Mourning Dove - Sunset & a Blimp

Well here we are the close of another weekend the second full one in August! I have recovered quite well from last weeks State TT's and got in a good little ride with Scott's Tuesday night rides this past week. I took Monday and Tuesday off as it really was getting old going to the day job every Monday and Tuesday.

Since I had some time off I was hoping I was going to get some photo work done, maybe like posting out to Smugmug and cleaning up files on the PC here at home. Got a few files cleaned up but nothing new posted and now am aiming for this week - week of 8/13/07.

Back towards the end of July I was spending an evening with my Pentax ist-DS out on the back deck near the bird feeders. I keep a Sigma 135-400 lens attached and mounted to my tripod for some of the closer work. I am still a bit skeptical on the glass work of this particular lens but some other landscape shots have come out quite nice, so I will keep it for a while longer. Anyway, I was able to be still for a long enough time to allow some Mourning Doves to continue feeding off of seed and insects from the ground. I took this shot between two slats on the deck and have cropped in to get a closer feel.

The same evening, I got bored with the birds so tilted the camera on the tripod and took some shots of some tall pines just a few hundred yards away. Looks kind of cool with the darkness of the trees, the clouds drifting by all the while the sun is setting beyond the Eola Hills.

A couple of days later while having dinner I look out the window and there is the 'GoodYear' Blimp cruising by! Not sure where they were going and never saw anything in the local paper about it, so obviously was not that interesting to many. My daughter thought it was really cool as this was the first time she had seen one and my first time in the last 20 years or so!

Thanks for reading and feel free to drop a line at tim@trephotos.com anytime you like.

Bye,
Tim