Videos: Deer in the Yard

Here are a couple of videos of deer in the yard.  Above, I was standing maybe 20 feet away from a fawn early in the morning, and neither of us was sure what to make of the other.  Below, I took this video from inside the house of a deer making it way through the yard, and helping to trim the grass.  I don't think the deer is interested in doing the whole yard for me, though...

A New Video

I found out not long after midnight on Tuesday that I had become an uncle.  I stayed up all night finishing my latest video, a birthday gift to my nephew.  It includes some of the best animal photos I've taken over the past nine months or so, since I started this blog.  I hope you enjoy it!

Goslings Return to the Shore

 
During my visit to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology last weekend, I stopped by the pond for one last photo opportunity before I headed home, I was glad that I did.  Some goslings were out on an expedition on the pond.  You can see them negotiating a branch in the photo above, and they're clearer in the photo below.

Now, usually, you see the whole family together, like this:

But I like to think that this was the first time that the parents let their kids loose, while the parents waited - maybe a bit impatiently - on the stone beach in front of the visitor center.  I waited while the goslings crossed an island in the pond, and eventually they emerged on the other side and hit the water again, headed for their mother and father.  I shot a video as they glided proudly across the pond and approached the beach.  They weaved their way through some lily pads, then got a bit excited as they hit the home stretch.  But at the last second, they played it cool and took their return to their parents in stride, lest their parents think that their adventure was too much for them.  I had fun putting this video together, and I hope you enjoy it.  Sorry for the shaky camerawork.

New Video: Water Lilies

Part of the reason that I haven't returned to daily posts in the last week or two is that I've been working on new video projects for the blog.  I've got a couple of bigger projects in the works, but first, I had to sort out some logistical issues and test some software features.  The product is the short video below.  The photos are from Cornell's Lab of Ornithology.  For full effect, it's best to view in full screen and listen in stereo.  Hope you enjoy, and stay tuned for more in the coming weeks!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gt-H7rjGV_A

Ithaca Falls Video

Well, I spent a big chunk of my day working on a video project.  Take a stunning piece of music, some stark images, and throw in a punchline at the end, and you've got a pretty powerful video.  Or so it seems to me.  I hope you enjoy this one!

Last Snowfall of the Winter

Mother Nature managed to sneak in one last snowfall before the end of winter, dropping about an inch and a half of snow on Monday night that quickly melted under the peeks of sunshine that Tuesday brought us.  Wednesday - today - is the vernal equinox, the first day of spring.  Light lasts longer than darkness for the next six months in the Northern Hemisphere...day is now longer than night.  Warmer weather, more sunlight, more birds, more wildlife, the emergence of the leaves, and the blossoming of flowers are sure to follow.

But for now, I want to offer one last glimpse back at winter.  I shot a video of the snow falling along Fall Creek in my backyard and put together some music to accompany it.  This time, the music isn't completely original, but it interweaves and develops two wintry themes written by Russian composers: Prokofiev's Troika and Tchaikovsky's Waltz of the Snowflakes from The Nutcracker.  The result, I think, is an appropriate accompaniment to this wintry scene.  There are two versions...if you've stumbled on this page somehow without knowing me, one of them is as close as you'll come to hearing my voice!

The all-electronic version:

 

The electronic-plus-acoustic version (twenty-some takes later...):

Finding - and Sharing - Our Talents

As this blog pretty readily attests, I'm a pretty terrible gardener, and my judgment (some might say "common sense") is occasionally a bit lacking when it comes to decisions I make around the yard (and elsewhere...), but this comes at the expense of other abilities.

I've been involved with music for most of my life, but I've never fully explored the process of creating my own music.  I guess you could say that the muse never quite struck.  But it gave me a pretty good blow last night.

I was driving around Ithaca yesterday afternoon and had a few minutes to spare, so I stopped at Stewart Park, which sits at the southern end of Cayuga Lake.  As I drove around and down the hill approaching the park, I saw what appeared to be small blocks of ice on the lake.  But once I parked and got out of the car, it was pretty apparent that it wasn't ice - they were waves.  To have so many waves on the lake, especially this far offshore, is a pretty rare occurrence.

I happened to have my camera with me, and rather than snap a few photos, I figured that a video would capture the experience more fully.  The wind was blowing right down the throat of the lake - violently! - pushing the water toward the southern shore and churning up the water.  The video wouldn't load directly to the blog, so I've created a YouTube channel for the blog where I'll probably be posting other videos in the future. 

I decided to set my raw video of the whitecaps on Cayuga Lake to music.  The idea was to capture the constant but unsettled nature of the waves, express the nautical nature of the scene with a bit of a rolling sea shanty feel, some Morse Code, and sprinkle a few splashes on top.  I could spend hours tweaking things - and the quality of the recording is only as good as my computer's puny sound card - but I can't help but be pleased with the end result.  It leaves me with a completely different impression than the original video, with only the howling wind.

The new YouTube channel opens a lot of potential, but we'll see what develops.  For now, it's just a place to plop some videos...added music or not.  Sorry for the shaky camera - the wind had just a little to do with that!

I hope you'll take a minute (literally) to check it out.  And in the long run, I hope you'll find your own talents (like how to arrange the flowers in your garden) and find ways to share them (like telling me how to arrange the flowers in my garden).