I always have to put my hand behind it and make it focus on the flower and then lock the focus in. Then as long as it stays in the same basic location it won’t change focus. You may have some kind of focus lock on yours as well.
You also sometimes have to step further away. When we want to focus on something we often get way to close to it. If you step back a foot or so from it and zoom it it will usually focus on something closer like the grasses.
Thanks! I would never have thought of the hand trick.
Sometimes distance will work, and others it won’t. And lighting for some reason makes a difference.
I also need to learn what I can do with the manual settings, rather than the “program settings.” I think there is some actual photograpy knowledge that I need, but haven’t found out yet.
Thank you!
With my iphone, if you touch whatever part of the view screen you wish to photograph, it will lock the exposure and focus on that part of the image. A yellow box comes up to indicate the area you have selected. The exposure adjustment is particularly helpful if you subject is backlit, as you can then better expose for the foreground subject.
Ooooh! Fancy!
Thanks, Phil. I’ll see if my old Ipad or my not-yet-obsolete Samsung phone will do something like that.
And I need to look for better info for my real good camera. I think it can do a whole lot more than I know how to use it for.
Here’s how far the fall color has progressed by today:
Down the right-of-way:
The two trees in the foreground are at the edge of our property:
A close-up of the sweetgum in the first picture:
An amygdaloideaen (apple, pear, cherry, or similar):
A lower-sun sweetgum:
Could be – the ends of the petals look right. If it is, though, it’s one of the less dramatic varieties. The blossoms here are kind of scraggly when they open fully.
Could be – the ends of the petals look right. If it is, though, it’s one of the less dramatic varieties. The blossoms
interesting! Thanks for that. The Seek app says it may be Canada hawkweed
You may be able to look on inaturalist. If you get a common name just look up the scientific name and then type it into inaturalist or some other flora mapping system .
We had an unexpected visitor on the back porch yesterday. He stayed a good 5 minutes. I haven’t had a pheasant in the yard for a long time. They used to be common.
Wow! I never see them either–but for some reason, people have been reporting more sightings around here, lately, too. I wonder if there have been some releases. It’s beautiful. Amazingly close shots! Thanks
Truly gorgeous. When I kept birds in aviaries before starting in on a garden I used to look longingly at pics of golden pheasants. But I’ve never seen one outside a zoo or a nature program. However my father in law was given some pheasant one time before we came for a visit and I can tell you they are also delicious, at least the way my mother and law prepared them.
Nice! I used to see them a lot more often, and we used to follow a quail hen and chicks on the lane occasionally, but not anymore. I still hear the ‘bobwhite’ some though. But a mail pheasant that close and on your porch! What fun! Great photos!
So amazing! Pheasants in the backyard were instrumental in my early love of birds. When 3 years old, I used to wake up before sunrise to pull up a kitchen chair to the windowsill so I could peer over the edge and look outside. A male pheasant usually came at sunrise to crow from a stump in the backyard. According to my mom, this was the highlight of my day as a 3 year old…
When we first moved here, 22 years ago, the land had still be being farmed. And there were a lot of pheasants around. The males are so adorable out, strutting around like extremely fine roosters in their smoking jackets. They sound a lot like roosters and chickens, which was surprising. We only ever saw the females and babies, in the spring and after that, they were hidden.
I think ours (and the neighbors on both sides of us) just left for better food than our wilderness started offering, once it was entirely fallow.
Since harvest is going on, I’m guessing lots of pheasants are displaced right now. But I can’t say I remember a lot of sightings other harvest times either. So, you may be on to something.
My daughter and I were just on the other side of the doorwall in the house. This guy seemed completely unaware of us, so the light must have been just right on the glass to hide us from his view.
Once our cat started really howling from the basement, because he wanted to be upstairs with us, the pheasant seemed to hear him and then he left, racing like a bullet down the back hill.
This is amazing! What kinds of birds did you keep?
I love this!
@klw, what do you think? Would harvest be enough to make pheasant-sightings more likely? Or might something else be going on as @Randy mentioned?
This time of fall (post-breeding) would be the time of peak annual numbers before the winter-die off, so there may be more birds around generally. The males would no longer be defending territories and may be congregating in small flocks now (and also the females and offspring). So birds may be drifting to the richest quality food patches for the winter, and be found in greater local densities, but more patchy on the landscape. Of course, like Randy said, it is not uncommon for people to release batches of captive-reared birds to augment the population, so it’s a possible explanation too.
Oh, you’re going to be sorry you asked. Mostly finches but also weavers, button quail, Pekin Robins and Mesias. You can see some in these photos along with what I think is a night heron on top in the first one.
Started with this aviary built on the side of an out-building in the summer following my first year of teaching.
But the first three photos were all taken in the second aviary I built , following my second year teaching. In this photo the newer aviaries are under the white roof on the left and the older one is on the right.
After I started planting the gardens for wild birds I repurposed all but the second aviary which I kept intact to keep vermin off my napping bed. These show the newer aviaries after the repurposing. Now I don’t keep any caged birds but have many more visitors than I ever had residents.
The last one shows the faux rock wall with planting pockets I fashioned at the end of the last aviary which I completely eliminated to allow access from both sides.
I have no regrets for having asked. Thanks for the tour!
A napping bed…in the yard…how delicious.
Neville.
I’ve got a movie of him perched on my arm shaking my Dad’s hat at me! Superb creatures. He trashed walnuts with a single bite. He extended a claw meaning ‘Let me perch on you’. He had a grip of steel. When I put him back on his perch, in his failed dominance resentment he nipped me most lightly. All worth it. He’s 9 and half full size. We wanted to go back this Sunday, that was last, but thought we’d better pace ourselves.
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