May 27 - Gateway Arch

I was in St. Louis on Memorial Day and of course had to take a few pictures of the arch. It was a cloudy night and even started to rain before we were through, but it was fun to see a view of the arch that I don't usually see.

This first image is with a very wide lens on the East side of the arch - the lens is wide enough that it distorts the arch from its familiar shape.


The next view is a 60 second exposure from the inner point of the South leg looking up. It's kind of an odd view, but I enjoy finding new ways to look at familiar things.

May 19 - Woods Prairie

A group of folks from the camera club met at Woods Prairie this morning (before dawn for some of us) and took a few pictures of the flowers blooming. The morning dew left my feet completely soaked in no time - even with my good hiking boots (maybe I need a new pair). Oh well, what's a few wet feet in pursuit of a nice picture!

Indian Paintbrush


Shooting Star


????


Indian Paintbrush

May 15 - Around the House

It was an interesting day for photography. Not too long after the sun came up, we spotted this Luna Moth out on our light post. I wish it could have chosen a more attractive landing spot. Unfortunately, when we tried to move it to a better location it flew away. Oh well - hope it comes back!




Hummingbirds (and birds in general) are very difficult to photograph. I caught this one peeking around the corner of a Blue Salvia on our back deck.




And finally, through the rain, I found this Indigo Bunting in an Oak tree.

May 12 - Hercules Glades Wilderness Area

For the second time in as many weeks, I ended up in Hercules Glades Wilderness Area. This time, however, I was with several members from the Southwest Missouri Camera Club. We had a great time wandering up Long Creek, taking pictures along the way. With the amount of water we've had around our house recently I was surprised to find that the falls were dry. Oh well, some other time. Even though it wasn't a great day for photography, it was still great to be out in the woods again. I did take another picture of a columbine (this is the last one, I swear!).

May 11 - Yellow Cone Flowers

After an impressive late afternoon downpour, I couldn't help but go out and photograph a few cone flowers we have on our deck. In fact, I didn't entirely wait for the rain to stop before I was out there - umbrella attached to tripod - peering into the viewfinder. If you look on the lower left of this flower, you can see a raindrop caught by the camera as it was in the process of dropping to the ground.

May 6 - Hercules Glades Wilderness Area

I dropped by Long Creek this morning to see if any columbines were blooming and was relieved to see that they were plentiful. It was a warm and humid morning. Warm enough to make you wish for that one thing which would make photographing these challenging flowers impossible - a nice breeze.

April 27 to 29 - CSNP Gathering

I spent this last weekend with a group of dedicated amateur photographers from the Central States Nature Photographers forum. This is a great bunch of photographers, and I enjoyed my time shooting with them very much.

We met down at the upper end of Boxley Valley in Arkansas at a small cabin we rented. I arrived right as the sun started going down so those of us that were there ran out and shot the few clouds that were on the horizon. These pictures represent just a very small portion of the sky - most of which was featureless.





Boen Gulf
On Saturday morning, we hiked in to Boen Gulf and visited Magnolia Falls - I shot several views of this falls, but liked the one with the trees in front. The other shot is from farther down the creek. It was a nice hike, but the hills grew quite large on the way out!




Broadwater Hollow
On Saturday evening (after waiting through a cloudless day), we headed over to Broadwater Hollow for a few shots of the waterfalls and even saw a few columbines.




Smith Creek Scenic Area
This newly opened natural area has some very nice geological features and we were there on Sunday morning before it was fully light. The mix of house-sized boulders, moss and flowing water was just fantastic.

April 22 - Carolina Wren

For the past few weeks, we've been engrossed with a family of Carolina Wrens. I've always liked these birds with their delicate shades of brown and rust, and I was very happy when we found one of them building a nest in a flower pot right by our window! We had a front row seat for a thrilling spectacle.

In early April, we spotted five tiny off-white eggs in the nest of twigs and grass. There they stayed through some very cold nights, finally to emerge about two weeks ago. Here's a picture of one of the parents (I can't distinguish between the male and female) feeding them bugs and spiders. One morsel at a time, they kept the hungry mouths fed.


