Michigan | Change Is Hard

January 18, 2025
by dawnkinster 35 Comments

Searching for a redhead

It’s been awhile, a really long while, since I’ve been out to Kensington to feed the birds. A photographer friend and I have been talking about it for what feels forever – – stuff just got in the way. But this week we decided we needed to make it a priority, because the weather around here isn’t going to get any better.

With negative wind-chill predicted for next week we decided to get out there Friday afternoon. And boy we’re glad we did because the sun actually came out while we were there. Yes it was cold, but back among the trees, out of the wind, it was magical.

*Maybe if he looks at us he will be more obvious.*

There’s a lot of content in the 765 images I took. Seven Hundred, Sixty-Five! That’s crazy! We were only out there maybe 2 hours. OK…maybe 3 hours. That’s 255 images an hour, or about 4 every minute…a picture every 15 seconds? Thank goodness it’s digital!

Anyway.

The biggest reason I wanted to be out there with my camera was to find the redheaded woodpecker. Hard to believe that until a couple years ago I had no idea there was such a bird in my area. But then I saw pictures online from Kensington and one winter day I saw him myself!

*I think he (or she) might be young. Notice the brown feathers between the eyes. Juvies have brown heads.*

Now that I know what part of the park I’m most likely to see him, I steered my small party in that direction. Along the way we ran into a couple of other photographers (recognizable by the extra long, super cool 800mm lenses on their cameras) and spent a long time talking to them about camera bodies, lens length, f-stops, tips for bird photography and… wait for it…while we were standing there, 5 people talking camera stuff, the redheaded woodpecker arrived, with much noise and fanfare.

*The black and white feathers on their backs make them very elegant birds.*

Now that I’ve heard him I will be able to find him more easily because he makes a noise different than all the other woodpeckers around. He was definitely interested in us, just as I was interested in him.

One of the guys with the big camera lens told us that if we threw a whole peanut up in the air the woodpecker would come off the tree trunk and grab that peanut right out of the air! Since we did, indeed, have a peanut like that, he volunteered to throw it so we could try to get a picture of the bird in flight.

I failed miserably, shooting wildly and blindly, but I did get one image of the bird flying, kind of in focus, and I’m proud to have gotten that much!

*Well, at least I got SOMETHING! That black thing at the bottom is the photographer’s hat.*

We had so much fun and spent almost 2 hours standing in one place a bit further along the trail, at a magical tree that was filled with all sorts of birds. Even the redheaded guy came back around. But that all will have to be saved for another post.

I have lots of editing to do!

January 15, 2025
by dawnkinster 27 Comments

Pretty things

Sometimes when the news is heavy, when it seems like it’s been heavy for weeks and months…

…and the winter sky seems dark and dull…

..and sunshine is so fleeting you stop and stare when, for a moment, there are shadows on the snow….

…then it’s extra important to slow down and enjoy the beautiful things that are all around us.

January 11, 2025
by dawnkinster 19 Comments

I’m a homebody

Penny here.

Who’d of thought that I’d be writing to you a mere week after my last contribution to mom’s blog? Obviously mom’s life is pretty boring if she’s willing to hand over communication control to me!

But I’m a sheltie — I never ignore an opportunity to communicate! (Sheltie moms and dads know this is true!)

So anyway. We got a bunch of snow last night. Not as much as some of you, but maybe a little more than 4 inches. It’s soft, powdery snow and mom had this brilliant idea that I might want to play in it. Cause, as you know, I’m a sheltie and stuff.

Yesterday mom had been up at the neighbor lady’s house drinking tea and talking about important stuff like me. The neighbor lives on a big lot, way back off the road and has a wonderful yard that backs up to woods. Mom thought it would be a fun place for me to play, far away from the road.

So when we woke up to all this snow mom got permission to take me up there to play. Unfortunately she didn’t clear it with me first.

So mom and I are trotting up the nice lady’s driveway and I figure we’re just out there for me to do my job, so I pee and mom says good girl, and I turn around to go home. Because that’s what I always do after I pee, I go home.

*Me in the nice lady’s backyard under protest.*

But mom says, no, no, baby girl we’re going to keep going up this driveway. Well! I hadn’t been up this driveway before and there was a big camper up there with a cover and there were cords swinging in the breeze and they were scary so I barked at them a lot and I turned around to go home!

And mom said, no, no, baby girl come on up this driveway and she drags me up there and around to the back of the house and I’m scared and I don’t understand and mom finally figures out I’m shaking so she picks me up and cuddles me and walks, carrying all 27 pounds of me, around the yard a bit until I settle down, and then she puts me down figuring I’ll run around sniffing some and I immediately poo.

