Please keep your eye out here for some beautiful new photographs as well as more well written and informative articles about nature photography. All of us here at Nature’s Domain love to get outside and enjoy the nature we love to photograph so it can be difficult sometimes to sit inside but I know we are all committed to keeping fresh new content on this website. As always thank you so much for your support and continuing to visit our website and we always love your feedback.

Now to give you something a little different that hasn’t been posted here on Nature’s Domain yet. A short video of some of the nature surrounding my condo here in Southern NJ. I shot these clips in the summer of 2010 and have finally gotten around to doing something with them. I know this is not photography but it is something I personally think is a great addition to the new modern DSLR. I know there are many varying opinions about video on DSLRs but I have been approaching it with the “if you don’t want to use it then don’t and if you do well then great” motto. I never want to be a full time videographer instead of photographer, although I think there are some great things that can be done with video relating to nature photography. I hope you enjoy the short clip and we all hope you enjoy our website enough to share with others and stop back again.

Thanks,
Ray Hennessy

Watch the video here to see in HD it looks much better.

Around My Condo from Nature's Domain on Vimeo.

Flowers and plants can be a vast source or many different and vibrant colors. One advantage of photographing them is they don’t move. You can really take your time and look for the right colors or just the right composition to make a specific color stand out. In the first example below the green (which is one of the most common natural colors) really stands out because of the composition and utilizing a really dark background.

Another example of color that makes the subject stand out are birds. There are literally thousands of colors in the bird world and we as photographers can try to take advantage of that. The difficulty with bird photography is the inability to control what the subject does and where it goes. Most of the time luck plays a huge part in getting a beautifully colored bird on the perfect background. Other times it can be patience, waiting and waiting for a bird to show up in just the right spot to make it’s color stand out. I usually use a combination of the two. Since I become easily bored, luck plays a large part in my ability to capture the beautiful color of birds against contrasting backgrounds.

Colors can be used in all different types of nature photography, not just the examples I’ve shown and talked about. It can be more difficult and require some time and patience to pay off, but in my opinion it can be one of the most striking methods for making your subject “singled out”. Next week I’ll be talking about silhouettes and if you have time click below to view the rest of the series.

View the entire series

Pretty obvious here, the red really makes the flower become the main subject.

This photo of the Cardinal has the 3 primary colors going on but the one that really stands out is the bright red. It's the most intense color in the scene and just seems to catch your eye the most.

Again here the bright white of the Egret stands out in the field of green marsh grass.

Another example of the bright red really catching the viewer's eye and making the blossoms on the branch become the main subject of the photo. This also has a little depth of field helping to draw your eye to the center blossom.

Here we have a great landscape on it's own. The many islands off the coast of Bar Harbor Maine make for a great scenic photograph. Once you add the bright red sails on this boat all of a sudden you have a definitive subject in the photo.

This is a more subtle use of color but the blue of the Tri-Colored Heron contrasts nicely against all the green in the scene and allows the subject to stand out.

There's that bright red again doing it's thing. In my opinion this is one of the most stand out uses of color there is.

View the entire series

Let’s start talking about depth of field, which I’ll refer to as DOF from now on. I won’t bore you the definition but try to explain how I use it in nature photography to help single out my subject. As a general rule the wider aperture (lower f number) used will create less depth of field. This can be used as an advantage to a nature photographer to make a certain part or subject matter in a photo stand out as in the example at the top of this post. I photographed that purple flower with the lens set to f:2.8 which created a very shallow depth of field. This translates into only the flower being sharp and the background becomes blurred thus helping the flower become singled out. For bird and flower photography shallow DOF is one of the most common and easily used techniques to allow your subject to become the main focus of the photo.

Using DOF is not only limited to birds and flowers, it can be a benefit in landscape photography and can also be used just for effect. My only suggestion is to be careful with extremely shallow depth of field. It can certainly make it more difficult to properly focus on your subject, especially if it is moving. There are also some lenses that create such a shallow DOF that almost nothing is in focus. DOF is one of the most important techniques I use in my nature photography to help me “single out” my subject and I’m sure most of you already use it yourself, whether you know it or not.

I hope you enjoyed this article and please stop back next week to see the next in the series: color.

View the entire series

Here is an example of one of the most common tools to make your subject stand out, especially with birds and other wildlife. Depth of Field in this photo was achieved by taking the photo from an extremely low angle and it helps the bird become the main focus of the picture.

Here, getting up close and using shallow depth of field helps to blur out the distracting background and keeping the viewers eye focused on the branch and pine needle detail.

I chose to use just the right amount of depth of field on this tree to allow the viewer to be able to distinguish what the background was, yet allow the dead tree to stand out.

This photo is a use of 2 methods for making the subject stand out. It has shallow depth of field to focus on just the opened shell and color plays a large part in helping the subject pop. The bright white of the shell really stands out against the burned marsh grass.

Using a really shallow depth of field here even blurs the other flowers that are nearby creating an almost dreamy, painted background.

