Feed the hummers

For this holiday season, I have created four special holiday cards. The back panel includes information about the images featured in my cards. Another blog post includes the greeting from my newest card Holiday Home.

My Solstice Hummers card includes a reminder to keep a hummingbird feeder up if you live on the West Coast or northern Arizona. Anna's hummingbirds – a male is pictured above – live in coastal Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia year-round. No one seems to know why, for sure, although climate change is sending animals to places we haven't seen them before. We have great egrets, which are rare in western Washington, here at the wildlife refuge in winter. Northern cardinals are gradually making their way westward too.

We see two kinds of hummingbirds in western Washington – Anna’s and rufous. Sometimes other varieties whiz through on their migration paths.

Keeping your feeder up in winter will not discourage hummers from migrating. We have many plants that bloom in winter in western Washington. Nectar freezes at 28 degrees F, so bring feeders in at night when it is below freezing.

To make nectar combine1 part white sugar (no honey, fructose, artificial sweeteners, or food coloring) with 4 parts water. Bring to a boil, then take off stove and let nectar cool. Clean feeders with hot water and a brush before filling.

Never use soap. If feeder is very dirty, clean with white vinegar. Change food every 2-5 days in warm weather; every day if it is over 85 degrees. In cold weather, below 40 degrees, change food every 5-7days.

Rufous hummingbirds – a female is pictured inside this card – migrate north to the Pacific Northwest in March and migrate south in September and October.


Cards are 50% off and calendars are 20% off from my supplier through November 20.

Gathering of eagles

Occasionally I glimpse one of our local eagle clan crossing the ridge near my home, but not quite as often as last spring and summer. Earlier this month, I spotted a large group of raptors very high in the sky. So high, I wasn't sure if they were bald eagles or other large raptors. Altogether there were 10 large birds, gliding on the thermals and dancing with one another. Too high to be hunting, they were clearly on a mission.

They lingered over my neighborhood just long enough for me to spot them from the window, run to get my camera, and out to the backyard to knock off a few shots. Then they disappeared into the eastern horizon.

When I enlarged one of the images to actual pixels, I could see the characteristic white heads and tails of adult bald eagles on three of the birds. The others appeared to be juveniles of varying ages.

I'm fascinated that raptors that often fight one another to death or serious injury over choice prey, will gather together for what looks very much like social time.

I have observed gatherings of eagles numerous times here. Enough so that I'm convinced they are an extended family, like an orca pod.

My favorite eagle couple is returning regularly to the evergreen grove where they roost during the times they are not nesting and rearing young. I wonder where their kids roost? They are harder to spot in the dark because juveniles are typically three or four years old before they get the white heads, tails and legs.

I have learned so much from the eagle clan this past year. By the end of the year, I hope to have most of those learnings together in a book. In the meantime, my growing visual collection can be found in my online Talons Gallery.

Editing photographs

There are a variety of fine editing tools in Photoshop that can save a special image. Some friends of mine recently lost a cherished horse named Cruz. They asked if I could edit out a fence in a photograph so they could have a large print made to frame in memory of Cruz.

Of course I said "yes." When I got the jpeg, though, I found that it was a low-resolution image, which meant they would likely get a somewhat "fuzzy" enlargement. Lower resolutions (2 megabytes and smaller) are fine for snapshots or Web uses. For enlargements of 11x14" or larger, the image needs to be at least 10 megabytes, preferably larger. Most of my 11x14" images are 35-40 megabytes. More pixels or dots per inch makes a finer image, especially at larger sizes.

The Photoshop tools I used for this project were the clone tool, healing brush, and blur tool. I cropped the image and adjusted the levels and color balance. Then I used the unsharp mask filter to sharpen the image as much as possible. Sharpening a low-res image is challenging because there just isn't enough detail to sharper, so you risk making the image appear to be coarser. In looking at the finished image, I think I would have used the blur tool more to reduce the checkerboard pattern of the fence in the background. I would also blur the right edge of the image a bit more. I took out the distracting fence but didn't "clone" in the bottom of the sapling in the photograph.

My favorite is the sepia-toned image but my friends wanted the color image, which they are printing on canvas. I can't wait to see it!

The entire project took about two hours. If I was working with a film image, these corrections would take hours, requiring air-brushing and touch-up by hand with inks and brush. I doubt, though, that it would look as natural as what we can get using Photoshop tools.

