All My Blogs

Giant Golden Orb Weaver spider. More than half of the challenge of getting photographs of creatures in nature is finding them in the first place.  You have to be where the organisms live, you have to be there when they are actually out and accessible, and you have to be inconspicuous in the process.   If all that goes well, then the is the need to have the right equipment, that there is enough light, and that you can use those things in combination to get a decent exposure that is focused.  If that isn't enough, there is the hope above hopes that you will also get an image that is attractive or shows the creatures engaging in some interesting behaviour.   I have read accounts of photographers spending months in the bush, living in blinds or exposed to the elements, and taking literally thousands of photographs in order to just get one really good image.  That's not me, mostly because I value my comforts and photograph happenstance opportunities as they...

Water balloon fun at Grace Baptist Church VBS (Vacation Bible School). One of the most important resources we have to offer is our time.  More specifically, time spent helping others, contributing, and making a difference.  Money doesn't have to be involved, although it is another resource often in great need.  And you don't have to make an exhausting effort or expend every spare second available.  You just have to be there. What I am talking about is volunteering.  Building the community, helping those in need.  The opportunities are boundless.  Any organization involved in serving people would benefit from another pair of hands.  Scouting, sports, clubs, rescue, food banks, seniors, schools, churches, camps; all need people who can give of their time.  A few hours here and there helps, although it's better to lend assistance on a regular basis.  All you need to bring is yourself.  Whatever skills you have is included in that packa...

Kathryn and I on Somoa. There are points along our timelines that represent critical moments of decision.  Making one choice over another inevitably causes events to unfold in very different and unique manners.  Outcomes rapidly change throughout our lives as time unfolds and will likely produce results that are drastically different from the way things are today. Fortunately, such critical moments are few and far between.  What one eats for dinner, the particular shirt worn on any day at random, and either riding your bike or running for exercise, will not likely impact what the rest of your life looks like.  It's those events that take us down a particular path that paves the way to our future.  Who you marry, the job you train for and take, and the degree of risk-taking you commonly employ will produce far-reaching ramifications. Have you ever wondered, "What would have happened if I had ...?"  I certainly have, and I think back along the time-stream rep...

My wife, Kathryn, with our grandchild, Nora. It seems that every milestone in life comes with its own learning curve.  We are not born with the innate knowledge of how to raise children and, it seems, that much of our understanding is based upon how we ourselves were raised.  We take our preconceptions and move forward as best as we can.  We are fortunate that we can learn from our mistakes and that those we raise are pliable enough to overcome them. My granddaughter, Nora, is about two and a half now.  Being that she is my first (and only - for the moment) grandchild, I have been learning what it means to be a grandparent.  I discovered that my attempts to discipline her were unwelcome when her parents were present, and I received significant chastisement from them both and my wife to boot.  OK, lesson learned.  My role is to support and enable, not guide and direct. It makes a lot of sense in that we are rarely around her; they live in Alberta and we...

Rotary Beach in Kelowna, British Columbia What makes one shot better than another?  Assuming that the elements of any two shots are the same, what is it about one that makes it stand apart from the other?  The answer has to do with composition. I took this photo two days ago while my family and I were visiting one of the many beaches found here in Kelowna.  I took many shots, but this one was the best of the lot.  What is it about the photo that makes it any better than the other ones I took?  The image below gives you an idea. Same photo as above but with compositional awareness points. If you search through my many blogs (over 600 now), you will find a number of them deal with composition.  One of the greatest tools for producing attractive photos is using the rule of thirds.  Other important ones include using lines as pointers and guides, putting people in your shot, and the placement of both foreground and background elements that lead to a simple...

Okanagan Lake at Kelowna, BC. I have discovered that 45 years of photography has given me an eye for when something is good.  Yesterday my family and I were at Rotary Beach in Kelowna.  After hanging out for two hours (a remarkable feat for me), I decided my camera needed to go for a walk.  I found a path that lead to a boardwalk and explored the sights.  It was there that I saw the chairs. I knew instantly that they would make an interesting photo.  Besides the colours and relative appeal of them, they formed an arc that helps to lead your eye toward the lake.  I needed to back up far enough and high enough to get the shot I was looking for; fortunately, there was a hill immediately behind me.  The APS-C sensor camera I was carrying sported a 24 mm lens that gave it a 36 mm relative focal length which was perfect for the image I wanted to capture. The other things in the photo I like are the willow tree off to the right and the waders just beside it....

While walking along Okanagan Lake in Kelowna today, I came across an interesting bee species and shot it with my Zfc Nikon camera and 24-70 mm lens.  It is the first time I used the lens for closeup work, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that it does have a modest macro ability.   At home, I perused my images on the computer and noticed that the bee I had photographed had features similar to one I photographed earlier while in Alberta (see blog here ).  It turns out it was a leaf-cutter bee, the second one I had seen in as many weeks.  This one was particularly interesting though because the ventral aspect of the abdomen was yellow. In the previously mentioned blog, I had discovered that these bees collect pollen on the undersides of their abdomen.  The one I had photographed earlier either did not have any or it was hidden from the camera.  The one I shot today clearly has a ventral load of the stuff.  I thought that was pretty cool. The Un...

February 27, 2015, was a very sad day for me.  It was the day that Leonard Nimoy died.  Although I loved his character and the associated series, it was what I learned from Spock that had such an impact on me.   What he taught me irrevocably changed my life.   To get what I mean by that, you have to understand the challenges I grew up with.  I have a mild degree of autism, not that it has ever been diagnosed.  I was born breech and whatever issues occurred during delivery had an impact on my brain.  Add to that my learning disabilities and you've got a young child that had difficulty with both socializing and learning. My father was in the military and, as such, we were constantly on the move.  I was never at any school long enough to be well-understood by my teachers.  My mother had an addiction to alcohol and was inebriated daily.  I suffered from both physical and psychological abuse throughout my developing years.  By ...

