Look­ing for wildlife to pho­to­graph? A recent blog post by Scott Bourne lists his top 7 bird and wildlife pho­tog­ra­phy hotspots in the states.

Read­ing this arti­cle, I real­ized that many of the birds he men­tions to be found in these refuges can also be found here in the San Fran­cis­co bay area. Accord­ing to infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by the Don Edwards Wildlife Pre­serve, the bay area has “30,000 acres of wet­lands, open water, and upland habi­tats, are home to at least 800,000 birds at any giv­en time and to mil­lions dur­ing peak migra­tion”. That link takes you to a com­phre­hen­sive list detail­ing when you might find which birds.

Just a par­tial list of birds we have spot­ted here in Half Moon Bay include:

Barn owls
Pacif­ic Great horned owls
Great blue Herons
Cat­tle egrets
White herons
Green herons
Cor­morants
Less­er mur­res
Oys­ter catch­ers
Snowy plovers
Red tailed hawks
Gold­en eagles
Turkey vul­tures
Kestrels
Kites
Pere­grine fal­cons
Hood­ed ore­oles
Downy wood­peck­ers
Acorn wood­peck­ers

Not to men­tion all the oth­er sea birds, finch­es, hum­ming­birds and oth­er North Amer­i­can vari­eties. It is a wor­thy project to doc­u­ment the birds of the bay area.

Our ances­tors quar­ried and hauled gar­gan­tu­an stones many miles to build mon­u­ments that could pre­dict where the sun and moon would rise and set. Pho­tog­ra­phers now days have it a lit­tle eas­i­er.

The Pho­tog­ra­pher’s Ephemeris is one tool that com­bines cen­turies of observed astro­nom­i­cal and grav­i­ta­tion­al data with Google maps and shows you in exqusite detail where the sun and moon will be direct­ing their light and the cor­re­spond­ing shad­ows, at any time of the day or night, at any place on earth, even allow­ing for ele­va­tion of the sur­round­ing ter­rain. Well, maybe not every coor­di­nate on earth, yet. I have not test­ed it’s lim­its.

Stephen Train­or is the author of this free pro­gram. An iPod app will also be avail­able on April 17.

Watch­ing the short tuto­ri­als reveals the pow­er of this pro­gram. Mark my words, this is some­thing we all will applaud today, take for grant­ed tomor­row and some will actu­al­ly com­plain about in the future. Since this will actu­al­ly save you time and mon­ey, Stephen pro­vides a dona­tion link to help main­tain the ser­vice. Please con­sid­er con­tribut­ing.

Here is the link to his blog or click the pic­ture above. Thank you Stephen, for mak­ing my life that much sim­pler.

Kite Aer­i­al Pho­tog­ra­phy is a tech­nique I am itch­ing to try and this pho­to­graph tak­en by George Lawrence after the 1906 earth­quake in San Fran­cis­co is inspir­ing. Some­one (at the USGS?) did a great job of cre­at­ing a zoomable high res­o­lu­tion ver­sion.

Ah, the gold­en hour, that peri­od of time 1 hour after sun­rise and 1 hour before sun­set when our ulti­mate light source fil­ters through the max­i­mum amount of atmos­phere. There are only 2 in a day. I took this pic­ture in Bossier City, Louisiana dur­ing the evening ver­sion. More often then not, I miss the morn­ing occur­ance. The musi­cian in me refus­es to rec­og­nize two 7 o’clocks in the same day. I do take advan­tage if I am forced to rise ear­ly, if I must take some­one to the air­port at 0 dark thir­ty for instance. I ratio­nal­ize and bal­ance what I miss by stay­ing up late and devel­op­ing pic­tures in the dark of night.

If you want the Gold­en Gate Bridge to be lit from the city side, you have to be there before noon. If you want to take advan­tage of that atmos­pher­ic phe­nom­e­non instead of buy­ing fil­ters or warm­ing it in post pro­duc­tion, get there ear­ly. This shot was tak­en at 07:30 am, not too bad. Click on it to get the full effect.

On Face­book? Fol­low my page for quick news and gallery updates!

Stu­art Nafey Pho­tog­ra­phy on Face­book

The Canon Library gives you a “How They Do It” tour of a vir­tu­al lens fac­to­ry, show­ing every step, from raw mate­r­i­al to a fin­ished prod­uct of pro­duc­ing a 500mm lens.

Gen­too Penguin_DSC4143, orig­i­nal­ly uploaded by jc_on_vacation.

