Upcoming Presentations & blog stats

I have three upcoming public presentations over the next few weeks. The first takes place this Thursday night (May 28) in Brampton Ontario.... and it's the premier presentation about my ongoing travel/photo adventure, with tons of never-before seen photos and the stories behind them. If you're interested, check out this link on my website for more information:
http://www.ethanmeleg.com/inpublic.htm

If you make it to one of the presentations, be sure to say hi!

In other news, I'm pleased (actually amazed) to have had over 11,000 different visitors to this blog in the past 6 months. I never dreamed that so many people would visit! I promise lots more posts & new photos to come as my journey continues. Thanks for following!

Survived the Birdathon!

Weary eyed from too little sleep, we began our birdathon at 2:07am on Thursday morning. The wind was howling, tempering our expectations and enthusiasm. Since we find most of our birds by sound, wind is a serious problem. Fewer birds sing in windy conditions and it's hard to hear them anyway. For the first several hours, we struggled in the darkness to find night birds - they just weren't calling.

Dawn is the critical time on a birdathon - you get the majority of your species in a short window of time because that's when birds are most actively singing. The forecast for Thursday was windy and record hot, so our success at dawn chorus would make or break our day. As it turned out we did well... finding most of the target breeding birds around MacGregor Point Provincial Park. We also lucked into a bunch of birds that are easy to miss. Our mid-morning tally surprised us, we had a chance of breaking our record of 174 species.

I would like to tell you that our luck continued through the afternoon, but the truth is that we hit a complete roadblock mid-day. Battling the high winds, we struggled to find any new birds. All the migrants that had been around earlier in the week had totally cleared out. There were no diving ducks or grebes - or perhaps we missed them in the choppy waters. Our enthusiasm sunk!

Late in the day, the wind dropped (the blackflies became horrific!) which salvaged our day. We picked up a steady stream of new birds in the final few hours. At 10pm, nearly hallucinating from exhaustion (catastrophic sugar crash), we called it a day. Our total was 161 species, which is is our fourth best total from many years of doing the birdathon. Given the hot & windy conditions, we were ecstatic to reach 161. This took 20 hours and 575km of driving.

There were a number of highlights during the day.... watching a red fox catch and kill a watersnake, finding a loggerhead shrike (endangered in Ontario) in an unexpected spot, seeing nesting piping plovers and watching a black bear feeding at dusk.

The most interesting facet of our birdathon is not the birds at all, but my diet. This is my one day a year to put aside all common food sense and eat with reckless abandon. To maintain my uber-birding pace in the absence of sleep, requires a truly foolish diet. Here's what I consumed during the 20 hour marathon: at least 27 mini-powdered donuts, 14 pepperoni sticks, slabs of beef jerky, an entire bag of chocolate peanut butter cups, two dozen cookies, a large bag of chips, half a bag of licorice, 4 cans of pop (sugar-free?!) and two mugs of coffees. How do I avoid sugar crash, you ask? Never stop eating until it's over.

Thanks to my birding buddies Mark Weircinski and John Haselmayer for making the day so much fun and for continually feeding me while I drove. And a huge thanks to all the people who sponsored the birdathon with pledges to Bird Studies Canada!

Spring Migrants - Point Pelee & Pelee Island

When there are songbirds around, I find it difficult to photograph anything else! The past week has been quite good for migrants in the Pelee area... and yesterday was one of my all-time best birding days for warblers..... there were tons hanging out on the north end of Pelee Island. Within only an hour or so, I'd found 22 warbler species.

Warblers are my favorite birds to shoot and getting a good photo is no easy task. If I end up with one publishable warbler photo from a day of shooting I consider it a success. This year I have been lucky to find a few cooperative birds.

Photo 1: Canada Warbler, Point Pelee
EOS 1DsIII; 500/4IS & 2x teleconvertor; 580EX flash (fill flash)

Photo 2: Black-throated Blue Warbler, Point Pelee
EOS 1DsIII; 500/4IS & 1.4x teleconvertor; 580EX flash (fill flash)


Photo 3: Least Flycatcher, Pelee Island
EOS 1DsIII; 500/4IS & 1.4x teleconvertor; 580EX flash (fill flash)


Photo 4: Blackpoll Warbler, Pelee Island
EOS 1DsIII; 500/4IS & 1.4x teleconvertor; 580EX flash (fill flash)

Photo 5: Purple Martin, Pelee Island

EOS 1DsIII; 500/4IS teleconvertor; handheld near nest house

Birdathon Fundraiser - please sponsor (see bonus!!)

