Embraced by his wife

The Best Christmas Present

My son Brian returned home December 20th, 2006, from his latest 90 day deployment to Iraq. He is a radiologist and worked in the 399th Combat Support Hospital, Mosul, Iraq. I think the happiest were his three children in grades 10, 9 and 2.

This photo is a bit of serindipity that came my way. I shot this photo with a 300mm Image Stablizer lens and this bird was at the outer limits of distance for my lens but I was pleased how this shot came out.

Sure Amazes Me

Photography sure amazes me. It is full of wonderful surprises like the above photo. I was down in Oregon near Gladstone just this past week and remembered this special place by the river that I had first seen over forty years ago. The reason I was there forty years ago was to receive some pre-induction training put on by the SDA Church for young men who would possibly be drafted into the Army as medics. It was during the summer and because we all behaved ourselves we were rewarded with being able to go down to the Clackamas River to go swimming at the above swimming hole.
The reason that I was there at Gladstone recently was that my wife, Barbara who is a school teacher was receiving some training in a new reading program. We weren't sure wether I was to go along but we both came to the same conclusion that I would drive her down there in our new black Impala LTZ.

One of the things that I knew that I wanted to do there was check out the old swimming hole. Well much to our amazement the hotel that we decided to stay in was on the river just adjacent to the swimming hole. While my wife was in the meetings I spent my time photographing the river and the wildlife that I encountered there which included this Great Blue Heron pictured below.

I was also photographing some Mallard ducks that were contentedly resting in the eddy of the river when I noticed a larger duck like bird come floating down the rapids and then came to rest in the eddy area of the river. I clicked off several shots of the now recognized Canada goose. Then on uploading my photos to my computer at home much to my suprise I noticed that I had actually photographed an entire family of geese. Goslings, mother and father.