating a lot of the colors instead of going full B&W.  We shall see.

Odiorne Point State Park

Here's a nice little HDR from my trip up to New Hampshire.  It was taken at Odiorne Point State Park.  It's an exposure fusion of 6 separate images, taken without a tripod.   I kinda like it, I think I have managed to not overdo it too much for once.



My goal is to get one or two good photos each day until I'm caught up.... not sure if I'll be successful or not, but I'll give it a try!

Fundy Trail

Today's adventure: Hall Mountain Trail

After some random googling and a suggestion from the relatives, I set off for the Hall Mountain Trail at the Bear Brook State Park in New Hampshire.  I was expecting a nice little 3 mile jaunt through the woods, swinging by a little marsh, maybe getting to see some water birds or similar stuff.

Yep, didn't happen.

It was the beaver's fault.  I swear.

It turns out that this particular park doesn't have very good blazing or other trail markings.  I found the trail head  just fine, and got onto the right.  So that part was fine.  I think I even did the first half of the trail correctly.  But then there was the beaver.  It was all his (or her fault).

You see, one of the major landmarks on the map I had was this relatively small swamp.  I could gauge where I was on the trail by where the swamp was.

Well, that was the plan.

Except for the beaver.

You see, beavers like to have their lodges in ponds.  But, sometimes, there isn't a pond.  So the beaver, being an industrious little dude, will dam up a stream or maybe even a marsh, and make his own pond.  Pretty ingenious, right?  I think so too.  Except when it causes this little marsh to become like 10X as big, and pretty much cover half the interior area of this loop trail.

So yeah, I got lost.  My 3 mile hike turned into a 6.5 mile adventure.  But despite that, still had a really good time.  I went clockwise around the "loop", meaning that I did the toughest ascent first.  All the way to the top of Hall Mountain in a little under a mile.  It's not nearly as steep as some climbs I've done in the Smokies, but it was still non-trivial .  The trail was quite wide, however it was obvious that folks had been four-wheeling recently, and there were a lot of muddy ruts and other wet areas.  The top of the mountain itself seemed kind of like one of the balds we sometimes have in the Smokies.  The view wasn't fantastic, but that's to be expected when it's still below the tree line.

At some point after this, I got off track and ended up on a different trail entirely.  I won't be entirely sure where until I get the GPS data uploaded... I didn't leave the trail system, I just got ... relocated at one point.

Anyway, it was still cool - I saw a porcupine out in a field and got some decent shots of it before I scared it off.  It also took me over to a much nicer view atop a granite cliff.  I hopefully got some nice source images that I'll be able to HDR into something cool.  AND!  I saw a porcupine hiding up in a tree.  Wicked cool.

Another thing I noticed were all the birch trees!  I don't recall seeing many (maybe any) in TN, but they're all over the forests up here.  I don't know why, but it's comforting to me.  The forest feels very different from TN in general.  I think there are more evergreens in general or something.

Anyway, that's it for now.  I don't feel like trying to muck with pictures.  You have the phone snaps from before to tide you over.

The top

Hall mountain trail heafe

Spring is coming

Photos from yesterday

I don't feel like captioning, so just check out the gallery:

PAX East 2012

PAX East: Day 1

Today was really enjoyable.

We started off waiting in line.  It seems like that's what you do at these things.  It turns out the line was for the escalator downstairs.  It turned out to be the wrong line.  We needed a different line.  A longer line.  One that, we were told, lead off into the keynote room.

It did.  Eventually.  If I ever come back, I'm bringing a little portable chair.  And probably a camelback.

This is what the keynote room looked like:



(The empty chairs eventually filled in).

The keynote was given by Jordan Mechner. I had never heard of the dude before, but it turns out he designed one of the first games I ever got addicted to: Karateka.  He talked a lot about his journey through the gaming industry.  Neat stuff.

After that, I wandered around the expo floor.  It's big.  Maybe even bigger than the SC12 show floor.

Once my friend got out of some panel or another, we tried out a couple of games.

The first, Gladiators, appeared to be in pre-release, beta form.  The dice were normal dice, with paper faces.  The mechanics were interesting, but a little confusing.   You could tell the guy demoing it knew them well, but he wasn't the best at explaining them.

From PAX East 2012

It looks like it could be a fun game once it's released.

Next we played some Dragon Dice.  I've seen these around, but never played before.

I really enjoyed this game.  The mechanics are actually pretty simple.  The hardest part was figuring out what all the different symbols meant!  Otherwise, it really is a pretty simple concept, but seems to have a lot of potential to be very fun.  I may actually pick some up while here at the show.

From PAX East 2012

I am tired of writing, will try to finish my summary tomorrow.  For now, here's a special little treat...

This room.was full this morning

... along with the other two thirds of it!

Not quite as fancy as last night

Bahstan!

Views

Traffic

Roasted duck flatbread

With fontina, provolone,  some sort of balsamic reduction.  Tasty, despite all the cheese!

We has arrived

I always pack too much

First problem

79 in a 70 on I-81 in Virginia *sigh*

Getting ready to head out

Just about all packed up for my vacation.  It will be a mega-roadtrip up to Pennsylvania, and then on to Boston and other parts of New England!  The main goal of the trip is to attend PAX East.  I'll be trying to post at least daily updates here on the blog, documenting what I think is the first vacation longer than 2 or 3 days that I've taken since high school.  I intend to do a lot of stuff outside while in New England, and hopefully get a bunch of cool photos while up there.   Whee!