Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.

Tag Archives: Photography


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Of iris and hungry birds

Earlier this week I felt the need to be in the woods, so I grabbed my camera and my new lens and went out early to see what I could see.

Near the park entrance it seemed obvious that Mrs. Osprey didn’t want her picture taken as she sat low in her nest so I moved along.

Gotta respect a mother’s wishes.

“I haven’t showered in days and it’s early in the morning. Give me a break!“

As I walked toward the nature center and the beginning of the trails I realized I hadn’t thought to bring the birds anything to eat.

Well, I thought, they’d have to get over it.

Darn, I’m being attacked! Run for it!

I hadn’t taken into account I was the first car in the parking lot and that it had been raining for two days so people hadn’t visited these hungry birds in awhile. I was instantly attacked by an angry mob of red winged blackbirds as I rounded the corner. I heard their wings first and then felt one bounce off my head. Then another. They were everywhere.

I thought I was in a movie, and not in a good way.

“Look lady, hand over the seed and nobody gets hurt.“

I swatted some of them away and moved faster down the trail, blackbirds following closely.

I had managed to get out into the marsh, with only a few blackbirds circling my head, when I heard a Baltimore oriole singing his heart out.

Hiding behind a couple of leaves.

He seemed to be celebrating the sun as he sang in the morning light.

Then he moved out into the sunshine to show off.

As he sat there singing he began to preen, as if he was singing in the shower.

“Just need to get that little bit of leftover gnat out of my armpit…”

He was fun to watch and the blackbirds got bored and headed back up the trail to wait for their next victim. They could only hope that person wasn’t such an airhead.

Though the blackbirds had given up, other birds had not. A little titmouse quietly asked if it was true, that there was no food.

“Seriously? There’s no food?”

I felt bad, but I had to tell him the truth. I had forgotten his breakfast. I was amazed at how quickly he abandoned me, once he realized I was a waste of time.

I wandered off to look for other pretty things to photograph. I figured it probably wouldn’t be a bird kind of day given I was a bird feeder failure.

I had to stop and enjoy the view.

I felt lucky that the iris was in bloom and so very beautiful.

Golden iris in the morning light.

But while I was focused on the iris, my eyes glued to the viewfinder trying to get just the right composition, I heard wings again. And again I felt something largish bounce off the top of my head.

“Hey lady!! What’s for breakfast?”

The male red-bellied woodpecker was miffed that I wasn’t offering anything to eat. And he wasn’t afraid to tell me off either.

“Seriously???”

I told him I was sorry, but I didn’t bring anything. And I went back to photographing the iris.

There were the obvious yellow iris, but also these delicate, smaller, purple blooms as well.

Off to the right of me I heard a big uproar. Turns out Mrs. Red-bellied wasn’t happy either.

“Hey Mr! Get to work and bring home some bacon or this relationship is over!”

I wasn’t sure if she was mad at me for forgetting or him for being a bad provider. Either way she wasn’t getting anything to eat. He jumped to and got to work finding her something…anything!

“Now where did I store that fat ant from last fall?”

He looked everywhere.

How about some nice lichen, sweetie?

“This might be a nice change of pace from the stuff the lady usually brings.”

In between his forages for something natural to feed his demanding wife (who kept on complaining. Loudly.) he’d come back and dive bomb me for being such a disappointment. I kept looking for pretty things to photograph.

My artsy image from this walk.

He followed me almost all the way around a big loop, complaining and doing flybys. Eventually I moved out of his range and settled into a more peaceful walk.

What?? No food???!”

Of course most of the other inhabitants of the woods were equally stressed by my lack of responsibility. I promised them I would never ever forget to bring their snacks again.

“Inconceivable!”

I probably should just pack a snack bag for them and leave it in my car to be more prepared in the future.

“I would think you’d be more thoughtful, Lady!”

Feeling remorseful I headed over to the heron rookery to see what was new. I figured the herons wouldn’t be mad at me given I never feed them.

“And don’t come back here without lunch!”

But I’ll tell you all about that in the next post. I have to say a couple of my favorite images happened over there!

“I’m very disappointed in you, Lady!”


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The third (and last) Harrisville adventure debriefing

So what does a person do while camping at Harrisville State Park once the main mission has been accomplished?

It was a dark and stormy day.

Well. If we’d had another clear night I’d have been out there on the beach getting a second good look at the Milky Way. But we weren’t that fortunate.

We went to the marina on Tuesday to look at the boats. There weren’t many there.

