All Mine

The weeks are flying by it seems, and this time of year is always hectic for us.  We have birthdays, mother's day, father's day, our anniversary, and other celebrations that are all clumped together from late April until mid June.  Although it has been a bit crazy around here, I feel like we've accomplished so much already this spring, and I hope the rest of the warmer months will be equally as productive.

Although we've spent lots of hours cleaning and getting our yard back in shape...or maybe I should say in better shape, we have taken time to just enjoy this time of year by hanging out on our back patio in the evenings.

Last weekend the weather was picture perfect, low humidity, breezy, and almost cool'ish as the sun was setting each night, so we would go out after dinner and watch for our little hummingbirds to visit the feeder we have placed not far from where we sit.  Of course I take my camera with me sometimes in hopes of catching these little creatures that move so quickly.

Sometimes, trying to get a good shot of them is a lesson in sheer frustration, but for whatever reason, I try and try again.  And although they don't seem to mind if we are outside, they don't really like us to be too close, and they seem to sense when I have the camera, and become well, camera shy!

I was so excited when the female pictured in the 2 photos above, sat still just long enough for me to capture a nice shot of her complete with a pollen covered beak.

Rarely do they land on the feeders when we are out, but instead they flit back and forth from hole to hole watching their backs the whole time.

This year we seem to have a bossy female, and her equally bossy female nemesis, and the two of them fight non stop over our feeder.  In years past we've had at least 2 feeders, and our neighbor usually has several as well, but this year we bought a new feeder, and threw out our old ones that were brittle and in poor shape due to the unrelenting sun we get here.

And our neighbor hasn't put her feeders out yet, so we seem to be the only game in town, so maybe that's why they seem so territorial at the moment.

As soon as one female comes in to drink, the other female is lying in wait with a not so secret sneak attack in mind.

Each female takes quick rapid sips from the feeder, all the while knowing that the other one will soon be there to shove her off for her own dining pleasure.

They often spar for a bit, and then the other one will fly off to our maple or cherry tree, chattering the whole way, as if she is cussing out the other one in secret hummingbird language.

This goes on for quite some time, and they never seem to come to any kind of understanding that there are multiple holes in the feeder, and the more the merrier concept seems completely lost on these two alpha females.

I've only seen a male at the feeder a handful of times, and my guess is that he's just happy to stay out of the fray of these bossy little ladies.

It reminds me of that scene in Finding Nemo where the seagulls are all saying "mine, mine, mine" as they fight over who will win the prize of something yummy to eat.

And of course they don't even seem interested in the various flowers I have planted to help give them an artisanal selection of nectars to choose from.  Thankfully the bees, moths, and butterflies don't mind sharing, and are happy with the flowers I selected for their cafe style dining experience.

I guess hummingbirds can be a lot like people...worried that if they share, they might miss out on something really good.  Perhaps they've never read the saying below!

A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle

~James Keller~ 

Thank You and Goodnight

Thanks so much for all of your wonderful comments and emails about my last several posts.  It's good to know that I'm in fine company when it comes to things breaking down but also learning to not sweat the small stuff...because trust me, it really is the small stuff in life!

We've had the very good fortune of glorious weather the past few days, so you can't be upset about losing your AC when you can throw the windows wide open and literally smell the roses...most of which have been flowerless for weeks, until today! 

But it's late, and I'm tired.  Tomorrow is another day filled with a long list of "must be done" items, so I will bid you all goodnight!  Enjoy your weekend...I know I plan to! :)

Just So You Know

Recently, a group of old friends were supposed to come to my house for dinner.  As a group, we don't see each other often, maybe once or twice a year, even though we live within a 10 mile radius of one another, but we talk more frequently and know that we would be there for one another if we ever needed something.

We've been friends since elementary school, so we are all connected, and have a shared history.  Before the dinner, slowly but surely things began to fall apart.  One friend was heading out of town and had realized she was running out of time to get everything done that she needed to, and when I texted another friend to see if she still wanted to come she said, "I'm hella busy, can we do it next month?"  The other friend had a work obligation, so she was out of the mix early on, and finally my last friend and I decided that with just the two of us we would wait and reschedule for another day.

The reason I'm telling you this story is because that's how life is sometimes, and it's ok.  None of us was upset that things fell through, because we all have demands on our time and we all know that if it didn't happen that day it would happen another time.  That's the beauty of true friends, they "get" that life gets in the way of our fun sometimes, but it's never because we don't want to be with one another.

I hear from time to time in the blog world about people being upset that others never visit them, or that emails  and comments go unanswered and they feel hurt by this.  Of  course I can understand if someone is ignoring you and you feel you have a friendship with them, and that that friendship is not reciprocated.  But often times when I don't immediately return emails or never get to answering comments, it's not because I don't want to, or that I don't really care about that person on the other side of my computer screen, sometimes it's just because life reared its ugly head and priorities shifted.

