Finally, I got time to sit down and look through this season’s images from the Block Creek Natural Area during late April.  They had a lot of rain this year, so the timing of bird nesting and things like that were a little off.  Nevertheless, we had a great week with two groups of photographers, back to back.  I’ve got a bunch of images to show you a sample of what the group got, so let’s get to it.

Don’t forget, clicking on an image will give you the enlarged and sharpened view.

The first things I noticed when I arrived the day before our photographers was that the barn had been painted and the entrance road had a new surface.  The big oaks in the back yard provided the perfect frame for the barn.

Larry and Sharron Jay had lots of fresh flowers in the greenhouse and throughout the grounds.

The Last Chance Forever folks brought a variety of owls and hawks to the Block Creek Natural Area to educate our photographers and to use as subjects for a morning photography session.

 

 

I was experimenting with the HDR Toning component of Photoshop and discovered that it can help make some photos much more fun to see than when they are processed “normally”.  The rooster below was one of the most colorful birds I’d ever seen so I couldn’t help but boost the colors into another level.

 

This woodpecker was hanging upside down while working on this dead oak branch.  I thought the shot would make more sense if rotated to a vertical pose.

Almost everyone in our group got shots of this beautiful male eastern bluebird.

So, we saw a lot and photographed most of it.  I did leave out some historic buildings we worked with just down the highway from Block Creek NA.  The area has a lot to offer outdoor photographers.

Larry