Monday, as we were setting up camp under blue skies, a park employee told us that Tuesday would be rainy but Wednesday was going to be nice. We figured we’d get through Tuesday and find something fun to do on Wednesday.

Tuesday looked like this most of the day.

We figured wrong.

During the day Tuesday we kept expecting it to rain, but it was just breezy and cold. The rain held off, but we expected it at any time. It was really too cold to enjoy walking on the beach.

Layers helped. Sort of.

We went to the local library to stay warm as we tried to find something to do. I googled “What is there to do in Harrisville Michigan?” Google came back with 5 things.

The clouds were cool, though.

1. Sturgeon point lighthouse. Been there, it wasn’t open but we got an amazing image.

2. Harrisville State Park. That’s where we were staying.

3. Cedarbrook Trout Farm. Well, I guess that was a possibility.

4. Bailey School. Saw it through the window, it wasn’t open.

5. Sturgeon Point State Park. Well, that’s where the lighthouse is…so…..

We spent a couple hours at the library, reading magazines and hanging out. When we headed back to camp to make dinner it began to rain.

You can always count on a library to fill a couple of hours.

So we each grabbed some snacks and our reading material and ducked into our tents.

Peanut butter on crackers…perfect snack food.

Fourteen hours later it finally stopped raining. Though I like listening to waves while I sleep I really didn’t need to listen to them for that many hours in a row.

The view from my bed.

And the kicker was that Wednesday wasn’t really any better than Tuesday had been. Windy and cold. We decided to go to the local diner for breakfast.

A warm breakfast always helps to make the day brighter.

There we asked the waitress what there was to do in Harrisville, and she mentioned a couple of stores. One was an art gallery that we had planned on visiting, another was a resale shop with supposedly cool stuff just waiting to be picked over.

Not open for the season yet.

We had hope.

We skipped, reminiscent of the Wizard of Oz, down the city sidewalks. We were still cold.

But it turns out neither place was open because we were up there before Memorial Day, the official start to summer. Sigh.

We walked around the nearly empty town and then drove back to the library where I skimmed a book and she read another magazine.

A library can warm you up.

And then we decided to pack it in and go home.

Time to go, even though it wasn’t technically time to go.

We’d only made one meal at camp. We’d spent way more hours in our tents than we’d planned. It was cold and wet.

We’d accomplished my goal so we could call the trip a success, and sleeping in a real bed in a warm house looked pretty good. It only took us an hour to throw everything in the car and head home.

Sometimes you have to admit that Mother Nature won.

Of course halfway home we stopped at a roadside park and the sun came out. But that was OK, we felt good about our decision to bail on our last night at camp.

The sun came out on our way home. Made us smile.

After all, there’s always another adventure waiting in the wings. I could tell you what and where, but that would spoil the story.

This little guy ate better than we did!

And I wouldn’t want to do that.


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When a 3 night reservation turns into two…continued

Let’s see. When I left you last my sister and I had driven a few hours north, scoped out a potential night sky photography site at a lighthouse, and set up our campsite at Harrisville State Park.

The view from our campsite.

The purpose of this three night camping adventure was to capture the Milky Way in darker skies than those around my house. I’d made the three night reservation six months ago in order to get a prime Lake Huron shoreline site.

I was sure that at least one night would have clear skies.

A view of the lighthouse from about where we planed to stand later that night.

Based on weather forecasts it looked like Monday night/Tuesday morning was my only chance. So we set our phone alarms to get us up at 2:00 a.m. and in the early morning darkness we drove the few miles to the lighthouse.

We quickly found the “X” we had drawn in the sand earlier in the day and began to set up shop. But while I was lengthening the tripod legs I noticed a light way out on the horizon, shining just above the bench I intended to use as a foreground. The light bothered me because it was so bright.

See that light in the middle of the horizon? It was a lot brighter than it looks here. The orange is light pollution.

I took a couple shots but didn’t like what I was seeing.

Too much light from towns to the south.

I decided to shorten the tripod legs in an attempt to hide the light behind the dune. I sent my sister over to the bench so I could try to focus on it, intending for it to be in the foreground which would be stitched together with another image with the focus being the stars.

She’s walking back using the red light. You can still see some of that bright light on the horizon to the right of her.

That didn’t work, I couldn’t focus on her at all, so I gave up that theory. Plus we were too far away from the bench and if I moved closer there would be that darn light out there on the horizon.

I decided to just try for a single image, nothing I had to stitch together later, just practicing getting the stars in focus. That worked and I took several of the same image so I’d have some spares to practice stacking when I got back home.

