This is the friend I was talking about yesterday! (Click here to see what “friend” I was talking about)

It took us a little bit of digging to figure out that the American Tree Sparrow and this White Crowned Sparrow are not actually the same species. Initially we thought one was male and one was female. The reason we thought they were together is because it seemed like they were chirping together and following each other around. I guess they just happened to migrate together, eat the same food, and live in the same bushes.

Theses pictures are some of my favorite nature shots that I’ve taken. I love the alert look in his face and the fluffed up feathers. He’s staring us down to make sure we won’t hurt him, I think. After a minute he relaxed and went about with eating. What a cutie!

“The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.”

- Walter Bagehot

I am always amused by animals looking at the camera!

This is an American Tree Sparrow.  The sparrow only passes by Edmonton on it’s migration route. These guys are one of our new ground foraging friends. At the time that I took these photos we thought we had only one American Tree Sparrow and one of it’s friend(I will post about the friend next) but it turns out there is a whole flock that’s migrated in. 

We are members of the Edmonton Nature Club. Some of the senior members said it’s lucky to get good pictures of sparrows. Apparently they are difficult to photograph. We had no difficulty at all though! The sparrow was very friendly and didn’t seem afraid of Zac and I at all. Now we make sure to put extra seed on the ground to ensure these guys are getting fed too!

“Never give up on something that you can’t go a day without thinking about.”

The warm weather has blessed us with a forest filled with gorgeous butterflies. They are still fast and like to land on not so nice areas. But one butterfly decided to pose nicely on a log and allow me to take it’s portrait. It landed right in front of me with it’s wing spread wide open. After the mini-shoot I was jumping with joy because I was so excited that I got amazing pictures!

“If you are depressed you are living in the past.

If you are anxious you are living in the future

If you are at peace you are living in the present”

- Lao Tzu

Dancing with her uncle

The 18th birthday is very important milestone in life. Filipino’s don’t miss the opportunity to celebrate this exciting time in life. They don’t celebrate the same way that most Canadians do, which is to get drunk at the clubs. Instead they have a huge celebration where they invite all family and friends together in honour of the new adult. This is called a debut. 

I was called last minute to do the photography for the event. I am so happy that I got the chance to celebrate this once in a lifetime(especially since I will never get on myself). It was a very fun night. Great music, wonderful people, and tasty food. It was one of those nights where you leave with more energy then you started with!

This cake was delicious!

The beautiful debutante and her gorgeous 18 candles

The debutante herself

“Tell everyone what you want to do and someone will want to help you do it.”
— W. CLEMENT STONE

]]> http://thelifeofphotos.com/2013/05/13/18th-birthday/feed/ 4 Facebook-3 monikahw Birthday Cake 18 Candles Debutante http://thelifeofphotos.com/2013/05/08/camo-frog/ http://thelifeofphotos.com/2013/05/08/camo-frog/#comments Wed, 08 May 2013 22:15:56 +0000 Monikah Wiseman http://thelifeofphotos.com/?p=922 Read More →]]> Now that all of the snow has melted (hooray!!) our bird watching area has turned into a marsh. This has lead to an abundance of new birds, insects, and frogs…lots of frogs. 

While we silently waited to spot some birds Zac heard rustling in the dry leaves beside us. We had no idea what it could be because we couldn’t see a rabbit or a bird, the usual sneaky critters. And at the time we hadn’t seen any frogs around, ever. All it took was one wrong hop to blow it’s cover! We booked it over to where we saw him hopping around. Zac got to him first and started snapping away with his camera. Once I got there I was confused because I couldn’t seen a thing but leaves and twigs.  Zac kept trying to point out where the frog was but I could not see it for the life of me. Wood frogs are excellent camouflagers, or I am just blind. After a few minutes spotted the frog. Zac had to repeatedly pointed it out, to the point where he literally had to poke the thing for me to see it. I lost him in the leaves a few more times after that. Finally I had my eye on him and wasn’t going to let the frog get away. When Zac was done taking picture I got as low and as close as I could to take some gorgeous shots of him. 

