Nature

I really enjoy shooting people.  I think there's an art to finding a way to capturing their personality, and then embellishing their physical presence.

But I also love nature.  Even more than people, nature is unpredictable.

We'll start with flowers.  Here's a rose from my front yard, followed by a sunflower that grew all on its own in my backyard:

I was at a park in Detroit one day when I saw this cantankerous duck really being belligerent to any other duck that came near him.  I decided to hang out with that duck, in the hopes that something interesting would come out of it.  I set my camera for a slow shutter speed (probably 1/100) as if anything happened, I wanted the wings to have a natural motion blur.  I didn't have to wait long.  It turned out even better than I'd hoped when he chased another duck straight at me.

Here's the shot:

I love sunsets.  I just can't get enough of them.  The colors can be so rich.  Here's my all-time favorite sunset shot:

You just never know what to expect with animals, even at a zoo.  I love shooting giraffes mainly because their eyes are so expressive.  I stood there with this giraffe for quite awhile when it finally just looked directly at me, as if to say: "Really, haven't you shot enough already?"  By chance, the out-of-focus angled tree behind the giraffe worked perfectly in perspective to the angle of its long neck.

If you haven't read Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach, you must.  When I came upon these seagulls floating in the air above the beach at Galveston, I must have fired off 100 shots.  It was just intoxicating in a weird way.

This little finch one day began banging on our window one morning.  I couldn't figure out what was going on until after I took some shots of him and I realized he was all agitated (you can tell by the red feathers all fluffed up on his head) by the reflection of himself in the window.  It thought there was another male bird messing with him!

I was driving to a shoot in Provo, Utah, one evening, about an hour before dusk, when I looked over at this orchard and found dozens of deer hanging around.  I pulled over and parked the car, got out, and I really liked the way this shot looked, with the row of trees on each side of this deer checking me out.

Here are a few other random nature shots: