This afternoon me and Sasha took a drive to someplace to see what we could see.  I have been really frustrated with my telephoto lens and thought I would go out and try some of the tips and tricks I read about over the weekend.  It seems like no matter what I do I can’t get the sharpness I need when taking photos of birds and other fast moving critters.  So I am on a mission to exhaust every setting combination I can think of before I just bite the bullet and go buy a faster lens.  I know deep down in my heart that it’s inevitable but I’m a Scorpio which also makes me stubborn so before I go buy a new lens, I need to know that I know that is the only other option.  But I digress…

Anyway we were just driving around aimlessly looking for something of interest to take photos of so I can try these new settings.   So on some back road some place where I have no idea where I was and I could probably never get back to if my life depended on it I came up on a Roadrunner with a field mouse hanging out of his mouth.  Let me just say this, I already know that the shot is not crisp, I just had to show you what I saw:

Dinner Time!

He stayed put for at least 5-7 minutes which was plenty of time for me to try all the  different setting combinations.  None of them worked and I was so mad I wanted to scream but I couldn’t because I was too excited about seeing a Road-runner for the first time since I’ve been in Texas.   I mean, I’ve seen them but they are usually a blur as I hear they can get up to 17 mph when running full speed.

The next stop was a hot spot for Red-winged Blackbirds.  I thought surely I would have better luck there because there were so many of them.  I decided to put Sasha on High-speed shooting as that was just about the only thing I had not tried at this point.  Well to my surprise I ran up on this little scenario:

I See You

Of course I screamed!!!  Not because of the snake…but because I couldn’t nail the shot…ONCE again!  Anyway it was still awesome to just be in the right place at the right time to see this.  The Black-bird was looking at the snake like, “you DO realize I can see you, right?”  It was really funny to watch.

Ultimately, I had an awesome day but I guess it’s pretty safe to say that I will be buying a a faster lens.  I’m not going to stress about it.   I mean, the shots documented what I  saw but in fisherman’s terms these were definitely the “ones that got away.”

Oh well…I still have the memories.