The Great Plains are a broad expanse of flat land, much of it covered in prairie, steppe and grassland, which lies west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States and Canada. This area covers parts of the U.S. states of Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. The Canadian portion of the Plains is known as the Prairies. Some geographers include some territory of Mexico in the Plains, but many stop at the Rio Grande.
WikiPedia

Having lived in Dallas, TX for 20 years, which is part of The Great Plains, I can say that I have absolutely no love for The Plains! There is nothing there but horizon! It’s great for farming, as there are no trees to get in your way.

As a photographer, I find photographing in the plains to be difficult, because the place does not move me. It offers nothing that excites me.

Now, if you’ll allow, I’ll break landscape photography into a few, very broad categories, ordered by my preference.

1. Forest/Woods
2. Desert/Southwestern
3. Mountains
4. Coastal
5. Prairie/Plains
6. Polar

I realize that these are pretty wide. I’ve done photography in each of these categories, or perhaps zones. My favorite is forest/woods. There seems to be a calming influence in a place full of rivers, streams, birds, different types of animals, and lots of trees. I can spend hours here and never tire of it.

Second on the list, the desert, or perhaps more accurately, the high desert, where most of the colors are browns, reds, and yellows. There you get to see dunes, bluffs, buttes, mountains, arroyos, cactus, and a wide array of desert flowers and plants. There seems to be always something interesting. However, I don’t know if I could spend my life there, living in that environment every day.

Third – Mountains: This was really hard as mountains and desert are probably really tied at 2nd place, perhaps on certain days, they even gravitate to first place. I just love the power and majesty of the mountains, the spirit of the desert. They both inspire me to shoot, shoot, shoot!

Coming in fourth, coastal. This is one that I have difficulty shooting, sometimes. Though it could be argued that this environment is the most dynamic, as the beach is always changing, second by second with each successive wave, it doesn’t seem to hold my interest very long. I see myself moving further away from the beach and coming back inland to explore greener spaces. I’m thankful for the time that I got to live in Charleston, SC – that gave me an entire 19 months to see if I really liked that type of photography and to explore it in depth, but it doesn’t move me so much.

Numbers 5 and 6 could be swapped, as I have no idea about shooting polar landscapes, though I would imagine that it would be somewhat similar to desert landscapes, but with blues and whites and a whole lot colder!

As I think about the trip to NE, probably in August, of course I will take a camera with me, but I’m just wondering what I will photograph, out there in those wide open spaces. It’s a long drive between here and there, some 23 hours, passing through some of the least picturesque parts of the country. I’m thinking that, maybe, just maybe, I’ll head on up to Mount Rushmore, South Dakota and to Badlands, since I’m up that way, but then again, after driving 23 hours over so many days, another 8 hour drive seems quite unpalatable!

This will be a challenge to photograph in places that don’t necessarily move me.

Bird on a wire @1000mm

I’ll admit that when I saw that Nikon had a camera that had a zoom on it from 24-1000mm, I thought: I’d love to give that a try!!! I waited around for LensRentals.com to come up with one, but they didn’t, so I had to take matters in my own hands. The FedEx guy dropped it off yesterday.

Last evening, I spent two hours and 265 shots, down in McDowell Nature Preserve trying the camera out. Seeing if I could run it’s battery out, take it through its paces, and see what it was about. Currently, it is on sale for $399 with free shipping. B&H was out of stock, so I bought one from Adorama.

Without further ado, here are my thoughts:

Viewfinder -

The P510 has an electronic viewfinder. Well, I remember having an electronic viewfinder on my DiMage A1 – 8 years ago. This viewfinder, from what I can remember of the old one, seems to be about the same quality – fairly crappy. C’mon Nikon, you can do much better than this! I used the Nikon 1 V1 and it had a very good EVF. This, although significantly less expensive, is a huge step down. It’s usable, but tiny and the resolution is not very high. Further, there is no sensor to switch between the EVF and the screen, which the A1 had, as well as the Nikon V1. The switch is done manually with a button on the back. Seems that it would have been easy to include this on the camera.

Charging and battery life
There is no separate charger. There is a small brick that comes with the camera that you plug into the wall, plug one end of your USB cable into it, the other end into the camera. The battery cannot be charged by itself. I don’t know if Nikon provides a separate charger for the battery, but this ties the camera up while the battery is charging. If you have two batteries, you cannot leave one to charge while using the camera. You have to wait!
As for battery life, I’ve seen reports that it lasts about 250 shots or so. I used the camera for two hours, solid, shot 260 shots and the battery was not fully charged. I’d say that it lasts quite a bit longer then that. My battery meter was still showing full.

