The recent snow storms along the Eastern U.S. left many people without power, telephone and dare I say it, internet service! The snow was so heavy on Friday there wasn’t even places for the birds to hide.

I decided to venture out on Friday because photographing landscapes and wildlife is usually better in bad weather, much to the chagrin of the photographer. The other reason I went outside was I had seen from the kitchen window something I had never seen before. During the storm, a flock of approximately 50 European Starlings attached our bird feeders. The tree was completely covered in them. I quickly found that these birds are very skittish when it comes to people. As soon as I opened the door to go out, they flew away without me being able to make 1 click.
However, as the saying goes, all clouds do have a silver lining. As I was standing under the tree with the feeders, a Red Bellied Woodpecker flew right past my head and landed in the tree. I have been trying to photograph this bird for a year. Like the Starlings, the Red Bellied Woodpeckers don’t like people. But the combination of the commotion of the swarm of birds and heavy snow was enough to camouflage me. I was able to get the lens up before the bird knew I was there. He didn’t stay long however, just long enough.

As I mentioned before I try to use the bad weather to take some landscape photographs. I tried my hand with a few black and whites which I thought made sense given the overcast skies and heavy snow.

I love trying to find interesting patterns that occur in nature. They are always there and are always changing.

My African safari was full of great memories. One of the best finds by our guide was a Spotted Hyena den chock full of pups of various ages.

How we happened upon this den was an exciting story. On our first game drive in Botswana, we happened upon a pack of African Wild Dogs. When it became too dark to photograph let alone see, we started our journey back to camp for the night. No sooner had we packed up our gear when we heard the dogs and hyena fighting. We turned on the spotlights on the jeep and headed toward the noise. It seems as the dogs were making their way, they happened upon the hyena den and a territorial spat ensued. While we couldn’t make any clicks with our cameras, we now had a new location to scout over the coming game drives.
The next day we returned to the den to find only pups, no parents! It truly amazed me how these pups took care of themselves while their parents were out gathering food. We worked this area for an hour or so. As the pups became more comfortable they came very close to our vehicle. They are very photogenic animals.

On our last game drive at Chitabe, we happened upon one of the adult Hyena picking over the remains of an Elephant. Was this soon to be lunch for the Hyena Pups? We couldn’t tell you as we had a flight to catch!

I have been working on a series of posts about what is involved in preparing for an African Safari. I have received a lot of inquiries in this regard and I figured putting together all the emails into a post or two would be useful. Stay tuned!

Those who know me know I love the beach, especially those on Long Island. I will always consider Long Island home even though I no longer live there. I chose to head out to Quogue to visit my parents this weekend, President’s weekend, given my daughter was off from school. I was amazed at how quiet it was. All the better for us!
New snow had fallen and the landscape photography was excellent.

Away from visiting with my parents, one reason I went out to Long Island this weekend was for the bird photography opportunities. With no one around I knew I would have ample time to work areas with minimal interruption from cars or beach goers, a luxury not afforded during the summer months.
The biggest “find” I had for the weekend was spotting a lone American Bittern at a very small salt marsh. It was truly amazing that I was able to catch this bird out of the corner of my eye while driving. You can see from the picture that he is camouflaged well with his surroundings.

This was my first chance to photograph an American Bittern. Observing its behavior and hunting style was a thrill. Unfortunately I only came away with a few marginal pictures. I was experiencing some focusing problems with my camera combination, a Nikon D700 and 200-400 f/4 with 1.7 TCe. I’m not sure if the error was operator induced or mechanical but most of the issues were back focusing so I am thinking I need to calibrate the camera and lens combination.

Another cool behavior I was able to witness for the first time was courtesy of the Herring Gulls.

This flock of Herring Gulls would dive for clams and crabs, fly to an area where the bay was covered in ice, and from about 50 ft. in the air, drop their catch on the ice. This would have the effect of breaking the shells and stunning the prey so the gull could make quick work of eating the insides. It was amazing to watch this behavior over and over again.

On my way back from a great morning of photographing birds, I spotted a Great Blue Heron heading out to the bay. I just had to stop and make one more click!

