The pigeon life

I thought that after years of shooting photos of kids (nephews, my own kids, my own grandkids) I would have no problem getting pictures of birds in flight. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

You can (to a degree) boss kids around. No so with birds. And wildlife photography is a whole different thing from landscape or bridge or towboat photography. At least that's how it is for me.

Yesterday afternoon after work (an essential job, we are told), I went down to the river. I got off a couple of decent photos of pigeons. Here is one.

If I could justify investing about $20K in a camera body, a couple of lenses, some equipment for steadying the camera …

I'll just have to make do with that I've got. Next time maybe I'll bring something for these rats with wings to eat so I can get them closer to the camera.

From the archives: Repair fleet worker

Time to experiment some more with black and white.

This is from the trip up to the Willow Island Locks and Dam last summer while the main lock was dewatered for maintenance and repair work.

Motor vessels Ohio Valley and Dan Elder

As seen from South Point, Ohio, this evening, as a light rain fell and then got heavier and heavier.

I would like to have gotten these from the West Virginia side so I could have gotten closer to the Dan Elder, but Virginia Point Park has been closed for several weeks. It's supposed to open back up around the first of April.

M/V Garyville on the Big Sandy

Warm day; light looks like spring; air feels like spring; a day I need to take break from a whole big bunch of stuff. The rivers are down, and the banks are drying out. I looked for boats, but there wasn't much to shoot that I hadn't shot before.

So here's the M/V Garyville taking a single load up the Big Sandy River.

After today it's back to working on a couple of long-range projects. One is a long shot, but you never know.