Manual Focusing
Forget about it! The viewfinder, in my opinion, doesn’t have enough resolution to do accurate focusing. I suppose one could focus on the rear viewfinder, which is very clean and of pretty high resolution.
GPS
Not all that accurate. Some of the shots had GPS coordinates that seemed remarkably accurate, others were off several hundred feet. No rhyme nor reason. All were taken under open sky. Also, where other GPS’s might work, this one has trouble unless under open sky. Even amongst the trees, it didn’t pick up a signal, where my hand-held GPS had no problems.
Zoom
Killer. I mean, seriously, 24 – 1000 mm! This was the reason that I got the camera. For that reach! At 1000 mm, as one might expect, camera shake is HUGE, but the VR does a great job at allowing me to shoot at slow shutter speeds, hand-held.
Auto-Focus
OK, it’s a $400 camera. I’m trying hard not to compare it to my D700, or even D300. The auto-focus is a bit slow and has quite a bit of trouble, sometimes, locking on at 1000mm, unless there is a great amount of contrast on the subject or between the subject and the background. However, as you can see from some of the photos, it works well and is delivers a very clean, acceptably sharp photo, even at maximum zoom.

Ergonomics
It’s a Nikon and they’ve got ergonomics solidly. The camera feels good in your hand. Buttons are positioned in places that make sense, and the meaning system seems very familiar, very similar to the V1.
RAW
No Raw – This doesn’t bother me in the least. Heck, it’s a P&S camera.
Shooting Formats
Finally, I love the different formats available 4:3, 3;2, 16:9, 1:1. I shot the whole 2 hours in square format. It was cool not to have to turn the camera on the side.

I’ve not tried out the 1080p HD video, just yet. Maybe when I go to The Bahamas I’ll try it out. Maybe not.

This camera, even with its faults, makes a fantastic walking around camera, or even in -the-woods camera. I’m sure that I’ll be posting more critter shots, soon. Also, it has 30 or 60 FPS shooting! I’ve yet to try this out … yet!

Well, this is a first. I have no beaver photos in my archives. Now I have a few! I was taking some photos of a squirrel and heard some noise down the hill in the pond. After a beat of looking, I finally spotted him. I zoomed in, took a few shots, and then he moved on.

I was zoomed all the way out to max, 1000 mm. Considering that this guy was probably a couple of hundred yards away, not bad at all and this is hand-held @ 1/25 of a second! Thank you VR!!!

More later …

To

1,000 mm
Is quite the stretch. I assure you that this is the same stop sign that is at the end of the block, circled in red. Taken from about a block away.

More later.

I was probably about 6 or 8 feet away from him by the time that I noticed him. I came to a dead stop, pulled my Canon S90 out of my pocket, and took about 6 shots. Mind you, this shot is not cropped much and the S90 has only a 3.2x optical zoom, so to get this much detail, I had to be pretty close.

The rabbit’s response to danger is to stand absolutely still and try to blend in with the surroundings; For a photographer, this is a dream come true. He did just that, stood absolutely still, letting me take a few photos as I inched closer and closer, taking photos all the while. Eventually, I got too close and he decided that it was better to run than remain still.

Thanks guy! I hope that I didn’t disturb your breakfast too much!

My apartment is right in the flight path of CLT, the Charlotte Douglas International Airport. At any time of day, I can go out on my patio and see planes coming and going. During the evening, after the sun sets, I can see their little lights off in the distance as they line up for miles, waiting to land.

As I am still about 10 miles from the airport, they are high enough so as not to be so loud. You can certainly hear them, but you have to have the patio door open, or have the apartment very quiet. Let’s just say that it doesn’t disturb my sleep, and certainly not Hobbs’.

While walking the other day, I had my D300, which has become my walk-around camera of choice. I had the 18-70 kit lens on it. Now, I’ll take a small side-track here and say that when I took this photo, and others that I took, I was thinking how handy it would be to have a Nikon P510 with a 24-1000 mm zoom! Talk about a walk-around camera!

So, about the walk: This wasn’t the Supermoon, but a day before. I noticed it as I was walking. When I turned east, facing the moon, I took several shots, then noticed a plane about to cross right in front of me, under the moon. I was hoping for it to gain altitude and pass directly in front, but no such luck. The next best thing was to compose it with a telephone pole guy wire to split the image and add an additional bit of interest, at least for me.

I had to seriously crop this image to get the photo that I had imagined, but that’s what happens when you shoot with 70 mm … now, if I had 1000 mm … LOL

Moonrise

Here are links to several listings that seem to best fit your wish list. You can click on the exterior photos of each home to see additional pictures. I noticed that you are a photographer so you are sure to appreciate what a difference a good photo makes and some of them, as you will see, are far from being good. Don’t let that discourage you though, if the house seems otherwise interesting to you, let’s go visit it.
~Denise Chavanne – Realtor

The above quote is from one of the first e-mails that I received from my Realtor, Denise Chavanne. Denise is, in all senses of the word, a professional. She knows her stuff as well as knowing who else knows their stuff. She says that when she is the selling agent for a house, she has a professional photographer do the photos. I liked her right away.   In browsing through lots of listings, you see lots of pictures. Most of them either taken by perhaps the owner, perhaps the agent, or, from what it looks like, someone who has no clue. They use a point & shoot camera, single flash on the camera, or perhaps even a cell phone.

