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This turned out to be a rather memborable day, night and next morning....right around 24 hours. I woke up around 10:30 and noticed some storms heading for town. I quickly get ready, opting to just watch it from my parent's house. I was there for about 15 minutes before deciding it might be worth chasing into Iowa, along I80, if it could turn into a good bow, while riding the warm front. As I drove by Desoto Bend Refuge some logc kicked in. I was like, surely shooting some wildlife will be more fun than these storms. It largely was. I guess the above is a Heron. I knew I'd soon be shooting in the rain, but looked forward to it more than anything. The only thing I did not care for were the occasional bolts of lightning. They kept me in my car for most of the shoot. My Canon 100-400L IS still sort of annoys me. It's my second copy and I still find it hard to get crisp images with it. I think the biggest issue is that while using the wider aperture it's dof is pretty small, so the area to focus is small. I don't know that it is my ability to hold it still, with IS on, and I don't think it is a shutter speed issue. I think it is mostly just getting the focus right. Even then, with objects not moving, it seems pretty hard to get sharp images. Maybe it's just going to be a soft lens. Something should just be sharp if it costs $1400.
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I should post the other picture I took around this time. The Heron looked like Daniel Son, from Karate Kid, holding one leg up sort of funny. He may be stretching here. It's that or when he was yelling at the duck following him around, wanting to be his buddy.
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Note the duck now on the other post, copying the Heron. Object between them is a small bird flying by.
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Duck still copying the Heron(not really obviously)
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Wet Heron.
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Not a great shot, I know(soft). I'm shooting sideways out the passenger window.
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They'd leave and fly away, over and over, if I was seen moving in for the shot. This guy however just wouldn't move. I shot him for a while, then noticed a truck coming towards me on the road. I was like, great, he's going to fly off when the truck gets here. I thought, it'd be cool getting him taking flight. Problem was I was stopped in the middle of the skinny gravel road. So, before the truck would arrive I had to scare him into the air. I figured, simple enough. Wrong. I yelled, I smacked the dash real hard, rev'd the engine.....nothing. Finally I hit the passenger side door. Doing so screwed up my readiness and I blew it when he took off.
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Now this area is cool. I'd been here before but there weren't all these lilypads. Right before stepping onto the bridge I hear something that sounded like a grimlin(just some new sound I don't think I've ever heard before). It was sort of higher pitched and odd. I was like what the hell was that. Then nothing. I move again and there the noise was again. I stop and nothing. Move again and a couple noises this time. This was mixed in with the occasional pad tipping over, spilling its collected rain into the pond below.
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Here's one of the thousands of nois makers. They were all over the place once one stopped to look a bit. They'd make their noise the moment they jumped away. Startle more than one at once and you'd hear several "grimlins". After messing around in this area, and getting rather hot(nasty nasty humidity around here now), I walked back to the car, ready to go home. Since I had my gear with, and a data connection, I looked at things real quick. Uh oh! I see the outflow boundary from this early stuff trailing west, then northwest, and there are some cu on it. I had a general idea of the days setup. Biggest problem, WARM mid-levels, the stuff I keep swearing I won't chase, but always end up doing so anyway. Another problem, mid-level flow wasn't great, nor was it in the upper levels. The day had more bad going for it than it did good, but that never seems to matter to me.....I just go anyway. It was now around 3:30 and if I was going to chase I needed to be doing so now. I hurried west, beating the Omaha rush hour. Long story short(lol, at least this portion of the long story of the 24 hours) I meet up with Steve Peterson in Aurora and we mostly bust. Nothing really fired till dark, and it did so back closer to home...sigh. Our boundary further west never popped. All this outflow was doing for that was getting the winds to back a bit. But it never mattered. Click here to head into that chase, with a rather entertaining night chase |
