Tule Elk were nearly driven to extinction in California but efforts have been ongoing to restore their population, specifically at the Point Reyes National Seashore. The area is a peninsula (land that is surrounded on three sides by water) and is elevated with cliffside all around. While the area is beautiful overall, I do find it strange that most of the land is taken up by large fields used for cattle grazing. But there is opportunity for other life to succeed such as these special Tule Elk.

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My wife and I took a quick trip to Point Reyes, a beautiful place just North of San Fransisco, California. After photographing other subjects during Sunset on our last night there, we stumbled upon this Great Horned Owl on this tree out in the middle of a field. I decided to hike out to a nearby hill to get as eye level as I could and snapped some photos as dusk was setting in. I waited as long as I could hoping that it would swoop down but, spoiler alert, I could only get portrait shots.

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Maybe the last photograph of this particular American Dipper, but we’ll see.

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If I did name my photographs with clever titles then this one would be called “The Third Eye.” But I do not title my photographs with such titles. You can make up your own clever titles for my photographs if you’d like. That sounds more fun for the both of us.

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This is not normally how I would crop a photograph that I plan on sharing in my Field Notes. Since my photographs are very high in resolution, I will usually crop in quite a bit closer so that you can see more of the details in the subject. And for Instagram posts, I will crop even closer since that platform is mainly viewed on mobile phones.

However, this is an example of how I might crop a photo that I plan on printing at a larger size. At that large size, the White Crowned Sparrow would still be printed larger than its actual size and still retain sharp detail. And this crop provides a lot more texture and interest with the small Oak Tree leaves scattered throughout. It may be hard for some to imagine but this would look really cool hanging on your wall. That goes for most if not all my photographs. ☺︎

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The Otter on the right hand side decided to shake off the water embedded in its fur. That’s what is going on with this photograph.

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The lens I generally photograph with has a very wide aperture at its largest. What this does is it creates a shallow depth of field. And if you also don’t know what that means, it means that it causes objects to be very blurry when they are not the point of focus. In this photograph, the Spotted Towhee’s eyes are the point of focus. Therefore, anything closer to my lens or farther away from the eyes of the Towhee become blurry. The farther objects are from the focus point, the more blurry they become.

You can see in this photograph that the far background is mostly gray tones. Everything is so blurry that it all kind of blends together back there. That creates a big separation between the far background and the stuff that is closer like the leaves and branches near the bird. I’ve never taken a photograph before that looks quite like this one nor do I recall ever seeing a photograph like this one. The coloring, the separation, and the twiggy branches give this particular photograph a moody feel to me.

You may have thought I was going to talk about the Spotted Towhee’s action in this photograph as it leaps off of its perch, but instead I hope you enjoyed the lesson about depth of field.

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As the name suggests, Dippers like to do a little move of bouncing up and down. This photograph shows the Dipper mid bounce, meaning, it is in the down position before coming back up. I liked that I was able to capture it with its eyelid down as well.

BAM☺︎