One of the nice surprises of the winter has been the appearance on our property of a flock of Dark Eyed Junco’s. After doing some research it seems that these birds are very loyal, as in once they make your property home good luck in getting rid of them!

They have been a lot of fun to watch. They swarm and communicate just like any busy family. I might even try to capture some video of this as pictures don’t do the interaction justice.

But then a funny thing happened. Last week, several of these birds mysteriously started to kamikaze into our windows. We couldn’t figure out what it was but came to the conclusion that the sun at this time of year must have put a funny reflection into the sliding doors and the birds thought they were flying to another tree. Mystery solved, or so we thought.

Then over the weekend I was watching the activity at the feeders from the family room. All the birds seemed uneasy. In an instant they scattered and from over the house came a red tailed hawk. The hawk grabbed one of the Junco’s out of mid air, perched on a nearby tree, bit the head off of the Junco and flew away. So much for my “sun in a different part of the sky” theory. So it seems the birds were fleeing from the hawk when they hit the sliding doors.

As I am sure many of you have heard, the eastern U.S. is in the midst of a heavy snow storm.

Given that the Junco’s are black and gray, I am watching to see if the hawk uses the snow to help isolate some of the birds. So far no sign of the hawk.

One of the most pleasant surprises on my recent trip to Africa was the number of Giraffe we encountered.

Here are some interesting facts about Southern Giraffe:
Giraffes roam over large areas of bush and savannah, living often in semi-desert regions where they get most of their water from their food. Similar to camels, they can go 2-3 days without water.
Giraffes are browsing ungulates, feeding almost exclusively on the new shoots of shrubs and trees. Acacia trees are their favorite food source. The Giraffes use their long prehensile tongue and lips to strip the leaves off the thorny branches.
While Giraffes can live in herds of up to 15 animals we only witnessed small groups of 2-6 during our safari.

Given how busy we all are in our daily lives it saddens me that we don’t have adequate time to appreciate certain aspects of our wild heritage. I was one of those people until I made a conscious effort over the last 2 years to change that. I have been deeply moved by what I have seen and where I have traveled over that period of time. I can’t wait until I get a chance to go back to Africa!

I recently saw several images a friend of mine took of some models that I thought were excellent. His name is Barney Streit. I know Barney as a very accomplished landscape and nature photographer. However the shots I was reviewing were portraits. Oddly enough I have been interested in increasing my proficiency in portraiture so we started exchanging information on how he got more involved in this aspect of photography. I have attempted a few portraits and head shots and really like the results.

Both of the above images were taken at Joe McNally’s Dobbs Ferry Workshop. If you are interested in improving your flash skills there is no one better to learn from than Joe. He is funny and one of the most knowledgeable photographers I have ever met. Joe’s assistant Drew Gurian is an awesome photographer as well. Joe has a host of books, DVD’s and workshops. If you are interested check out his website and blog.

Oh yeah, back to Barney! When I asked him how he improved so much in this new area of photography he gave me two websites he used. Both of which had to do with networking. One of the sites I had heard of, the other I knew nothing about. The one I didn’t know was Meetup. This is a website where people with similar interests organize and post public gatherings for the purpose of meeting, collaborating and networking. I have already joined several Meetup groups and think this will help accelerate my portrait photography as well as be a lot of fun. If you already clicked on Barney’s link above I’m sure you have figured out that the other site was Model Mayhem. I also plan on joining Model Mayhem with the goal of doing some TFP work.

One of the best things about photography is that most involved are very helpful and knowledgeable. They are usually very willing to share what they have learned. Thanks to my friend Barney, I have some great new tools with which to try something new!

Regardless of your business, preparing for and encouraging growth is an essential part of success. In order to encourage growth in my photography I have created a list of goals for 2010.

1) Visit and photograph another National Park: A highlight of 2009 for me was visiting Glacier National Park. I attended Moose Peterson’s Wildlife Photographer’s Base Camp and learned more in 5 days than I ever imagined I could. Moose and his son Jake did a great job of combining wildlife biology and practical photography knowledge with business experience. I will definitely attend another Base Camp in the near future. As a result of Moose’s teaching I have read about and researched our National Park system since that visit and have become obsessed with visiting these national treasures. Ken Burns put together a fantastic series called “The National Parks: Americas Best Idea” that I highly suggest everyone watch.