And when I get done pooing I pull mom toward the driveway so I can go home! Cause that’s what you do after you poo, you go home! And mom is looking for a bag to collect the poo and realizing she forgot to bring one and all the time I’m pulling her back toward home.

Mom decided to give in and we trotted all the way back down the driveway and back to my yard, where, once I was safe and sound on familiar ground I played with my leash and attacked her boots and chased snowballs just like normal.

And after I went inside mom walked all the way back up the nice lady’s driveway with a bag and collected my poo.

When she finally got home she was pretty cold and wet and discouraged so we took a nap on the sofa. I slept on top of her to make her feel warm and safe and loved in return for her carrying me around that scary yard.

But before we have another adventure like that I’m going to have to have a serious discussion with mom. Yep, no more surprise adventures when we don’t even get in a car! How’s a girl supposed to know it’s an adventure anyway!

Talk later, your adventure-less girl, Penny.

*The nice lady’s house is way up there, far away from my house!*

Wordless Wednesday

January 8, 2025 by dawnkinster 24 Comments

December 21, 2024
by dawnkinster 38 Comments

When stuff doesn’t go right

I’m in another one of my funky, can’t figure out how to do stuff, phases. You know how it is (or maybe you don’t), you’re bee-bopping along doing stuff you’ve always done and suddenly something doesn’t click.

Sometimes literally.

*Shooting through a window, with the glare of other windows reflected and struggling to focus.*

Earlier this month I questioned whether I should print my blog, as a way to preserve it. Several of you had ideas, and others of you had wondered about their own blogs, so were following along.

Last week I wandered around the PixxiBook site, (thanks Linda!) a company that prints blogs into hard covered books with a really easy interface. They have options of choosing which posts you want to print, or you can choose a specific time period.

My issue is, and always will be, the size of my blog. I’ve been writing here since 2006, with over 3,300 posts. Still I was curious.

So, after a few days of thought, I put my URL into their ‘go ahead and try it’ box and it started to go to work. Pretty soon I could preview the results, and I enjoyed very much reading the first couple years of posts in the format the printed version would appear.

Back then I had no images, and the posts were shorter than my ramblings of today. It was fun to reread all about being in grad school as an older student.

Meanwhile the PixxiBook machine was still churning. When I finally backed out of the site several minutes later it had made it through 30% of my blog, indicated there would be 40+ books and the cost was edging up over $4,000.

I smiled, because obviously there’s no way I can ever afford to put my entire blog into hard covered books. It would be bigger than an encyclopedia set! But I will print a few years worth, perhaps those early days in school. And there is potential to just pull the Katie posts out and put them in one book, though I think that will take some work on my part.

Then, later in the week, I was working on a Christmas present, putting photos from a summer adventure into a photo book for someone and I was struggling!

Now, I’ve one projects like this a hundred times, but this time things felt different. I couldn’t find the book template I wanted to use, I couldn’t find the save button, though I remembered that while making my Penny 2025 calendar the system had saved on it’s own, so maybe that was it, I couldn’t get the photos imported…nothing was working the way I remembered it should work.

I spent a couple hours and got only a quarter of the book built when I had to stop for the day.

And, you guessed it, when I went back the next day nothing I had done had been saved. And I struggled all over again finding the pieces I needed to build the book. In the end I did the best I could and the book is designed and ordered and hopefully soon on it’s way to it’s forever home. But geeze.

AND during all this my Lightroom photo editing system decided I’d run out of storage. I have both Lightroom and Lightroom Classic, which I pay a subscription for.

I’d always meant to use Lightroom Classic, because I don’t really want my photos to be stored by someone else in a cloud. But I accidently started with the cloud version, and I never wanted to stop and learn Lightroom Classic.

Franky, when I took the time to go explore Classic it seemed less intuitive and I couldn’t even figure out how to import a photo to it, so I stuck with the Cloud. But now my cloud is full and I really don’t want to pay more, especially with Classic sitting right there on my laptop. So I forced myself to figure it out.

And I’m slowly, very, very slowly, moving that way. I have edited the photos you see on this post using Classic. I’m not entirely happy.

And, speaking of not being happy, I have a new camera and I don’t have it all set up the way I want it yet. Because of course the new camera isn’t exactly like the old camera, otherwise, what would make it new.

Right?

So as I’m trying to take photos of this hawk that was hanging out on my deck and around my birdfeeders, terrorizing my little birds, I couldn’t get it to focus. That’s always been my problem with the Nikon Z series.