I once had a friend tell me that if I didn't send her a Christmas card the following year that she would no longer be sending me one.  I was kind of taken aback, and wondered why getting a Christmas card would mean so much more to her then me calling her from time to time throughout the year as I did.  Did a card or letter outlining all the great things supersede the "real" life conversations we had over the phone?  Apparently it did, and we haven't communicated in years.  

So, just so you know, if we are to be friends, you will have to be patient with me, and I promise I will be patient with you.  If days go by and I don't respond, it's not because I don't care, or that I don't think of you, it's because life got in the way and took me from the "wants" headlong into the "needs."  And we all know that needs are so much bossier than the wants. ;-)

Patience

Patience has never been my strong suit, but photography has taught me to slow down...well a little anyway.  Sometimes you can't rush a photo, you just have to wait and let it present itself.  And then if you want to turn it into something special, that requires even more patience.

I can spend hours waiting for a bird to come into position (and I have the bug bites to prove it!), and hours more fiddling with that image in post processing.  In the end I have to answer to myself, translating the finished piece I see in my head into something I like on my computer screen, and ultimately onto paper or canvas.  I am often my own worst critic, but that's ok, because it pushes me to try harder, reach farther, and most decidedly, be patient.

And if photography isn't the catalyst for my new found virtue...well my computer would be the other thing which often tests my patience.  The last few days it has been having hiccups, locking up, and just generally being a pill about things.  I've had a stern talking with it though, so I'm hoping it will sit up and fly right, much like the beautiful hummingbird above! ;-)

I hope you all are having a wonderful week and that no one is trying your patience.

Mrs. Hummingbird

Well, the rain finally let up yesterday afternoon, and the sun was happy to make a comeback...we were happy to see it back too.

I decided to step outside and do a little more hummingbird hunting with my long lens, and I was not disappointed when a beautiful female hummer decided to show up to the feeder.  I'm so glad you liked the other images, and thank you for your kind words!

Not to be forgotten, Mr. Hummingbird showed up too and even gave me a wave hello! ;-)

I think this might be a mating pair, and I don't think this is the same male as in my last post because his throat feathers were far less dramatic than those of the other male.

Just like with the bluebirds, I never tire of seeing the beautifully colored feathers of hummingbirds, and these are her true colors...no increasing the saturation necessary.  Their feathers are iridescent, luminous, and simply brilliant, it's no wonder people have tried to capture these colors for years and bring them into their homes...Mother Nature is quite the color expert!

 

And here she is...Mrs. Hummingbird...she reminds me of that quote...

"Though she be but little, she is fierce!"   ~William Shakespeare ~

Happy Sunday!

Before and After

The hummingbirds are back, and we finally put our feeder out yesterday.  We relocated it to a more convenient place for me to take pictures, and even though it's been raining cats and dogs today, I was able to get in a few shots, so I thought I would share a few before and after images.

As an added benefit of relocating the feeder, I can now stand inside to take my pictures, and the hummingbirds seem to also love the proximity of the feeder to our tomato cages.  As you can see in each of these photos, this little guy was not worried about the rain at all, and was simply enjoying his new found perch.

Because I edit each of my pictures, I thought it might be fun to show you the "before" and "after" shots so that you can see what I do.  Sometimes I do a lot of post processing, mostly on shots that I want to look more like paintings, but a lot of the time I just tweak things so that they look more the way I want them to.

The shot above is a before shot, and even though I like the way it looked straight out of the camera, which it is above, except for cropping, I still wanted to put my touch on it.

So here is the after shot.  I used a texture on it which darkened the background ever so slightly, and I also bumped up the contrast, but just a hair, so that his head feathers would pop a little bit more than in the first image.

I also left some of the texture on the breast feathers, but removed it completely from the head.  I liked that the texture warmed him just just a little and made his breast feathers a bit more golden brown.  I could have done this by changing the warmth too, but I didn't want the effect on the whole bird, just on his body, so using a texture was the way to go.

Above is a before of him grabbing raindrops on his long tongue as they fell, which was pretty cool to watch!  In this one, I mostly just removed one or two errant raindrops which seemed distracting to me.  See the one on the far left of the image and then there is one below his tiny feet.

If the light had been better I could have maybe gotten some cool bokeh with the raindrops, but my depth of field was so small that only a few showed up, which ended up looking like smudges to me...so out they went.

Here, you can see the after shot, which saved in a smaller size for some reasion, but you can see that the drops have been removed.  And once again I increased the contrast just a smidge and de-noised it just a bit to remove the graininess in the background which was caused by my high ISO.  And boosting the contrast slightly makes the hummingbirds stand out a little bit more from the background.  Simple changes, but ones I feel are worth taking the time to make.