Next Thursday (May 21) I'll be doing an annual Baillie Birdathon fundraising day with my birding buddies Mark Weircinski and John Haselmayer. The day goes like this: we start at around 2am, spend approx 20 straight hours searching for every possible bird species we can find on the Bruce Peninsula, then nearly collapse from exhaustion. Why do we do this, you ask?
1) To raise money for conservation - specifically Bird Studies Canada.
2) We are serious bird geeks.
3) To attempt to break our previous record of 174 species.

How can you help? Please sponsor me for the birdathon with a pledge to Bird Studies Canada. You'll be helping to support research and conservation of birds. Making a pledge is very easy - you can do it all online with a credit card by CLICKING HERE for the birdathon website.

BONUS!!!!! Anyone who pledges $100 or more, can tag along with me on a photo shoot at a mutually convenient time. That's a cheap way of getting some personalized instruction in photography!

After the birdathon, I'll share details of the day here on the blog... including highlights, statistics and funny stories (there are always some!).

Wildflower Workshop & latest bird photos

There are two spots left for my upcoming wildflower photography workshop in early June on the Bruce Peninsula. This is one of the best places and times to shoot wildflowers in Ontario! The workshop is a chance to learn techniques for making sharp, well-lit and artistic wildflower photos... and to find out where the best spots are! Photos 1 & 2 were taken during my last wildflower workshop - same place, same time of year. Send me a note if you're interested.

Photo 1: Yellow Lady's Slippers (wide angle cluster)
The tour is timed to coincide with the peak blooming period for Yellow Lady Slipper orchids.... we should have a chance to photograph lots of them.... some years there are thousands!

Photo 2: Striped Coralroot

This is one of the more unique-looking orchid species. I used flash and reflectors to create dramatic lighting and isolate the flower from the background.

This week I've been focused on shooting backyard bird species at my parents' house in the Pelee area. We developed a great feeder setup with blinds and strategically placed perches. I'm hoping for a good wave of orioles, grosbeaks and buntings to keep me busy!

Photo 3: American Goldfinch on apple blossom branch

Photo 4: Blue Jay on stump

Photo 5: Blue Jay on stump with peanut

I smeared peanut butter on the inside of the stump and stuck peanuts in it, which the Blue Jays love!

Back in Ontario & more Texas photos

Photo 1: That's me yesterday.

I've been back in Ontario for the past week, mostly hanging out with family & friends as well as catching up on some work. After 6 months of photographing every day, this is a great break - I've barely picked up my camera all week.

The top photo is me at my best-friends place yesterday in Penetanguishene. We stood around the BBQ for a long time and I ended up having to put on a parka to stay warm in the evening. My body has definitely acclimitized to the hotter temps of the southern US! I suppose the liberal amounts of wine we drank may also have contributed by thinning my blood!

Below are a few photos I've caught up on procesing from my last week in Texas. This season is birds, birds, birds.... so I'm well practiced for the arriving migrants here in Ontario.

Photo 2: "Bubbaville" eastern Texas

I carry a Canon G9 point & shoot with me pretty much everywhere I go, to quickly capture priceless scenes like this one.

Photo 3: Northern Parula warbler, eastern Texas

I was able to 'better' my shots of this species from a few days earlier (previous blog posting).

Photo 4: Gray-cheeked Thrush, High Island, TX

This forest-floor skulker is a species I've wanted to shoot this species for a long time!

Photo 5: Black-and-white Warbler, Port Aransas, Texas

This is a much better photo than anything I've ever managed to catch in the past. They hardly ever sit still!

All bird photos with the 1DsIII, 500/4IS & 1.4x TC

Songbird Extravaganza !

My stepfather Tom and I are currently photographing birds together in northern Texas. Today started out a bust. We were up at 5:30am and on location at dawn, but the birds were not cooperating. Our luck began changing mid-morning once we figured out the best shooting techniques. The rest of the day was exceptional - it turnd out to be one of the most productive days of songbird photography of my life.

Tom is a videographer and when we're out together we alternate shooting because the fill flash from my camera ruins his video. I typically get on a bird before him and fire off a few shots. He needs 7 seconds footage and tells me when he's about to film, so I stop flashing. I was so excited about the composition on the gnatchatcher (first photo below) that when he said "don't shoot' my brain heard "go shoot". I fired away, captured the image, and ended up flushing the bird. As a result, he mised the shot. Sorry Tom!