This photo could have been taken with either the bird or the tall marsh grass in focus. I chose that later to make it a bit more mysterious. You can obviously see the bird in the background but it may take a few moments to realize it's a Great Blue Heron. If I had photographed the heron in focus, the tall grass would have simply been in the way.

Depth of field is the main tool used in this photo to make the little Canada Goose the main subject but lighting also plays a part here. I specifically waited for the little guy to walk into the spot of sunlight thus making him the brightest part of the photo and further drawing the viewers eye directly to him.

There are two trees in this photo and thanks to depth of field, only one is the focus of the photograph. I chose to include the foreground tree to help create some depth to the photograph and also add more color. This is another example of lighting helping the tree stand out. The early morning sun was behind the tree which caused the background to go almost black and really made the main tree almost glow.

Depth of field is the only thing that would help this Brown Anole stand out. Everything in the scene is the same color and full sunlight just lights up everything.

View the entire series

It has been really fun and challenging to pick out a few of my favorite photos to represent each color in nature. I realize that there are hundreds, maybe thousands of different shades of colors in nature so I tried to choose the main colors to complete this series of pictures. I hope you enjoyed following along and please feel free to leave any comments or maybe suggestions for another series of photos I could do in the future.

Thanks,

Ray

View the entire series.

Argentina is a place that might not normally be at the top of a wildlife photograhers must go list.  Maybe this post will change that.  Over a week and a half this past Christmas and the new year we traveled to several places throughout the country and saw some incredible places, wildlife, and birds.

We arrived in Buenos Aires on Christmas Eve, and within minutes of arriving at our hotel were heading down to Costanera Sur Ecological Reserve.  It is a wonderful place located at the edge of the bustling city, and it is a haven for over 100 birds species and several reptiles, amphibians, and mammals. 

As well as being in the reserve itself, there is a mile long wall along a main street that borders the reserve, and from here is where we did most of our birding.  We saw hundreds of birds from this wall.  Species we saw included Ringed Teal (above), Monk Parakeets, Black Hooded Parakeets, White Faced Tree Ducks, Brown Teal, Silver Teal, Coscoroba Swans, Tiger Herons, Common Moorhens, White Winged Coots, Red Gartered Coots, Red Crested Cardinals, and Guira Cuckoos to name a few.  And the best part is that the birds here are used to people since the wall is a hub for people doing all sorts of activities.

Guira Cuckoo- Costanera Sur Ecological Reserve

White Winged Coot- Costanera Sur Ecological Reserve

Common Moorhen?

Southern Lapwing- Costanera Sur Ecological Reserve

 This next bird is easily one of the most spectacular birds I have ever seen.  THe RED CRESTED CARDINAL.  First is the female, then the SPECTACULAR male. My shots don’t do justice to the male

Female Red Crested Cardinal

THE MALE

Male Red Crested Cardinal

After staying in Buenos Aires for several days, we took and hour and a half flight up North to Iguazu National Park.  Iguazu National Park is home to the second largest waterfall in the world.  The park as a whole is absolutley spectacular.  The falls are gorgeous and are definitely a place worth visiting.

Iguazu Falls from the Plane

 We stayed at the Sheraton Iguazu.  That is not in the photo here.  However, from our hotel, which is just out of the shot to the right, we could see the falls.  It truly is an UNBELIEVEABLE place.  The big falls with the plume of steam is called the Devil’s Throat and plunges over 350 feet.  The falls themselves are a couple miles from end to end.

Iguazu Falls

 It looks prehistoric.  And the diversity of wildlife in the park is staggering.  We saw around 30 species of butterflies, several lizard species, frogs, countless unusual bugs, and in the one day we spent there over 50 species of birds.

Double Barred Seed Eater

Plush Crested Jay

Violet Capped Woodnymph

Robust Woodpecker

Lastly, some butterflies, a caiman, and a coati

Eighty Eight Butterfly

Leaf Mimic Butterfly

Butterfly

Butterfly

Spectacled Caiman

This last animal is a coati. They are some of the coolest creatures I have ever encountered.  They are all over Iguazu, and are completely unafraid of humans.  But you need to be careful, because if you don’t pay attention they WILL steal your food.  Its quite comical if it doesn’t happen to you

Hope you enjoyed my first post, and hopefully I did a decent job. Thsese photos only scratch the surface of what we saw

Sunset

The passion flower has always been a favorite of mine, it is somewhat whimsicle in it's design. I have had people tell me that it looks like a ballerina or a dancing dervish. The amazing pattern of this blossom is intricate in it's own right. Only the beauty of Nature could delight the sences like the bloom of a passion flower. Just to glance upon this spectical is a wonder and delight. I hope you enjoy this vision as much as I have enjoyed capturing it on film.

This delicate blossom can only be a vision of Nature at it’s finest. I think the passion flower is a statement that only Nature can bring to the eye. I have been told that it looks like a ballerina or a dancing dervish. I find the pattern and color to be whimsicle and inviting. To take macro’s of this beauty are truely a delight for me. I hope you enjoy them as well. The passion flower is a vine plant and can be found in most parts of the world. I feel privledged to have it growing in my garden.