2) Create photographs that illicit emotion: One of the true tests of being a successful photographer is whether your images are able to pull at someones heart strings. Good photographs capture moments, great photographs illicit emotion.

3) Get published: I will attempt to have one of my photographs or a text/photo package published in 2010. I will also explore having my images exhibited at some of the local Fairfield County art and framing galleries. I will also enter at least one judged photography contest.

4) Experiment with different forms of output: I would like to try new print media and video capture (I need to get a DSLR with video capabilities first)! I believe the advent of devices like Amazon’s Kindle and the rumored Apple Tablet will make “moving pictures” an important part of a photographers output capabilities. If you have not seen the Sports Illustrated Tablet Demo it is well worth your time and really cool. While the origin of this mockup is being questioned, the capabilities described are real. There is an old Wall St. traders saying, “Don’t fight the market, go with the flow for resistance is futile”. While I like creating and viewing photographs the tide in the industry is definitely trending toward moving pictures.

5) Attend Photoshop World: I have never attended PSW. Based on my current level of proficiency I think the educational and networking opportunities will far outweigh the costs.

6) Attend at least one Wildlife Workshop: This doesn’t have to be a photographic workshop, although it can be. The goal is to learn more about wildlife. Having just returned from Africa (I will definitely visit Africa again) I have an even greater interest in learning more about the biology of wildlife. I have started to investigate volunteering for a local wildlife organization to help them with their research by taking pictures.

What are your photographic goals for 2010?

I hope you are all enjoying the holiday season, surrounded by family and friends. This has been one of the best holiday seasons I can remember. I have spent some significant quality time with my family and this feels like the first time in I don’t know how long that I have been able to enjoy the season.

Now to some photography! We had about 5 inches of snow yesterday making everything look very festive. Given I was itching to make some clicks the snow was the perfect excuse to get out and ring in the New Year. With everything covered in snow and the bird feeders full, I had my pick of subjects.

There are 2 new species I have seen in mass numbers over the last few days/week, White Throated Sparrows and Dark Eyed Juncos.

There seems to be around 10-20 White Throated Sparrows and 20-30 Dark Eyed Juncos. They are both beautiful birds and very fun to watch.

And one of my all time favorites:

The Downy Woodpeckers and Woodpeckers in general are difficult to photograph. They are very skittish as are the Cardinals. There could be 10 outside when I look out the window but they take off permanently when I go outside. I guess I need to work on my technique!

I wish you all a Happy and Healthy 2010.

Its amazing how beautiful the Impala is. Botswana’s population seems to be thriving. When we were there, mothers had recently given birth to many calves.

Several things make identifying Impala’s easy. The most notable is the “M” shape marking on the hind end. Many people think it looks like a McDonalds sign. Many of my readers know I love movies. To me it looks more like the McDowells sign in “Coming to America”!

Unfortunately, one of the real purposes the Impala serves in the circle of life is food for many of the predators. We witnessed many kills where the Impala was on the menu as the daily special. The most notable of these kills were the dog kill featured in one of my previous blogs and a leopard kill from my last day at Chitabe.

Its hard to imagine that a creature so beautiful as the Impala serves mostly as food for Africa’s wild predator population.

We were very fortunate to witness a pack of 22 wild dogs on 2 of our game drives. This was one of the most exciting parts of the trip for me. I will keep the pictures here to just pack behavior as I know many children read this blog. I will have some scenes of the kill in the website gallery shortly.

You can tell by the image below that these hunts take their toll on the animals. Look at the right front leg on the dog to the left.

This pack had 14 new pups in the 22, 2 of the pups had already not survived the last few months. That said, our guide told us that this was one of the largest African Wild Dog packs in Africa.

Flying around the dog kill was this beautiful Yellow Billed Kite. When the dogs were not looking he swooped down and grabbed a piece of their kill which is actually still in his talons in this picture.