I’ve noticed blue jays in our backyard more often lately. I see them out there occasionally in the summer but it’s difficult to spot them behind the leaves. Now that all of the foliage is gone for the winter, they really stand out against the bare trees and brush. I managed to grab my camera and get to the window for a quick photo of one today. It’s posted as photo 12/365.

I shot it in shutter priority at 1/250s fully zoomed in (135mm). That’s the maximum zoom that I have for my a6000. It’s not a terrible photo, but I had to crop more than I wanted. So I’m going try to improve that photo. To start, I’m going to have to get closer. Spend some time sitting out in the backyard just watching and waiting.

So far the photo challenge has been a bit up and down. It’s definitely kind of difficult to just shoot something every day. To motivate myself, I usually have to come up with some sort of feature or technique that I want to focus on. (Clever puns come naturally, I guess.) Over the winter I think I’ll be taking a lot of black and white photos. The weather is usually overcast so it seems to make sense to shoot in black and white. The hard part is finding interesting lighting and shadows. Fortunately, it gets dark earlier. So if I head out for a walk around sunset I’m usually able to catch lights as they start to flicker on for the night.