OLP 2013 – 6 – Run rabbit run

I still get a kick out of non-horse mounts on carousels.

Goats

Of all the amazing images I’ve ever captured… this is not one of them. But who doesn’t like looking at goats in a bucolic field? Rhetorical question, don’t answer that.

Ponies in fog

Something about the line “ponies in fog” reminds me of Flight of the Conchords’ “Bowie’s in Space.” And I s’pose it also carries hints of “Snakes on a Plane.” All very straightforward titles, yet somehow creative in their uncreativity, no? Well maybe not “ponies in fog,” that one’s just a cop-out.

Regardless, here are some ponies in fog. (Or probably horses in fog, actually.)

Swan lake

Sometimes all the right elements just come together, and all you can do is watch the results.

 

Mad seagull

Well, even if I can’t give you recent photos, I can at least give you a few decent ones. Only every once in a while, though. Wouldn’t want to spoil you.

This is actually reposted from Monmouth County Daily Photo last year. It reminded me of Michael Smith’s famous Mad Bluebird photo, but I guess most birds just have that kind of face!

Piebald!

If you live in the U.S., you’re probably familiar with white-tailed deer. Most of them are, y’know, brown.

Every now and then you’ll find an albino deer, which is all white with pink eyes.

And sometimes, you’ll find a deer that doesn’t quite fit into either category. These spotty brown-and-white deer are PIEBALDS.

Like albinism, piebald is a rare genetic thing: less than 1% of the deer population is piebald. It’s frequently associated with other weird physical stuff, like a bowed (“Roman”) nose, short or deformed legs, a curved spine, short lower mandible (overbite), and internal organ deformities.

This piebald buck— either a young button buck or a buck who’d recently shed his antlers, but I’m not familiar enough with deer to make an educated assertion— seemed pretty physically normal to my inexpert eyes… except that he was out at the wrong time of day, and totally unafraid of people.

Source:
Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. (2012). “Deer: Frequently asked questions.”
http://www.dgif.virginia.gov/wildlife/deer/faq.asp#piebald-deer
.

Juvenile gull

As it turns out, 1/250 is too slow a shutter for fast-moving wildlife. OH WELL, you win some, you lose some.

Claws

Some fishermen use crabs as fishing bait, because crabs are tasty, and some fish think so too.

But if you don’t want your bait to scare off your prey, you need to remove your bait’s threatening defensive equipment.

As such, the fishing area around Barnegat Light is littered with discarded crab claws. They’re small, only an inch or two long.

(Poor little crabs.)

Turkey day

When I was driving my friend Kyle home after a somewhat disappointing hike, I nearly ran over some wild turkeys.

“WHAT!” I cried.

“They’re turkeys,” said Kyle.

I stopped the car in the middle of the road and grabbed my camera from the backseat.

“Are you serious,” Kyle deadpanned.

“They’re WILD TURKEYS!!! I’ve seen wild turkeys like three times!”

“Dude, they live in the woods. They’re as common as sparrows.”

“Not to me!”

Kyle sat there in patient disbelief as I kept shooting pictures of these stupid birds.

“…In the spring, they have babies, and they’re kind of cute,” he conceded.

 

Anyway— Happy Thanksgiving, if you’re in the U.S. and you celebrate.

Great egret!

This is a great egret! No, really, it’s a Great Egret. At first I thought it was a snowy egret, but it looked kind of big. I was right! (It happens sometimes.)

I was also proud of myself for not overexposing the egret. Every time I’ve tried to take pictures of white birds, the scene overexposes, because exposure is taken from the AVERAGE of all tones in the frame. Since most of the frame is really dark, the camera is like “WHOAAAAA this is DAAAAARK I can’t see anything! OMG let’s brighten this up so we can see it!!!” and in so doing, the poor white bird, a tiny speck in the camera’s eye, is considered too insignificant for the camera to even CONSIDER, so it gets brightened up with the rest of the frame.

I spot-metered this time (so the camera’s exposure was only based on the average exposure within a tiny central spot, instead of the average exposure of the entire huge frame), and I think it came out okay. Hey photographers: is that how I’m s’posed to handle this situation?

Confession: this was photographed way outside of New Providence, because I’ve made it a current goal to see and photograph as much of New Jersey as possible, because why not. Are ya’ll okay with this?