Puma Safety

Puma Safety Tips courtesy of my 8th grade Science classes

Chorus frogs come out at night

Speaking of the blog being in the dark for a while, how about a post full of pictures taken in the dark.  A couple of months back I took a free photography class with Chris Hartzell, in Monterey that focused on shooting frogs at night. It was a very informative and leisurely class, where I learned how to use my flash much better than I could before.

We employed two techniques, one taking images with a backlight and one without any other light other than that of our camera mounted or hand-held flashes. These led to two different kinds of images: (1) images with a lit green background or (2) images with a black background. I really liked the idea of the black background because it is so much more natural. It gives the viewer a more honest take on the environment that the frog was in. It was well after sunset and damn dark out, so why not let your image show that. It may not be type of image that makes the cover of Sexy Endangered Animal Monthly, but it shows the subject in a more natural setting.

Enough blabbing ... on to the photos.

No backlighting, just the dark night sky

A face cute enough to kiss

Full-frame with flashlight mediated backlighting

Doing a bit of calling

How about some color?

Thanks again to Chris

Friday Coyote Blogging

Knowland Park, Oakland   Jan 2013

Much like this 'yote, we at CTC have been lurking in the darkness lately... we hope to emerge soon.

Silly Buck

Randomtruth had a great post up on bucks of the Santa Cruz mountains.

I'll just add one image of a buck, also from the SC mountains.



I don't know WTF this little guy is doing.

Just got a taste of something yummy?

Thinks he is a snake?

Realized he still had food stuck in his hipster stache?

Just trying to let the young does know that he is a fantastic lover and will bear them strong fawns?

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See also Friday Coyote Blogging from the same set.

More of the Redwoods: Predators

Its been a busy month.

I am hoping February may give me a little more time for misadventures, but more likely it will be March.

So here are a few images for the Santa Cruz Mountains that I should have gotten up a few months ago. These are from the same set that got the raccoon family hijinks.







And I am going to go ahead and consider the loud-mouthed Steller's Jay a predator.

One more shot of a Steller's Jay, mostly to show off this beautiful redwood creek setting