While on Safari in Bakersfield last weekend, I stuck my head in the optical viewfinder of my new long telephoto lens for some fun Bird photographs. One thing that lent itself to the quality of those bird images was the quality of light. I took the chance with my new, smaller Olympus camera with its wide angle pancake lens to take a stab at some HDR images.

Hope you enjoy as much as I did when tweaking the levels of tones in these sandwiched images to make some beyond realistic compositions.

If you didn’t already realize it you can click on these images. They will take you to my Flickr page where you can see even bigger versions.

Most of my bird photographs were taken in this drying wetland pictured from a much wider angle in the photo below:

There is a lot going on in this image I made below with my larger telephoto lens.

• Oil pump bobbing up and down,
• Winds blowing a dust storm in the background,
• Carrot harvesting in the mid ground,
• Tumbleweeds on the right,
• A field of carrots ready to harvest in the foreground,

This is the industry of Kern County:

I know I live somewhere where it rarely rains and we hardly ever see clouds. But I could look at these images for a long time.

Saturday I spent some time with my new lens. Bakersfield has many watershed areas. Some are for flood control, others are reservoirs for farmers who store water to irrigate in dry times. This is a dry time. We haven’t had any significant rain for nearly a year.

This gave me a good chance to take some photographs of some of Kern County’s resident feathered creatures.

This first bird, some type of bird of prey, I’m unable to identify. If you know it, please share in the comments.

American Kestrel looking very colorful on the power lines.

This Turkey Vulture didn’t land close enough for me to get any close ups, but looked majestic in the wind.

There was a very large flock of Egrets clinging to the last remnants of water in the quickly drying marsh.

There are dozens of different gulls in Bakersfield, but I enjoyed the quality of light here.

Surprise, these are not ducks. They are American Coots.

Killdeer

Over the holidays I grew tired of lugging around 10+ pounds of photo equipment on the chance that I might make the chance make some photos. I found myself making excuses why I wouldn’t, rather than making good opportunities to take pictures. I ended up taking more pictures with my less than awe-inspiring camera phone.

Why? Because it was there, easy to carry and was bundled with something I use to keep me connected at all times anyhow.

I had heard a few years ago of systems that were being developed and with my combined birthday and Christmas gifts, and the generous giving of family and friends I picked up an Olympus Micro Four Thirds Camera, the E-PL3.

It reminds me, slightly, of my original Olympus OM-1. That 35mm film camera was given to me by my father when I was 12 or 13. With that camera I made some great memories of high school and college. I learned about depth of field, shutter speed, pushing and pulling black and white film and how that decisive moment when you fire the shutter can help to produce a variety of images.

Now I’m able to take that feeling of the manual focus camera and use it on today’s technology. It isn’t quite the same, and the lenses that are built for the micro four thirds system are infinitely more pocketable.

I’ve picked up a few pancake lenses to take with me. Three lenses, two batteries and the bag weight less than just the body on my Canon 7-D with the lightest lens I have.

I’m hoping to make some great images in 2012.