You can see the bench, but it’s really small and there’s too much light pollution.

But all the time I was focused on the Milky Way I’d been distracted by the lighthouse to my right. The grounds had a single large light on the other side of the building which was lighting up the side of the tower. I thought it was beautiful and wanted to get a shot of that even if it wasn’t a Milky Way image.

I started to move the camera around while not realizing the shutter was still open.

So once I was done with the multitude of stackable images of the Milky Way, and feeling disappointed in the images I had so far, I turned the camera toward the lighthouse. And the first test image I took I realized included a small part of the Milky Way!

How exciting, it was possible to get the Milky Way and the lighthouse in the same image! Quickly I shifted the camera to the right. And this is what I saw:

Nikon Z6ii, 20 mm, iso 3200, 12 seconds.

The yard light they had perfectly lit the tower without being obscene. I had enough time in between flashes of light to get the image because there was so much other light around. And by moving to the right I had eliminated most of the ugly orange light pollution that blasted out over the lake.

I was thrilled.

The rest of the night I worked on getting the best composition, and then taking multiple shots to stack later. I think I was also trying to get one image with the lighthouse in focus that I could use as a foreground to be blended with my best sky shot.

To be honest I don’t know if I did that. I haven’t looked closely at all the images yet. I fell in love with the single image I’m showing you now and sort of stopped looking after that.

It’s such a great reminder of the entire adventure.

If I don’t end up doing anything more with these I’ll still be happy. I need to read the study guides in my online class to learn how to do blends where part of the image is from one shot with the foreground in focus and the rest of the image is from a sky shot with the stars in focus. It can’t be that hard. Right?

Right???!

So what did we do the rest of our three nights at Harrisville? Well…this has gotten too long already so once again you’ll have to wait and see. But I don’t think anything we did the rest of our time there will top that first night.

Hint: There were no more clear skies, day OR night!

When I’m out shooting the stars I don’t feel the cold. My sister, who was patiently waiting for me was marching up and down the beach trying to thaw her toes. I didn’t notice the cold until we got back to the car, and then I realized I was cold to the core.

We got back to camp about 5 a.m. and headed to our tents to get one hour of sleep before the 6 a.m. sunrise which we wanted to photograph. But we were both so cold all we did was shiver in our tents, even with our electric blankets, as we waited for the sun to come up.

The first hint of sunrise.

And after we got a couple shots with the sun rising we scurried to McDonalds to get a hot cup of coffee and a breakfast sandwich. It took a couple hours before we were ready to head back to our tents for a nap.

It was pretty but we were too cold to appreciate it.

Warm was good.

So Monday night/Tuesday morning was the highlight of our camping adventure. Would it be worth it to stick around Harrisville for the rest of our reservation? Hard to say. When I get some more time I’ll show you around town.

But it won’t be under the stars.


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When a three night reservation turns into two.

Six months ago I reserved a campsite on the shores of Lake Huron during a new moon cycle, intent on doing some Milky Way photography. Many years ago Katie and I camped at this state park and I remembered a lighthouse located just a few miles north that might work for night photography.

This is the Sturgeon Point Lighthouse.

My sister drove all the way up from Alabama just to go with me on this photography adventure. Last Monday we set out early in the day so that we had time to scout out the lighthouse location for potential night shots.

My sister noticed this split in color on the lake.

You see, the weather didn’t look promising beyond Monday night. That’s what happens when you have to book something months out. Weather is always the unknown element. We expected a clear night Monday, but rain and cold Tuesday and Wednesday.

We discussed going back home Tuesday if it was miserable.

Monday was a beautiful day.

And we knew we’d only have one night to get the Milky Way. So we needed to be ready.

The lighthouse was just as I remembered it, standing tall on the shores of the Great Lake. We wandered the beach looking for something interesting to put in the foreground.

The bench might look fun under the Milky Way.

Eventually we decided we needed to be quite a bit behind the lighthouse in order to be shooting Southeast where the Milky Way would be. We found a place that might work, tucked low behind a small dune, and made a big X in the sand so we could find the spot in the darkness of 2 a.m., our planned shoot time.

Probably not this angle though.

Then we explored other places on the site, including Baily School which wasn’t open, but we got an interesting shot through the window anyway.

A school room from back in the day.

We wandered down the beach to the south, thinking maybe the rocks out in the water might be interesting. Even if we didn’t end up shooting there at night, they made a nice, minimal, image in the sunshine we were enjoying.

Maybe we could light paint this rock.

Eventually it was time to go check into the campground. If all three days were as nice as Monday we’d have a wonderful time. If only.

