NatureScapes recently made its annual appearance at the Florida Birding & Photo Fest in St. Augustine, Florida. The four day festival, held in late April each year, has grown quite popular with local and visiting photographers and proved to be an exciting event. The classroom sessions and fi...
Photographing nature and outdoor subjects from a boat gives a photographer a unique perspective and can allow a photographer to get original photographs of often photographed subjects or approach a subject that would otherwise be impossible to photograph. Any subject can be photographed from a b...
When it comes to attracting birds into camera range, nothing is more effective than water. Only a limited number of species come to feeders to eat seed, fruit and nectar, but all birds come to water to bath and drink. Using water for bird photography can be especially powerful if you happen to l...
by Greg Downing | December 20, 2008
We just finished our very first NatureScapes Photography Series event at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, and I must say it was a huge success!
“Amazing!” “Stunning!” “Breathtaking!” “Awesome!” “Freezing!”
These were some of the comments that were shared at the two sunrise shoots during NatureScapes’ first annual event this past December in Bosque del Apache National...
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O.K. – let’s have some fun. Bird photography doesn’t always have to be quite so serious. I want you to break out your Tarot cards, Ouija board, crystal ball, lucky rabbit’s foot, Smithsonian Field Guide to the Birds of North America or any other device that may help you p...
I like fast things and maybe you do too. Speed in itself is exciting and has been a fascination for the public for many a decade, enjoying a golden era in the early 1900s, demonstrated by the huge crowds which regularly gathered to watch record breaking trains, planes, automobiles and ocean line...
For compelling bird photos, go beyond portraits. An animated NatureScapes.net thread recently discussed whether or not “boring” would be a valid bird image critique. As bird photographers, it’s a good exercise for us to consider what draws viewers to a particular bird photograp...
Just thirty minutes from Minneapolis, Minnesota is the worlds’ largest congregation of wild Trumpeter Swans. Each year, from early December through late February, as many as 1,600 of these rare swans spend their winter on the Mississippi River here. Nearby is a little-used public viewing a...
Living in The Netherlands has one big downside to it…rain…rain and more rain.
Often I do not want to go out and shoot anything when it’s raining again like many of you will recognise. But lately I have been trying to take advantage of the bad weather by going out and hoping to shoot...
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A virtual chorus of camera shutters sound as I lay on a boardwalk over a marsh. Just a few feet away, nearly twenty wood ducks are feeding, bathing, and fighting. The photographers start taking off their large lenses in favor of short lenses and even wide angles. Freshly molted out of their ecli...
While photographing the breeding cycle of Common Terns on a local lake during 2005 I discovered that none of the hatched chicks survived to fledge. As this did not bode well for the survival of the colony, I decided to see what could be done for the following season.
May 7
Every spring, millions of migratory songbirds travel through the Mississippi Flyway into eastern Canada. Along the way they meet an obstacle: Lake Erie. Upon seeing this vast expanse of water, many birds look for a place along its southern shore to rest up a bit before the crossing. The...
Photographers come from throughout the country to train their lenses on the seabirds among La Jolla’s cliffs and the scenic California coastline for good reason: seabird photographs are easily achieved here, to the extent that shooters like myself with modest bird photography skills can ha...
I had been having a frustrating day working in my floating blind. Birds weren’t cooperating, the wind had come up, and it had started to rain. Enough was enough. After about three hours of lying on my stomach and fighting off mosquitoes I decided to call it quits. Just as I began heading b...
