Contribute your Creative Captions!

And now for some weekend fun!  Anyone have any good captions for these photos? 

One is of a Sharp-shinned Hawk that landed on my bird feeder,

the next is part of a herd of deer that keeps coming into my back yard,

and the last is, yes, a photo of a squirrel eating a bagel

(ah, the things that go on in my yard...)

Contributed captions will be posted next week :)

Zooming In on the Birds

For my birthday, the wonderful Mr. Red House got me a telephoto lens for my camera.  I took it out for a test run and had so much fun getting close-up pictures of the birds.

Red-bellied Woodpecker

This guy is a frequent visitor of the Red House Garden.  He first came to my attention when I pulled open the blinds in an upstairs room only to look into the startled eyes of the woodpecker on the other side.  He was perched on the edge of the roof holding a large seed in his beak.  I don't know who was more surprised, me or him!   He stared at me for a long second, apparently decided I was harmless, and then went about tucking the seed under the eave of the roof.

Here you can see red patch on the belly for which the Red-bellied Woodpecker is named.

I've seen him up on the edge of the roof several more times, sometimes peering at me over the edge of the gutter.   Red-bellied Woodpeckers will store food in the crevices of tree bark or fence posts for later.  They obviously sometimes store food under roof eaves as well!

Some other photogenic and common visitors to my bird feeder are Tufted Titmice, Dark-eyed Juncos, and Carolina Chickadees.

Tufted Titmouse

Dark-eyed Junco

Carolina Chickadee

With the telephoto lens, I could sit on the other side of the yard and still get close-up pictures of the birds at the bird feeder.  There were one or two shy birds who still looked over at me and checked me out before getting seeds, but most ignored me, as I was so far away.  This will also be a big help in identifying the various species that come to my garden, which has been a challenge for me with all the different birds.

I'm definitely going to enjoy this lens!

Stretching to Fill the Frame - a Photography Lesson

What I don't know about photography could be the subject of many books, I'm sure.  Blogging, however, has given me an unexpected interest in the art of photography.  I have really enjoyed exploring a whole new world that the camera can capture. 

Saxon Holt over at Gardening Gone Wild has challenged us to concentrate on 'filling the frame' this month.  His photography lesson has given me much to think about, and several lessons have hit home with this challenge.  Taking pictures with more awareness of what exactly you want in the frame make for much better photos (and much less cropping!)

In looking over my pictures for a suitable photo for the photo challenge, the first lesson that was brought home was that I should be more patient.  (Isn't that a lesson we always need to learn?) I was dismayed to see how many photos I had that were not focused well.  Sometimes it was due to not having the right lens, but many times it was due to my tendency to just click away without really taking my time.  

Another pointer Saxon Holt talked about is using negative space to help frame a picture.  This was very interesting, as I had never even thought about negative space before.

The ultimate lesson was, however, to let the frame tell the story that you want to convey and only that story.  A picture is worth a thousand words, after all.  Which brings me to my entry in the 'Fill the Frame' photo contest.  This next picture is my story of transitioning from the end of a beautiful summer into the beginning of a glorious fall.  Hopefully, the photo says it all.