Photo Week Hike

For my Thursday’s blog post for Photography Week I wrote about the different settings on my Nikon P1000. Since I received my camera last month, I’ve only been using the Automatic mode, basically point and shoot with the settings figured out automatically in the camera. I took Friday off since Lia shared her take on the Photography Week with her Friday Story Time by Lia. So now it’s my turn again with my Photo Week hike and I have started to use the Program and Manual modes on my camera .

Rich, Snowball and I went on a hike to Vereen’s Memorial Gardens not far from our house. It’s a beautiful, quiet nature site with long walkways over the marsh to the Intercoastal Waterway. It’s the perfect place to sit and reflect and also see many birds and wildlife. These two pictures were taken on a previous hike with my Google Pixel 6 camera. The next pictures I’m sharing were taken on the Program mode where I adjusted the different settings.

After we cross the walkways over the marsh we end up at the waterway and a small island. This is a private pier on the other side of the Gardens that was recently added to the scenery. There weren’t any boats at the time so the water was like glass and I got a good reflection in the photograph.

As we walked across one of the walkways the first thing I noticed was all the beautiful bluebirds! Three, four, no FIVE gorgeous bluebirds in one tree! I was standing in the same spot when I took the “group” shot then zoomed in to 2400mm for the closeup.

The first photo was at 567mm focal lens and the second was at 3000mm. But in the short time when I snapped the first photo, a majestic blue heron stopped by for a rest! If you notice the background is quite blurry but I was focusing mainly on the birds. Having both in focus will be my next step.

As a comparison from standing in the same spot I took this photo from my Google Pixel 6 phone camera. I still love for how easy it is to snap a picture anytime and takes awesome pictures for a phone camera. The birds look like little specks at this distance! Yes you might say I’m loving my Nixon P1000.

These three photos are my favorite! I don’t know how I did it but I was able to snap the birds in flight! I missed a few on my first try because trying to find them as they were flying plus focus at the same time wasn’t the easiest thing to as the birds flew by so quickly. But I did find another setting for taking action shots like this so that will be my next step to study on all the different modes for taking pictures like these and making it easier.

This is one of the memorials at Vereen Garden, look at the dates on the memorial! Many of these are the Vereen family who the Vereen Memorial Gardens were named after.

When walking along the trails you see smaller memorials like this one. There is no name but I’m thinking it was someone who loved the gardens and maybe visited frequently. This memorial shows how much the person was loved by someone.

Snowball enjoyed his hike with us and I was excited to see all the birds and get some good shots. But when we returned home, I had another surprise. There was a beautiful Flicker in our backyard! As I was adjusting the lighting, it ended up being too light so I tweaked my settings for the next set. I also put my settings on “continuous” shooting or “burst” mode. Hold down the shutter release button when in burst and it takes seven pictures at a time! This is great for capturing different pictures of the same subject. Then I can decide which is the best shot! Thanks to my blogging friend Doug J. for telling me this!

These are a few shots that I did on the burst mode and I was able to capture the perfect photo of the red on this Flicker’s head.

Did I tell you I’m enjoying my new camera? Oh yes I did, every post I’ve written on my Photography Week blogs! But I love nature, wildlife and old barns and churches. I think that will be one of my next outings, look for old buildings.