photoartflightBald Eagle Images From Blackwater NWR
Posted on April 23, 2022
One of my Favorite NWRs to photograph in is the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge in Maryland. Great variety of subjects from the Wildlife and Great Sunrises & Sunsets. You never know what you will see to photograph. Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge hosts the largest concentration of breeding Bald Eagles on the East Coast, north of Florida. Bald Eagles in the wild can live up to 30 years, but usually average 15 years. Following are a series of Bald Eagle images from various trips to photograph there.
Winter Sunrises & Sunsets At Blackwater NWR
Posted on April 14, 2022
The images here are from Winter visits to the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge over a few years. The Featured colorful ice image was taken at sunrise with a Sigma 300-800mm lens @ 300mm on a Canon 20D .
Bald Eagle Fly-By @ Blackwater NWR
Posted on March 13, 2022
A series of 3 images of a close Bald Eagle Fly-By taken at the Blackwater NWR in Maryland. I was using a Canon 400mm DO lens with a 1.4x teleconverter on a Canon 1D mkIV. I shot a series of images as it flew by me but I only used a few images here with the wings up. I seem to see more Bald Eagles at the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge near Cambridge Maryland than any of the other National Wildlife Refuges near me. I also read somewhere that it has the largest population of Bald Eagles in the Northeast.
Blackwater NWR Wildlife Drive Exit At Sunset
Posted on January 6, 2022
I was going through Backup Drives to cleanup duplicate files & unneeded images and I found a folder with sunset images from Blackwater NWR. The sunsets at Blackwater NWR can be very colorful and dramatic. The Featured Image was taken with a Canon 15mm Fisheye lens on a Canon 1DmkIII and was taken a little closer to the exit than the image below. The images taken with the 15mm Fisheye were adjusted in Photoshop to remove the “Fisheye” Look & Effect but maintain the wide view.
Blackwater NWR Clouds At Sunset
Posted on September 23, 2021
I was working on files from previous photo trips. Now that I am retired I can go through my backup drives to post images that I did not have time to post before. This is a Sunset taken at the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge in Maryland a few years ago. Dramatic or interesting sunsets are quite often seen at Blackwater NWR. Some have told me that dramatic sunsets at Blackwater are because it is somewhat close to the coast. I am not sure on that, but Blackwater NWR does deliver on interesting sunrises & sunsets! Image taken with a 14-140mm lens @ 48mm on an Olympus body. I was going retouch out the aircraft contrails, but decided to leave them in.
Eastern Pondhawks At Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge
Posted on July 6, 2021
We usually like going to Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge outside of Cambridge Maryland for photographing Bald Eagles. It usually has one of the largest amounts of Bald Eagles in the Northeast. But in the Summer I also like it for the large amounts & different types of Dragonflies you can find. Here I am posting some images of Eastern Pondhawk Dragonflies. Blackwater has a long Wildlife Drive so you can find a large variety of Dragonflies because of the different varieties of habitats along the Drive. Some of the best areas are by the Observation Platform that goes out above the grasses over the water & along the Wildlife Drive where there is standing water on both sides of the Drive.
Osprey FlyBy At Blackwater NWR
Posted on March 9, 2021
An Osprey Flyby image taken on the Wildlife Drive at the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge near Cambridge, Maryland. This was from a few years ago and never got around to working on them. Luckily I had time to shoot a vertical image as it quickly flew by providing a frame filling image with very little cropping. Then the Osprey circled back and I got a few more images as it flew by in the opposite direction. Featured image taken with a Canon 400mm f/4DO lens on Canon 1D mkIII. (f/8, 1/2000 sec, ISO 400, aperture priority).
Blackwater NWR Mergansers
Posted on February 13, 2021
On our visit to Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge in Maryland, I was looking for some different photo subjects than the usual ones we see. I did find some Mergansers in different areas along the Wildlife Drive. The Featured Image is a Hooded Merganser. It was swimming in a small water channel under a bunch of trees so I hardly could make it out in the shadows. It was just one black blob moving in the water so I adjusted my exposure in the camera to +1 stop hoping that would be enough to get some detail. Then when working on the image in Adobe Camera Raw, adjust the shadows in the Raw file to bring out more detail in the shadows and reduce the noise in the image. So it seemed to work out ok. This was taken with a Canon R with a 150-600mm lens @ 600mm. Then near the end of the Wildlife Drive I found a pair (male & female) of Common Mergansers swimming in the channel.
Tundra Swans Along The Wildlife Drive
Posted on January 19, 2019
Along the Wildlife Drive at Blackwater NWR there are many large & small pools of water, besides the main bodies of water, the Blackwater River and the Little Blackwater River. These pools of water have various large groups of birds swimming, feeding and interacting. If you have long lenses it is fun to photograph the interactions of the birds. Also it is a good spot to shoot panoramas of them with a longer lens to get more detail instead of a wide angle lens with the birds looking like little dots. Sometimes there are very large groups of Tundra Swans, Snow Geese or Canada Geese with various ducks and other birds thrown in. If you are lucky you can also get mass takeoffs of a flock of Snow Geese or Swans taking flight. The images below are just showing a small section of the long pools of water. I included an image at the end of the Blackwater NWR map showing the pools and the pool names. The map also shows the Tubman Road Trail down the road, which is also an interesting area for photography.
3 image panorama, handheld, Tundra Swans, Canada Geese & various ducks, etc. at Pools 5a & b on Wildlife Drive. 400mm with 1.4x teleconverter.
5 image Panorama, handheld, Tundra Swans, Canada Geese and various ducks, etc. at Pools 5a & 5b On Wildlife Drive, 400mm with 1.4x teleconverter.
Photographer phototographing Tundra Swans On other side of pool 5c. 400mm with 1.4x teleconverter.
Blackwater NWR map showing the water pools & Tubman Road Trail.
Tundra Swans Fly-By
Posted on January 18, 2019
Getting around to working on more of my images from Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge. Here are some of the Tundra Swans we saw at the refuge. Most of the time they were far out in pools along the Wildlife Drive. But occasionally we saw some fly by giving us an opportunity for some flight shots. These were on an overcast grayish blue sky day. The higher up the Swans were flying seemed to be a little bluer sky. Because of the gray day I had to raise my ISO higher than I usually use to get a shutter speed fast enough to stop the wing movement.
Pair of Tundra Swans in Flight – 400mm, 1.4x teleconverter
Higher Flight of Tundra Swans – 400mm, 1.4x teleconverter
photoartflight 