Winter Birds

After Christmas dinner at my Aunt Nancy's house I was quickly taken in by playing with my new Olympus e-pm1 and several of the lenses I had brought with me.  My aunt had several bird feeders placed near windows of her house, so all the hungry birds were easy targets for my camera.  Plus, photographing the fast moving birds was great practice for capturing pictures of other wild animals on future trips to the woods.

Cardinals are a great photograph during the winter.  Easy to attract with nearly any brand of food, their red plumage stands out in stark contrast to winter's blanket of snow.  This guy was a bit bashful and tried to keep his head behind the feeder, but I did manage to capture this nice photo.  The 14-42 lens that came with the Olympus worked flawlessly capturing the cardinals colors.

Here several chickadees were being much more cooperative for their portrait.  All four positioned themselves well and the picture was easily framed.  Leaving the 14-42 lens in place and switching to the full auto mode, the quick chickadees were captured as if they posed for the shot.

Finally, I broke out the telephoto lens.  I haven't purchased a proper 50-150 specifically made for my Olympus's Micro 4/3's platform, but I was able to find an adaptor to make an old 50-200 Pentax fit on the camera.  Works great.  Biggest downfall is the e-pm1 doesn't have an optical viewfinder, so you are stuck using the LCD screen to tell if you're in focus or not.  In the photo above I was able to capture a little woodpecker hanging on a suet feeder.  I wish the sky wasn't so overcast, because the focus on the bird is very nice, and on a brighter day I think the bird would have popped more in the photo.

All in all I'm still thrilled with the camera, and for an outdoorsman, and a family-man, I really think that this camera will suit my needs for several years to come.

Happy Exploring
Scott M

Light and Color

Is there really anything else more important when capturing an image with a camera?

Sure you can snap off picture after picture, but will your finished product be something that someone wants to see? 

I grew up around cameras.  My father and two of my uncles all had nice cameras and they have always enjoyed snapping pictures whenever possible.  So naturally when I started writing about the outdoors, I was very aware of the need to invest in a nice camera to capture the places I was talking about.  After messing around with some lower end point and shoot models I recently made the commitment and upgraded to the Olypus E-pm1.  This model falls outside of the DSLR category, and into the newer category of Micro Four Thirds cameras.  Despite the unwieldy name, the camera has been so much fun to shoot with.  I won't pretend to know the ins and outs of the technology, but the goal of the system is to offer both the usability of a camera with interchangeable lenses and the quick handling of a digital point in shoot.  This is accomplished in a more compact body by taking advantage of increases in digital technology.  While playing around the day after I bought the camera I captured this image of a Brown-Eyed Susan in my garden:

Nice color and sharp focus with minimal experience handling the camera. Being digital, it has auto focus features, which can be set to conform to certain styles of shooting. However, the auto features can be shut off allowing the user to play with the image themselves.

A couple weeks after that photo, I capture this one in a corn field near my favorite hunting spot:

Here I really tried to focus on the composition of the photo.  It was setting sun light, so I was able to almost eliminate any shadow on the front and our left of the ear of corn.  The green leaves and stalks created nice contrast, helping the yellow kernels really come to the front of the picture.

Take time to enjoy the details,
Scott M