Two Years!

Victoria Daily Photo is two years old. March 10th was the actual anniversary but it slipped my mind so I'm celebrating today and probably tomorrow. Two years is 730 daily posts and over a thousand photos. Since it's my anniversary I'm going to indulge myself with a little retrospective and some background information. Below is a selection of my favorite photos from my first year.

Equipment
Cameras
I started out with a little Fuji Finepix, I think about 4 megapixels but soon switched up to a Nikon point and shoot. I think the Nikon was 8 megapixels. Both those little cameras made good images but I was uncomfortable with framing pictures using the lcd screen and longed for a single-lens reflex viewfinder. The least expensive digital single lens reflex camera I could find was a Sony Alpha 200,the camera I still use. For an entry level digital SLR I cannot recommend it highly enough. I've taken nearly 50,000 photos with this camera to date. It still works perfectly though I've not treated it gently.

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Tomorrow I'll write a bit about lenses and the software I use for processing images.

Mystery Flower

Well it's a thoroughly unpleasant day out there this morning so there's no way I'm going out. However, it's an ill wind...I'll do my taxes, which I've been putting off as long as the sun was shining. As for this lovely little blue flower, I don't know what it is. A fairly large patch of it was blooming near the top of Highrock Park last week. A passing local said she thought it was not a native species but had been planted by someone or escaped from a garden. I can't find it in any of my local plant field guides so I suspect she's right. If you know what it is please leave a comment.

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Ah, the internet is wonderful. Thanks to visitor Old Stone I think we can safely identify this flower as an immigrant from Turkey called Glory of the Snow (Chionodoxa forbesii). Thank you Old Stone, I always like to know what things are called.

Early Morning Eagle

This is the Saxe Point resident Bald Eagle once again, here seen just as the rising sun struck him a few mornings ago. Photographing birds is a new endeavor for me so I hope regular visitors will bear with me while I explore and learn (and repeatedly photograph this eagle and a few other dependable subjects....)

Satinflower (Olsynium douglasii)

Here's another entry in the roll-call of indigenous spring flowers here, the Satinflower (Olsynium douglasii). I photographed these at Highrock Park in Victoria West yesterday. It is also known as Douglas's Widow Grass. The weather has been cold lately relative to a few weeks ago, hovering around zero degrees Celsius, and while I was trying to take these photos there were actually a few tiny snow crystals drifting down. Summer is coming but winter has not left yet.

Ring-necked Duck (Aythya collaris)

I suspect you all thought when seeing the above duck, "Aha, he's showing us another picture of the Lesser Scaup!" That's what I thought too when I first noticed him swimming around in Swan Lake. Then I noticed the white band across his bill and realized that I was seeing something different. This is a male Ring-necked Duck (Aythya collaris), another member of the diving duck family. The cinnamon coloured neck ring is seldom very visible and the duck is sometimes called the Ring-billed Duck. Below is the more discreetly coloured female. I've just realized that one reason that the females of these duck species tend to be rather drab browns is that they blend in so well with the reeds and grasses that line their natural habitats like Swan Lake. I suspect this camoflage serves them well during the long periods they must spend on their nests when incubating their young.Below, the head-on view of the male shows the neck ring more clearly as well as his oddly shaped head.