photography « MaryElizabethThompson.net

Scattered and Unfocused

I haven’t posted anything in the last 10 days because I haven’t felt like I had any solid ideas of things to blog about nor any time to devote to sorting it all out. As my last full-time semester of classes winds-down, I’m having to wind myself up to finish my commitments and meet those deadlines. It’s taking an extra effort because that’s not at all what I’d like to be doing.

I’d like to be bird banding more days per week. Or out birding in general. Or riding my bike more. Or hiking and photographing things.

Or clearing out months of neglected and piled clutter before my house resembles those on the TV show Hoarders, which it is beginning to already.

Or painting some new pictures. Or working on blogs, the revision of my novel, or any other writing that doesn’t involve citations to peer-reviewed journals.

There’s only a few more weeks of classes. Less than 30 days. I have several presentations, two research papers, and two final exams that have to be completed. I’m just focused on the finish line, trying to get to the end.

In other news….

We set up the BirdCam to monitor the hummingbird, oriole, and platform feeders on the deck.

So far, the BirdCam has only caught a few squirrels.

Then we discovered that the Robin has laid 3 eggs in the nest and is sitting on them. I got some still shots with my Canon, but we’re afraid that rigging up the BirdCam there now will disturb Mrs. Robin too much and she may abandon the nest. So I have to monitor that one myself now.

Mrs Robin on her nest. (Only two of three eggs are visible; one is hidden behind her tail) Blurriness is due to dirty window.

The coolest thing about it is that the eggs actually look exactly like the Robin Egg Candies that they sell for Easter every year. And they’re so tiny!

Like I didn’t have enough to juggle. Oh well. It is very cool that we’ll get to see baby robins in a week or so.

Written on April 11th, 2012 , Goals, Nature Tags: birds, motivation, photography

Ready for My Close-Up

Just this week, my husband and I were watching an American Robin in our front yard as it picked up grass in its bill. We watched, amused, and wondering how much it could possibly carry and how much more it would try to pick up. Finally, it took to wing and flew… right into the hedge outside the window of our spare bedroom. It landed on something that looked like a nest.

We hurried to the spare bedroom and looked out. There was a nest. Not only one nest, but a total of three nests, although only one was close enough to see clearly. The other two were obscured by foliage.

So I broke down and ordered a Wingscapes WSCA02 BirdCam 2.0 with Flash.

Now we have the complication of how to mount it in the window at an angle that gives us a good view. I’ve designed a simple hinged board thing that we’ll probably put together this weekend and I’ll post photos of it after that, as well as whatever images the BirdCam captures.

I’m a bit concerned now, however, because we haven’t seen any activity at the nest at all since then, so it may be a moot point. If the camera doesn’t catch any activity after we have been monitoring it for a while, I’ll just move it around to the back yard and watch Pancho and Inez, my bluebird couple who may have moved into one of my bird houses.

In the meantime, enjoy this live camera feed of Great Blue Herons At the Cornell Lab in Ithaca, NY. They also have a live camera feed on a Red-Tailed Hawk.

Written on March 29th, 2012 , Nature Tags: birds, photography, video

Five Minute Intervals

Always in a rush? Never have time for your art, whatever form your art takes?

It’s try that the creative person needs long stretches of isolation to do his or her best work, but that doesn’t mean you that can’t do anything at all with just five minutes. And it doesn’t have to be your best work. Just do something. Anything. Or not.

Here’s a list of possiblities:

Write something: a quick blog, a status update, a shopping list, a journal entry, a list of random ideas, a poem, a postcard to a friend, a love letter. If it’s Tuesday, try Five Minute Fiction.
Sketch something: your pet, child, or spouse, a book on the table, your own hand or foot, the view from the window. Read Robert Sloan’s advice on creating five-minute art. Or this article by Courtney Jordan.
Sing something: sing along with your favorite CD, or sing a capella a beloved song from childood, or a silly song, or a love song. Can’t sing? Hum,then. Or drum your hands on everything around you and listen to the different sounds. And maybe dance.
Got a bucket list (which you might share here or here)? Or a list of impossible things you’d like to do? Use 5 minutes to research information about one of the activities on your list. That’s the first step to getting it done.
Take a photograph of something: your pet, child, or spouse, a row of books, DVDs, brushes, or drawing implements, your cup of tea or coffee, your work in progress, the dead bug on your desk.
One of my Dead Bugs
Read something: a news article, the sports page, the comics, a couple poems or pages of a novel, a blog, a new recipe, an instruction manual.
Drink a glass of water. Staying hydrated is important.
Tidy your office or studio. This is something we all put off, since we’d much rather be in the process of creating something rather than putting away our toys. But it does need to be done sometimes, and it can prove cleansing or meditative. And I almost always find something I thought I’d lost (or forgot I had) when I tidy up. So it’s all good.
Stretch. Look out the window. Stand outside, if the weather is suitable. Take a deep breath. Stretch again in a different direction. Or two. Look around from that stretch position and see the world from a different angle.
Meditate. Sometimes the best action is no action.

Don’t like any of my ideas? Try these:

Things to do when you’re bored.

Five minutes in the kitchen.

