Bodega Bay Oystercatcher Feeding

Photo by Paul F. Gill

This photo was taken on February 16, 2010 in Bodega Bay, California, US. More images are HERE.

Something about the photographer.

My name is Paul F. Gill and I am a pho­tog­ra­pher based out of Sonoma County liv­ing in Santa Rosa, California.

I was born in 1957 in Roar­ing Spring, Penn­syl­van­nia. Before I was 9 years old I had seen more of the United States than most peo­ple see in a life­time. I had par­ents who wanted to drive, camp and see this great land called the USA. We got our kicks on Route 66.

When I was 9 years old my dad asked me and my 2 broth­ers if we would want to move to Cal­i­for­nia. He said we would “get bikes to ride” in Cal­i­for­nia because Penn­syl­van­nia was just to hilly for bikes. Of course we said yes not know­ing we were being bribed. But that next Christ­mas he came through as promised. Mov­ing to Cal­i­for­nia changed our lives. I will always be a Californian.

Pho­tog­ra­phy is my passion. My dad exposed me to this pas­sion and started it all by giv­ing me a half frame cam­era when I was a teenager. My dad always had a cam­era and we have the old Kodachromes, home processed Ektachromes and Black & White prints to prove it.

Film pho­tog­ra­phy was fun but dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy is a dream come true.

The exper­i­men­ta­tion with pho­tog­ra­phy that dig­i­tal pro­vides is incred­i­ble for build­ing a cre­ative knowl­edge base. The soft­ware tools that are con­tin­u­ously improv­ing pro­vide for lev­els of artis­tic cre­ation that seemed impos­si­ble even 5 years ago.

Cur­rently I have 2 Nikons, my trusty D2X and my out­stand­ing D300.

The D2X is great as a gen­eral pho­tog­ra­phy cam­era. I use the D300 when shoot­ing wildlife. The D300 low noise with high ISO capa­bil­ity has made it my cam­era of choice for wildlife shooting. The Nikon DX for­mat is pre­ferred and there is no desire to go back to “full frame” 35 mm for­mat yet. The crop fac­tor of the DX for­mat is quite use­ful for both wildlife and land­scape photography.

Post-processing of images is done with Adobe Light­room and some assis­tance from Nik Soft­ware plug-ins. Light­room is a won­der­ful tool not only for pro­cess­ing of images but also for orga­niz­ing and cataloging.

I travel a lot pur­su­ing my pas­sion of pho­tog­ra­phy. Liv­ing in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia pro­vides me with a lot of local places to prac­tice pho­tog­ra­phy. The coast, the San Fran­cisco sky­line, numer­ous wildlife refuges, and the High Sierra.

There is always a place to go take pic­tures in my large backyard.

Paul