Facing winter

A goldfinch keeps a wary eye out for danger while at my backyard feeder. Its plumage, like the background behind it, has faded from its summer colors. Bright golden yellow replaced by shades of brown and gray.

The bird stares off into the future, facing the approach of winter, the darkness closing in.

A note about the EXIF data on this shot: The camera recorded that this image was shot at an aperture and focal length of 0. That's because I used an old Nikkor 135mm prime lens and a 2x teleconverter that doesn't communicate with the camera body. The D60 accepts all Nikon lenses, but for anything other than the AF-S lenses, you're on your own as far as exposure and focus settings are concerned. The combo of lens and teleconverter gives me an effective focal length of 400mm - which corresponds to about a 14x zoom. In bright light, the pictures are fairly clean, but in low light, as this one is, the colors get muted and everything gets muddy. But given what this photo is trying to say, we'll just call it ... moody.

Milestones approaching: If all goes according to plan, two things will happen sometime this week:

1) Someone will trip my visitor counter at 100,000. If it's you, let me know. I have something for you - an 8x10 photographic print of the picture of your choice (it has to be one of mine). :-)

2) My overall view count will pass the 500,000 mark. The internet has been quite good to me as a way to get my photographs seen. Three years ago, I had hundreds of pictures sitting in boxes, albums and notebooks. I started this photo blog, then joined the community at Flickr hoping to garner a few views. Since then, I've published nearly 2,000 images online and I don't have any plans to slow down.

Thanks for being a part of this.

Click on this post's headline to see (somewhat incomplete) image EXIF data. Click on picture to enlarge. Photograph © 2008 James Jordan.