The summer went by

I could not find the time for photography or updating this blog during the summer. From the beginning of June until the end of July my days were spent either at work or trying to complete the "project" in our backyard. I fixed our basement wall and then built a new terrace behind the house. Most of my time was spent shoveling sand, first digging a deep, large hole next to the wall and then filling it:
I will not calculate how much sand I had to move back and forth, but there sure was a lot of it. Now the basement wall is done as it should be, the drainige etc are up to modern standards.

The terrace turned out nice, it is good to sit down and enjoy the evening, or to have a barbeque. And if you're wondering, no, the terrace was not built sloping down. The camera was not straight when the picture was taken. I decided not to start straightening the image with photoshop, it's good enough as it is.
When the terrace was done, I made good on my promise to my eldest daughter and took her on a photography outing to the boonies. Here are a few pictures from that day:
Nea took this picture of a small spider that decided to hitch a ride on my sleeve:
I've promised to take Nea to see and photograph migrating cranes, so the next update will be coming much faster than this one did.

A spring morning at the swamp

I headed out at five in the morning. Just as the sun was rising I was at the end of the dirt road and started to walk towards my hide. At first the going was nice and light, there was either clear ground or snow with a nice icy crust to make walking easy in the forest. Once I got to the swamp, things changed completely. With the exception of a few small shady spots, all the snow and ice on the swamp had melted and there was plenty of water everywhere. Step by step I continued forward, eventhough I kept sinking about knee deep with every step. Along the way I stopped to look and listen at the sights and sounds of spring. A lonely crane was calling out near my route to the hide:
As usual, the crane was rather far away and as I kept moving, eventhough away from the bird, it took to its wings and flew away:
Eventually I arrived at the and as I had suspected, the tiedowns had let go. As the snow and the surface of the swamp had melted, the attachments had come loose. Luckily I had made a backup tiedown to a tiny pine and this had stopped the hide from being flown completely away. Eventhough the tent was lying on its side in the water, looking all battered and beaten, nothing was broken:
I took a few landscape -type pictures, mainly as a memento for myself of how wet everything was this time around:
The pair of swans that were close to the hide had received some company since my last visit:
I loaded the hide up and started to head back. The weight of the hide forced me to take short stops to rest along the way. I used the breaks to take some pictures. On one of my stops some calls from afar caught my attention. It took me some time to locate the source of the sounds, but I finally spotted four cranes making quite some noise between the trees close to the edge of the swamp:
The sun was out and heated the air fast and pulling the hide along in the soft and uneven surface of the swamp got me sweating quickly. Even with the heat of the sun, there were still some spots of terrain that were rather cold:
On my way back to the car the sun had heated the edge of the forrest so much, that I managed to take my first butterfly pictures of the year:
This one was a rather rough trip, but now the hide is at home drying and waiting for coming photography trips to the boonies.

Walk about

I headed out to the swamp in the morning. My gear considerations last night turned out well. I took along my 50mm lens, the extension set, tripod, a couple of memorycards and a water bottle in my backpack. I attached the 400mm lens to the camera and carried it in my hands or hanging from "speedclips" on the straps of my backpack. I used all the gear I had with me and did not once feel that I would have needed something from the stuff I left at home.

My long break from photography backfired on me as soon as I had gotten thru the woods and onto the swamp. A sparrowhawk took off from a nearby tree and I spun my camera around for the picture. As I tried to get the bird into my sights thru the viewfinder, I wondered why the camera refused to focus. Then I realized that I had not turned the power switch with my thumb as I swung the camera in the right direction. I managed to flick the switch and followed the hawks flight, only to realize that my camerasettings were way off. I managed to keep the focus on the bird as I rolled my shutterspeed. Just as the shutterspeed was coming close to being right, the hawk disappeared amongst the trees. So much for taking that picture. I usually put the right settings in my camera as soon as I head out and keep adjusting them as I move along and the conditions change, in preparation for situations exactly like this one. Before, when I spent more time with my camera in the boonies, I did this without really giving it much thought. I also had no problems flicking the powerswitch with my thumb while lifting my camera to take a shot. Today I managed to mess up on both counts. I really must be out of practice.

I walked about at the swamp, taking pictures of plants and insects. The days pictures:

Did you know that the plant in the third picture is carnivorous?

