This shot was taken from one of the boat tours at Everglades National Park in Florida. I was happy to get this shot since the boat was moving pretty fast past this group of birds.

Tags:   florida december 2015 everglades fuji XF55-200 Fuji XF55-200 pelican birds sandbar nature wildlife outside

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I have seen waxwings in my yard only a couple of times and have never been able to get a good shot of them because by the time I get my camera they are scampering off. Today when I came home I noticed a big flock of birds in the tree across from my house and with the overcast skies it was hard to tell what they were but I was pretty certain they were waxwings. This time I had my camera with me and ran over and started taking some pics. As cars would pass the flock would get scared into the air, make a circle and then come back to the same spot which was in some box elder trees near some hawthorn trees with berries the birds were eating. it started to snow pretty hard making it impossible to photograph them unfortunately. Then later they decided to fly into the weeping willow behind my house where I watched them for a while. I put some apples out for them at my feeders but unfortunately had not takers want to come in closer. I was happy with the shots I got I hope you enjoy these five images.

Tags:   bird waxwing cedar waxwing wild wildlife nature animal outdoor outside utah yard Nikon d500 60-600 Sigma 60-600

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Happy Thanksgiving! Moving this forward in my timeline because nothing says Thanksgiving like a big old turkey.
Originally posted in March of 2016.

Tags:   fuji fujifilm XF55-200 Fuji XF55-200 X-T1 Fuji X-T1 turkey bird utah nature wildlife Utah Nature Utah Bird Utah Animal

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Last year I was able to find Utah milksnakes in a couple of new counties for me. I already posted one from one of those new counties and this is the specimen from the other new county. I was elated to finally find one in this part of Utah as I had tried to find one there for many many years. Hopefully I can photo document these beautiful snakes in a couple of additional counties this year. I can't wait for Spring!

For this photo I used the built-in focus stacking feature of the Olympus E-M1X. You are able to configure the number of photos to take and how much depth each should be from each other both in front of and behind your focus point. It takes a quick burst of RAW images and then combines them in-camera into a high-quality JPEG. I tried taking those same RAW images and doing focus stacking in Photoshop using the auto-align layers and auto-merge options and didn't get as nice of results. I also tried using the stacking functionality in Luminar NEO and that didn't turn out as nicely either. This was also taken with the camera resting on the rock next to the snake so wasn't totally stable. So I can say that the Olympus focus stacking does a great job.

Tags:   Lampropeltis triangulum Lampropeltis Triangulum taylori Lampropeltis gentilis Lampropeltis Milk Snake utah milksnake Utah Reptile Utah Snake Utah Herp Utah Herps Utahherps.info animal nature wildlife herp snake reptile

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Here is a Yellow-headed collared lizard from Southeastern Utah last spring. They can be much more vibrant than this young one.

Tags:   reptile lizard herp Collared Lizard yellow-headed collared lizard Utah Herps Utah Lizard animal nature wildlife Olympus om system utah

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