Point of View

It's time, once again, for PJ's photo blogging challenge. The challenge for the month of April was "Point of View." Now, I think this can be interpreted in a variety of ways, so here's what I came up with for last month.

Bracket Field

I live near a large regional park and last month I took advantage of the free parking in the off season on weekdays to do several hikes in the park. The one large hike that I did last month took me around the perimeter of the park, slightly over 9 miles all told. The trail is mostly a fire road, so it's wide, but it does take us into some interesting areas. There is a small airport (Bracket Field) along the northeast corner of the park and I got to see several small private planes take off as I walked along the trail. Not much you can really do with this point of view other than to take the underside of the plane. Interestingly, it's also the only shot of the five that I've chosen that isn't predominantly brown, so I have that point of view going for me as well.

Ground level

Early in the hike, I almost stumbled upon a garden snail. I found this particular animal kind of intriguing, mainly because normally, when I see these kinds of snails, they're usually found in a fairly wet environment. Not so for this guy as he was in the middle of a pretty dry trail. Although, I will admit that the year so far has been one of the wettest we've had on record, which could be the reason this snail was so exposed. Either way, I decided to get down as close to ground level to get a good up close and personal shot of the snail as it traveled along its way, heading for the other side of the trail.

Many times, I'll try to encourage snakes to get out of the trail and I even moved a tortoise we found in the middle of a dirt road off of the road so it wouldn't become road kill later on, but for some reason I didn't do this with the snail. Not sure why outside of the fact that it is not a native species to the area. Still, from its point of view, it probably has only known that one area where it has called home. I guess I should keep that in mind for the next time as I did encounter several bicyclists on the trail and kept wondering, did they miss this guy as he made it across the road? Who knows? But at least I can help it along if I encounter other animals in the middle of the trail, especially the slow moving ones.

Animals from a different point of view

As noted above, we've had a lot of rain since the beginning of the year. For comparison sake, we average in my area about 13 inches of rain per year, which is why we're classified as a semi-desert. Last year (January to December), we received slightly over 35 inches of rain. This year, we've already received over 23 inches of rain since January 1st. Granted we are moving into the dry season in Southern California, but most people who know our climate or have lived here for awhile know that's a lot of rain for our area.

But because of this, we get a different point of view of some animals that we don't see very often. If you've been paying attention, you know that I love animal encounters and will go out of my way to photograph animals in the wild. Very rarely do I get to encounter deer in our local foothills. I didn't see the deer that made these prints, but because of all the rain, I did get a decent shot. I'm sure these prints are no longer up there on that particular trail due to other foot and bicycle traffic, but from my point of view, it will always be there.

Desert tortoise

On the last weekend of the month, a friend of mine and I went up into the desert to do some geocaching. As we were traversing down this dusty one and a half car width dirt road, we came over this rise and I saw this big California desert tortoise in the roadway. Fortunately, my friend who was driving, was able to stop in plenty of time. These tortoises are endangered species and are protected over their range, which we were obviously in at the time. One of the things that you're not supposed to do is disturb them. That being said you do have permission to move the animal off of a roadway for its own protection. You're supposed to move it to the side of the road, in the direction that it was heading.

So we got out of the car and I gently lifted the tortoise off the roadway and off over the bank into this area where it was heading. I wanted to be as gentle as possible since if they feel like they're being threatened, they will sometimes void their bladder in an act of self defense. This isn't a good thing for the tortoise since now it doesn't have its natural water reserve. Fortunately, it didn't do that and as I moved it, I also checked to see if it was a male or female. The curved underbody of the shell told me it was a male and a good sized one at that. If you look closely at the hind legs, you'll see nice long claws which are used for digging burrows in the ground. Those are about a quarter inch in length and from the front of its shell to the back, it was about 14 inches in length. This was also the first time I've ever encountered a desert tortoise in the wild, so I had that going for me as well.

Different camera

For the first time in awhile, I got my Canon DSLR camera out of its bag and took it on a hike later in the month. It had been about 2 and a half years since I last used the camera and I felt it was high time I got it out, dusted it off and use it again. I had posted about this on Facebook previously, but the reason for not using it were a variety of things. I hadn't been satisfied with the way it was dealing with different kinds of light, especially harsh midday light and on one of my road trips, I just didn't use it and relied solely on my phone for photos. I've been happy with the results of what I've been taking recently with my phone, but from my point of view, it was limited, especially when it came to taking wildlife photos.

That came to a head a couple of days before I got this shot of a gopher snake, when I spotted a couple of coyotes in a field. I got a decent video with the phone, but couldn't get a really good close up shot. After I got home, I got the camera out, put it through some paces and then took it out on a hike where I got this shot of a gopher snake "tasting" its surroundings. So I guess what I'm saying here is depending upon the point of view I want to convey will probably determine which camera I use. I'm not going to confine myself to one particular lens anymore.

And there you have it, my take on the Point of View challenge for this month. Please stop by PJ's page to see how others did this challenge. Please feel free to comment here.

Viewing the trail through a different lens

Originally, I was going to title this entry, October 7th, 2021, but people might not understand. Either way, I'm going to have to explain the significance of this date because it pertains to this blog entry. On that date, I took my last photo with my Canon EOS 80D DSLR camera. At the time it was a conscious decision because I was out on a hike in Chiricahua National Monument in southeastern Arizona. I'd noticed that I wasn't getting good quality images mainly because the lighting was harsh and so I switched to my iPhone for the remainder of the trip.

I didn't figure that it would be over 2 and a half years until I picked up that camera again, but it has. What got me thinking about picking the "Big Boy" up again was the videos I took last week of the coyotes that many of you have seen on my Instagram or Facebook feed. Although good, had I had the Canon, I would have been able to zoom in a lot closer to the coyotes than I could with the phone. I'm also not saying that I'm going to go back exclusively to the Canon as there are benefits to both of them, which I will detail below.

I have been taking photos since I was in third grade (so almost 60 years). My parents bought me a camera, probably for my birthday or Christmas that year. It took roll film, so it wasn't a Kodak Instamatic. This one had a steep learning curve to it, especially for an 8 year old, but I was up to the task. Eventually, I bought my first DSLR camera when I became a photographer for my high school yearbook. My wife bought me a better camera as a wedding gift and eventually I made the switch to digital. Needless to say, I've been a photographer for most of my life and I have a love for photography.

Which brings me back to last week when I spotted those coyotes. The iPhone is good, actually great for landscape photos in my opinion. Its zoom has gotten so much better, but you still can't get really close shots of wildlife using the phone. And so I dusted off the "Big Boy" and started looking it over to remember the ins and outs of DSLR. The batteries were dead, so that was the first order of business and then I waited for a good day when I knew I was going to go out on a hike. That ended up being this afternoon and these are three of the shots I took along the way.

With the iPhone, I wouldn't have even bothered with the bird on the trail. It would have been too far away, even with the phone's zoom and if I'd gotten closer, it would have flown away and I wouldn't have much. I would have had the same problem with the butterfly. Animals have proximity zones. You get inside their zone and they take off. With the telephoto lens on my Canon, I can get much closer to get a good shot without entering their proximity zone.

With the gopher snake, I know I wouldn't have been able to get close enough to it to get the tongue shot that I got. I kept getting closer to it and eventually I entered its proximity zone and it turned around and headed into the brush. I'd taken lots of photos of it before it turned around and hightailed it out of there, but I didn't know exactly what I had until I was able to look at the shots on the computer's big screen. I had several good ones, but this one was just fabulous.

So in the long run, I'll continue to use my iPhone for most day to day photos, but the Canon is my "Go To" for wildlife photography.