I have hummingbirds getting very competitive and territorial about this feeder I keep there. I am, as we speak, making the balcony area into an urban herb garden so please do not be taken aback by the poor, dead jasmine plant. It will look much better in the coming weeks. I will admit I’m not the best with interior design. I’m just not one of those people. Thus, the “old” TV, the spotty carpet, the ragged balcony area. Anyway, I humiliate myself on multiple levels to bring you this lovely natural event. Suddenly a big old hawk appeared on the hummingbird perch area. I don’t know if he (she?) was there because of the little birds or there because he/she had seen my little wild kitten staring through the window at the birds. Either way, I moved to get my camera. I didn’t manage to get to my Nikon, because that would have entailed putting a battery in and by then, surely the hawk would have flown away. I got my little camera, the Panasonic Lumix, and snapped a quick photo of the hawk. Then, after it flew to a nearby wire, I got a better shot. Big, beautiful, scary things they are.

I took these pictures at my niece’s birthday. Three of these girls are cousins and one is a friend. Because of the low light, they ended up in blur, except for excerpts of them here and there. But this one shows you the magic of photography. This is what I have always loved about taking pictures. Because I am no good at setting the light or manipulating anything — any good picture I take is almost always accidental. And this photo was a happy accident. The girls are hummingbirds in flight, I think. Except for one.

And speaking of hummingbirds, we are now the proud owners of a feeder.

This part of it kind of says it all.

On the far left is The Dark Knight soundtrack. The thick, dirty thing with no spine is my grandmother’s old cookbook.

While camping at Leo Carillo we awoke to piercing cries of baby hawks. Leo Carillo is a hotbed for Spring mating leading to summer births. We saw birds in a nest in a bathroom, baby squirrels everywhere, and though we didn’t see them we know there are little baby rattle snakes hiding out. The hawks were older now, according to one camper who’d been there for weeks. They were more like little teenage hawks. They were already hunting and eating, or else they were just eating stuff their mom had laid out for them. After an hour or so of hungry chirping they went back in their nest and slept quietly for the rest of the day. It was the cutest thing ever.

As I make my way through my camera’s manual, I’m learning VERY SLOWLY how to set the aperture and shutter speed and all of that. But I have to say, so far, the auto settings are kicking my ass. I can’t manage to do it better than the camera does it itself. The thing is, as we grow older we must teach ourselves new things in order to keep our brains young. I can already feel my brain getting old and so I force it to learn. So now we’re learning photography language. It’s frustrating because it’s a world onto itself, there are so many good photographers out there already and so many people who know so much more about it. But every once in a while, using the auto settings, I luck out and get some great pics. During a recent camping trip, I played around with night settings.

I love what that camera can do. On the other hand, I know I need to learn a lot more before I start waving around it around like I know what I’m doing.

Driving up Laurel Pass and onto Mulholland, a hawk sat on a telephone wire overlooking Fryman canyon. I stopped to take a picture. I used my telephoto lens but it wasn’t really powerful enough to capture this hawk at close range. Nonetheless, I messed around in Photoshop to see what I could salvage.

Somewhere in the middle of it I went to the zoo with a classroom for kindergartners. That was fun. Fun in the way that having your big toe ache all day while you plod around on asphalt all day fun. No, really, it was fun in that feel sorry for all of the imprisoned animals way. No seriously. I have learned that the best time to visit the zoo at all is in the morning. If you go in the afternoon the animals are done with it. They just want some peace inside their dark little caves. It was, however, a good chance to try out the new camera. The one shot I really wanted was of a baby orangutan. It had climbed into the perfect position, in between cuddling with its mommy and climbing up a rope – it was the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. But for some reason my camera wouldn’t click — I think it had to do with the autofocus, which I’ve started really digging. I’m tired of missing shots because I didn’t focus it right. Anyway, I missed the shot.

I got one of the baby orang but it wasn’t a very good one. I doctored it up in Photoshop for the hell of it.

Testing things out with the new camera.

Donnie has put up the latest You Suck at Photoshop but in looking back over his videos I realized I missed this one. These are so funny but so horrible and true. When you look into the abyss….the abyss looks back at you:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EKAtO4Anxc]

Now that’s what I’m talking about. Who needs Easter Bunnies when you could have the real thing?

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