You can see that he had his feathers a bit ruffled from the rain, and he spent a lot of time shaking off the water but I couldn't get a good action shot since the light was so low.

In this shot, besides cropping it down, the only editing I did was to convert it to black and white which you can see below.

I love the drama that black and white can lend to an image...it changes the whole feeling and look of a photo.

So there you have it, my before and after hummingbird collection! :)  Of course I always try and shoot the best possible shot each and every time, but I also think that tweaking your images can not only be fun, but it can also take an image and make it look the way you saw it in your head...well at least in my head anyway!

I hope you all enjoy your weekend, and if you are in the path of TS Andrea, like we are, I hope you stay dry and don't experience any flooding!

Humming Along

Hello there, how is everyone?!  Things here have been crazy around here, some good crazy and some bad...but mostly good.

We bought a hummingbird feeder, and that has been both good and bad.  I love seeing these delicate little creatures as they come to feed at our feeder, but man are they hard to photograph.

They are so darned fast and not keen on humans, so trying to take pictures from afar and in the evening light, when they seem to feed the most, is a bit trying on my patience.  I've decided that in the winter the swans are my photo nemesis' (or is that nemisi?) and in the summer these little buggers will do everything in their power to elude my lens.

Oh well, it gives me something to do, right...and it keeps me out of trouble!

The past few weeks have been filled with all sorts of things, like photo shoots until 3 am, and then right back at it the following morning.  Collaborating with a dear friend on some artwork...something I love doing these days, and working, working, working!

   

 

We also had some bad things happen in the past few weeks, friends and acquaintances who passed, some who had lived very long and interesting lives, and others taken too soon by the ravages of cancer.

Our dear neighbor George was one of those who lived a long and interesting life.  When we moved into this house 5 years ago, George was a spry 95 years young, living completely independently, driving his sweet dog to obedience each week, and tending to his beautiful garden.  I'll never forget that at our Christmas party he showed our son his itouch and told him that when the newest model came out he would sell him his old one for a good price.

Because George was one of the oldest living WWII veterans, I had the opportunity to interview him for a magazine, and what I learned was that George wasn't just any WWII veteran, he was the Forrest Gump of soldiers, having seen action in some of the most hostile and critical arenas of the war, and bearing witness to things most people only see in movies.  From there he ended up in India for a few years, and through all of his experiences he embraced moving forward, choosing not to dwell in the past.

He used to joke that he would make it to 100 or die trying, and it was that great sense of humor I will miss at our neighborhood gatherings.  George did indeed make it to his 100th birthday last December when his family hosted a wonderful celebration of his long and storied life.  In true George fashion, he made it to 100 and a half, passing away on the exact date that he turned that impressive age.

I don't think George ever really knew how much of an impact he had on those around him, how much of an inspiration he was, and what an example he set for embracing life no matter what age it says you are on a piece of paper.

He didn't complain about technology, but instead embraced it.  He didn't let a number dictate what he could or couldn't do, he simply lived life the way he wanted too and I firmly believe that it was that attitude that kept him healthy up until just a few months before his passing.  George lived completely independently until his 100th birthday when he decided to move to an assisted living facility, still tending his garden, driving, and caring for his beloved dachshund, and constant companion Hummel.

We could all learn a little bit from George as we frantically go buzzing through life like a little hummingbird.  He taught me to live the life I have right now instead of wasting time pining for the past or longing for the future.  He taught me to embrace change and to move with the times. But the most important thing he taught me was that no matter what your age, you can do anything you set your mind to, that the limit is not in the number, but in how we perceive the number.

If you don't believe me, that age is just a number, please read the short article linked HERE and watch a bit of the video which was shot at an obedience trial when George was 98 years old!!!  He was so proud of this video and showed it to us on his itouch...RIP George, though you are gone you have inspired so many and your legacy will live on forever, you will be greatly missed!

Humming Along

Has it really been almost a week since I last posted?!

I guess I've not had much to share this past week, and I've been extremely busy with work stuff.

I've been humming along with picture taking, writing, and cleaning...all the usual stuff.

It's all been a bit of a blur, much like these hummingbird pictures...why won't they stay still just long enough for me to capture their beauty?!  Work, work, work...they have to do that to live, kind of like the rest of us I guess!

I captured these lovelies at dusk tonight as they flipped in and out of my neighbor's yard...you know, the sweet neighbor who doesn't think I'm crazy when I show up looking not so lovely but with my camera in hand!  You gotta love a neighbor like that!

She loves these delicate little birds...the only birds who can fly backwards.

As they buzzed past my head as I tried to snap their picture I realized that it had been awhile since I had really slowed down to enjoy life and snap some fun pictures.  We all need to do that from time to time, stop and smell the roses and also capture them!

I hope everyone's week is off to a good start...and here's a bit of nostalgia for those of you who grew up in the 70s!  Until next time friends! :-)