(NOTE: was suppose to publish on 4/3/2011. Looks like blogger had a hiccup...)
Last few weeks have been busy and then I got sick. Though I made it to all the scheduled winter farmers markets, I missed the one at Somerville High School on Saturday. I just had to sleep off a bug. I did make it out to vote in the afternoon - around 4 pm when the weather starting looking unpredictable. And I managed to lose one of my EMS fliptop polarfleece mittens. Ugh!
A fotodiox nikon to mft adapter arrived this past week as well. I may have gotten the wrong one as it only works on my Nikon 50mm 1.8 lens. I ordered a second one that is suppose to work with "G" lenses. Another website describes that as short-hand for "gelded" to describe the Nikon lenses without without the aperature ring.
Anyway, this becomes a 100mm lens on the oly e-P1. More experimenting! I took alot of shots of the cat - great bokeh-y portraits. A miracle since I don't have auto-focus and she doesn't sit still. This afternoon the weather was in the 50's but windy. Around 4pm I headed out to Alewife Brook along Sunnyside to see if I could get some bird pictures. No birds. But I wandered anyway. I stopped to look at place that is marked in grids, wondering what they were.
Someone came down the path and said, "Do you know why that is sectioned off like that?" We took some guesses. Got to talking about the alewife brook path. He said it was a DCR project. Talking about how much Arlington has improved and the great changes coming, like the maybe the Mass. Ave improvements in E. Arlington. He then walked ahead.
I was hearing birds but not seeing any. Just kept walking slowly, then I saw it... A goose? No, a heron, white and blue-grey cruised above the Brook heading towards Cambridge. So beautiful and elegant. Followed a little bit later by a male duck flying a bit closer to the water. I continued and ran into the guy on the path on his way back.
"Did you see it?" Yep. He explained that it may be a black-crown heron (hope i have that right) and there a few nesting on the pond near Belmont. As we talked another bird soared over us, like a hawk, gliding. It didn't come close enough but its undersided appeared black (inky black like a raven) with with the pinon? feathers white on the underside. It never slowed down.
Further up I saw some guys fishing from a flat boat. Then 2 swans. Then the fishing guys came back up and the swans went under the bridge. I crossed the street only to see the swans heading back. I walked back along the Brook trying to take pictures. Very tricky. This might be a situation for auto-focus and zoom. But it was good practice. On the way back saw more birds. These black birds, a bit thin, with a fan-like shape at the end of the tail. A pair of morning doves. Robins of course. Sparrows.
The photo at the top is from part of a huge tree that has seen some major storm damage but will not give up the ghost! I watched a video this morning on the PBS website. A series called e2 had done a piece on the Paris bicycle system Velolib. Either during shooting or in editing a soft focus was added to most of the scenes. Very effective imagery. I wish I had some stills. Anyway, it encouaged me to play with in focus/out of focus today.
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