Twelve Photographs of 2013 and Why I Chose Them

The first picture is a hooded merganser swallowing a large perch. As I was watch in the hooded merganser with this large perch I did not think it would be able to swallow it and yet the merganser was able to do it even though it was being chased by another merganser. It was the enjoyable watch and the actions and interactions of these birds

I have been out whale watching for many years and have seen all types of activity including different methodology of feeding. And all our time most of my pictures have been side views of the Humpback Whales mouth open and finally I got a picture looking right down the whale's throat which shows the baleen very well.

This is my first snowy owl taken at Gooseberry. All of my other pictures of snowy owls were taken at other locations.

The pair of American Oystercatchers was photographed just as the sun rose at Nickerson Beach and I love the light in the picture.

Here is another picture taken at Nickerson Beach of two Black Skimmers up in the air fighting. This was the first time that I have seen this type of activity.

I I was at a workshop in New Hampshire doing a landscape foliage photography and the instructor says think out-of-the-box. I decided to try a blur of the foliage that was hidden behind some white birch trees. Another tool for my armetarium.

I was trying to decide what to post for Halloween this year and decided to try something new. My neighbor had a tall manikin of a ghostly figure with a skull for its head. I took the picture of of the manikin, after importing the pictures into Lightroom I exported the one I chose into Photoshop remove the background so I only had the manikin in a separate layer. I then imported a cemetery picture that I that I took a few years ago, brought that into Photoshop and and then added the manikin as a another layer, and then by changing the blending mode and opacity made the manikin ghostly and then I slightly blurred the whole picture to get the final result. It was fun trying a new technique.

We had this past winter a great visitor to the Cape Cod Canal, a King Eider. Although I have seen a King guide her in the past I've never had a decent picture of one. It took me four trips down to the canal searching all the eiders till I was able to locate and photograph the King.

My grandson and I went up to Parker River National Wildlife Refuge in hopes to photograph the snowy owls that had been reported there. That day we did not see any snowy owls at Parker River but in addition to a Rough-legged Hawk, we located a Peregrine Falcon on the beach feeding on a Yellowleg. The Peregrine did not care we would taken pictures of it but just kept on eating.

The next picture was taken at my condominium of flower seeds. I like the composition of the fine hairs of the seeds

 On my trip to Banff and Jasper Canadian National Parks, I could not get over the beautiful sunrises and reflections of them mountains in the lakes

Finally, again from the New Hampshire trip a sunrise with nice colors and a reflection and to make the picture better I included a tree as a silhouette in the foreground.