Photo 1: Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
EOS 1DsIII; 500/4IS & 1.4x teleconvertor; 580EX fill flash


Photo 2: Northern Parula warbler
EOS 1DsIII; 500/4IS & 1.4x teleconvertor; 580EX fill flash

Photo 3: Prothonotary Warbler

EOS 1DsIII; 500/4IS & 1.4x teleconvertor; 580EX fill flash

Photo 4: Prothonotary Warbler
EOS 1DsIII; 500/4IS & 1.4x teleconvertor; 580EX fill flash

6 month trip update

Laughing Gull pair courting
EOS 50D; 500/4 IS & 1.4x TC
ISO 200; 1/500 @ f/8

As of today, I've been on the road for 6 months. What a blast the trip has been with many extraordinary experiences, interesting people, and some of the best photos I’ve ever shot. I thought you might like to hear some stats and stories from along the way.

Before I get into it, let me say a huge thanks to all of you for checking out the blog…. and especially those who've taken time to post or send a comment. THANKS!

Stats since I started the trip on October 20, 2008:

• 40,190 km driven
• 45,500 photos taken
• 558 km walked carrying my camera gear
• 2-3 days – average time between showers
• 6 days - longest time wearing the same t-shirt
• 358 species of birds seen
• 8,174 different blog visitors
• climbing a landslide: most dangerous thing I've done (aside from driving)
• $141/gallon – cheapest gas I found (Tucson in December)
• favorite towns: Portal, Arizona and Mendocino, California
• favorite spots: giant redwood forests of northern California & Death Valley, California
• top trip songs: The Unforgettable Fire (U2), Big Casino (Jimmy Eat World)
• trip album: Viva la Vida (Coldplay)
• worst sleep: Radisson Hotel, Phoenix (domestic dispute outside my room; they set off the fire alarm at 2:30am)
• best park staff: South Llano River State Park, Texas
• cheapest bottle of wine consumed: Charles Shaw Cabernet Sauvignon ($2)
• celebrity encounters: Hulk Hogan passed me while driving
• 1 camera destroyed to get Canvasback duck photo (Canon G9)
• Sierra Nevada Pale Ale - best beer

I'll be back in Ontario in just over a week and look forward to touching bases with friends and family, as well as shooting on my home turf, as the journey continues.

Bunting Bonanza

Another fantastic day, surpassing yesterday due to brighter overcast conditions which allowed for faster shutter speeds. Buntings were the stars of the show.... amazingly cooperative, so I spent the entire day photographing them. I shot well over a thousand photos and ended up with a few that I'm very happy with!

Photo 1: Indigo Bunting fanning tail
EOS 1DsIII; 500/4IS & 2x TC; 580EX flash
ISO 400; 1/400s @ f/8; fill flash at -1 2/3


Photo 1: Painted Bunting on grass
EOS 1DsIII; 500/4IS & 2x TC; 580EX flash
ISO 640; 1/320s @ f/8; fill flash at -1 2/3

Photo 3: Common Yellowthroat
EOS 1DsIII; 500/4IS & 2x TC; 580EX flash
ISO 400; 1/50s @ f/8; fill flash at -1 2/3

Texas coast migrants

Indigo Bunting (male)

EOS 1DsIII; 500/4IS & 1.4x TC
ISO 800; 1/250s @ f/5.6

The last few days rank among the best migrant shooting I've ever experienced. The most colorful characters - Indigo Buntings and Scarlet Tanagers - were so cooperative! The light was dreary, the color saturation rich, and the shutter speeds painfully slow. I shot at least a thousand images today. Most were blurry, but the few that worked out are gems..... best I've shot of these species. I'm crossing my fingers that the next few days are as half as good!

Warbling Vireo
EOS 1DsIII; 500/4IS & 1.4x TC
ISO 400; 1/640s @ f/5.6


Scarlet Tanager (male)
EOS 1DsIII; 500/4IS & 2x TC
ISO 800; 1/50s @ f/8


Scarlet Tanager (male)
EOS 1DsIII; 500/4IS & 2x TC
ISO 640; 1/40s @ f/8


Dickcissel (male)
EOS 1DsIII; 500/4IS & 2x TC
ISO 640; 1/100s @ f/8

Hooded Warbler

Hooded Warbler (male) near Port Aransas, Texas
EOS 1DSIII; 500/4IS & 2X teleconvertor; 580EX flash with Better Beamer
1/50s @ f/8; fill flash at - 1 2/3

After more than 10 years of unsuccessfully trying to photograph Hooded Warblers during spring migration in Ontario, I've had incredible luck with them here in Texas.

