Thursday, September 28, 2006

South Bay Morning


Great Egret
Originally uploaded by Bill Walker.
Well, Ashok and I had a pretty slow morning at Sunnyvale Baylands and the neighboring sewage ponds. I did have a lot of fun borrowing his 2X teleconverter, and I even, in a moment of hubris, tried stacking the 1.4X teleconverter on the 2X teleconverter on the 500mm f/4L on the camera body with the 1.6 magnification factor, leading to the equivalent of a 2,240mm f/8 monstrosity. Thanks to the miracle of image stabilization plus the wicked tripod setup, I actually got some moderately sharp images with that setup. More pictures here.

Friday, September 15, 2006

I'm beta, baby.

hey all,

I just switched to the new Blogger Beta thingie. I really hope this works, and that all my content survives the switchover, and that the RSS feed still works.

Thursday, September 14, 2006

Get Down, Get Down, Get Down


American Avocet
Originally uploaded by Bill Walker.
This morning Ashok and I went looking for shorebirds in Alviso, and ended up flopped on our bellies in the soggy pickleweed. For fun. On purpose.

Why? Well, turns out there's no substitute for getting down at eye level with these guys, it really does make the images more immediate, more compelling. I'm quite happy with this one here, it was sharp enough to warrant printing at 13" by 19", which is pretty rare in my experience for a 8MP DSLR.

Saturday, September 09, 2006

Dances with Acorns


Acorn Woodpecker
Originally uploaded by Bill Walker.
Saturday morning I had the opportunity to visit Guadalupe Oak Grove Park with Ken Briggs in search of cooperative Acorn Woodpeckers posing with acorns on beautifully lit branches.

The company was lovely, the weather was wonderful, the woodpeckers were around. We got very few shots, but had a fun time wandering around. We also had a nice chat with the Los Gatos Wild Bird Center folks who were in the Park for their weekly bird walk. It's a lovely stand of oak trees, highly recommend for birders and non-birders alike

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Come see my cool bird slideshow!

Bringing our wild birds on-line: Bird Photography meets Photobloging
Wednesday, October 4th, 7:30pm
Bay Area Bird Photographers, Lucy Evans Nature Center

You’ve seen these birds before, but never quite like this: Black-necked stilts cross bills in the afterglow. An osprey lightens its load before take-off. An oystercatcher impersonates Dracula. In this talk Bill will present the beauty and strangeness of familiar birds, showing recent images made in Oregon, California, and New Mexico -- all published online via flickr, the photo sharing web site.

Bill's photography is an outgrowth of his passion for seeking out wild birds and sharing them with his community. He strives to show birds as an organic part of their environment, both visually and ecologically. This talk will feature lots of bird images and will also demonstrate how Bill uses personal and internet computing to pass along his enthusiasm for bay area birds and the best places to photograph them. Technology topics will include photo-sharing websites, blogging tools, and mapping.