Thursday's Hike

I never got around to creating a photo essay last Thursday after my hike; I just published some individual photos. Well, I fooled around with some shots I originally didn't think worked and came up successful. And that's as good an excuse as any to put together another photo essay!

Spring has been creeping into Newport slowly but surely. It's been somewhat warmer, the temps averaging in the upper 40s to the upper 50s, but on this day it actually got up into the mid 60s! Whew! Heat wave! So I headed down to Ballard Park to see what I could see.

Actually, I heard something first - the characteristic loud, hoarse churrrrrrr of a large Woodpecker. I looked around and finally spotted two male Red-bellied Woodpeckers flitting around some trees. One successfully disappeared, but the other hung around giving me the wary eye. Unfortunately he was in a place that required me to creep through the woods off the path to get a decent shot. So I did, and got very close indeed. I still used my Raynox DCR-2020 telephoto lens, and that gave me these really excellent shots:




And in this shot, taken not long before he flew off, he's very clearly giving me the "Do you mind?????" look of annoyance:


On my way out of the park I came across a whole carpet of Lesser Celandine along a low-lying section of the south trail. Despite the name, this flower is in the Buttercup family; it can be found in wet, low-lying areas all over Newport. I used my camera's Super Macro setting to get this shot of a single bloom:


The Super Macro setting came in very handy much farther on in the hike. There was a Pussy Willow in full bloom on Beacon Hill Rd. near the intersection with Hammersmith Rd. As I got closer to it I noticed that the Honeybees were out in full force and harvesting pollen like there was no tomorrow:




And around the corner and up the hill a little on Beacon Hill Rd. there were clumps of Lyre-leaved Rockcress growing against the stone wall. I used the Super Macro setting to get close to the very tiny blooms on this:


A couple of weeks ago I posted a shot of a brick and stucco wall on Shepherd Ave. artfully decorated with Ivy, and I promised to play with it in Photoshop. Well, I went a little better than that. I swung by the wall again at the end of the hike and decided the lighting was right to set up a HDRI shot. So I did the three bracketed exposure shots, and today I finally got around to layering and blending them, with this result:


So that'swhat I did last Thursday. And now I have an article I can actually spotlight on my Namespace page!