The past couple days on the central Texas coast have been spectacular for both songbird and waterbird photography. I've added at least a dozen species to my collection.

I'm camping on the beach right now and have to ration my power usage (batteries are running low) so will keep this a brief post. Will post more photos soon when I'm in a hotel.

Northern Cardinal

Photos of Northern Cardinals are perpetually good sellers. No surprise, this a beautiful and familiar bird to people across much of North America. I photographed these in central Texas yesterday, using a 1DsIII with a 500/4IS lens & 2x convertor. I chose to use this camera body over the 50D because I was working at fairly close range with birds landing on predictable perches (so I could prefocus). In low light - like these were shot in - the file quality of the 1DsIII appears much better than the 50D.

I sat virtually motionless on the ground near the feeding station for 6 hours to get these and several other species that were coming in. Unfortunately at the end of the day I found a tick crawling up my shorts and thankfully removed it before it had a chance to embed itself. While I admire the survival adaptations of ticks, I prefer not to be the parisitized host!

Northern Cardinal (male)

Northern Cardinal (female)

Birds - Central Texas

Just a quick post before I crash out... I'm fried after a scorching day here in central Texas!

I've been photographing from a blind for the past couple days, trying to improve my coverage of a few species as well as adding some new ones to my collection. It's been extremely dry here this winter, so the birds are easily attracted to water fountains/drips.

This has been a good opportunity to put the 50D body through the paces, using it with the 500/4IS and a 1.4x teleconvertor. I've shot thousands of photos, but the keeper ratio for this kind of shooting is painfully low. Here are a few I managed to process so far....

Wild Turkey head


Northern Cardinal

Lincoln's Sparrow

Bird season approaches!

Great weather and cooperative birds have been keeping me busy lately, hence the lack of blog posts! With spring fast approaching, I've been shifting to photographing birds. April and May are a marathon of songbird photography for me.... starting in Texas and following the migration north to Ontario.

Songbird photography is tricky.... the birds are small and rarely sit still. Capturing sharp, well-framed photos requires being fast and efficient with a long lens. I get rusty at this over the winter and have to tune up my technique each spring, which is what I've been up to lately. I've been using my new 50D body and have found it to be excellent for bird photography. I'm most impressed with the incredibly quick and accurate autofocus, as well as the fast frame rate. It blows away my 1DsIII body for shooting birds. A downside is the 50D files have more noise (digital grain) than 1DsIII files, especially in low light. This doesn't surprise me, the 50D is way less expensive and has a smaller sensor. Nevertheless, the files are still pretty good - very publishable - and I expect to use this body for the majority of my songbird photography this spring.

Here are a few recent bird photos.

Photo 1: White Pelican landing - Salton Sea, California
EOS 50D; 500/4IS & 1.4X teleconvertor
Exposure: 1/1600 @ f/5.6; ISO 250


Photo 2: Pyrrhuloxia on cactus - Tucson, Arizona
EOS 50D; 500/4IS & 1.4X teleconvertor
Exposure: 1/1000 @ f/5.6; ISO 200; fill flash at -1 2/3


Photo 3: Black-throated Gray Warbler - Madera Canyon, Arizona
EOS 50D; 500/4IS & 1.4X teleconvertor; 580EX II flash & Better Beamer
Exposure: 1/60 @ f/5.6; ISO 250; fill flash at -1 2/3


Photo 4: Townsend's Warbler - Cave Creek, Arizona
EOS 50D; 500/4IS & 1.4X teleconvertor
Exposure: 1/160 @ f/5.6; ISO 400


Photo 5: Yellow-eyed Junco - Chiricahua Mountains, Arizona
EOS 50D; 500/4IS & 1.4X teleconvertor; 580EX II flash & Better Beamer
Exposure: 1/60 @ f/5.6; ISO 400; fill flash at -2

Small dog, big truck

Every now and then I stumble across a funny scene that warrants stopping for a quick photo. Here's one I shot the other day near the Salton Sea in California. I think the dog is a Chihuahua??

