This Ruffed Grouse is the first of a series of wildlife photos that I will describe which will include where and when the photo was taken, photographic gear used, camera settings, and anything of particular interest about the photo.
Date: May 21, 2003; Time: 6:23 A.M.; Place: Dungarvon River, New Brunswick, Canada; Camera: Nikon D1X; Lens: Nikon 70-300 mm f/4.0-5; ISO: 800; Exposure: 1/60 sec at f/6.3.
Getting this shot required getting into the blind before daylight, and waiting for the Grouse to show up and start "drumming". With poor light conditions I was forced to use an ISO setting of 800. The sound of the shutter caused the bird to leave the log several times before he became accustomed to the sound. Although the Grouse has been one of our favorite game birds, few have had the opportunity to witness or hear the bird during it's mating ritual of "drumming".

Saturday, Nov, 22, 2008
Being brand new to blogging, I'm looking for anything that will help me get started. To start I will give a little background of my experience with photography. It all started over 50 years ago with an inexpensive 35 mm camera. In the early 50's, my neighbor and myself decided to make a wildlife movie. We purchased a 16 mm Keystone movie camera and headed for the woods. It didn't take too long for us to realize that we had enbarked on a very difficult task. Without through the lens viewing, we missed many opportunities, so we pooled our resourses and purchased a Bolex 16 mm camera. We spent the next 10 years making our first wildlife film, "Dawn to Dusk". We estimated that we had spent over 10,000 hours on the project. During that time we had to learn all about incident verses reflected light meters, ISA, depth of field, types of film, wide angle verses telephoto, tripods, blinds, animal habits, and on and on. Since we were spending so much time viewing wildlife, we decided to double our return by also shooting 35mm stills at the same time.
That was our start and since it would take a book to cover our experiences up to the digital era, I will now jump to the present. I'm currently shooting only stills with a Nikon D200, and doing my editing with Photoshop CS3 and Lightroom 2. My first experience with digital was with a Nikon D1X through which I shot approximately 40,000 images. I have shot over 5,000 with the D200.
My experience with software started with Photoshop 6. I'm using an Epson 7600 wide format printer, and an Epson 1280 for sublimation inks.
(more to follow)