Red Shouldered Hawk

 ‘Pippin’ - Red-shouldered Hawk

The story of Pippin is unfortunately a common one.  In 2003, he was found flying around a neighborhood acting abnormal for a wild hawk.  When approached, he actually landed on the roof of a car begging for food.  He is an  ‘imprint’ which somebody raised and released thinking they had saved the bird’s life.  But Pippin was found almost starved to death, not knowing how to hunt.  Fortunately, he has become a wonderful education ambassador with Blackland Prairie Raptor Center in Texas.

Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge has several of their ambassador raptors at Super Saturday last summer and i was so happy to get many wonderful photos of Pippin!

Dallas Ft Worth area is home to the Blackland Prairie Raptor Center - Raptor Project

Migration

So what do you do when you have several great shots and can't decide what one to play with, just use them all, or at least  several together.  Birds are migrating through Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge and its the first day of fall. I am planning another day out on the refuge Sunday to see what I can view through my lens.  I already know Pelicans are there now!   The Pelicans, The Pelicans!  Oh come on Edgar Allen Poe..help me out here, yes I know that was The Bells!  So for my background layer I used a cool sky as a texture then a really neat texture from Distressed Jewel called Happy Easter.  You can find many of these handles and textures over at Flicker where I hang out and participate in many of the cool sharing groups there.

Sunrise Wading

Boy I am energized again over my photos.  Saturday I gave a talk at Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge on my photo art, textures and working with layers.  I think everyone had a great time as we had a lot of laughing and questions and over all fun.  It was really windy out on the waters edge and yet I managed to get a couple interesting shots.  I of course am never happy to just go with the flow so I tried something different with this little image of the egret.  I have been playing with some HDR from photomatrix I got to wondering if I could treat the hdr image like a texture and blend it onto my original image.   Well, yes you can!   So this original image was not taken in braket mode ( that is to say there were not 3 shots taken of it) I used a single image and let the photomatrix just make a map toning copy for me.    I was totally blown away with the end result.  I love how the little sunflowers and green weeds brought so much color into a rather boring blue and muddy grey image that is pretty normal when you are taking shots of white birds, and water. 

Now with some new excitement and ideas its time to look through my old photos again.

Blackbird Sings

I just love black birds with their bright wing patches and their little territorial antics and calls.  This handsome fellow was taken in April at Hagerman Wildlife Refuge.  The texture was from Kristen Frank. 

New work and more birds!

 The more I play around with birds and the processing of textures the more I am learning.  I guess birding might become a new hobby!   They sure are not easy to get images of and at least for my art I do not need super close images.  For once less is more!  Enjoy ~

Visit to Hagerman

Had a fun trip over to the wildlife refuge Tuesday.  The big pelicans were there in the hundreds and they seemed not bothered at all with me approaching for photos.  No flowers yet but lush green everywhere.
Textures by Kim Klassen, Distressed Jewel and Kristen Frank

Time has gotten away from me.

 Lately I worked hard to restore my computer back to factory settings, and this put me behind in some photography work I was getting really hooked on.  My photos with textures and layers are getting new life in photo shop.  These two ostrich are sharing secrets and were awareded Editors Pick at BETTERPHOTO.COM

This great rusted out hub from an old tractor was also awarded Editors Pick.  Its done in textures and layers from my original photo.  Taken last spring in Boswell Oklahoma.

Here is some play that is just wild called weird lines!  Honest its a filter called Weird Lines!  Here I have a blemished daisy from last summer and just could not come up with anything to save the photo.  I began to experiment and came up with this rather odd looking thing that reminds me of an ocean creature.  Awarded Editors Pick also for May.

Some of these will be part of my Artist Trading Card swaps in the Digital Art arena.