Our campsite, right on the shore, was small, but we managed to make it work.

Maybe the weather forecasts were wrong.

We did note that of the handful of people camping along the shore we were the only ones in tents. Perhaps we were a touch too early in the camping season.

The view from our camp site looked promising.

Not to worry, we each had electric blankets and we were confident that we’d be fine. This was not our first spring camping experience.

Our beach. Though it was too cold to swim.

So…you might ask…what happened on Monday night? Did we leave our nice warm, snuggly beds to drive up to the lighthouse at 2 in the morning? Or did the waves lapping on the shore lull us back to sleep after our alarms rang?

Stop! Don’t drive into the lake!

I guess you’ll have to wait and see.


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We’re behind!

Hey everybody! It’s me Penny.

Mom says we haven’t had internet for a million years. Ok, maybe it only FELT like a million years, maybe it was just about a week.

Mom told me to sit on this bench. So I did.

Anyway I’ve been to lots and lots of parks lately ’cause mom and dad are getting stuff done on the house and I tend to bark a lot while stuff is being done on the house.

But mom! I’m not sure about sitting next to a BOY!

Plus mom says it’s really nice to have the time to go to parks and work on my behavior issues. Seriously mom? Does it look like I have behavior issues?

Deuce seemed to tolerate my curiosity, but I don’t think he was thrilled to sit next to a GIRL either.

I didn’t think so.

Mom says she has some really nice pictures of me that she will share with you once she gets them edited and stuff. Which could be a million years from now.

Or a about a week.

Pictures in this post were taken by my Aunt Karen, Deuce’s mom.

Hard telling with mom.

Signing off for now, your photography model and exemplary citizen,

Penny.


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Night adventure

I’ve been waiting for a clear night with no moon and Saturday night/Sunday morning was it. It’s early Milky Way season and it would be visible for a couple hours before sunrise.

I just had to find a dark place to wait.

I got up at 2:00 a.m. Sunday morning, got to Shiawasee Nature Preserve, about an hour north of me, by 3:30. I thought I was prepared. I knew which direction to look. I had the Skyview app loaded in my phone. I had a compass. I’d been there during the daytime and had scoped out a spot to stand that was very near where my car would be parked.

So it was with high hopes I got out of the car in 32 degree weather (but no wind!) wearing a winter coat, scarf, hat, and gloves. I walked the few feet to my chosen spot, set up the tripod and pointed it to the SE. And saw….nothing. A few stars. Nothing much was visible because the light from Flint, 28 miles away, was overwhelming.

I began to doubt myself. Maybe it wasn’t really in the SE. Maybe it was more South by now. After all it was last week I had the training that said Southeast…maybe it moves faster than I imagined. I couldn’t remember the name of the constelations I was supposed to use to find the Milky Way. I couldn’t figure out how to put Antaras (a star) into the Skyview app on my phone to find it.

I was reduced to randomly pointing the camera at the sky in any location I thought it might be and shooting. I saw a few bright stars I thought might be the ‘teapot’ and concentrated on that section of the sky. But that was due South, and I knew that wasn’t right. Still, looking to the Southeast was just too bright.

As I played with my settings I couldn’t check to see if my images were getting better or worse because the back of my camera went black. Apparently I had touched some random button that disabled the live view. Sigh.

I tried the proven trick of upping my iso to the highest it could go, just so I could see what was there, and it was totally blown out white. I tried lowering it some, still white. My fingers were getting cold. My toes were numb. I’d been out there for an hour getting nothing.

In fact, this is my favorite shot from Sunday morning.

My fingers were numb and I didn’t realize I had hit the remote shutter button when I moved the camera.

When I got home I found this image, as the best of the bunch. The Milky Way is in there, if you squint hard and use your imagination. I’ve tried editing it to bring it out more…but I can’t figure that out either on this one. Trying to bring the Milky Way lights up while dimming the Flint dome light is just so hard.

If you sit in a dark room, blow this up, and squint you should be able to see the MW over on the left.

So I reluctantly posted my image on our group’s Facebook page, explaining my issues (well, the issues revolving photography anyway!) and look below at what someone did for me! They edited it so that you can actually see the Milky Way.

Thank you Geralynn Dykstra for the edit!!!!

I’m not so discouraged now. I DID get the Milky Way in the image! I even got stars reflected in the strip of water! I won’t go out to this location for another attempt, there’s just way too much light. But I’ll keep going to dark sky places and I know that eventually I’ll capture the sky the way I see it in my head.