Baiting and Shooting

My bird feeder is in my front yard very closely centered between my small front porch and the sidewalk and street.  Being that my porch is so small there is not even room to place a chair to sit on so when Jonah and I go outside during the day, I sit on the steps.  This puts me even closer to the bird feeder, yet sometimes the sparrows don't seem to mind our presence if we sit still and don't move a lot.  Most of my bird photos are taken from that vantage point.  However, to capture the very stubborn cardinal, or to get good closeups of the squirrels in the yard sometimes takes a little more planning.  While I do have some good squirrel shots from my place on the porch steps, some of the photos of the squirrels as well as the birds are from inside my front door.  Of course the problem with that is having to shoot through the screen in the door.  The photos tend to be fuzzy.  I have also taken quite a lot of photos through the screen door using my Canon AE1 35mm camera but as yet have not gotten the film developed.  The zoom lens on the Canon gets me much closer to the birds and squirrels than my Kodak Z885 point and shoot digital camera.  

Today I had to try an experiment.  I decided to place some loose birdseed in areas that would draw the birds and squirrels closer to the porch while I stayed inside the house watching from the door where they would not see me so readily.  This experiment is going to have to be extended.  Weather prevented me from keeping the bait sitting out the entire time and even then it seemed to take most of the day just for the birds to find out that the bait was there.  They never did find the little flowerpot tray with the birdseed in.  As far as I know the squirrels never found the bait on the steps, however they did move in for some of the other closer shots.  You can see what happened below.

 Oh well, tomorrow's another day...

Other shots I was able to take today are included in the animals page on this blog.  I finally did succeed in capturing that stubborn camera-shy cardinal too!  Hopefully tomorrow he might even come on up to the porch!

Capirani Photography is Blooming!

You may be noticing some changes going on with this blog.  Well that's because I'm expanding the site and turning it into more than just a hobby where I play around with the camera.  I've always wanted to try to see if I have what it takes to become a professional photographer/artist.  My art uses cameras and computer programs.  Some of it may be traditional but a lot that you see here will be off the beaten path. 

You will find here not only the usual type of landscape and nature photos that I love so much, but also various forms of graphic art created with the photos that just did not make the cut.  Instead of just deleting them, I decided to play around with the editing programs I have to see what I can create.  By doing so, I think you will find here some very interesting artwork.  The uses for this artwork--well, that is left up to the viewer and hopefully, eventually, the client who buys what I create.  Some of it may work well for backgrounds for family websites and blogs.  Others might be perfect for scrapbook pages.  You decide.  

While you look over the new sections of this website, please excuse the inconvenience of the remodeling.  New things are arriving and old things are leaving the site.  Hopefully once I have this set up the way I want it, the hobbyist will have become the professional.

Playing With My Camera!

Can you believe that after having my camera for about 4 years or so, I am finally getting around to checking how to use all the settings?  I've found out my nice little Kodak Easy Share camera can do a lot more than I thought it could, including take close-up shots of flowers and other things I used to only do with my 35mm Canon AE1 with zoom/macro lens attached.  No it's not getting shots as nice as that camera does but it's better than what I was doing with it.  Anyway, I've been experimenting a lot the past week.  My daughter is planning another vacation and I fully intend to know how this camera works and make the best of it this year.  Below are some of the photos I've been taking this spring both before and after I found out how to use the settings.

Frustrations Abound

For the past few weeks since I bought my Kodak EasyShare Z885 Digital Camera, I have been making lots of videos of my grandkids and transferring them to CD's. Today I was just checking them out and realized that the videos on my computer are great, complete with good lighting, color, and sound. However, the videos on the CD's are missing the sound, or only have little bits of sound here and there with total silence in between. I have no idea what is going on or why the sound portion of the videos is not transferring to the CD's. What am I doing wrong? Maybe I should be using DVD's instead of CD's? I thought about that, but CD's should hold the sound since it is CD's that are used for music. At first I thought it was the program I used because the later CD's I used the EasyShare program to burn the CD's and the earlier ones I just sent the files to the CD from the file where they were saved. But the sound was bad on all the CD's, not just the latest ones.

Well, for now I am going to go get some DVD's because I have used up the last of the CD's I had getting all the grandkid photos and videos transferred. I know the DVD's will hold a lot more than the CD's do. and maybe the videos will work on them. Either way, I want to get all the photos transferred again and keep the photo DVD's separate from the video DVD's. Then when I get them all transferred the way I want them, I will just throw away the others since they are not the kind that can be recorded over.

Is there anyone out there in cyberspace reading this blog that knows what the problem is and can tell me how to correct it?

Playing With My New Camera

Today I got the chance to play around with my new Kodak Easy Share Z885 digital camera. Daughter brought Grandson over for awhile so I could play with him while she ran some errands. That gave me the chance to experiment with the camera. I made several videos along with some snapshots. Sorry, they won't be posted here. My grandkids are off limits to the internet. I am hoping to get to my photo box soon and get some of my best pictures on here.