Cards and calendars

Every year I spend hours and hours designing new holiday cards and calendars. Last year I realized that people just don't send cards like they used to and don't buy calendars either. So many organizations give really wonderful calendars to contributors, that people won't spend what it cost me to produce a calendar. A couple of years, I received five free calendars in the mail – beautiful ones. So last year I donated four of my photographs to the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency for their calendar. They gave me several which I handed out to friends and neighbors. This year they can't budget for a calendar (bummer), so I'm producing my own again. I donated use of one of my most popular images – a panoramic of Ruston Way waterfront – to the agency for their efforts to reduce air pollution in Tacoma (a worthy cause).

Still, people ask me about holiday cards and calendars, so I came up with a selection of favorites. I can't afford to keep an inventory on-hand anymore though. A couple of years ago, I discovered that Zazzle.com does a very nice job of hosting my cards and calendars which can be customized at no additional cost. Cool!

So I posted my 2012 calendar, created a new holiday card, and updated four favorites. Something new I'm doing this year is adding a description on the back of the card. All of the images I choose for holiday cards are meaningful to me. I hope you are moved somehow by the image itself, but people tell me that they enjoy hearing about the stories behind the images. This post will be a bit longer because I want to share the story that goes with the image at the top of this post.

The calendars are 25% off through Halloween when you buy two or more. Zazzle just had a half off pre-holiday sale on cards. I'm hoping they'll have another sale in a couple of weeks. Check out my Holiday Cards & Calendars.

 Anybody Home?

Ireland is the land of my ancestors. In 1984, I journeyed there, in part to
honor the memory of my parents who passed away a couple of years earlier.
 I photographed the doorway in this image in Kilkenny, Ireland – a place
that feels very much like home.

The Sequalitchew Creek woodland in DuPont, Washington – the ancestral
home of the First People of the Nisqually River delta – is also a place that
feels very much like home.

This photo illustration combines two images that fit together – if only in
my imagination – creating a visual representation of my journey
from a place of origin to a place of destiny.

Places that feel very much like home.

Getting a closer look

 I manage to spot tiny things that are extraordinary when you focus on them. Maybe it's because I have been near-sighted for most of my life. Or maybe it's because I notice something and then photograph it.

 Some are less tiny but I want to get closer. 

 Others are larger still but still beckon me to take a closer look.

Stepping out of the stream of life

Great blue heron, Frye Cove-Puget Sound

I just finished reading James Herriot's "All Creatures Great and Small" and started "All Things Bright and Beautiful." Given how much I love nature and creatures great and small, it's a little surprising I haven't read the much-loved veterinarian's books until now. He also wrote children's books, several of which I read with my son when he was little. Two favorites are "Only One Woof" and "The Christmas Day Kitten." I could never make it through "The Christmas Day Kitten" without a quavering voice and a few tears.

Something that strikes me about Herriot's writing is a sense of balancing work with play, sadness with happiness. In "All Things..." he writes about stopping the car on the way to a veterinary call, just to enjoy the beautiful Yorkshire countryside:

"This form of self-indulgence had become part of my life and still is: a reluctance to come down from the high country; a penchant for stepping out of the stream of life and loitering on the brink for a few minutes as an uninvolved spectator."

Nisqually Reach - Puget Sound

Some of my best images were captured when I stepped out of the stream of life, rushing to work only to be stopped by an incredible sunrise. So, of course, I photograph it.

December sunrise - Mount Rainier

When I photograph something in nature - a beautiful scene or a wild eagle plucking a fish from the river - I am a spectator documenting, often without thinking. Later, when I'm downloading and editing images, I allow myself to experience the emotion I would have if I wasn't trying to capture a scene. I have several favorite images to share in my online Places Gallery.

I hope you will take some time to step out of the stream of life and enjoy.

Eagle's roost

The nest is empty but my favorite eagle extended family has returned from their summer fishing trip. This pair and some of their kin roost in the grove of trees near the nest. They have been gone for a few weeks, though. I assume teaching junior how to hunt. I have seen mama eagle flying over our house the past couple of mornings, headed for the Nisqually ridge and delta. I have also had glimpses of junior.

Tonight on our walk papa eagle was perched in a favorite snag. We watched for a few minutes, then continued on our walk. When we rounded the corner, he flew to a nearby tree. That's when I noticed that his mate was in the tree.

Later in our walk, I spotted four eagles flying off toward the delta into the setting sun. I will be adding to my Talons gallery soon.

I have been busy working on a program and publicity materials for Feels Like Home, the alumni art show I have been coordinating with a couple of friends from high school. The opening, which unfortunately I will have to miss, is September 30 in my hometown of Bordentown, NJ.