Friend Jus­tine Car­son recent­ly returned from a month long, pho­tog­ra­phy workshop/trip to Argenti­na, the Falk­land Islands, South Geor­gia Island and Antarc­ti­ca and brought back incred­i­bly beau­ti­ful and amaz­ing­ly close-up pic­tures of pen­guins, seals, birds, ice and moun­tains. When they were not on land tak­ing pic­tures, they were study­ing wildlife pho­tog­ra­phy tech­niques and lis­ten­ing to lec­tures about the ani­mals and geol­o­gy they had trav­elled so far to see.

Only back a few days, Jus­tine kind­ly threw togeth­er an excel­lent pre­sen­ta­tion for our Feb­ru­ary work­shop. Those pic­tures and many more are now up in her Flickr gallery. Thank you Jus­tine!

King Penguin_DSC4613, orig­i­nal­ly uploaded by jc_on_vacation.

Sev­er­al peo­ple have asked if I was able to pho­to­graph the Maverick’s surf con­test this week­end. I was on my way to ski Kirk­wood when I heard the Maverick’s com­pe­ti­tion was on. We had an excel­lent time ski­ing and I have no pic­tures from the con­test.

But there are plen­ty great pic­tures to view. The weath­er was excel­lent and the waves were huge. It’s not easy get­ting these shots since the breaks are about ½ mile off­shore. Either you climb the slip­pery cliffs with a very long lens or you beg, bor­row or pay your way on a boat to get the close-ups. As of Sun­day night, here are some links to the pic­tures that I have been able to find.

Flickr has a “Maverick’s Surf Con­test 2010” group with over 300 pic­tures.
http://www.flickr.com/groups/mavericks2010/pool/

I like to watch the group as a slideshow. It fills your brows­er win­dow with the largest pic­ture it can and border’s it in black. Max­i­mize your brows­er and try it.
http://www.flickr.com/groups/mavericks2010/pool/show/

Sev­er­al encore videos of the live action and com­men­tary is on Mavericksurf.com.
http://www.maverickssurf.com/contest/see/webcast.php

Check out this raw video footage tak­en from the Chan­nel 5 news copter.
http://cbs5.com/video/?id=61790@kpix.dayport.com
Note: look for the “Chop­per 5 News of Mav­er­ick­’s Surf Con­test” video

The Sun­day Chron­i­cle has 2 sto­ries on Maverick’s, one on the front page and anoth­er in the sports sec­tion.
Huge waves at Mav­er­icks injure spec­ta­tors
and
MAVERICKS — Biggest of the big waves

And the Chron­i­cle also has 2 pho­to gal­leries of the event with over 200 pic­tures com­bined.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2010/02/14/SPBQ1C1FN9.DTL&o=
and
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2010/02/14/MNTA1C1AAA.DTL&o=

Reg­u­lo Zap­a­ta Jr. has pic­tures up on Face­book.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2056640&id=1215168613&l=3ff43523e4

Slideshow in the San­ta Cruz Sen­tinel:
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/localnews/ci_14396254

That’s a start and there are more out there. Some of the pic­tures are absolute­ly fan­tas­tic. The pho­tog­ra­phers caught beau­ti­ful angles with surfers framed by the curl of the wave, shots of wipe­outs are cap­tured sec­ond by sec­ond in burst mode and the spec­ta­tors and the spir­it of the event. It looks like Mav­er­icks deliv­ered big time this year and there are some award win­ning pic­tures that doc­u­ment it.

Is the iPad a new use­ful prod­uct for pho­tog­ra­phers and pho­tog­ra­phy in gen­er­al?

Pho­to blog­gers are already writ­ing arti­cles dis­cussing using it to dis­play your port­fo­lio, trans­fer­ring pic­tures to and from cam­eras, oth­er com­put­ers and online gal­leries, pho­to manip­u­la­tion soft­ware and even teth­er­ing it as a view find­er for loca­tion shoots. Tim O’Brien dis­cuss­es how the iPad can help visu­al­ly impaired pho­togs. Check it out.

Apple iPad and Pho­tog­ra­phers — G. Dan Mitchell Pho­tog­ra­phy blog

What the Apple Tablet Will Mean to Pho­tog­ra­phers — Scott Bourne Photo­Fo­cus blog

What the Apple Tablet May Mean to Blind Pho­tog­ra­phers — Tim O’Brien Pho­tos