There’s a back of the camera focus button which I like to use v.s. using the shutter focus. I thought I had programed the camera to use the back button option, but while taking these photos, I’d focus using the back button, and when I actually pressed the shutter to get the shot it would REFOCUS and because there were so many branches it would focus on those instead of the bird.

Big sigh.

Lucky for me the hawk was concentrating on the little birds trapped in a briar bush below the deck and not me. He (or she) stood still for long periods of time. I finally just put the camera into manual focus and tried that way.

I still have to fix the focus problem, but that means figuring out more stuff. And I’m so tired of trying to figure stuff out these days. I might just go take a nap instead.

Here’s hoping you are having a much more productive and less frustrating month than I am!

*No little birds were injured during the writing of this post.*

December 12, 2024
by dawnkinster 15 Comments

The great sock mystery

On this frigid Michigan morning, with high temperatures predicted to be in the mid teens (F) and wind chills below zero, I think it’s only appropriate to talk about socks. This is the kind of morning that I want to snuggle up on the sofa with comfy warm clothes under a blanket and my dog, and contemplate life’s mysteries.

Over the years I have purchased many warm socks. To my knowledge they all arrived in pairs, two of each pattern, color and style. But for many weeks I have only been able to find matching pairs on a handful of occasions. Unless there’s a huge pile of socks behind the dryer I suggest that my dog has hidden them on purpose.

This morning, with the wind blowing snow across the driveway, Penny and I head out into the dark to do her business. On my feet are mismatched socks. After all, who decided socks need to match anyway?

Penny agrees. What do you think?

Wordless Wednesday

December 11, 2024 by dawnkinster 11 Comments

December 7, 2024
by dawnkinster 21 Comments

Bird watching

After a beautiful warm fall it’s finally getting cold now, cold like it’s supposed to be in Michigan in December.

We even got some snow, but nothing near what northern Michigan and the UP got. They had feet of snow fall in one day. We had a couple inches and they closed the local schools.

Why, I remember when I was a kid walking through 5 feet of snow uphill both ways to the bus stop. I’m sure you did too. Kids today.

Anyway, I haven’t done anything particularly interesting lately. Certainly nothing blog worthy.

Unless you count watching my birds as they swarm the feeders during these chilly mornings.

Sometimes we even have a bit of sun and then the birds are extra happy. I am happy too, enjoying the light on their feathers, and the sparkle in the snow.

I am hoping to get to my favorite birding park in the next week or so. We’ll see. It seems like every day fills up with things not going to the park related and I think….well tomorrow…and then tomorrow crazy happens all over again.

But if I ever do get out there I’ll share the photos. Cause there are bound to be some images blog worthy from out there.

PS: Thank you to everybody that suggested ways to print my blog. I’m going to be doing some research!

PPS: And THANK YOU to everybody that donated to my fundraiser for the Truck Safety Coalition! I appreciate every one of you!

November 19, 2024
by dawnkinster 20 Comments

Is Christmas early? Or maybe Thanksgiving is late.

Our community band holiday concert is this Thursday. Yes, the day after tomorrow, and before Thanksgiving. It’s never happened like this before.

We’ve only had 4 weeks of rehearsals to prepare, but it’s Christmas music, much of it we’ve played before. It will be fine. In fact, it might just be the perfect way to kick the holiday season off!

So…if you’re in the area, and would enjoy some uplifting music to kick start your holiday season…come on over to the Clarkston High School this Thursday evening, 7:00 p.m. It’s free.

You can have your picture taken with the authentic Santa, and we’ll have cookies afterward too! I personally don’t think you can have a legitimate holiday season until you’ve heard “Christmas Festival” by Leroy Anderson live and in person.

And Santa himself will be directing “Sleigh Ride.” That alone should make you want to be there.

Happy Holidays, everybody! Christmas music, then Thanksgiving. It’s always good to mix things up. Keeps us on our toes!

November 1, 2024
by dawnkinster 13 Comments

Traveling slowly or Barn Hunt!

I’m headed for a short visit with family down in Alabama. Which means I’m driving through farm land. Lots and lots of farm land. I’m beginning to think you could throw a dart at a map of the US Midwest and there’d be a great barn to photograph right there.

Yep, everywhere I look I think, “I need to come back here, find a campground, and spend a couple days hunting barns.” Sort of like looking for places to shoot the Milky Way, but I’d get to be out with the camera in the daylight instead of tromping around in the dark.