Hello again everyone... as you can see I think that I was suffering from temporary writer's blog when thinking of a blog title 
Yes, it has been over a week once again since I last posted an entry so now I believe that I will try to get one done every two weeks and then if I actually do manage to get one a week done it will be a pleasant surprise 
What's been happening as of late. Well... it snowed...a lot 
Yes, I am one of those snow haters that you read about. Not that I really hate snow as the thing that I hate is that snow=cold and it is in fact the cold that I hate. I am going to do my best this winter to not turn into a hermit as that is what I tend to do when the temperature drops....nope...not this year as I have my newly purchased snow shoes that I only got to use a couple of times last year and I am hoping to do a ton of winter shooting. Other than that Rob has been really busy with the U of R shooting hockey, soccer, volleyball, football... you name it he's been shooting it. I went along and shot some volleyball with him last week and I can tell you that it is not easy!! We have also been teaching more photo workshops and are heading out on the road with our workshop in a few weeks. We were fortunate enough to be able to head out with our friend Jim last week to shoot some pictures of snow geese in one of his blinds...we then went and picked up his falcon. I must admit that I knew absolutely nothing about falcons previous to going out and I'm still no falconer but it was an extremely informative and fun afternoon.
And onto some pics:
I had a bit of time on my hands one evening so decided to play around with my macro lens that I rarely get a chance to shoot with.
ISO-200, Shutter Speed 1.3 sec, Aperture 2.8, Focal Length 100mm shot with Tokina 100mm 2.8 Macro Lens.
Rob at the Cougar women's volleyball game. I can't remember if this was shot right before or right after he started complaining about how sore his knees were getting. For once I didn't actually think that he was just being a whiner as I too shot quite a few pics from the crouched position and almost had to ask for assistance when getting up
ISO-3200, Shutter Speed 1/400th, F 2.8, Focal Length 70mm
Here are some pictures that Rob shot of the snow geese:
Here are a couple of mine... I was fortunate enough to be able to use Jim's 500mm lens. Now of course I want one....thanks a lot Jim!! I won't tell you here that I might have been bugging Rob a wee bit too much with little shots such as "Wow... I didn't know that some geese have blue eyes and some are brown" etc... yep... he was more than a bit jealous over the fact that I had such a big telephoto lens
Rob shooting out of the blind. A little bit cramped with 3 of us but you wouldn't believe the view!
So... I thought that it would be fun to make a contest out of this last one. If you can give me the correct number of geese that are in the photo then you will win a prize lol...
We will now move onto some of Rob's falconing photos (if that's not a word then it is now) :
Everyone meet Voodoo. Very crazy that you can walk up and pet him but then the second he sees another bird he is in full on attack mode.
Jim and Voodoo pre take off.
And onto some of mine:
For some reason I honestly thought that I would be able to get photos of Voodoo mid attack... not so much! We had actually temporarily lost sight of him and then all of the sudden a partridge flew up. Before you could even blink there was a sound and then a blur of feathers. How did I know that these birds flew at a speed of about 120 MPH!!??? This photo is of him coming in after Jim signaled for him to come back.
Rob making a new friend... note that the falcon appears to be somewhat shying away
The end of a long but exciting day.
I had to throw this picture in here. When I picked Rob up in the morning he was extremely proud of his new hat. No, you are not seeing things as that is actually not one but two lights built into the brim. Needless to say I was just as speechless as I was the
time that he wore the polyester pants ( I know Rob... you keep claiming that they are not Polyester )
As we were driving home the sunset was amazing and we came across these bulls in a field so we decided to jump out and take some pictures... Rob managed to get a shot of one that had both horns whereas in my shot I somehow focused on the one with the mono horn.
I was about to close the blog here but Rob just emailed me a couple more photos so I will share them with you. The first photo is of me dressed up in hunting gear blowing off the end of a shotgun...no, I didn't actually shoot it. Rather long story involved but the best or worst part of the story involved me having to walk into a marsh in hip waders holding this gun (not loaded)... that all went well until it was time to try and get out of the marsh as I had sunk into about a foot and a half of mud and needed help getting out.
Keep checking back to the blog as we will be holding a photo contest in the not too far future.
That's it for now... if you are finding yourself with some idle time when you are not shooting then check out
yearbookyourself.com just as I did:
Until next time...keep shooting and have fun!
Devona
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