He knows Tom Brady

Who wouldn't dream of walking in the shoes of both Graig Nettles and Roger Staubach, playing third base for the New York Yankees and playing quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys? Drew Henson experienced both of those things during his unique but short pro sports career between 2002 and 2004. He got a hit (just one) for the Yankees, and he had a start at quarterback (just one) for the Cowboys. I got this photo of him in the 2002 Arizona Fall League when he was battling to make the Yankees.

But Henson's greatest claim to fame probably comes from his college football days at Michigan when he battled Tom Brady for the starting quarterback job. (Brady was thought to be a baseball prospect at catcher but never went the dual-sport route, instead concentrating on football.) There's an urban legend that Henson beat out Brady for the Michigan job, which isn't true. The two platooned for the first seven games of 1999, after which Brady was named the starter. In the image below, Henson made a good stop on a hot grounder to third, but was indecisive and threw late to first base. Just like his career, didn't quite make it.

3rd baseman Drew Henson

Osprey, 16 years later

This is the third installment this week in my "old images revival." This time the setting is Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge near Cambridge, Maryland in April 2003. There were lots of osprey in the area but it seemed I would have to be content with distant shots. Until...I was walking along a trail and heard a crash in the tree above me. An osprey had landed with a huge fish that was still flopping around. I carefully got in position to shoot up at it, and fired off 85 images in 10 minutes.

The lighting conditions were difficult. It would have been much better if the sky had been blue and I had a flash unit for fill flash, but what I recorded was a low-contrast bird with a washed-out, cloudy background. At the time, I posted a couple of images with which I was never really satisfied. I took another crack at the images today with my more modern version of Photoshop Elements and another 16 years of experience with photo editing. There are still the limitations of the original images, but I think what I came up with is more presentable. I ended up posting two revised images and eight new ones. Click on the image to start the revised slide show.

Osprey with a fish

Cherry blossoms, five years later

I've been going through old images, as I do from time to time, and noticed that a few from the April 2014 Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, DC didn't make it onto the web site. I went to Washington many times between 1986 and 2014, this time to attend orientation for my fourth and final incarnation as an FDIC bank examiner, and for only the second time I happened to be there in April when the blossoms were peaking. (The other time was pre-digital. I've got some prints somewhere.) Click on the image below for the slide show starting with the four new images. It then wraps around to other DC-area images from the 00's.

Cherry Blossoms

The busy years

In 2002-2005 I was rediscovering photography and I also felt the need to do something more with my vacation time. In 2003 I went to Antarctica, Alaska, Iceland, Maine, Florida, Maryland, and the Yellowstone area. I was looking through my Yellowstone photos today and decided to add five more images to that gallery. I also did a revision of the iconic (for me) elk image shown below. The new images are two more of the elk, a magpie, a female mountain bluebird, and a moose in Grand Teton. Click on the image to start the slide show.

Iconic Elk

Baby bison can fly

I've made the Black Hills and Badlands photo trip several dozen times since my move back to the Heartland 12 years ago and have accumulated hundreds of bison, pronghorn and bighorn images. There's always the hope that I'll see and capture some behavior I haven't seen before, and this trip didn't disappoint.

When we passed through the Custer State Park in mid-April, there were no baby bison present. According to news reports, they started popping out just after we left. When I returned solo on Friday, there were baby bison everywhere. I was staking out a large herd in the south part of the park and saw this baby, no more than four weeks old, decide to jump over a small creek rather than wade through it. Baby bison really can fly!

Baby bison

Something else I hadn't seen before was pronghorns chasing each other. Next to Oak Draw Road, I saw a small herd of six, and I think the old buck was chasing the youngsters around to keep them in line. Compared to the youngsters he seemed to move rather stiffly when walking, but he could still run. Pronghorns are considered the second-fastest land animal in the world after cheetahs, and it is something to see them race across the prairie at speed.

Pronghorn chase

I stopped in the Badlands both Thursday and Saturday expecting to see bighorns, and as usual a herd was in the vicinity of Pinnacles Overlook. There was only one small ram with the ewes. Several of them with lambs were on the cliffs above the nearby Ancient Hunters Overlook and I got some images both Thursday and Saturday. The lambs blend into the cliffs and it was hard to see them, but I was able to tell there were three of them climbing around on the steep hillside. The Sage Creek Rim Road was finally open on Saturday after being closed the last few times I've been in the park, but I did not any of the four rams that frequented the area the past few years.

Baby sheep (look closely)

Click on the image below to start the slideshow of 60 images at the beginning. Besides bison, pronghorn and bighorns you'll see prairie dogs, elk, deer, mountain bluebirds, swallows, and some other little birds. Alas, no coyotes.

Baby bison

Update 5/26/19: Geese and ducks are so common I rarely bother to shoot them, but I decided today to head to the neighborhood pond, the site of my first Canon M100 test two years ago. I got three images worth posting but it was a reminder that a mirrorless camera without a viewfinder is not a wildlife camera. The image shown below is two ducks on what I believe is a muskrat hut. I got a few blurry images (not posted) of a muskrat (?) swimming toward me. He submerged near the shore and I never saw him come up again. Not only is it hard to frame a moving subject, it is hard to get correct autofocus with a long lens, even with a stationary subject. I missed my tripod and real DSLR 0.8 miles away; maybe this week if it stops raining. Click on the image to start the slide show at that point, then it wraps around to the images from out West earlier in the month.

Ducks on muskrat hut