I sense an air of menace in this picture, for some strange reason.

There is always the temptation to go back to film, but then I remember all the hours I spent in my smelly darkroom, as the temptation passes.

Developing film is pretty easy, and you just need a tank. Use a macro lens to scan the film.

This was a contraption I had made for my EM5 for film scanning.

November through to March are great times to explore Greece and Italy. Less heat and low crowds make places nicer to visit. December in Southern Europe is usually a bit more sunny.

I like the extended perspective in this first shot.

Nice clear winter light. I presume it is getting colder in Canada now.

WAMU from Pier 62

Always nice to see what folks are shooting and posting. This is a great thread. I do not have much to contribute this week... a pic from a few days ago. Just horsing around and pointing the camera. Nothing creative! Just adding to the mix. :-) I will try to capture some new (better!) material for the next installment. LOL :-)

I will eventually get around to a Blurb book, or probably two or three, as the project has become a huge never ending list of places.

Fauna

For the past few weeks I've been taking a lot of reasonably short (2 to 3 miles) early morning walks in the local countryside in an attempt to improve my fitness. It's early days, but I'm seeing some improvement, so fingers crossed things continue to pick up. One of the incentives for visiting this particular area is the abundance of wildlife that can be found there.

I'm not the stealthiest of trackers, but I think I'm improving and the more I visit the area, the more I'm getting used to the daily patterns of some of these critters and building a better picture of where to find them.

After the recent Kestrel encounter a few weeks back, I've been carrying the 100-400mm on most mornings so when I miss a shot, I can't blame it on carrying the wrong lens. It seems to be behaving a lot better on the Z8 recently than it has in the past, although maybe some of that can be attributed to improved technique? Either way the subject detection has actually started detecting subjects more often than not, so something has changed. One thing I do know though, it's damned heavy to hold the camera to your eye for prolonged periods with this lens attached and extended, either that, or it's just my puny programmer's arms complaining. Damn, I brought the wrong arms.

Anyway, this is a collection of the best of the various fauna I've spotted over the past week or so. Hopefully there'll be more to come over the following weeks.

Bucking A Trend

I spotted this buck trotting along and minding his own business on the far side of some scrubby ground. Unfortunately I gave myself away by announcing to myself "Oh! A deer!", a bad habit I've been trying to kick ever since. This did get him to stop and glare at me for a bit, although not long enough for me to get a clean shot with no obstructions before he was startled by a dog walker heading towards him from the opposite direction and ran off towards the woods.

Doh! A Deer

Thinking I was being clever, I deduced that the buck would probably cut through the woods and onto the fields at the far side, so I slowly retraced my steps back towards the woods from a different angle. As I entered the woods, I spotted movement in the form of a pair of doe moving slowly through the woods. This time I didn't give myself away by talking, just slowly and, I thought, quietly moving down the path towards them, but clearly not quiet enough. One stood there briefly staring back at me before, kind of ironically, the same dog walker from earlier somehow managed to circle around behind me and entered the woods from the right side of this frame, startling both deer and making them run away. I think this dog walker might be my nemesis.

"Playful" Squirrels

Assuming that was the last I'd seen of the deer for the day, I decided to carry on back through the woods and see what else I could find. As I did, I spotted motion to my right. A squirrel, defying gravity as it scurried around a tree. Then I spotted a second one on the same tree. The first squirrel moved towards the second and they began to play, chasing each other around the tree.

Then they stopped for a rest, or, erm probably something else. I decided to leave them to it and moved on.

Another Day, Another Doe

The next day I returned and decided to check out one of the less frequently visited parts of the area in a direction I'd previously seen deer run off to. To my surprise I got lucky and briefly spotted a doe hiding in the trees. My stealth cloak of invisibility clearly wasn't doing its job as she easily spotted me then trotted away into the trees. I did encounter her again later without her seeing me, but when I moved around for a better view she was gone, so no photograph.

A Kestrel Encounter

As I was looking for the doe, I heard a commotion over by another small wooded area and decided to investigate. When I got there, I found a large group of Crows making a racket. The cause of their commotion? A Kestrel was also in the area, which is probably against their club rules or something. Note, these Kestrel images have all been upscaled in Topaz, but with a bit more resolution to work with than the previous set of Kestrel images I shared, it appears to have done a much better job. Kind of ironically, I've downscaled them again to 2K on the long edge before sharing them.

By the time I spotted it, the Kestrel was hovering above a field, clearly studying something in the grass below.

After impressively holding her position for quite some time, she decided to alight in a tree close to where I was stood. I was grateful for this, not only because I caught her landing on an infeasibly small twig of a branch, but also that 100-400mm was getting uncomfortably heavy and I'd be able to lower it a bit.

She'd managed to position herself with a couple of errant twigs in the way of a clean shot, so I moved as much as I could without startling her to get a clean view of her head.

After a while, the crows assembled and moved out of the woods and started to circle the Kestrel. She stood her ground and ignored them for a while, before finally taking to the wing.

A final shot as she manoeuvres to avoid the crows. She banked to her left and then tucked her wings in and hit some kind of turbo button, suddenly picking up a tremendous amount of speed and disappearing out of sight.

Nothing wrong with this. An interesting building. Welcome aboard.

Beautiful set. Makes a nice change from forest pics.
The deer is a handsome fellow indeed.
And those squirrels are certainly getting a lot of rest.
However it's the 3 kestrel on a twig shots that really stand out.

It is always fascinating to watch crows go after birds of prey. I used to see this sort of thing a lot when I worked outside of Reggio

I used to enjoy early morning walks but I've got out of the habit recently. There are too many dog walkers around up here. Perhaps I should make more effort.
The deer are cute. And just look at the talons on that nice fluffy birdie 😁

Nice colours in this.

Shot of shots(imho).

Great shot. Colours are amazing.

Super pictures, and a beautiful little cutie-pie bird! Great a story, too. EXCELLENT. I really like #1, 2 & 3 -- it's like the youngster is having a fun time refining her flight skills. :-)

I like this one the best. :-)

That's a shame, hopefully you can find some quieter walks.

Yeah, you wouldn't want her to take a dislike to you, would you?

Yes, I remember you mentioning this a couple of weeks ago, so I was quite surprised when I witnessed it for myself. Apparently they don't like taking on larger birds such as crows because there's a danger of getting their plumage damaged which would seriously undermine their ability to hunt. It probably doesn't help that the crows tend to hang around in flocks, so in this instance, she would have been seriously outnumbered if they'd actually attacked her.