I find this amazing. It seems that if you are trying to sell something that costs $100,000+, that you might want to not go cheap on the photos. The houses that generated the most interest for me were the ones with the best photos. The ones that gave me a sense of what the house looked like inside. Unfortunately, these are few and far between.

During our visit, Thursday, one house in particular caused me to remark: I’ll bet that this house would get so many more views if it had good photographs. The photographs of the house were really bad, taken with a cell phone. The pictures looked boring, uninteresting, and very much amateurish.  When I walked into the home, I was expecting, honestly, kind of a dump, but it was a beautiful home. Instantly, the photographer in me took over and I started thinking about how I would shoot it.  It was simply a lovely home!

My friend Richard and I were discussing a conversation that he had with someone. They were getting married in a few weeks and asked him if he’d do the wedding pictures. Mind you, they’d planned everything else, but waited last minute to ask him to do the photos. Of course, they wanted a “hook up”, a deep discount, nearly a freebie. He, of course, declined. Amazing! You take what is arguably the single most important person at the ceremony, then you go cheap!

Well, just a downside of digital photography for the masses. Anyone can do take a picture … What is the value of a photographer?

Every once in a while, a dog will be present, pressing his nose through the opening. I want that shot! However, every time that I have my camera with me, he’s nowhere to be found, camera-shy canine.

Now that I think about it, he/she usually only appears when I am walking Hobbs. Since Hobbs only attends the walks periodically, and now much shorter walks for him, I don’t get to see this dog, but I’m still hopeful.

I think that it would make a good, perhaps comical shot.

C’mon, Cujo! Stick your nose through the fence! Perhaps I should go and knock on the door and ask them to let him outside for a few minutes.

Hey! Can you let your dog out into the backyard so that I can shoot him?”

Perhaps I should work on my phrasing! Proper words are everything. LOL

Well, I have another trip planned in two weeks. That short cruise that I was talking about to The Bahamas, but I’m sure that in two blinks of an eye I’ll be there and back, wondering where the heck the time went. Time sure can get away if you don’t pay attention. Wow!

I found a house!!! I signed a contract!! I put down my earnest money! I got a call last night from the realtor saying that they sellers have backed out. WTF!!! What was the point of the contract, eh? Well, a contract, it seems, only affects the buyer. The seller is free to back out at any time. Of course, if it is late in the game, the seller may end up in court having to reimburse the buyer for their trouble and expenses; however, as it is early in the game, we signed on Thursday, they flaked on Sunday evening siting: Family issues! Oh well, you can’t make someone sell their home.

This is, of course, my judgement of the situation and I may have the facts all wrong, but then again, I may not. Here’s what I think happened: First, some facts: Let us begin by stating that this is a BUYERS market. Buyers have the upper hand. Period. This house is surrounded by other houses of similar size and construction, all selling for about $127K – $130K. When they put their home on the market, 18 months ago, they were asking for $155K. Way overpriced. Way over! It sat. They had had only 1 offer, lower than mine. They rejected that offer. After a while, they dropped the price to $139,900. Again, still over priced by about $12K. My offer put it slightly higher than the going price for others in the neighborhood because they had done some nice landscaping and painting. After some negotiations they accepted. We had a deal … or so I thought.

Remember when … as they say, a man’s word was his bond? I like that. If you say you’re going to do something, sign your name to the dotted line, then do it! Period. Don’t waffle. Don’t get cold feet. If you get cold feet, do it anyway. I just could not see backing out of a deal, not just because I was on the receiving end of it. I just prefer dealing with people of integrity. My realtor said that in her experience as a realtor, she’d never seen this happen, ever!

I think that, over the weekend, they looked at the numbers and decided that they did not want to sell simply because they weren’t getting out of the house all that they wanted to, monetarily. However, I realize that that is my story wrapped around the situation and perhaps that it was really a “family issue” that made them unable to sell the house. One that just happened to happen on that weekend after they signed the contract. Also, they had tried to negotiate an earlier closing, which I declined.

No matter, the whole ‘why’ of it is conjecture, and really doesn’t matter anyway. Hopefully, the next seller that I deal with will be one of integrity!

I had a list of other homes in the neighborhood that I liked, as well. This morning, I made my loop through the neighborhood, looked at about 6 of the homes on the list, made a few notes, and contacted Denise, my realtor. Thursday morning we start again.