There is now an abundance of frogs in our forest. You can’t walk into the trees or sit on the patio without hearing the loud croaking of the frogs. I still can never spot them though. This was the first and only once I have seen even though I know every time we are bird watching we are surrounded by frogs. I really enjoy the sounds though, so I will just have to listen instead of seeing them.

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong”

-Ghandi

]]> http://thelifeofphotos.com/2013/05/08/camo-frog/feed/ 2 monikahw Frog Camo http://thelifeofphotos.com/2013/05/06/tranquility/ http://thelifeofphotos.com/2013/05/06/tranquility/#comments Mon, 06 May 2013 22:00:03 +0000 Monikah Wiseman http://thelifeofphotos.com/?p=916 Read More →]]> While Zac and I sat on some rocks watching the ducks in the pond I noticed a peaceful scene. I have seen many pictures that use a rock in the foreground with a sprawl of water as the background. Those pictures have always interested me. But I have never really lived near water and when I had gotten the chance by waterside I wouldn’t really thinking of taking this type of picture, I’d only been thinking about relaxing or swimming. Something about this arrangement of rocks caught my eye. 

Being in nature is very relaxing, to me. If I’m not in the best mood a walk in nature can definitely change that very quickly. It is amazing how much of an effect our surrounding can have on our state of mind.

It is not always easy to get to a place where we love so sometime we’ve just got to close our eyes and imagine being some where that we imagine as peaceful.  

“As the physically weak man can make himself strong by careful and patient training, so the man of weak thoughts can make them strong by exercising himself in right thinking.”

I don’t know if you have ever noticed this, but when you are near water whether it’s a pond or a puddle and the air still you can see the reflections of your surroundings in the water. The body of water acts like a mirror and for a photographer it can makes way for some awesome photograph opportunities.

In these to photos I took full advantage of the mirror effect. The water was not perfectly still but it was still enough to get a great shot. If you did not notice before, the photos are flipped upside down making it looks like the trees and houses have a slight ripple to them. What do you think?

“Try not to take things personally, what people often say is a reflection of them and not you.”

The other day I was walking around the pond to get some pictures of the buffleheads when I noticed the goose sleeping close to us. I tried to sneak up to get a peaceful shot of him but of course he didn’t stay sleeping for long. He was not on high alert but he definitely was keeping an eye on the slowly approaching photographer, me. The goose was in the company of a ring billed gull which are very common in the summer time. Lots of people consider gulls to be the “rats of the sky”. I can appreciate them though because they sometimes make a humorous addition to photos.

The goose and the gull were awesome models. They stood back to back for about ten minutes while I fired off as many shots as possible. Just as they were getting annoyed with me and getting ready to take off a gust of wind blew past and lifted the goose’s feathers just right.

“I am tired, but I am not done”

- My running mantra

So I have taken a little break from photography to try out some video in the past week.

I can shoot video but I am not very good at putting videos together. I’ve been practicing though. It has been a lot of fun. I don’t think I’m doing too bad at it either.

Here is a little video that shows you what it is like in our forest bird watching.

Have a great weekend!

-

“The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.”

Magical Rainbow Water.

Drink this and you will instantly have all the special powers you always wished you had!

Gotcha!

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there really was such a thing? 

-

While browsing the internet I came across a cool picture of jelly beans being injected with food coloring and this inspired me to take a color filled picture of my own. Unfortunately I had neither jelly beans or food coloring laying around. It was time to get creative and improvise. I had water and that is easy to color as long as you have any other colored liquid. The only other colored liquid I had was a huge bottle of vanilla flavor. So off I went to experiment. The final rainbow water is a result of merging many shots and some hue adjustments. It was a fun little project and I think the results turned out sweet. 

Photoshop is such an awesome tool. I am amazed by the things that I’m able to create in only an hour. Being the gullible person I am, this was a great reminder of no matter how real a photo looks it could very easily be very fake. 

What do you think of the results?

The Original Vanilla Water

—

“The opposite of happiness isn’t sadness — it’s boredom.”
Tim Ferriss