On the day that the chicks fledged, one of the parents would take a bit of food in its beak (pictured) and push it into the mouth of a waiting chick, but then pull it back out again! It did this repeatedly - enticing, I suppose, the youngsters to leave the nest and get some food on their own.


One at a time, they emerged from the nest...


And faced a brave new world.

March 24 - Elephant Rocks

I though I'd go ahead and post a few images I took from Elephant Rocks on our recent field trip. Though there is nearly an infinite number of compositions to be made here, I've always found it challenging. The photos I like best on this day were the ones that limited themselves to a a very small portion of the park.

Here's one with a lot of color...


And here's one with none...

March 24 - Missouri Mines State Historic Site

This last Saturday was spent on a long field trip with the camera club. We left Springfield at 7:00 a.m. and by the time we returned at midnight, we had visited Elephant Rocks State Park, Hughes Mountain Natural Area, and the Missouri Mines State Historic Site. It was a long day!

Though Elephant Rocks and Hughes Mountain were fun, I can't say I got the best out of them photographically speaking. But I think I made up for it with the abandoned mine buildings. The odd mix of age and angles were really interesting.

March 20 - Additional Hughes Mountain Photos

I've been working on a few more pictures from Hughes Mountain that I thought I should post. The first picture is a combination of three different pictures (click on the image to make it a little bigger).



I still remember how cold it was up there - Brrrrr...


There is a surprising amount of color even in this bleak landscape.

March 3 - Lunar Eclipse

I drove all over trying to find a nice place to view the moon rise and never did really find the ideal spot. We ended up NW of Springfield on a quiet farm road high on a ridge which gave us an unrestricted view of the horizon. The moon first revealed itself in a very small sliver (most of it was eclipsed at that point) which slowly grew larger as it moved up into the sky.

Here is a closeup of the moon (or at least as close as I can get to it) as the Earth's shadow has mostly moved across it.


The sunset behind me was more interesting from a photographic point of view and I spent quite a bit of time with my back to the moon. The next two images show some of that scene.

February 24 - Around Springfield

It was windy and rainy today, which as you might guess is not so good for photography. But even knowing the conditions, I wanted to get out and around for a little while. Fortunately, the rain let up here and there and let me take a few pictures.

The first stop was the Commercial Street Footbridge. I've returned to this spot numerous times and am always pleased with the results. It's a nice spot where you can see a large area of sky, and the structure of the bridge is always interesting and inviting.





Next, I drove up to Fellows Lake - just north of Springfield. Fellows Lake has always been difficult for me because they do not allow access to the lake before or after dark. But with nice clouds it doesn't matter too much. In this first image I kept getting rain on my lens and would have to stop and clean it off between shots.



This is from the east end of the lake as the clouds started to break up.



Before I left, I took some pictures looking east after the sun started peaking through. Just as I began snapping away a woman and her dog walked through my frame. The dog is the blurry spot above my shadow on the left hand side and the woman is in yellow in the upper left. I thought it was kind of interesting.

February 17 - Hughes Mountain Natural Area

Last Saturday, I drove out to Hughes Mountain NA, which is South East of Potosi, MO. For over a year I've been meaning to get out to this place but haven't had the chance. The weather was howling at me by the time I got to the top - blowing snow and freezing temperatures. It worked out pretty well for photography, though, and that was why I was there.

February 03 - Snow Birds

I greatly admire people who can do great bird photography. Bird photographers (and animal photographers in general) usually have some very specialized equipment (read really big glass). It's one thing to take a picture of a bird - it's quite another to get the bird razor sharp (i.e., in focus and no motion blur). To get a well composed image on top of that makes it all the more difficult.

Here are three birds I captured out on my back deck during the snow of the last few days. It took 300 pictures to get these three so in terms of batting averages, I'm at about 10!

Junco


Red Bellied Woodpecker


Cardinal