new pix note, quick

September 7, 2009

You can now scroll through the big home page pix, there to the left; and we'll be able to add captions, too---just saying where and when. Ideally we'd list GPS coordinates, but you have to know how to do that, and not all of us do.

Some of the new pictures are from a recent overnight, and the two bat pix are from a couple of years ago. The bats fly at night, and if you sit around in the dark with a headlight on, the insects will fly in the beams and the bats will go for the insects. It's not like you're trying to trap the bugs, but it's a consequence of wanting to not stare into darkness.
The bats fly by, often close, and with a wide angle lens (25mm) and a flash, you just aim the camera basically up and out and toward the light beam, and when you see a bat out of the corner of your eye flying that way, push the shutter off and take the film to Target the next day and see what happened. The photos are never technically good, but when you shoot bats for fun, your expectations are low.

There's also a dead deer photo, which I hope isn't too gross. I'd say it's less gross than a deer killed on pavement by a car. What you don't see is the track of packed-down grass where some animal dragged it off a slope onto the flat fire road (a table).We came upon it on the way home from the S24O on Sept 5.
G