Rob Wiebe

Tout le monde connaît monsieur le cardinal! He’s a perfect combination of familiarity, conspicuousness and style. He’s bright red overall, has a black mask and throat with a red crest and a large, thick red bill.

There’s a bit of blur in the left foreground from branches but I don’t think it takes away too much. Close though  I took this photo in early morning light. The settings are 1/640 at f2.8 at 200mm and I turned the ISO up to 200 so I didn’t have to use the flash.

Contact me at rob@robwiebe.com

The wood duck is truly a beautiful animal. The drakes, males, have red eyes and are green and shiny chestnut brown and beige with white speckles on their chests and ornate white patterns across their bodies. The females, hens, have much more subtle colourings with delicate patterns, a natural elegance and a distinctive teardrop-shaped white eye patch. Both adults have crested heads.

I was able to get close enough to these beautiful creatures here in Gatineau park to get some good pictures. I took this one at 100 ISO, f5.6, 1/400 sec at 300 mm with no flash.

Contact me at rob@robwiebe.com

Say hello to the little blue heron, cousin to the great blue heron.

Little blue is a smallish heron that lives in coastal wetlands throughout the southern united states and northern central america. It has mostly dark blue-grey plumage with a rich purplish maroon head and neck and long plumes on head, lower neck and back. Its legs are dark, eyes are yellowish and bill is blue-gray with a dark tip. It is the only heron species in which first-year birds and adults show dramatically different colouration: first-year birds are pure white, while adults are blue.

I took this photo early in the morning in soft light on the coast of La Moskita in Honduras. This guy was super shy and I just couldn’t get close. I shot at 420mm (300mm w 1.4 TC) with a shutter speed of 1/600, aperture f6.3, ISO 200 and I didn’t use the flash.

Contact me at rob@robwiebe.com

During our stay on the island of Roatán in Honduras, we visited the ziplines of the Monkey Trail Canopy team in West Bay and had a blast.

With the help of two guides, William and Jorge, we zipped from Creation rock, the highest point of West Bay, down down down, right to the middle of a beautiful sandy beach. Our zipline trip lasted about an hour. We zipped across valleys and above and through tree tops and were surrounded by magnificent foliage alive with tropical wildlife the whole way.

To see more ziplining photos, read my blog post Ziplining through the jungle in Honduras.

Contact me at rob@robwiebe.com

Mealy Amazon parrots are described as the calmest of all Amazon parrots. They are generally docile and tend to play well with others. They can be found all across central and northern south america. To see them in a natural habitat in Honduras, your best bet is to visit La Moskita where there is still a lot of untouched jungle.

Mealies can get very noisy; their voices can carry over a distance of 2 kilometres. They can also imitate sounds really well, including human speech, and they enjoy repeating sounds using different inflections. Mealies can live up to 80 years. Since they’re gentle and they can “talk” and they live for a long time, they’re a popular pet in households around the world. Watch this video to see a parrot talking and singing.

I shot this parrot on a rainy day in fantastic light at 200mm over a few different f stops. I started at f2.8 but found that the depth of field was too thin for this beefy bird. I got this shot at 1/400 at f5.6, where my lens is sharp. I was able to keep the ISO at 400.

While not one of the prettiest creatures in Honduras, the turkey vulture makes up for what it lacks in beauty by being incredibly useful to mother earth.

Turkey vultures are large, meat-eating birds that excel at soaring. They don’t kill to survive; they survive on things that have been killed. Turkey vultures are the consummate scavenger, cleaning up the countryside one delicious bite at a time.

Read more in my blog entry called the turkey vulture culture.

I shot this vulture at 300 mm on an overcast morning, under the jungle canopy. I pushed the ISO to 1600, aperture at f/5.6 and shutter speed at 1/400. It’s a little too dark for me. If I could do it again, I’d bracket using the ISO. I’m slowly gaining more confidence in the higher ISOs on my D7000

For more info, contact me at rob@robwiebe.com

In Honduras, the locals call the yellow crowned night heron a “crab catcher.” In Spanish, it’s a martinete coronado.

These are stalking birds that hunt at night. To hunt, they wait in ambush or slowly stalk crabs and other prey along shorelines, marshes, ditches, etc. Once in striking range, they lunge at their prey and seize it in their bill. They swallow small prey whole, but often shake apart, crush or spear larger prey.

I saw this juvenile early in the morning in low light. I moved as close as I could to it, taking a few shots every few feet. Eventually it would get fed up and fly away maybe ten or twenty metres. Then it would land and look back at me as if to say, “C’mon, try to get closer this time.” Actually, now that I think about it, maybe it was just hoping to get some sleep.

I shot this heron at ISO 800, 200 mm, f 5.6 at 1/500.

Contact me at rob@robwiebe.com

This is my first attempt at creating a high dynamic range (HDR) image. The idea behind HDR imaging is that cameras are limited to the amount of image detail they can record when the sensor is exposed to light. Whether you shoot auto or manually tweak every setting to the max, you’re compromising on some details and getting an average result. Exposing for good detail in the darks can give you thin highlights. Exposing for good detail in those same highlights will most likely result in darks slipping into a solid, dark black. You get the picture.

To create this HDR image of a dive boat, I bracketed the shot of the sunset using the bracketing function on my camera. Basically, I captured one image at the “correct” exposure and captured one more image over exposed and one more image under exposed. The bracketing function allows me to set the exposure value (EV) that I want to go under and over, I chose 1.7 EV, and fires the 3 shots in quick succession while making the under over exposure settings automatically. I then merged the RAW files using Photomatix and made a few more tweaks before rendering this JPG.

HDR imaging combines image information from multiple exposures into one image with detail beyond the limitations of single exposures. The results are photos with gorgeous, impossible detail and clarity.

Bottlenose dolphins are one of the best known dolphins. If you want to see them in the wild in Honduras, the best place to go is Cayos Cochinos. If you’d prefer to interact with dolphins in Honduras, you can go to the Roatán Institute for Marine Sciences in West End, Roatán.

These dolphins live in warm salt water oceans around the world. They’re sleek, highly trainable, highly intelligent creatures that stay together in close knit social groups called “pods” and have a complex communication system, including their own names or “signature whistles.”

Dolphins are playful and happy. At least I think they are, but that’s probably because of their permagrin look. Or maybe it’s because they’re one of the only animals other than humans who engage in sex for pleasure.

The white-faced monkey in Honduras is technically a white-headed “capuchin.” These small, nimble and inquisitive creatures are black with a white or yellowish face and shoulders. Their tails are prehensile (grasping), which helps them move through the dense tree branches, lianas and vines in the rainforest canopy. The best place in Honduras to see white-faced monkeys in the wild is in Pico Bonito National Park.

White-faced monkeys are active in the daytime and live in groups of 3-30, including an alpha male and an alpha female. Although they will occasionally drop to the ground, they spend most of their time high in the trees and are constantly on the go. They are important to rainforest ecology as they help disperse seeds and pollen.

Although white-faced monkeys are omnivores (they eat anything, like me), they mostly feed on fruit and large invertebrates. In some areas of Honduras, they’ve learned to aggressively beg for and brazenly steal food from humans. Along with blunt molars for chewing fruits and nuts, white-faced monkeys have large, sharp canine teeth. They have been known to bite people if handled or if annoyed while receiving food handouts.