The Owl Season is here...

It is good to be back, it is great to be out there holding a camera once again.  After 10 months break, I went out this evening to capture some images of the nesting Eastern Screen Owls.  I went out without any expectations, just hoping to get some decent images and some practice.  It was just like riding a bike once again.

During this delivery, the male Eastern Screech Owl flew in out of nowhere, different than the usual routine where he would perch for several seconds before delivering the catch into the cavity. The subsequent frames showed that it was carrying a caterpillar. In another week, the female will join in hunting and taking turn to feed the owlets. I hope to be able to be back again when the babies are old enough to be peeking through the nest cavity.

Shot taken with 7D Mark2, with its crop factor, I was able to shoot with a shorter zoom lens.  The AF system continues to impress me with its ability to focus in the low light condition.

Tender Moment

I was fortunate enough to be able to photograph this Barred Owl nest along many great photographers early this year.  Owl is my favorite raptor among the all the Avian species.  After spending over a month monitoring and photographing their progress, this image was by far one of my favorites from this nest.  It was one of the best days for photographing at this location: not only we did not have the typical cloudy day with dull lighting,  we also had one of the best moments one could have asked for.  The sun lit up the background perfectly and the baby barred owl popped up and peeking through the mother, checking out the action going on among the photographers to my left.

1Dx | 1200mm | 1/160 | f/9 | ISO4000 | Fill Flash | Manual

Manasquan Reservoir County Park

In the morning of July 4th, I woke up at 3 a.m. and drove to the Manasquan Reservoir County Park for the sunrise shot. It is a beautiful little park in the Howell Township, Monmouth County of New Jersey. Manasquan reservoir is an important part of the water supply in Monmouth County, with a 4 billion gallon water capacity, it supply up to 30 million gallons of water a day for the resident of Central New Jersey. The reservoir is part of the larger county park of 1204 acres that include woods and wetlands, a 5-mile trail, fishing and boating areas, and a environmental center.

Other than recreational and outdoor activities, Manasquan Reservoir is a charming place for photography, thanks to the dead trees that are standing still in the water. We arrived at the reservoir half an hour before sunrise and I still had some time to scout around for good composition - the point is to have the dead trees well separated on the picture. About 10 minutes before sunrise, the color of the cloud and sky getting incredibly vibrant - it was the most dramatic dawn I have ever seen since I moved to US. The color doesn't last long and it was totally gone in just a few minutes, I was fast enough to capture the right moment. We stayed for a while and walked around the park in hope of finding another good spot for the next photography outing.

By: Kah-Wai Lin
 

Sierra Night

High up in the Sierra Nevada Mountain range, Yosemite is hours away from any significant source of light pollution. I knew that during the night I would see a show of stars like no other I had ever seen before. I made my half-hour long drive up Glacier Point Road long before sunset to ensure I could claim the spot I wanted before other star gazers got there. As the sun dipped behind the granite mountains in the west, the stars began to shine. The longer I waited the more brilliant the small dots in the sky became. Looking east toward Half Dome there were so many stars that it was difficult to even focus on a single point, the all seemed to blend together in a bright mixture of the Milky Way. As I made my exposures of the sheer face of Half Dome, I started to notice small lights making their way up it. The head lamps of rock climbers had gone un-noticed to me while I was focusing on the stars. Even in the freezing cold temperatures, the climbers continued up the mountain at midnight. They were just a couple more lights among the millions of others above them.

By: Kaz Canning
 

Leaping Into The New World

http://troylimphotography.com/blog/

A pair of Great Crested Flycatchers were nesting in my backyard.  This image was one of the baby flycatchers leaving the nest.  Each day after I got home from work, I spent time photographing their progress.  It was hanging out at the cavity several time and finally left the nest and flew into the nearby oak tree.  I was lucky to have been able to capture the only frame of the fledging process.

1Dx | 200-400L @ 526mm | 1/250 | f/11 | ISO800 | Flashes | Manual

By: Troy Lim
 

New Website

I have always wanted to learn more about WordPress but never took the time to learn and study the concept.  Go Daddy was offering the hosting of the WP site for $1/month so I signed up and forced myself to start learning more about it.  I must say, putting together a site like mine is really simple.  Therefore, I have decided to move away from SmugMug and started my own site. I will be adding new work to my galleries.  This will also get me to write a quick blog about each image. 

To celebrate to launch of the new site, here is one of my favorite screech owl shots from this year.  I spent majority of my time capturing images of Screech Owls from several nests.  It was totally worth it.

http://troylimphotography.com

"I discovered a nesting pair of screech owls in an area a friend dubbed Fern Lake. The nest was in a grand oak and the limbs were covered with resurrection ferns which were really green from the wet winter we had been having. I set up a blind and monitored the nest over a period of weeks. I was fortunate enough to be there just as the baby owls started to emerge and land on the fern laden oak limbs. This little owl notice my movement and was peeking over the fern to see what was going on. 1Dx, 200-400L @ 300mm, 1/160, f/6.3, ISO3200, filled flash, manual, on tripod in the hide. Minor Exposure and WB adjustments. Noise Reduction, Cropping. Wild, Not Captive, Not Called, Not Baited"

By: Troy Lim
 

Dusk at Cape May Beach

We had a short but rewarding trip to Cape May last weekend - in both photography and sightseeing. Cape May is a lovely little town located at the southern tip of New Jersey, with beautiful Gingerbread-type houses, magnificent lighthouses and charming beaches. 

This is my first trial on the long exposure seascape photography using the B+W 10-stop ND filter, which is also a practice toward my upcoming trip to Acadia National Park. This picture was exposed for about 200 seconds under the overcast sky before sunset. I really love the misty appearance of moving tides and clouds that render the pictures surreal and artistic look. 

Although it doesn't appear in any of my shots, we spotted a group of dolphins passing through. What's a lucky day!

By: Kah-Wai Lin