Saturday, May 6, 2017

Flowers and a baby squirrel..

I normally don't photograph domestic flowers, but I had a couple of hours to wait for my son and there was a cemetery nearby. I drove through and saw lots of tulips and decided to try for some color.

 
The first flowers I worked with were red or orange. I tried using a 180mm macro and wasn't having much luck so I switched to a 18mm-200mm lens and things got better.
 
 
I was laying on the ground and shooting up, trying lots of different angles,
 
 
and working around the plants to find decent compositions.
 
 
 
I liked the yellow patterns at the base of these flowers.
 
 
The light changed after a bit and I moved to a different group of nearby flowers.
 
 
 
 
I was pleasantly surprised how the yellow petals popped against the blue sky.
 
 
 
It was sunny and 75 degrees and I paused to look at some of the images under the shade of a big pine tree. While I was standing there I heard a couple of crows about fifty yards away, they sounded a little too excited. I looked over and saw one crow on the ground and one on top of a tall headstone calling. The crow on the ground looked to be pecking at something. I ran towards them expecting to find a young robin or some other bird.
 
 
There wasn't a bird. There was a baby gray squirrel the crows had been menacing. The crows had flown when I ran over and were perched in nearby oak trees. I checked to see if the squirrel was injured. It wasn't bleeding and seemed ok.
 
 
I looked in nearby trees for it's nest or family and couldn't find it. The little squirrel was calling out, but no squirrels were answering. I thought it likely, that it lived in one of those trees and the crows had grabbed it, so I didn't want to take it anywhere. I did want to give it some protection from the crows and a fighting chance to live.
 
At the bottom of a nearby headstone were hostas, (a sort of thick sturdy plant) and I found some tree branches nearby. I encouraged the squirrel to move between the dense plants and the tombstone and then placed the sticks across the top of it as a barrier against the crows. Hopefully I created a safe spot for the squirrel to wait for its mom to come and get it. Then I went back to the flowers.
 
 
 
 
Soon it was time to go and pick up a kid. The squirrel thing was a little different, but I did capture lots of color.
 

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