Georgia: The Black-Footed Ferret

In a previous post I wrote a little about black-footed ferrets. One in particular is featured in the FerretCam accessible from the National Zoo's website. That ferret is Georgia. I reported that I was informed that she would be ready for breeding in April. Here it is late May. Breeding in the wild generally takes place in March or April, but I don't know if this necessarily applies to the captive breeding process.

It's difficult to say at this point whether she was inseminated in April or not. I do know that part of her abdomen has been shaved. I don't recall it being shaved yesterday, but I can't be positive. I don't recall seeing her belly yesterday. Today she was sleeping "belly up" so it was obvious. Shaving is done just prior to the procedure. So, I am assuming that the procedure has been completed. Gestation for the black-footed ferret is 41-43 days.

I contacted the Zoo yesterday and was simply told that they would do their best to post news about Georgia when it's available.

We will stay glued to the FerretCam in the coming weeks to see if everything goes as planned.

Fun In The Field

It's great to be able to combine two things I like doing - 1) being outside, hiking, observing wildlife and 2) photography. My son and I went out to Meadowood the other day with the hopes of getting close to some deer. The challenge was to position ourselves in an open field (the grass was about mid-thigh high), concealed and ready to photograph. He served as a spotter and I had my camera mounted on a tripod. The camera was high enough just so the lens cleared the grass. This profile was not below the top of the grass, but that's not really needed when dealing with wildlife. It's more about being concealed, breaking the pattern of human form. And, if possible, being down wind. This is not always possible, especially when you have set up what amounts to a "hasty" blind and when you don't know which way the animal may approach.

We were dressed in camouflage clothing (hunting attire, basically). We sat on the ground with a large piece of burlap (painted with different shades of green and brown) draped over us as well as the camera and tripod. We were lucky in that two deer made their way towards us. However, most of the time all we could see were their backs because they were eating grass near the ground (meaning their heads were buried below the high grass line). So, we mostly just observed and thought how great it was that we were in the middle of this field and the deer were 1) either not aware of our presence or 2) aware of the lump of camouflaged burlap and determined it to not be a threat.

One did pop her head up from time to time -

After awhile, my son decided to move down the hill to the rear of where we set up our blind. By standing up and moving, the deer figured out we weren't what they thought we were.

He had a hunch that there may be some deer just over a rise about 100 yards from our location. He kept a low profile and moved in that direction. He was right, he flushed out about 8 deer. I just stood there at the top of the hill and just took in the sight. I wasn't ready with the camera. Anyway, he made his way back up to me (see the first image in this post) and we headed out a little wiser to the art of stealth and stalking.

A Vision Voice

This image was made about 4 miles from my home. I hike in this area quite a bit because it's close, the sunsets are "on" more often than not, and there tends to be a variety of subject matter. Wildlife, trees, a creek, ponds and hiking/horse trails. It's the Meadowood Recreation Area located in the Mason Neck area of Virginia.

On this day (May 1), the evening sky was shaping up well for a nice sunset so I made my way out here. I decided to play around with the idea of making two exposures, one for the sky and one for the foreground and then layer them together in PS to give one image where the sky and the foreground are properly exposed. At times you run into situations where one part of a scene is brighter than another part and the camera isn't capable of exposing the entire scene correctly. You get a nicely exposed sky but the foreground is too dark or the foreground is exposed nicely and the sky is blown out. This problem is encountered most often when shooting landscapes.

I won't go into details on the PS technique, but a web search will likely take you right to a good tutorial. Like this one. And this one. It's not a secret technique, I just want to keep this entry fairly short and the likelihood of me creating a better tutorial than what you can find elsewhere is slim to none. I wanted the greatest depth of field that I could get, in this case on my Tokina 12-24 AT-X Pro lens, that's f/22. I took an in-camera spot meter reading of the sky (f/22 @ 1/5 second) and of the foreground (f/22 @ 1/20 second).

Hmmmm....that's quite a difference I thought, that's six clicks of the dial. I thought about pulling out the only graduated ND filter that I own, a Singh-Ray 3-stop soft step. But, no, I wanted to put the PS techinque to the test.

I went with it and found that it worked pretty well. However, I thought it needed some help so I brought up the "graduated ND filter" in Nik Software's Color Efex Pro 3.0 and finished the job. It really fine-tuned the image to what I had previsualized while setting up the shot. Something I call my Vision Voice.

Going Ape for Yoga

This guy really looks like he is stretching his left hip flexor and his left rotator cuff in some sort of peaceful yoga position. I just thought this turned out to be a very warm image that sheds "light" on the humanistic nature of these great animals. Note that the eyes took on a milky blue look, a result of the clear blue sky above somewhat obstructed by the overhanging trees.

It's amazing that Apes are capable of creating tools and using language. They lead complex social lives and are capable thinkers and problem-solvers. And, obviously, they understand the value of exercise!!

Spring Collection

I've been working on capturing images of spring flowers and other expressions of spring in an effort to produce a "Spring Collection." I have my own flower garden and have visited several other local places to gather these images. I plan on producing a limited number of prints for each collection. Most likely, the collection will be prints of two or four images.

Another idea and something that has already begun to sell involves using a double matte for (2) 4 x 6 images with frame. One image is an original image of mine printed on "radiantwhite" velvet fine art paper. The second image is actually a short poem written by the buyer and printed by me on the same "radiant white" fine art paper. The buyer then actually signs the poem and I mount/frame the image and poem. What a great gift this makes. It really is an "anytime" gift, although Mother's Day was the inspiration. It's a very personal gift that has that "just because" quality about it.

It's a working thought in progress and the images posted are by no means all there is. I am sifting through the lot of them now.