Erich's Photo and Travel

 We only get one good day of weather this weekend so we took advantage of the day and took a walk along the Platt River to shoot some wildlife.  Of course, this entailed lugging our telephoto lenses. We found an eagle's nest situated about 100 yards from the trail last week when we rode our bikes along the trail but didn't have our cameras at the time. The nest has a chick!  The mother wasn't around but we figured she was out hunting so we ended up waiting about 20 minutes for her to come back with food. This is as close as we could get.  I took this photo with my 100 - 400mm Leica Lens.  Not too bad.  Wish I could have been closer but a fence was there to keep people like me out. There were egrets and geese, and other birds that I have no idea what they are called.  I asked them their name but cheep, cheep doesn't translate well in my brain. We even spotted a prairie dog who immediately alerted his troop to our arrival! As always, it was nice to get o...

 COVID Fatigue sucks...BIG TIME Guess what?  Mike's Camera has our Olympus 7-14mm f2.8 Wide Angle Lens on sale!  We have been waiting for the lens to come on sale.   I called Mike's Camera in Wheatridge, Colorado and our good friend, Jeff stated that he could get his hands on a couple of the lenses in a couple of hours.  Jeff (as always) didn't disappoint us.  The Mike's Camera team are awesome.  Why go anywhere else right? We picked up the lenses and headed to downtown Denver for a little street photography.   With masks on, we braved the semi crowded Larimer Square while on our way to Union Station via the 16th Street Mall. Our goal was to shoot Union Station at night was we just walked around snapping away. We found a really old courthouse building, Bryon White that must have missed many a times in our previous walks.  Wide angle photography at it's best! Off to Union Station! The temperature started to fall fast so we headed back to the c...

 COVID, COVID, COVID!   Need to get out of the house today and do some actual meaningful photography.  Enough backyard birds and squirrels! Just renewed our Denver Botanic Garden membership for another year.   We were not expecting a lot of color at the gardens, but we need to get outside. Low and behold, we were greeted with a lot of color and not a whole lot of people.  Of course we got to the garden right at opening. We decided to bring our "Lego Mini Me's" with us to show depth and basically fuck around. The garden started to fill up at around noon so we packed up our cameras and headed from home.   It was just nice to get out of the house albeit for only a few hours.

Just how many lenses do I need?  Or for that matter, cameras? Actually, I have reduced my lens and camera count considerably.  Thank you eBay! Mike's Camera sponsors a free event called "Demo Days" in Denver.  Typically the event is held at either the Denver Botanic Gardens or the Denver Zoo.  This year it was the Denver Zoo. Demo Days allows you to try any and all available camera gear at no charge so you can try before you buy.  The best part is (or at least for us) is that you cannot actually purchase anything at the event. I brought my new Nikon Z6 so I could try out a 20mm f1.8 wide angle prime lens.  What a nice lens! I have done quite a bit of research and read a lot of reviews and I don't believe that I read one bad thing about the lens.  Extremely fast, wide aperture and tack sharp photos.  Yes, all of that is true. Just by going to the event, I received a $50 coupon towards the lens. Oh, did I fail to mention that I won a p...