Crazy week…

© jmillerphoto.com – Red-tailed Pennant

Wild, busy week in this neck of the woods which was a dab of a four day holiday work week, a dash of the standard craziness that my “put a roof over our heads” profession can provide, and a big lump of culminating the big news that I’ve been talking about for a while but haven’t shared the news on.  With family in town during the week there wasn’t a lot of time to do much blogging or shooting.  And with an even busier week on the horizon I’ll get my time in while I can.

Okay… the big news was that I was selected for a really amazing promotion a few months back and it became effective this week.  It is substantial enough that the party for it was a family affair.  Great to have my folks in town to enjoy the big day, but also get a chance to sit down with my dad and talk photography.  In many ways Dad is responsible for my photography bug.  He did some outstanding work when I was growing up, rolled and developed his own in the darkroom, and is a great source of frank and honest conversation about the images I make and photography in general.

I did get out and do some shooting this morning at Mitchell Lake Audubon Center, marking the 26th day of nature photography work I’ve done this year and the 50th day of nature photography I’ve done with the Canon 60D.  That sounds like the makings of a blog post.  I’ll have to start working on that.

I made a two significant rookie mistakes before I left, but recovered from them nicely and it was a good 200+ image day in spite of some pretty significant winds.  I’m hoping to apply my new workflow to that set of pictures in the next couple of days but my rough walk through the images have yielded a number of smiles on my face this evening.

This coming week is going to be busier than last.  I’ve seen the agenda items I have waiting for me on Monday so it should make for an interesting time.  I have some thoughts about where I’d like to go next weekend if I can swing it.  Is it a bad sign when you’re thinking about next weekend before this weekend is over?

About the Image:
This is one of the images that I gandered at during my quick walk-through of today’s images and thought that it’ll be a keeper.  This is a male Red-tailed Pennant (Brachymesia furcata) perched on a thistle that is getting ready to bloom.  It was shot today at Mitchell Lake Audubon Center near the bird pond.  It was low enough to the ground that it kept the wind to a minimum, though it did create some issues with getting a good angle on it.  ISO 400, 1/160th at f/13, on the tripod with Canon 60D, 300mm f/4 IS USM L, and 1.4x Extender (the standard gear).