500/4IS & EOS 50D; handheld from my vehicle

Coastal Old-Growth Forest

This week marks 5 months that I've been on the road. Time flies! With spring fast approaching, the intensity of the trip - and shooting - is increasing. The last couple of days in particular have been exhausting, with far too much driving. I just returned to southern Cali to drop off some camera gear for service at Canon. It was hard to leave northern Calironia and Oregon, my time up there was far too short. Photographing in the coastal old-growth redwood forests of northern Cali was a dream for me..... few places have left me in such awe. The mornings I spent wandering those forests were spiritual experiences.

I'm way behind in editing and processing all the photos, but I wanted to make a quick blog post with some photos I sent to my family. It's difficult to convey the immense size of trees in the redwood forests, so I jumped into many of the photos for scale.

Will post some more photos when I get caught up on sleep and work!

All photos taken with EOS 1DsIII; 17-40mm or 24-70mm lenses and Singh-Ray LB warming polarizer

Pacific Coast

The last few days I've been on the Pacific Coast in northern California and Oregon. The weather has been pretty wild - rain and high winds. Photographing shoreline scenes has been a challenge because of the blowing salt spray (it's all over my gear). The winds have been so strong, there were a few times I thought my camera/tripod was going to blow over!

Although I haven't been able to photograph much due to the weather, I've enjoyed exploring this area for my first time. This is an incredibly scenic stretch of coast with rocky outcrops, lighthouses and quaint seaside towns each with myriad restaurants that claim to serve 'world-famous' clam chowder.

For the next few days, I'll continue shooting seascapes (assuming the weather improves). And I'm especially looking forward to exploring some of the stands of huge, coastal old-growth trees.

Here are a few of my favorite images from the coast this week, all taken in northern California just before the bad weather rolled in.

Photo 1: Rugged coastal scenery in northern California.
EOS 1DsIII; 70-200/2.8; Singh-Ray LB warming polarizer & 3 stop soft edge ND grad
Exposure: ISO 200; 1/25 second at f/16


Photo 2: Pacific sunset near Redwood National Park
EOS 1DsIII; 24-70/2.8; Singh-Ray LB colorcombo polarizer & 3 stop hard edge ND grad
Exposure: ISO 320; 5 seconds at f/16

Photo 2: Pacific sunset near Redwood National Park
EOS 1DsIII; 24-70/2.8; Singh-Ray LB colorcombo polarizer & 3 stop hard edge ND grad
Exposure: ISO 400; 25 seconds at f/16

The Alabama Hills

Prior to crossing the Sierra Nevada mountains, I stopped in the Alabama Hills near Lone Pine, California. This is a very scenic area for landscape photography, with sculpted rock formations backed by the snow-capped Sierras. Many films, including classic westerns, have been filmed here.

Below are a few of the images from my brief time in the hills. Since the sky was clear, the opportunity to make truly dramatic sphotos was limited. So I used my timer to jump into some of the photos to add an element of perspective. This also shows my family and friends that I'm still alive and well.

I'm sitting in a laundromat on the north coast of Cali and the light conditions are terrible in here for processing the photos on my laptop, so I hope these look ok!

Photo 1) The cliche sunrise photo of Mobius Arch framing the Sierras.
EOS 1DsIII; 24-70/2.8 lens; Singh-Ray LB warming polarizer; cable release & mirror lock-up
Exposure: 1/30s @ f/18; ISO 200


Photo 2) Me framed by Mobius Arch at sunset (horizontal)
EOS 1DsIII; 24-70/2.8 lens; Singh-Ray LB warming polarizer; cable release & mirror lock-up
Exposure: 1/10s @ f/22; ISO 200


Photo 3) Me framed by Mobius Arch at sunset (vertical)
EOS 1DsIII; 24-70/2.8 lens; Singh-Ray LB warming polarizer; cable release & mirror lock-up
Exposure: 1/30s @ f/22; ISO 200


Photo 4) Afterglow at Mobius Arch
EOS 1DsIII; 24-70/2.8 lens; Singh-Ray LB colorcombo polarizer; 2-stop hard edge ND grad; cable release & mirror lock-up
Exposure: 1.3s @ f/22; ISO 200


Photo 5) Moonlit camping in the Alabama Hills
Yes, that's where I camped (I was in the van during the long exposure)!
EOS 1DsIII; 24-70/2.8 lens
Exposure: 477 seconds @ f/11; ISO 200