I made a trip to my favorite local park yesterday hoping to get some better shots of Mallard ducks.  I went to a location where the ducks were close to the water’s edge, and set up so that the reflections of the nearby green, yellow, and orange trees provided some sweet water as a background.  As the sun dipped lower in the sky, the combination of a pretty setting and good light made for some bold shots of the ducks.  I used my strobe with a flash extender attached to bring out the colors of the water and even out the natural light.  Unfortunately, I underestimated how much shutter speed was needed to successfully freeze the motion of the swimming birds, so I lost a lot of shots.  Despite my big error, I do have a handful of images that meet my high standards, and overall I’m quite happy with the results of my shooting session.  Hopefully, I’ll find time to go back in the near future.

This is one of my favorite shots of the day.  Here I photographed a female Mallard dabbling on the surface of the water.  This lady frequently exhibited this behavior and I wanted to capture it.  In order to do so, I tracked her through my lens and watched her, waiting to snap the shutter until she had entered the brilliantly colored green water and her body was lined up parallel to me, making the perfect photo.

Techs: Canon 1D Mark II N, 300mm f/2.8L IS USM + 2x Mark II Extender, 580EX Flash, 1/400s, f/6.3, flash -1 compensation, tripod.  To order this print, purchase stock rights, or view other photos I have for sale, please visit my website at www.karipost.com.

Happy Halloween (one day late)!  Since I haven’t done any shooting in the past couple weeks, I thought this would be an appropriate older image to post to my blog.  This shot was taken last year when I discovered that a spider had taken up residence outside my back door.  The spider emerged each evening, so at dusk, I set up my macro equipment outside with the intention of getting some black silhouettes of this spider against the blue sky.  Just as I was securing my composition and exposure settings, my next door neighbor turned his porch light on, completely changing the scene.  Instead of giving up and going inside, I switched my focus to capturing a new type of shot, one with the light in the background, silhouetting the spider.  This is the end result.

To order this print, purchase stock rights, or view other photos I have for sale, please visit my website at www.karipost.com.

Here is another photograph of local color taken during my one hour shooting session on the 13th.  Just two days after this image was taken, I noticed that the area is past peak for color this autumn, so unless I get the chance to make a trip down south this season, this may be the last bold fall color image I have this season.  In the upcoming days that I have off, I will try to focus on some more intimate photographs of the seasons colors and hopefully capture at least a couple more images of what many photographers are saying is the best autumn season for color in a long time in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic States.

Techs: Canon 1D Mark II N, 70-200mm f/4L IS, ISO 200.  To order this print, purchase stock rights, or view other photos I have for sale, please visit my website at www.karipost.com.

Here’s another shot from my mini outing a couple of days ago.  In this one, I focused on a section of trees that showed the varied hues of fall color as a gradient.  I hope you like it!

Techs: Canon 1D Mark II N, 70-200mm f/4L IS, ISO 200.  To order this print, purchase stock rights, or view other photos I have for sale, please visit my website at www.karipost.com.

The colors of the autumn trees have just been popping up here recently and I finally grabbed an hour after work today to photograph some of it.  This year is the best for color that I can remember.  Tomorrow, I have a day off so I’m hoping to spend the day shooting and getting some killer images.

Here’s one shot from tonight.  I’m processing these on my laptop so please forgive me if they don’t look on target completely.  Hopefully I’ll have more images to share in the days to come.

Techs: Canon 1D Mark II N, 70-200mm f/4L IS, ISO 200.  To order this print, purchase stock rights, or view other photos I have for sale, please visit my website at www.karipost.com.

Here’s another photograph of the Double-crested Cormorant I found hanging out at the duck pond in Glen Rock.  After fishing, cormorants dry their wings by holding them outstretched for the sun and air to dry.  I managed to get a portrait of this one while showing that behavior.

Techs: Canon 1D Mark II N, 300mm f/2.8 IS plus extender.  To order this print, purchase stock rights, or view other photos I have for sale, please visit my website at www.karipost.com.

One of my favorite subjects to photograph (particularly when I can’t find anything to photograph) is tree bark.  I think trees have a lot of character that we otherwise overlook, and photographing tree bark is an awesome way to capture the individuality of a particular tree, as well as develop your eye looking for interesting compositions.

There are a couple sycamore trees in the school field behind my house that I had been meaning to photograph for a while, so I finally stopped by on my way back from a bike ride and did just that.  This particular tree had plenty of interesting patterns in its peeling bark, like this one, which reminds me of the Chinese ying-yang symbol.

Techs: Canon 1D Mark II N and Sigma 150mm f/2.8 Macro.  To order this print, purchase stock rights, or view other photos I have for sale, please visit my website at www.karipost.com.

Here’s another photo from the Glen Rock Duck Pond.  I found this Double-crested Cormorant each time I visited, so its been hanging out at the duck pond regularly.  I have a few shots of cormorants, but I’m always looking for better ones so I tried for some photos of it.  This shot, of one swimming, is different from any I already had, so I’m pretty happy with it.

Techs: Canon 1D Mark II N, 300mm f/2.8 IS plus extender.  To order this print, purchase stock rights, or view other photos I have for sale, please visit my website at www.karipost.com.

Here’s another “special subject” I was able to find at the Glen Rock Duck Pond.  This female mallard has been present at the park for several months now, and yesterday, when I didn’t find the wigeon, I set out to finally get some shots of her.

What makes this mallard so unique is her blond coloring.  This is due to a gene trait that sometimes occurs in birds called leucisism.  She looks like a pastel version of a regular female mallard.  I plan to try to get more shots of this individual, as I have seen her at the pond on a regular basis.

Techs: Canon 1D Mark II N, 300mm f/2.8 IS, 1.4x teleconverter.  To order this print, purchase stock rights, or view other photos I have for sale, please visit my website at www.karipost.com.

One of my favorite local spots is a small duck pond in Glen Rock, New Jersey that is part of the Saddle River County Park system.  Usually the pond is full of Mallards and Canada Geese, with occassional Great Egrets, Great Blue Herons, Black-crowned Night Herons, Ring-billed Gulls, and Double-crested Cormorants.  If you visit regularly enough though, every once in a while an unusual bird or two can be found, as long as you are looking.

The pond is close to home, so I often run or bike there, or visit with my mom to go on walks.  Yesterday, I joined my mom for a walk on her lunch break and noticed an uncommon visitor, an American Wigeon!  After my mom returned to work, I grabbed my camera out of the car (I had packed it just in case), and set out to photograph the female duck.

Wigeons don’t tend to be very tame, and this bird wasn’t exactly an exception, but I did get closer to her than any other wigeon I have seen.  Fortunately, birds at local parks tend to get rather used to humans, so I was able to sit out in the open, where the other ducks and geese mulled around me and probably made me seem less threatening.

Unfortunately, because of the many birds and poor circulation of the water in the pond, the water’s surface is often not very clean, as was the case yesterday.  I had to do some extensive cloning to the water to remove feathers and other distracting debris from the surface of the water.  As a result, the shot isn’t stellar, but it’s my first of the species and more than suitable for my stock gallery.  I returned to the pond today, both this morning and afternoon, in hopes of getting some different photographs of the wigeon, possibly in better conditions, but she was no where to be found.  I guess she moved on.

I returned to the pond today, both in the morning and afternoon, and did not find the wigeon.

Techs: Canon 1D Mark II N with 300mm f/2.8L IS + 2x Extender.  To order this print, purchase stock rights, or view other photos I have for sale, please visit my website at www.karipost.com.