Come Fly With Me

A cheesy title, but I think it fits :P. So here we go. I'd like to preface this start to my photo blog by saying that every photo I upload will undergo absolutely no digital post-editing, except perhaps cropping.

Earlier today my photography obsessed uncle that I mentioned in my last post took me with him to a water treatment plant at the very souther tip of the Bay, a little north of Santa Clara. Surprisingly, it didn't smell at all, as we walked between the various pools of algae covered water. A startling variety of birdlife adorned the shores and skies, and gave me a chance to use my newest lens, a VR 55-200 telephoto lens that my friend sold me for pretty cheap. Great for outdoor, bright-light photography. Not so good for anything else. And today was a beautiful bright CA day - minimal haze, no clouds, lovely strong breezes.

Here we have your basic turkey vulture. Pretty common around the bay area. Great for photos, as it has a pretty huge wingspan and it doesn't zip around like those infuriating tiny sparrows, which are near impossible to get a clear photo of with the equipment I had. Luckily this one was pretty low to the ground.

This seagull had been circling over my head for quite some time. Kinda scary actually..

My uncle knows the name of this guy. Think its some kinda egret, but not quite sure. He was quite lazy while skimming over the algae ponds, he actually fell into the water rather un-gracefully after a while.

Here we have ducks. Mallards, to be a 'lil more specific. Gorgeous colors, probably some of the prettiest birds you'd see in northern californian wetlands. The area was filled with these ducks and their little ducklings. My 5 year old cousin, full of loud boisterous energy would run at these ducks causing them to take flight, enabling me and my uncle to catch these shots of them skimming the water's surface.

A red-tailed hawk, really common around the hills near my house and down south of San Jose. This guy took off before I could sneak up close, but I managed to line up this shot perfectly as it rounded some power lines.

It's disgusting how many photos like this I took. I really don't wanna get into the habit of shooting a ton of photos and then having to go through 500 identical ones and trying to pick the best one.

This obviously isn't a bird. But my lil cousin, who's shockingly good at spotting the most amazing things, found this guy lounging on some broken asphalt. He was a bit hard to spot at first, because he blended in so well when you look down on him. Along with a lady bug and some snails, this guy was the only non-avian wild-life I saw all day.

So there's my first photo-post, lets hope I can keep this up and not give up after a couple of days.. Normally I won't have the number of photos to share that I had today. Today I just happened to go out and take 301 photos in little under two hours. (setting the camera to continuous shooting mode is rather addicting...) It took a while at the computer to delete the useless ones, and then even longer to rule out several shots that were perfectly fine in terms of lighting and clarity, but beyond that weren't really interesting. In the end I have around 110 photos left.... my poor hard drive is going to fill up quickly at this rate...