A Little Person Story. And a Hard to Believe Dog Tale

What’s Up?

As below, Thursday morning proved to be quite interesting.

Today is Friday 30 December 2022. The forecast for this morning is for more of the same, cloudy skies with a gentle wind from the east. As always, I will be at the cliffs early. This blog post took about an hour to prepare and makes two hundred seventy-seven days in a row with a new, educational post just for you. Wherever you are and whatever you are doing, I hope that you too have a great day.

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iPhone pano of the pelican cliffs early on Thursday morning.

Pelican Cliffs Pano

First, note the undisturbed pelicans on the main cliff on the left side of the image. Coast Walk is on the extreme right. From right to left in the distance are La Jolla Shores and then Torrey Pines. Standing just this side of the Western Gull in the center with the tripod-mounted 400mm f/2.8 was, as noted below, perfect for incoming and fly-by Brown Pelican photography.

The apparent tsunami in the bay was caused by operator error — faulty panning when creating the iPhone pano.

A Strange but True Little Person/Midget/Dwarf Story

The amazing pelican photography at La Jolla continued on Thursday morning. Early on, I was the only photographer there. After doing some flight blurs with the 200-600, I did some more high ISO flight in low light with the tripod-mounted Sony 400mmm f/2.8 and the a1. Then I worked several gorgeous carpet necked pelicans with the tripod-mounted 600 f/4. I am glad that I got both big lenses to San Diego. (I shipped the 600 via UPS Ground insured.)

The flight photography all morning long was superb with dozens of pelicans flying in and around almost constantly. At about 9:00am, I noticed a guy climb over the fence on the downhill sidewalk across the small bay. I put the big lens on him and saw that he was photographing the pelicans with a cell phone. He was a little person, a dwarf or a midget, whatever is politically correct today. Anyhoo, his actions drove about 200 roosting pelicans off the hillside. While that helped the flight photography, it surely was not too cool. Not to mention that if he had slipped, he would have died.

Thirty minutes later, he showed up at the main cliffs, walked down into the crevice on the left, and scared away about three dozen birds. He climbed up on a ridge and continued photographing the pelicans and making selfies. As he was now even with me and several other photographers, I called out to him: “Sir, please do not scare off the rest of the birds.” He smirked. Then he continued to walk towards the point, scared away all the birds, turned around to face us, and smiling — laughed in our faces. Nice guy. After he left, the birds flew back in creating more great flight chances as the wind was perfect from the east.

Then he went up Coast Walk, climbed over the fence there, again scared some more birds, and again risked his life. The last we saw of him he was trespassing in a area surrounded by “Native tree restoration area — Please KEEP OUT” signs.

Man and dog scaring the remaining pelicans off the cliff

Hard to Believe

By 10:30am, hundreds of pelicans had returned to the main cliff while creating still more great flight photography. Then the gentleman in the image above walked down the steps and came through the gate. His entire head was covered with tattoos. He was being dragged by a very large dog. Is that a pit bull? He barely slowed down as he walked toward the point, scaring away every pelican that was up top. I simply gave up retired to the deck as did many others. The man and the dog followed. With a friendly smile he said, and I quote, “I’m sorry that I scared all the birds away. I did not notice that you were photographing them.”

Go figure.

The iPhone Photography e-Guide To order your copy of the The iPhone Photography e-Guide please click here. The PDF is sent link by e-mail for downloading: the file is relatively huge at 216 MB.

Hard to Believe

Cliff has a great eye and wonderfully creative vision. Yet it is still hard for me to believe that he can make so many great images with “just“ an i-phone. Almost more amazingly, Cliff captures with his iPhone and does all of his post-processing on the phone! In this great e-Guide written for BIRDS AS ART you will learn to set up your iPhone quickly and efficiently and how to to use it. In addition, there are dozens and dozens of tips on Cliff’s favorite apps and his favorite gear. Scroll down to the bottom to see the Table of Contents.

The iPhone Photography e-Guide: $20.00.

To order your copy of the The iPhone Photography e-Guide please click here.

Dr. Cliff Oliver

Dr. Cliff Oliver is an award-winning photographer, former photography instructor for the San Diego Natural History Museum, cutting-edge integrative health care professional, and international workshop leader. He created and taught the first 5-day immersion iPhone photography workshop at Hollyhock, Canada’s premier Leadership Learning Center. He teaches quarterly iPhone photography classes at the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library School of the Arts (these include Art on the iPhone, iPhoneography, Portraits and Selfies, and Practicing in the Field). His images have been on the cover of WildBird magazine, on display at Scripps Oceanography Institute, and been honored with multiple first-place finishes in the International Exhibition of Photography Del Mar. The San Diego Natural History Museum’s, “Birds of the World” centennial exhibit featured several of his images. One of his iPhone images received an honorable mention in the Athenaeum 23rd annual juried exhibition. He has displayed images at Art Speaks: Expressions of Hope and Healing and has produced a series of books, called Zen I, II, III, IV, V, VI and VII that feature original images that promote inner peace. The last 4 books feature only images taken on the iPhone. He teaches individuals and groups the skills of capturing iPhone/mobile photographs and then how to create personalized works of art.

Learn more about Cliff and what he does on his Center for Balance website here. And don’t forget, if I had never met Cliff I would be pushing up daisies somewhere. To request my Health Basics File that contains the whole story, please shoot me an e-mail by clicking here..

You can learn how I got interested in iPhone photography and see some of Cliff’s great iPhone images in the 2018 blog post here.

Typos

With all blog posts, feel free to e-mail or to leave a comment regarding any typos or errors.