Sorry, alligator, not quite crazy enough

Almost there! Alligator slide photo from the State Library and Archives of Florida.

Earlier this month I posted the craziest alligator stories of 2011. Here are a few that caught my eye, but weren’t quite outlandish enough for the “craziest” list, which kind of makes them crazy in their own way.

Alligators wander into garages all the time, except in Washington: Seattle woman finds alligator in her garage.

Decades old alligator mystery solved in Texas.

Or not: Second man comes forward claiming Abilene zoo gator.

An alligator–in Pittsburgh–survived house fire.

Angry alligator found on Long Island Expressway.

Obama pardons gator poacher.

Gang of escaped gators roaming Florida.

One from close to home: Gator stuck in storm drain on Hilton Head Island.

This was a good one: Stolen taxidermied alligator taken on muddy joyride.

Enjoy!

So many birds!

Vintage birders. Burrough Audubon Society photo from the U.S. Archives.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but I was really surprised to count seven species of birds at our feeder (which had been empty since, like, summer) only one day after I filled it. When I bought the bag of seed, I figured I’d get a few cardinals. Nope. Seven different bird species visited that feeder in just over an hour. Seven! And those were just the ones that I was skilled enough to see and distinguish.

I will admit to not being a consistent or skilled birder. I hesitate to call myself a birder at all. To be honest, birds are a little intimidating because they move so fast and there are just so darn many of them. Because we have so many, though, especially here in the Lowcountry, I can’t help but notice them. And once I notice, I can’t help but start looking.

The deer were so plentiful last summer that we couldn’t afford to keep the feeder full. They were eating a $20 bag of bird food in one night. But it’s cold outside now, and the yard has been so empty for the past few weeks (not even any squirrels). Finally I realized it was because we didn’t have anything for anyone to eat. Everyone had left.

So I stocked up on a variety of different birdseed mixtures and filled the feeders. The next morning, it was like the backyard had come alive. We have a wooded backyard with two big live oaks, four pines, and four sweet gums. And our property backs up onto a dense wooded buffer that separates our neighborhood and another one behind us.

When I looked out the kitchen window, the sun was shining, and flash of brown after flash of brown moved from the feeder to some nearby, out-of-sight perch. The feeders are so far from the house, they just looked like brown bits of confetti fluttering around in the sun.

Once I dug out my binoculars and field guides (a real birder would have had them ready), those brown bits of feather and energy became the following:

• Carolina chickadee (Poecile carolinensis)
• Northern cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis)
• Mourning dove (Zenaida macroura)
• Red-bellied woodpecker (Melanerpes carolinus)!! This was the first time I ever saw one of these.
• Carolina wren (Thryothorus ludovicianus)
• Song sparrow (Melospiza melodia)
• Brown-headed nuthatch (Sitta pusilla) My first time for noticing this one, too.

Real birders probably don’t think this many birds in one morning is a big deal. But for me, seeing seven different species in one hour, in my yard no less, is something I can always get excited about.

For those more experienced birders, what’s the highest number of species you’ve seen at your feeders at once?

The start of something great, or a complete disaster

I could spend an entire day just looking around outside, seeing what I can see. Watching the way the light hits the trees, the way the birds move, whatever I can find to watch. What I like about taking pictures is that it forces me to look at things as they truly are and consider them within their surroundings as flattened images frozen in time. When I’m thinking about pictures, I notice things like the way the light is hitting the world and how the textures and shapes I’m seeing are really composed. I’m really seeing it all.

I cannot in good conscience call my photographs art. I love photography as an art and I love other people’s photographs. But in all honesty, I’m not good at it. However, I have been frustrated with the look of the pictures I’m able to get with my go-to camera options (iPhone and Olympus Stylus Waterproof)–both of which are great in certain situations, but not very flexible. About a year ago, my dad gave me some old Minolta 35mm SLR cameras with fancy auto-focus lenses.

I hadn’t touched them until about a month ago, when the desire to take better pictures finally overcame me. I do know a little about photography and film (they do actually still make that stuff) is cheaper than buying a digital SLR. Plus I thought it would be fun to play around. So I decided to reacquaint myself with the potential disaster that is film photography.

There’s just something about the texture of film that’s appealing to my eye. I love looking at film prints, but like I said, I do not have a good history with making this art.

I took a few photography classes in high school and college, but I could never get the hang of the equipment. My pictures always turned out a little out of focus, a little too busy, a little under-exposed, and speckled with dust I forgot to check for when I was making the print. It was a disaster. I was a disaster with a camera and access to the dark room.

Developing film is a tedious process with many steps and opportunities for failure. Getting the image into workable form as a negative and then making prints involves measuring chemicals, focusing lenses, and timing things to the second, and I’m not very good at any of those things in any context (baking, science, and definitely film development). Being in the dark room fooling around with all that equipment doesn’t appeal to me at all.

I can remember being crushed after spending the last hour in the dark room only to find I’d made some mistake that messed up my image. Thankfully, Snapfish is taking care of all that for me, which probably will increase my success rate as a film photographer by at least 50 percent. Now all I have to do is figure out exposure and explore compositions, which I think will be worth it.

Film inherently involves some risks. In this post I’ve included some of the shots from my first roll film that turned out the way I intended, but that role also included lots of exposures that ended up like this:

Oops. This type of picture would be quickly deleted from the digital camera. But with film, the mess-ups mingle in with the good shots, which takes some getting used to. Or getting used to again–film used to be the only option, after all. Anyways, I realize that my experiment might have some messy results. I’m still having fun seeing the world through the camera lens.

The beauty of photos, film or digital, is the ability to capture a moment in time. All we have is the present moment, and I’m always trying to remember to see the world around me. Really see things. I can only hope that with a lot of camera practice, I’ll see even more.