I went out again last night late in the day to my favorite wildlife management area and came away with a few more pictures I really like and wanted to share.  They do all show up in my flickr stream here if you want to see everything.

Heading down the road I saw something far off in front of me, I assumed it was a group of vultures until I looked through the binoculars.  It was a group of turkeys.  A whole heck of a lot of them!  Looked like two adults and several juveniles.  Here's a couple images of the juveniles...I haven't gone through the rest of the images yet that have the adults in them.

As I'd inch my car closer they were getting nervous and started to cross the road several times

Eventually they flew off...into the tops of the trees.  It was odd to see a turkey in a tree, I guess birds and trees just go together...just funny to see around 13 turkeys in the treetops.

 I've got to say, I never wanted binoculars.  I never thought I'd need them.  I figured if I wasn't close enough to get the shot with my 100-400mm lens then what did I need binoculars for?  Now I'm learning.  If I hadn't looked through to see what was in the road, and assumed it was vultures, I would have just drove on and then the turkeys would have gotten scared and flown off.  So, because I looked before I just drove on I was able to get some interesting shots by knowing what was up ahead and driving slowly.  Thank goodness my husband needed binoculars for a hobby of his, because now I'm using them for my outings.

Shortly after the juvenile turkeys, this little one made her way out and was busy chomping some grass.  

She stuck around for awhile and then eventually 'took off'...

It was a cloudy day to beging with, some raindrops here and there and the sun was setting...so the light was way off and pretty wonky.  She's not as sharp as I'd like her to be but it was a surprise that she took off and I wasn't ready for it.

I did see another really tiny fawn further down the road but she was so far off with her mom that those pictures aren't even worth posting.  But she had to be 'brand new'...she was adorable.

There were quite a few Red Shouldered Hawks out last night, too.  I found this guy just finishing up a meal on a fence post.  I saw him start to turn around and did a little rapid fire with my shutter to try and catch his taking off position, instead he gave me some rapid fire of his own...

And later on, after getting home, I was treated to this beautiful 'almost full' moon...there was actually an orange/brown ring around it but I didn't have time to sit and play with my settings on the camera to try and get it because the mosquitos were trying to carry me away.  I did go out later with my tripod and tried a few, but I didn't last long, and that was after coating myself with bug spray.

I've had such great luck lately photographing bucks and does at one of my favorite wildlife management areas I frequent.  They've been out in abundance and quite cooperative!

If you're wondering, I shoot most of my images of wildlife right from sitting in my car.  This one area I go to isn't frequented by many people so the wildlife are not 'used' to seeing people all the time, so if you see something (even just a hawk) and get out of your car, it will fly off.

The first buck with a nice full rack I captured happened the weekend before last.  It was just after sunrise (sun coming up behind me and to my left I think) when I spotted him out eating grass and just casually walking about.  I was so excited to have finally gotten a six-pointer with my camera, and the light was awesome.

This past Saturday I was up before dawn again and the first deer I spotted were these two does making their way through a barbed wire fence.  The light was not too good that day.

Then a little farther along I spotted these two bucks and three does.  They were really far off, I had my 100-400mm zoomed out all the way and did crop this image.  Kinda blurry, funky light, shooting through tall grass, but I was really thrilled to see all of these together in one spot.

Also spotted that day was this six pointer...and when I posted this image to flickr, I wrote, "if the antlers don't give it away that this is a male, something else should!" Just me being funny...not the greatest image in the world, the light was in and out but I was happy to get it.

Then the next day I went out again, this time well after sunrise so I wasn't expecting to see many deer.  I did meet a friend out there and we drove around looking for a buck...she really wanted a shot of a nice one so we were on the hunt.   We did see quite a few does and I was able to get this image even though we had a storm coming up...

And my buddy was able to get alot of deer shots also, but she still wanted her buck.  It was getting late and so we had turned around and were heading back out.  Just driving along, talking and then I saw HIM.  I got so excited I grabbed my friend's arm and all I could do was point.  I slowed the car down and we stopped and shot alot of 'just in case' shots from inside the car and then we slowly crept out.  We both have the 100-400mm lens so we were able to stay where we were and not try to approach him and let him do his 'thing'.

He preceded to eat acorns out of an oak tree at first...

Stretching to get them...

And then he started to rub his antlers all over, leaving his scent and sign that he was there and that everyone (does) should know it!

And then, the image I'd been looking for and the image my friend had been looking for came and we were both so thrilled to have gotten this shot (looking back over his shoulder) and to just bask in the awesomeness of him!  I know, sounds corny..but trust me, it was pretty exciting stuff for us!

As you can see he's an eight point buck.  From what I've read that usually means he's about 4 years old.  So he's made it through several hunting seasons so far.  I wonder if he'll be around next year, I hope so.

Leave a comment here and link me up to go visit your deer/buck photos...preferably wildlife/natural type photos, not trophy photos from hunting, thanks :)

I hear this all the time, How do you load presets into lightroom?

There's several ways to do this.  But I'll tell you my way.

Open Lightroom

Go to the Develop Screen

At the top of your preset list (on the left) you should see a folder called 'Lightroom Presets', right click on that.

You'll see the option 'new folder' pop up, choose that.

Now, what I do is...I name that new folder the name of the person/website that created a set of presets I'd like to load.  That way everything is organized and easy to find.  Once you've chosen your name click 'create'.

Now you'll see the new folder you named and added in your list on the left.  Right click on that new folder and choose 'import'.  Go find where on your computer you saved the lightroom presets and choose them and then click 'import'

That's it!  Now you can continue to make new folders for each set of presets you have starting back again at the top of this tutorial and right clicking on the 'Lightroom Presets' folder.

Hope this helps :)

What do I sell the most of?

T-shirts!  Yep, I sell tons of t-shirts through cafepress.  I have a couple stores there, Heather Green Photography and The Clotheshorse.  The photo store is fairly new and hasn't gone through a Christmas shopping season yet but The Clotheshorse just keeps rockin' on every year. 

Some of my most popular designs are:

Live, Love, Laugh, Neigh

If you can read this, put me back on my horse:

These sell over and over.  I really love using cafepress.  I originally started with cafepress back in 2002 just designing t-shirts for myself because I could never find any in the stores that I liked.  Then one day I decided I wanted to actually make money selling my designs and the rest is history.

You also can sign up for free to sell your designs at cafepress right HERE.

Some things I suggest to market your designs are:

Start a blog..they're free, why don't you try blogger or wordpress

Start a myspace page dedicated to your cafepress store, search around myspace and add other cafepress shopkeepers as friends.

Find free online classifieds that have categories that fit what type of designs you're selling and market your stuff there.

I'm sure you can think of alot of ideas once you set your mind to it...the key is learning exactly what types/sizes of images to upload, tagging your images correctly when uploading them to cafepress and advertising wherever you can.

There are other sites out there that do the same thing as cafepress, but don't quite have the huge customer base that cafepress does.  You can also try Printfection or Zazzle.

You can check out my Printfection store HERE

And you can check out my Zazzle store HERE

There's alot of different ways to create textured photos, but they all sort of follow the same idea...working with layers in Photoshop....so here's a few tutorial links for you so you can get the basic idea.

Texture-Tutorial - by archtype-stock

Texture Tutorial - by kayceeus

Texture Tutorial - by Princess-of-Shadows

And here's a few places to find free textures:

Urban Dirty

Archive Textures

Image After

Texture King

Flickr Group - Textures For Layers

Flickr Group - Objects For Layers