Written on February 14th, 2012 , Art, Goals, How-To, Philosophy Tags: drawing, how-to, motivation, photography, writing

Doing What’s Meaningful

This new background photo was taken at Occoquan Bay NWR. I actually take a lot of photos of tree branches against the blue sky. I think it’s one of the prettiest combinations of colors there is. Just like I love when the bright white moon is up during the day in front of a clear cerulean sky. Gorgeous.

Sometime taking photos of tree branches includes Bald Eagles at Pohick Regional Park.

To me, beauty is meaningful. As is the grotesque. As is oddness. And living things of all species. So I am easily motivated to take photographs of things I find beautiful, grotesque, odd, or alive. (Which encompasses almost everything, which accounts for the outrageous number of photos I take.)

And the grotesque includes the dead fish that eagles leave uneaten on the shore.

Humans are hard-wired to find meaning. It’s part of our nature to puzzle out why things are, to learn about them, to find (or invent) meaning for them. This is part of the intelligence that evolved along with creativity, language, art- and tool-making, and everything else that sets up apart from other animals. Our curiosity about the world, our ability to figure out patterns, discover their meaning, and plan for the future – all this has made extremely adaptable and therefore successful.

I don’t believe that the universe as a whole has any meaning. There is no absolute, over-riding purpose to anything… at least, not one we can be privy to. (Although that doesn’t stop people from inventing them and trying to impose their invented meanings on others.) But we each have the ability to decide or discover for ourselves what is meaningful to us, and to pursue that meaning.

And it is pursuing what is meaning to us that keeps us motivated to get up in the morning, to go out in the cold or the heat or the rain or the snow, to take photos, or make art, or plan for the future. If you don’t find what you’re doing meaningful, then why bother? Why are you doing it? What is motivating you?

When we lose sight of what is meaningful in our own lives, though, we lose motivation. We’re simply going through the motions. And sometimes that’s unavoidable. We all have to do things from time to time that seem pointless, but are required to get to some other goal we’re trying to achieve. But no one should live their whole life in pointlessness.

It is your responsibility – your duty to yourself – to find something that gives your life meaning. What motivates you? What makes you feel good about yourself and the work you’re doing? What are you holding on to? What are you protecting? What are you creating?

Written on February 9th, 2012 , Art, Goals, Nature, Philosophy, Photography Tags: birds, fish, goals, meaning, motivation, photography, psychology

My Digital Cameras

(This is part 2 of my history with camera. Part 1 was last week.)

I remember clearly when my husband and I bought our first digital camera. He’d done the homework and researched what model would be the best for us, but I don’t remember now exactly what model we ended up with. I’m pretty sure it was an HP. We bought it at a Sears in Manassas. We were excited like a couple of kids at Christmas.

I was excited, but skeptical. I couldn’t understand how a camera without film would even work. How could a computer sensor ‘sense’ the light coming through the lens, much less record it? And record it on what? A tiny card that wasn’t even a floppy disk or a CD?

Digital Camera Sensor borrowed from DigitalPhotographyfromScratch.com

But it worked. We took photos of our the car and each other in the parking lot of the Sears and marveled at the ability to see the photos instantly on the little screen.

That was about 10 years ago. That particular camera eventually went wonky and we replaced it with the next higher model HP. I never quite understood how they worked, but I was enamored of the fact that I could take as many photos as I wanted without incurring extra costs for film and only paid for the ones that were printed.

But soon, the urge to have a SLR came back stronger than ever. So, I began reading about the digital SLRs. I was intimidated by the price, but also by the overwhelming amount of photographic knowledge of which I was ignorant. I’d heard some of the terms — f-stop, aperture, shutter speed, and so forth — but certainly had no idea how to use them. Every camera I’d ever owned had been a point-and-shoot of some variety.

After a while, however, I took the plunge and got my first DSLR, a Canon Rebel XT. The HP point-and-shoot became solely my husband’s. I’ve haven’t looked back since.

I taught myself how to use the Canon and I loved the ability to take photos of absolutely everything and anything that caught my fancy. And I took a LOT of photos. (And still do. I can easily do 200 in a 2-3 hr walk. More, if I go someplace new with new critters and plants to capture.)

I used my pictures not only for blogs or posting online, or for documenting our family events, but also to capture images of plants and animals that I would then identify when I got home. I sat on the back deck and snapped photos of every bird that came to the feeders so I could learn what they were.

And my photography skills improved. I taught myself (from books and the internet) how to use the features on the camera (or most of them, anyway.) As my skills improved, I wanted to share my photos with everyone. So I began publishing a calendar that included my 13 best photos every year.

And while the Canon Rebel XT was a perfectly adequate camera, eventually I longed for something bigger, better, faster, more.

In 2010, I upgraded to a Canon D-50 DSLR and passed my Rebel down to my husband. I even invested in a couple of really nice lenses, one a zoom and one a macro, so I could get even better shots of nature to learn from, to enjoy, and to share. And, as I wrote a few weeks ago, I even had a professional photographer friend give me some tips on using the manual settings, which improved my pictures even more.

I’ll never be a professional photographer. My photos will never be in National Geographic. But I love taking pictures. Even with my iPhone. If I see an unusual bug or flower or mushroom or tree or rock formation or a dead animal, I want to take it home with me and learn everything about it. And I want to share it with everyone else. Digital photography has given me that dream come true.

Written on January 31st, 2012 , Art Tags: photography

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