An early morning on the shore of one of ten thousand, this little Spotted Sandpiper carefully studies the continental breakfast buffet. So many choices, but they are all still bugs. How can I tell that this is a SPOTTED sandpiper? He wandered off to the side of the sun and I caught this photo.

He sure was busy, darting around catching bugs. He’d hunker down low and chase them! It was fun to watch until I had my fill of bugs too. It’s hard to hold a big lens still while you have bugs crawling on you. I’ll have to work on that I guess.

Here’s yesterday’s location, only in infrared. I keep forgetting that I can do this. I waited all winter for the bright green foliage of summer so that I could take my infrared camera out.

As you can see from these two photos, the foliage reflects infrared light so they appear as crystal white masses. The sky goes black and the clouds go white. There are special cameras for taking infrared, but a lot of point-and-shoots can do it. I’m using a Sony F828 for this. If your P&S has a “night mode”, then it probably does a decent job of infrared. The easy way to test it is to point your TV remote at the camera lens and push a button. If you see a light coming from the remote on the screen, your camera see IR. Then you need a filter. Light colors are measured in wavelengths and the filters are numbered accordingly, 720nm, 820nm and 1000nm are the common ones. The first two do a good job, the 1000nm is hard to work with, with so little light, you need a tripod.

If y’all like these, I’ll take some more…

The True Meaning of Cell Phone Sunday

My friend Dave pointed out that my skills as a photographer may appear to be the result of my good equipment, so I should get a cheap camera and prove otherwise. I suggested my cell phone camera, because it has a simple 640×480 camera and I always have it with me. “Perfect” Dave said, ”now do it.”
Simple rules: only uncropped, images directly from my cell phone. I do some post processing to sharpen up the image. The “camera” on the phone only has a “capture” button, so, at heart, it’s really a composition challenge. See past Cell Phone Sunday Photos.

I love these guys, I haven’t seen them for a year and haven’t photographed one for an even longer time.

Even on a windy day, some can still hold their ground.