Lastly, a more personal bit of information. There are not many things in nature that I don't like. Some of the animals or phenomenon that I have come across have been such that I have felt the need to be respectful or cautious, which ever way one wants to see it. There is however one animal that I really cannot stand,THE DEER FLY! I can't think of any other critter as annoying as that. I picked well over ten of them from my neck again today.

Grouse morning

Moving the hide paid off. I arrived at the hide about four thirty. The trip over went well, except for the fact that what had a few days earlier been frozen ground was now extremely soft at some places. Noticing the deep and soft places in darkness before sinking in them was quite a task. For a moment I also doubted my navigation skills, since I did not see the hide when expected. Finding a safe path thru the swamp had caused me to judge the distance I had walked a bit wrong and also slightly off course. I managed to get my bearings right quickly enough and got to the hide without taking an unwanted swim. The length of my boots was just barely enough at some points along the way.

The sun began to rise and with the increasing light more and more grouses arrived. The first ones started to arrive well before there was enough light for me to see what was happening, but I could hear them coming. Especially the ones that glided in right over the top of my hide. As the light increased the birds became more and more active and the noise grew louder as about thirty birds started calling out. From time to time the ruffling of feathers and a slight move towards a better knoll would result in a clash. There was so much to action going on that I didn't feel any urgency in taking pictures and could take moments off to eat my sandwiches and just follow what was going on.
A few examples from the morning:
In addition to eating and taking pictures of the grouses, I managed to capture this piece of spring action:
On the way back to my car I just had to take a picture of the first butterfly for this spring.
I got a lot of pictures of the grouses, I'll probably post some more tomorrow.

Preparations

I went out for a quick visit to the swamp this morning. I put up the extension to the hide in preparation for our photographers meeting on saturday. A warm, sunny morning was ideal for a quick walk-about in the boonies. Along the way I managed to take a few snapshots:

Rasberries and bugs

My idea was to go pick blueberries. At first I had trouble getting myself started in the morning and once I got into the bush, I decided to concentrate on rasberries for a couple of hours and leave the blueberries for another day. While picking berries, I also practiced taking pictures of bugs, since I'll have to start taking closeups for my project sometime in the near future among a lot of other things.

The days pictures:

Berries

I had to drop by at work to take care of something in the morning. I got the job done and was heading back home at around 10 a.m. At 10:30 I was on my way to the wilderness. I picked a bucketfull of blueberries and half a bucket of cloudberries. For my photoproject I took a few pictures while I was picking berries:

My butterflyspot didn't let me down:
A slightly different shot of a pine cone:
This butterfly seemed to love my backpack:
The osprey came to check me as I walked towards the nesting tree:
There appeared to be some birds in the nest:
Cloudberries:

All in all, a nice day and a good trip.

At moss level

As the rest of the family headed of to visit some friends yesterday, I packed my backpack with my camera, 50mm lens, a bottle of water and some mosquito repellent. I also grabbed with me a bucket and a lid for it. My idea was to spend a little time at the swamp, pick some cloudberries and then come back home for a nap before heading off to work for the night. At the swamp I walked around, picking berries here and there. Approximately 1/3 of the berries were ripe, so picking them was a rather slow process. There is not much point in picking raw berries, they are hard and completely tasteless, so I left the red ones alone and grabbed only the ripe yellow ones. I'll go back for the rest later when they are ready. If somebody else gets to them before me, so what? The person picking them has earned them just for going to the trouble to get to them.

While walking along with my nose in the moss, I had a great opportunity to take some different type of pictures than usually for my project. Here are the days pics:
I must say I am very pleased with the days walkabout. I got pictures I needed and were long overdue for my project and a bucketfull of cloudberries. The only downside of the trip was that my ½ liter water bottle was much too small. It was 25 degrees, sun shining down and because of the mosquitos and horseflies, I had to keep my camo jacket on and my water consumption went sky high in a flash.

All of the above pictures were taken with a 50mm f 1.8 lens. Far too often I myself and many others I know think of "nature photography" as something that requires a lot of money to get long lenses. I think we should just remember to keep our eyes open as we move along, there is a lot to see in nature at a very close level, and photographing it all does not necessitate long lenses and big bucks. Just stick your nose down into the moss and see what comes up.