Click here for an audio slide show I made from my first visit to the Faire in 2006

A pair of juvenile barn owls peek out from their nesting cavity, which is five stories up in a nearly-finished office building in Coldstream Research Campus in Lexington. It’s unusual for barn owls to nest in man-made structures, but wildlife biologist hope that they will return in future years to raise more babies in a nesting box which will be installed after this set of babies fledge. There are currently only around 10 known nesting sites in Kentucky. You can read Andy Mead’s full story about the owls on Kentucky.com.

As you can see, they are quite a ways up there and very tough to see with the naked eye. Many birders have been coming by to watch them at dusk with binoculars and spotting scopes. During the four times I have visited the site to photograph them, they have never appeared before 9:30, which is quite a few minutes after the sun has gone down. The two photos of the owls were taken with the Canon 1D Mark IV at 6400 ISO with a 600mm lens, 1.4 teleconverter. The exposure was VERY slow: anywhere from 1/4 second to a full second at f/5.6. A cable release was crucial to keep the lens/camera from moving. Most of the time, I couldn’t clearly see the owls until after the exposure was made and I could look at the back of the camera.

Homing Pigeons in flight – Images by David Stephenson

Dave LaBelle likes to give me a hard time about when we first met. I was in high school and thinking of coming to WKU for the photojournalism program. I handed him a copy of Bird Talk Magazine and inside was a photo of a white dove that I had taken (I raised doves and pigeons as a kid). Of course I was proud, especially since I was paid $25 for that photo. I made a copy of the check and put it in a photo album which I still have 25 years later. Little did I realize that Mr. LaBelle had his own passion for pigeons as a child.

Now as an adult I raise and race homers in my back yard. I’ve been taking photos of them during training tosses and as they fly around the house, but I’ve never been able to get anything as clean and sharp as I’d like. After a visit to a fellow club member’s loft this week, I realized he had a better space and many more white pigeons. So this morning I went over to his loft with a piece of black felt, a Canon Mark IV, two strobes on clamps and spent an hour photographing his birds. I love all the different shapes they make when flying – it’s just not something you can discern when they are moving so fast. Maybe I can get Bird Talk to publish one . . .

Mr. LaBelle, this post is for you. You ready to get racing again??

(BTW, let me make an important distinction for those of you who may watch or photograph those “white dove” releases at weddings or funerals: The birds being released are white homers just like you see in the photos above. They are NOT doves. The release business knows darn well that no one would hire them to release pigeons, so they call them doves. The white pigeons go home and can therefore be available again for the next release. Domesticated doves would just go off into the wild and likely die. I remember getting into an argument with a copy desk about a caption I wrote and they wouldn’t believe me that they weren’t doves. **end rant**)

After 12 years of covering the Kentucky Derby for the Lexington Herald-Leader as a staff photographer, I had a few more options this year as a freelancer (of course one options was to sit at home sipping mint juleps and watch the race on the big screen). Well, the draw of the race was too much and my former boss, Ron Garrison invited me back to work with the team I have been working with for every other derby I’ve worked.

This year, though, I asked Ron if I could actually shoot the race (wha?) Yup, I’ve never watched or photographed the race or viewed it live in the years I’ve been shooting for the Herald-Leader. (There was that one year, nearly 25 years ago when I worked as assistant for Bill Frakes and I pushed his remote buttons from the roof of the Downs – but that doesn’t count). For the last ten years or so, I’ve covered the backside with Mark Cornelison for the week leading up to the Derby. That’s working double shifts for a week. There have been times when I’ve worked from 7 a.m. Friday morning until 3 a.m Sunday morning with about four hours of sleep Friday night. For all that hard prep work, I never did get to shoot the two-minute race. Ron agreed to let me have a race position in addition to another assignment before the race.

My other job for the day was to cover the infield with reporter Amy Wilson and create a piece in the flavor of our series called Project Dateline. So we took the approach of the infield turning into city for the day: Infield, Ky.

The infield is a gold mine, as most photographers know, but again, I’ve never shot it. My assignments have always been fashion/celebrities/multimedia and owners box during the race. So you can imagine how much fun covering the infield was, especially in the pouring rain. Safe to say it was one of the more enjoyable Kentucky Derbys I’ve ever covered. Hopefully Ron will have me back.

Jennifer Garner and Idol Gives Back in Jackson, Ky – Images by David Stephenson

In March, I was hired by Fox TV to be the still photographer for the segment they were producing for American Idol Gives Back, which feature actor Jennifer Garner visiting the LBJ Elementary School’s Save the Children outreach program in Jackson, Ky.

Garner and the video crew were great to work with and very low-key during their visit. After watching the episode, I thought they treated the subjects of the stories with sincerity – something that many in East Kentucky are wary of.

Spent an evening around the neighborhood looking for those little signs of spring. After such a long winter, these little glimpses of spring are quite welcome indeed.

With a nod towards the basketball post-season and Kentucky’s beloved men’s AND WOMEN’S teams, Amy Wilson and I took a trip to Wild Cat, Kentucky in Clay County to resume our Project Dateline series. I had to take a little break from working on this series since I left the Herald-Leader nearly a year ago. But now we’re back on it and I hope more will follow as summer marches on. Let’s just hope the cats march on as well!

WILD CAT — At dawn, the Mouth of the Beech Creek River is a deep jade green. The ground that rises up all it is the unmistakable color of wood shavings. The sky above it is cloaked in a still frozen fog. Visible in dark patches, freshly turned earth, ready for planting.

Still, the roosters down at Larry Owens’ compound are noisily gearing up for their big every-morning-doodlefest, beaten already to the punch by the gee-whiz daffodil bulbs which have forced their greens up and their yellow petals out to greet this day.

It’s March Madness in Little Wild Cat, a town of maybe 75. That might not count the whole Combs family that lives over in Big Wild Cat, says Chris Davidson, who is out in his camo-gear this morning, thinking of bagging a few squirrels, and isn’t up to doing a census.

To read Amy’s complete story, you can check out the Project Dateline website.

Bald eagle, Lexington, Kentucky

Bald Eagle, Lake Ellerslie, Lexington, Kentucky

Bald eagle making a dive on a fish

Bald eagle looking to make a dive on some prey

I had a tip a year ago about this eagle hanging out near Jacobson Park, but I never could find it. Herald-Leader photog Charles Bertram told me it was back out there today so I went to see if I could find it. Sure enough – there it was exactly where I was told to look for it a year earlier. Charles had much better luck than I did, though, and had some kick-butt photos of the eagle with a half-eaten gull in its talons. If only he had a website to publish those photos . . . I’d give him a little link-love.

While this isn’t the first photo of an eagle I’ve taken, I’m most excited that this bird is in Lexington! I was born here and never did I think that I would ever see a bald eagle in Fayette County. One man I talked to at the lake said the bird has been there for a couple of weeks and that he doesn’t stay much longer than that.

Shot with a Canon Mark IV and a 600mm f/4 lens.

It’s been about three months since the University of Kentucky’s campus-wide smoking ban went into effect. As I walk across campus most days, I don’t see too many smokers. But recently, I have noticed that a few [stubborn?] students don’t seem to worry too much about the ban and they continue to smoke as they please. While I don’t normally make a point of photographing the smokers (yet), I loved the light and shadows on this guy, especially as he exhaled.