Member Projects & Events including photo outings.

Check the PhotoZone Meeting educational events HERE.  We have many educational events planned.  All will take place after our meetings regularly scheduled on the third Sunday each month.  Meetings are held at The Emerald Art Center, 500 Main street in Springfield.  Meetings start at 1:00pm.  Visitors are welcome. Please enter by the side door on 5th St.  Special events usually start around 3:00pm. Note: the events page will open in a new tab.

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Be sure to add a like at the bottom of each entry. If you would like to contact the photographer, you may do so HERE.

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Greg Giesy and the Great Blue Heron

Great Blue Heron at Finley Nature Wildlife Refuge 10/24/2024

Finley at the Bruce Road entrance was as dry as I had ever seen it.  Sharon and I checked out the bird blind at the first parking lot with no water in the pond and no birds visible.  We drove down Bruce Road and where the road bridges over the pond we saw about only 50’ to 60’ of water on both sides of the bridge where usually we would see a pond of about half a mile or more in length.

We drove on with no water to be seen and finally turned around to go back down Bruce Road and head home.  On our way back our bird list included one Red-Winged Blackbird and a Northern Harrier off in the distance.

As we crossed the bridge Sharon saw an animal in the water, so we parked the car at the end of the bridge and walked back hoping for a mink or an otter, but we found a pair of nutria.

I took pictures of the nutria and was looking for their den in the side of the pond when a Great Blue Heron flew from the south straight at me.  I started taking photos and as it got closer it noticed me, flew sideways then landing for a second.  It sprang back into flight making a large circle around me, flew across the road, and landed at the north edge of the pond.

My new camera and lens, the Canon R5 Mark II with the 200 to 800mm lens, tracked the Heron in flight perfectly for over 200 shots and during at most two minutes of time. Here are 20 shots of that encounter.  Enjoy!

A few minutes after the Heron landed, a Great Egret came to the water and about landed on the Heron found the pond too crowded and flew in several directions until the Egret flew on south.  I will be working on those photos next.  

Click the first image to view the images in order. Click to the right to go forward and click to the left to go back.

You can click any image to view it large. 

Greg Giesy - Photographing a White-Breasted Nuthatch

Greg Giesy

Photographing a White-Breasted Nuthatch

I was with a group of birders walking through Delta Ponds to see what we could see.  Every outing you’re on you see different birds, in various locations, and they are doing different things.

This season there has been a White-Breasted Nuthatch staying at one particular tree.  It is never a sure thing when birding, but it did not disappoint.  The nuthatch was on the southside of the trunk of the tree and quickly went around the trunk to the northside above where a branch had broken off leaving a hole that had rotted out with evidence of an animal gnawing or scratching at the hole.

The bird quickly looked both ways like it didn’t want anyone seeing what it was doing then dove head first into the hole coming out with a sunflower seed probably left by a squirrel.

I managed to take nine photographs of the nuthatch’s story before it flew off with its prize.

Click an image to enlarge

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Don Myers

They're lowering the water in Lookout Point Reservoir.  All of the old stumps they left are starting to show and I thought it was fascinating. I took a bunch of color and b&w infrared shots. Let me know what you think. I would very much like to have critical analysis from you and others. All are infrared photos.

Which do you prefer? B&W or Color? Let me know what you think.

Comments Here.

Greg Giesy - Ruby-Crowned Kinglets

Sharon and I were getting ready to leave to go downtown, on April 17th, to see Linda Devenow’s photo exhibit at the library.  I got to our front deck when I noticed a small 4” bird, a ruby-crowned kinglet, in the neighbor’s shrub.

I got my camera but of course the bird was gone.  I stood looking for it when a flock (12 to 18) of ruby-crowed kinglets flew into my large Japanese Maple.  I had never seen more than one at a time.  I started shooting.

Seventeen minutes of shooting with my Canon EOS R5 using a 2X converter on my 100-500mm lens (1000mm) at about 20’ away they were gone, and I had about 300 individual shots.

Two days later with about half the flock from before I took another 225 photos of the kinglets over 22 minutes in three different Japanese Maples eating aphids as fast as they could go.

Here are 18 of the best shots and some of the shots show the aphids they are eating.

Click HERE to view all 18 images.

Dennis Galloway - Sunsets from Bisbee Arizona

When I moved from the valley to the east I expected that I would no longer be regularly photographing the sunsets. However, my new place is near some good vantage points to look out over Bisbee.

The picture with the moon is of Cerro de San José across the border and the lights of Naco, Sonora. This mountain is a favored landmark in this area.

Greg Giesy

ICE

I have been taking ice photographs for more than fifty years and almost all of them have been black and white.  In February of this year we had ice in Eugene and ice in my yard.

With the first photo the birdbath it was so colorful that it got me thinking of some color ice shots.  Most of the photos are of a large copper water feature that has water cascading like a waterfall over the sculpted copper back sheet in front of a wall that is painted purple.

The first few shots of the water feature are in black and white but then I started working with the copper and the purple to give more interest and more depth.

Let me know what you think.   

All prints are high quality inkjet prints image size 13"x19"

Frame size 20.25"x25.5" Price $495.00

Click to view all 20 images.

Greg Giesy

Surreal Iris 2021

To get a more painter like quality out of these photos of Bearded Iris I have pushed the photos in the computer beyond my standard sharp reality of telephoto lenses and high megapixel cameras.  

We have not used others’ presets but have work mainly in Lightroom on sharpening, noise reduction, texture, clarity, dehaze, vibrance, saturation, exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, whites, blacks, color mix, and vignetting individually with my partner, Sharon Berry, to vary the outcome of each photo to fit the qualities of the individual flower. 

Greg Giesy

The Great Southwest

Sharon and I took two long road trips through the Southwest United States in 2018 and 2019.  The photos were taken with a Canon 5Ds r with three different lenses the Canon EF 11-24mm 1:4 L USM, the Canon EF 24-105mm 1:4 L IS USM, and the Sigma 150-600mm 1:5-6.3 DG.  To process the images from CR2 (Canon Raw) I used the pre-Photoshop Camera Raw to change these to black and white and to enhance their quality.

These and other nature and landscape photos will be combined with shots of the ancient Native American sites we also visited with the thought in mind to setup a book of black & white photos.