A metallic-green adult cuckoo wasp just finished taking nectar from the flower. Cuckoos, the bird species, are brood parasites whereby the female lays her eggs in the nests of other bird species.  The cuckoo chicks are usually larger than their fostering family and often destroy their adoptive brothers and sisters directly (by pushing them out of the nest) or indirectly (by out-competing them for food).  The cuckoo wasp has a somewhat similar pattern of behaviour. Many species of Hymenoptera (bees and wasps) care for their young by producing an enclosed nest where the larvae can grow and mature.  The female cuckoo wasp, much smaller than their larger cousins, will find an opportunity to lay an egg in the brooding chamber of a compatible species.  There, the egg hatches, often after the host larva does, and consumes it.  Afterwards, the larder, being still somewhat full, becomes the next source of sustenance.   Now, the sole inhabitant of the brood cham...

I think this is a pearl crescent butterfly, although the mylitta crescent looks very similar to it.  Given that I photographed this in central Alberta and that the mylitta lives further south of there, I have to assume it is the pearl crescent. Crescents are medium (on the small side) sized butterflies.  They typically are orangey-brown with blackish markings on the wings.  The pearl crescent is found throughout most of southern Canada and the US.  Larvae feed on aster plants such as the familiar blue smooth aster.  Adults feed on the nectar from flowers and will lay eggs on the host plant.  The young caterpillars grow until their third moult and then enter into a period of hibernation.  In the spring, the young continue with their feeding and finally pupate to later emerge as adults. I photographed the butterfly at f/5.6 but found that I did not get all of it in focus.  I changed the aperture to f/9 and shutter speed setting accordingly and took ...

I have never considered myself an artist.  If you ever examined any of the work I did in art class, or the stuff that I proudly presented to my mom and dad in those early years, I think you would agree.  I might be able to draw the odd dinosaur (a favourite subject of mine when making colouring pages for my kids) and can even produce a passable flower, but don't ask for details or the actual representation of something specific.  My specific talent is button-pushing, both literally and figuratively. I enjoy photography because there is a science to it and it relies a great deal on numbers.  I have always been drawn to both cameras and computers, and the advent of the digital camera was a marriage too good to miss out on.  I learned a lot about composition and exposure in my early 20's and found those lessons melded nicely with what this new image-capturing medium enabled.   My first passion in life has to do with wildlife and the environment.  Pho...

Eric holding a western tiger swallowtail butterfly. For as long as I can remember, I have always loved catching "critters."  The list includes snakes, insects, amphibians, reptiles, and any other organism that falls prey to my collection methods.  This summer I have already captured (and released) a long-toed salamander, a wood frog, a dragonfly adult, numerous beetles, and the swallowtail butterfly shown above. The above shows pictures of me holding some of the other creatures I have caught and held.  I have also caught a fair variety of fish, but not all of them have been successfully released (and a few were very tasty).  Some of the most memorable captures I have made include three speckled kingsnakes, a Caribbean anole lizard, two rubber boas, a pygmy owl (it was stunned by a window hit), a northwestern salamander, and a rough-skinned newt that I captured while Mike Lynch and I were hiking near Duncan, BC.   One of my habits is to turn over surface str...

Bees are of great environmental and economic importance because of their contributions to pollination.  But it is not just the veritable honey bee that plays a significant role in both aspects.  There are a host of other bee species, many of them solitary, that are equally important.  Mason bees, carpenter bees, mining bees, sweat bees, and resin bees all throw their lot into the part of pollinator.  One that \i had not heard of, and didn't actually photograph until recently, was leaf-cutting bees. After examining my photograph on the computer, I initially believed the insect to be another fine example of a flowerfly, otherwise called hover flies.  However, it didn't have two important features common to such insects; there were long, thin antennae and no halteres.  The absence of halteres must mean that it is not a fly, and close inspection of the wings led me to discover that there are, in fact, two pairs of wings and not just one as found in dipterans....

Crimson-winged white-faced dragonflies.  Male (above) and female (below). As a boy, I would spend hours along nearby streams and ponds watching and collecting aquatic insects.  This was mostly in southern Ontario but I found the passion followed me when we moved to Alberta back in the 70's.  Even now, I cannot see a body of fresh water without looking for what interesting invertebrate fauna may present itself.   While camping in Leduc, Alberta, I put my kayak in the water at a nearby retention pond.  Although it is artificial in nature, being a man-made hole used to manage runoff, succession has made its mark and it now resembles a fairly advanced ecosystem with a wide range of inhabitants.  That's one of the beautiful things about nature; we can mess it up terribly but its perseverance will eventually make amends if left alone.  I saw a family of bufflehead ducks, a muskrat, damselflies, mayflies, and an army of dragonflies competing for space, m...

When most of us think of gulls, we have a mental image of them on a body of water or beach, possibly even a score of them at an active landfill site going after scraps.  We don't normally associate them with precision flying, intense aerial acrobatics, and catching flying insects during their maneuvers.  Yet, this is exactly what Franklin'g gulls do on warm summer days. I have to admit to being surprised to come across such a situation a couple of days ago.  At first, I thought the aerobatic display could only be accomplished by the bird's cousin, a tern.  Its narrow silhouette and stunning mastery of the air were reminiscent of such a bird.  After photographing it I later found that it was in fact a Franklin's gull and that they do indeed catch flying insects on the wing (see inset).  Suddenly, I had a new understanding of the roll gulls play in the ecosystem.   Franklin's gulls will take a wide variety of foods, but insects, both aquatic and aer...