View allAll Photos Tagged Encounters
Throwback to two years ago - harsh winter weather in Lapland. We barely made our night train connection because the windshield wipers of the connecting bus had frozen and did not work. Luckily the driver got the help needed. After each snow plough that passed visibility was briefly reduced to none, driving in a cloud of snow.
Cities At Night - Hattem
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© NGimages / Nico Geerlings Photography
For the Smile on Saturday challenge: "Dogmania"
I don't have a dog, and I rarely photograph dogs ... but one day (long before the pandemic of course) we stopped to chat with a fellow walker ... and as we chatted I found myself enjoying the little white poodle, who was full of energy and keen to get on with his walk! I had a Lensbaby optic with me, not ideal for a restless subject! But I kept snapping, not sure if I would ever use the shots, or just keep them as a memory of the brief encounter of the morning! So here are just a few of them ;o)
Shot with the Lensbaby Sweet 50 on the NEX-6
HSoS ;o)
Cliche and Smile on Saturday: Here
Lensbaby Sweet 50: Here
Birds, beasts & insects here: Here
If you are interested about the Lensbaby and how it works there's more (off Flickr) on my Inedita website.
More about the Sweet 50 optic Here
More about the whole Lensbaby systemHere
A new little cat has moved into the street. Dusty has not been enjoying this weather, so he's spent plenty of time sitting up at the bedroom window watching what happens on the street outside. On this particular evening he stepped onto our front balcony and his long fur was being blown all over the place.
I heard a little noise and stepped outside to see what was going on. Nothing dramatic or indicating a cat fight, but some rather muted exchanges of cats' cries. Dusty is a big tall cat as the photos I post below indicate. But he was hunched down very low as you can see here (rather strange for a cat that bosses the street). And there sheltering from the wind behind a large terracotta pot was a beautiful creature with the most beguiling eyes.
I'm not sure the little cat knew what to expect next, and as I brought my camera up for the shot it looked at me as if to say, "How can I get out of this mess?" Everything ended well. Dusty was on his best behaviour, and the little cat was seen again with Dusty the next morning. There is a distinct hierarchy among the cats and Dusty was making sure the new kid on the block understood its place.
Right at dusk tonight I saw Jupiter and a very fait Saturn just above it. With all the hype about this rare close encounter of the two planets, I decided to try to photograph the pair. I thought it would be a long shot, both figuratively and literally, to get anything at all that would make for an interesting photo. I had about 15 minutes to try various shutter speeds and ISO settings before it disappeared into the haze on the horizon. The biggest challenge was trying to focus on the planets so far away. If I had had more time maybe I could have gotten it better, but then again maybe not. Tomorrow evening they are supposed to be closer together yet, but it is also supposed to be mostly cloudy. I was particularly pleased to see that I had captured Jupiter's moons.
A Brown Pelican approaching a Great Blue Heron who has positioned himself close to the fish cleaning table.
We just returned from a whirlwind trip up to Devils Tower National Monument in northeastern Wyoming. The forecast was calling for clear, dark night skies. We spent 2 nights photographing the milky way over Devils Tower. Since my all time favorite movie is "Close encounters of the third kind".....it only seemed fitting to go look for alien ships in the night. Although I saw no aliens, I did manage to see an incredible night sky full of unbelievable air glow... (the oddly colored cloud looking lines running through the sky created by various atmospheric conditions). This image was captured on the second night. Both nights were beautiful and different. I shot with 2 cameras each night with various orientations and focal lengths. This particular image is what's known as a focal blend. Because our eyes see the world differently than camera lenses, I needed to do this to keep the Tower in its proper perspective. The foreground was shot at a focal length of 35mm and the sky at 24mm. The foreground was captured during the blue hour, just after sunset, and the sky was captured about 2 hours later. Nothing was moved between shots except for focal length on the lens. I then hand blended the 2 images in photoshop to create one exposure.
Nikon Z9 with Nikkor 24-70mmF2.8 S lens
Foreground, ISO 64, F11, 1/2 sec, 35mm
Sky 15 images stacked for noise reduction, ISO10,000, F2.8 10 sec. June 21 2022
Falkland islands, Sea Lion Island
Common and widespread in the Falklands, the Crested Duck nest near fresh water rivers and ponds that are close to the sea. The male and female look similar. Like almost all birds and mammals we encountered, these ducks were easy to approach!
An insanely cool catch that we managed to get completely by accident.
Luke, Jasper and I were on our way from Chicago to Kansas City, when I spotted a headlight down the tracks on UP's Springfield Subdivision just south of its namesake town. Upon further inspection, we realized we had stumbled upon an incredible train: UP's MBNAS with a gorgeous standard cab SD60 on point. We had known prior that this train would occasionally get the specially painted Alton and Southern SD60s, but had confirmed earlier that they were still in St. Louis. Due to this, we never even thought about the fact that it could potentially have a regular UP paint 60. After sitting in the siding for a northbound intermodal, the extremely friendly engineer put the pedal to the metal and went faster than any manifest any of us had ever seen before. They topped out at 65 miles per hour and we couldn't even manage to get another shot of them due to not being able to catch up (despite Luke driving over 100 miles per hour in some stretches of highway). Despite that slight misfortune, the fact that we even were able to shoot it to begin with is nothing short of a miracle.
Black-chinned Mountain Tanager
Large and colorful tanager of Andean cloud forest in western Ecuador and western Colombia. Plumage is golden-yellow with a black head, blue wing patch, and yellow stripe on rear crown. Separated from the more common Blue-winged Mountain-tanager by yellow back, orange tinge to underparts, black chin, smaller crown stripe, and less blue in wing. Usually encountered in pairs or small groups that move through middle levels of the forest, often with mixed-species flocks. Visits feeders in some areas.
Taken on a trip led by Sam Woods of Tropical Birding Tours.
Mashpi Amagusa Reserve - Ecuador
February 15, 2025
these old timers caught my eye on a recent outing, an architectural style I hadn't encountered before.
I stopped off at Col. Sam Smith Park on the way home from a trip to the city. This juvenile Peregrine Falcon perched beside a lakeshore pathway was not the least bit fazed by the people walking by. One of those pleasing days when you see something totally unexpected!
I spent last week on Mull with a wildlife photographer friend David and returned with a scary number of images to sift through - I need to learn when not to press the shutter release!
This shot is from a fabulous encounter with an otter that we followed along the shore for maybe 2 hours seeing it eating and sleeping for short spells as it travelled.
Explore 12/04/2022 No. 168