Squirrel Hunting 101

Hi All! Betty here again. It's been a while since my last post, but I thought maybe you all could benefit from my squirrel hunting experience. I have outlined a few simple tips to help you hunt your very own squirrels at home. First off - make sure you are familiar with your prey. These guys are sneaky little devils (and evil to the core!).

Next - make sure you have plenty of back up. Today, I have Frank and Robin as my assistants.

It's always helpful to make sure you have someone taller to reach Mister Squirrel (this is where Robin comes in):

You will need to keep an eye on your assistants at all times - Frank obviously has a tendency to get easily distracted (shiny object, butterfly, etc...). Here you see him staring at... well... the corner of the deck:

You will also want to allow breaks for you assistants:

Make sure that you have the tree

surrounded at all times:

Now, I like to start off with an "innocent invitation" of play to Mister Squirrel:

Sometimes it doesn't even hurt to give the tree a little shove (you know, to shake things up a bit):

I do like to get as close as possible to Mister Squirrel as I can:

Sometimes it helps if you levitate:
Now, this is very important - you will want to ignore the paparazzi as much as possible. They are very distracting and your in-attention may allow Mister Squirrel to escape!
Sometimes it helps to feign dis-interest (as Frank is demonstrating - like I said - the kid is easily distracted!):
If all else fails, an imploring look to mom "please get me the squirrel!!" might do the trick! Good luck in your squirrel hunting!!

These are just some fun pics of Betty from the other day. I was sitting on the deck reading (with my camera in reach) and waiting for any critters to show up to the feeders. Betty decided to do a little sunbathing on the deck. I was playing around with manual mode and really like how these turned out:

Oh yea... I did have a critter or two show up to eat:

Mad Dog!!!!!!!!

Tammy decided that she wanted photos of her and Mad Dog jumping off a dock together (don't try this at home folks - MD is a professional and knows what she is doing!). I was all for the idea and they were VERY good models and jumped off that dock NINE times. Here we have our willing participants:

I started out taking shots from the side of the dock and it looked like the photos were turning out really well. We did get a couple fun shots out this angle - here is our doggirl (1/2 dog 1/2 girl):

MD is really good at what she does!! I loved looking at Tammy and Mad's forms - it amazed me how many times they were actually in very similar positions in the air. MD is so good at pointing her toes!!Then I went around a bit towards the front of the dock and took a couple jump series. I didn't think that I was going to like them as well as the side, but.....
This one has to be my favorite out of all the shots:

Challenge #2 - Close Up

This is for challenge #2 - we were supposed to concentrate on getting close-ups of three subjects: nature, water and patriotic. As a bonus, we were to try to get photos of fireworks or sparklers. To see my fireworks, scroll down past the last post of the ground squirrel. I did not end up doing the patriotic subject - just could not think of anything I liked. Ah well. I had fun with these in CS3. The corn in this one was selected and left yellow and the rest of the photo was turned into a black/white. I really like the effect of this one.

This is a Lilly in my flower garden. I kinda did the same thing with this one. I selected the bug, left him green (that is his normal color, believe it or not) and the rest of the photo was made into sepia (and desaturated a bit). The original photo really didn't do anything for me as the Lilly was not that pretty (faded by the sun).
I had a blast setting up my water shots. I used poster board as my background, put my camera on the tripod and a flash. This is actually a serving spoon. Ya gotta hold your tongue just right (and take over 100 shots!!). Obviously, it's been Photoshopped to death! LOL
My second water shot. I put a glass of ice in the freezer - got my gear set up (black poster board this time) and by the time I was ready, the glass frosted over -it gave it a really cool effect (ha ha).

Stealing From a Squirrel...

Sooooooo... if a squirrel steals from a bird feeder, who steals from the squirrel? A ground squirrel! This little guy... err.... gal (and two of her friends) climb the tree in the back yard and steal corn off of the squirrel feeder. I was actually setting up the camera to take some squirrel pictures. Brian has totally spoiled and fed these squirrels and they will let you get pretty close. I set up my tripod and was checking the settings on the camera when she showed up. Isn't she cute???

Fireworks!!

Last night Brian, Sheryl and I went to the Cedar Rapids fireworks display. I had not seen the CR display and have never taken fireworks photos. The display only lasted about 20 minutes. These are my favorites.