Jerome Cosyn Photography

Jerome Cosyn Photography Jerome Cosyn photographs the natural beauty of landscapes, birds, and wildlife. He lives in Ohio, and travels in North America and Europe.

Jerome Cosyn resides in Ohio, where he photographs the natural beauty of the landscape, as well as the birds and wildlife that inhabit the region. He also travels in the United States, Canada, and Europe to explore and photograph a wide variety of subjects. This site is a personal journey, discovering photography as an art, an interest, a skill, and a devotion. My goal is to share the journey: the

choices made, the lessons learned, the passions endured, and the joy obtained. Thanks for joining my journey.

Walking beside a lake as the sun was settling down for the night, I was quite charmed by the way the evening light came ...
07/24/2026

Walking beside a lake as the sun was settling down for the night, I was quite charmed by the way the evening light came through the leaves of a sapling sycamore, creating a lovely, luminous green. Behind, the sunlight danced merrily upon the waves of the lake, providing a sparkling backdrop. The way Nature plays with light and color is a beautiful thing.


Killbuck Lakes, Ohio – 22 July 2026

Tech stuff: 28-400mm lens at 330mm, hand held, 1/250" @ f/8, ISO-160.

A recent post of a Steller's jay I photographed in California, along with a viewer's comment, reminded me that I had int...
07/24/2026

A recent post of a Steller's jay I photographed in California, along with a viewer's comment, reminded me that I had intended to talk about the birds I encountered on that trip. Camping in a tent immerses me in the middle of Nature in a way that staying in a hotel or resort lodge does not, and the first sounds I hear every morning are the songs and calls of birds. They provide my wake-up call usually before the sun is up, and their voices provide a continuous accompaniment to camp life, as well as hikes and explorations throughout the day.

I am no ornithologist, and I have no expertise on the avian world. I love to hear the birds, but I can identify only a few by their voice. So I do what any modern, technically-aware person would do: I rely on my smartphone to tell me. The app I use is called Merlin, which is provided free of charge by Cornell Lab. It's used by millions of people to identify birds by their sound or their appearance. You can find the app here: merlin.allaboutbirds.org

With the touch of a button, Merlin will begin listening, and if there are birds singing or calling anywhere nearby it will almost instantly tell you what they are. While I was camping around California (back in April and May) I got in the habit of turning Merlin on in the morning when I got up, while I was making coffee and having breakfast, and letting it list all the birds it heard. Then I captured screen shots of the results.

Here are some of the birds that sang and chattered around me. It isn't an all-inclusive list, but it's a pretty good sample, collected over a period of six weeks, from mid-April until the beginning of June, from the southern desert areas of California (Joshua Tree National Park, Mojave, Death Valley) up through the forest areas of the Sierra Nevada mountains, as far north as Tahoe National Forest. Birds from below sea level to 10,000 feet up in the mountains sang for me during my journey. Some of the same species were seen and heard in all locations, while some were confined only to specific regions. The photos are a composite of the screen shots from Merlin. Here's the list, sorted alphabetically:

Acorn Woodpecker
American Crow
American Goldfinch
American Robin
Ash-throated Flycatcher
Black Phoebe
Black-headed Grosbeak
Black-throated Gray Warbler
Brewer's Blackbird
Brown Creeper
Brown-headed Cowbird
Bullock's Oriole
California Quail
California Scrub-Jay
California Towhee
Common Poorwill
Dark-eyed Junco
Downy Woodpecker
Fox Sparrow
Killdeer
Lesser Goldfinch
Mountain Chickadee
Mourning Dove
Nuttall's Woodpecker
Northern Flicker
Northern House Wren
Oak Titmouse
Red-winged Blackbird
Rose-breasted Grosbeak
Song Sparrow
Spotted Towhee
Steller's Jay
Violet-green Swallow
Western Tanager
Western Warbling Vireo
Western Wood-Pewee
Wild Turkey
Yellow-rumped Warbler

Back in April, I received a pop-up notification from Recreation.gov, which handles all camping reservations for National...
07/24/2026

Back in April, I received a pop-up notification from Recreation.gov, which handles all camping reservations for National Park and Forest campgrounds, to notify me that my next reservation was for Death Valley National Park. It's a standard notification, but the way it fit into the little pop-up window made it seem rather ominous, and even a little creepy. 😆

Until I spent time in California, I had never seen or heard of the Steller's jay. I first noticed them around my camp at...
07/23/2026

Until I spent time in California, I had never seen or heard of the Steller's jay. I first noticed them around my camp at Inyo National Forest, where they were frequent bold and vocal visitors. On my initial glimpse as one flew past, I thought it might have been a blue jay, but when I got a better look, I realized they were a different breed.

With their dusky dark heads and shoulders, they look rather like a blue jay that was peering up into a chimney and caught a face full of soot. Their voices definitely sound like jay-speak, but harsher and more guttural, like blue jays speaking with a grackle accent. After seeing many at Inyo, I saw them almost everywhere else I went in the mountain forests, from Sierra to Tahoe. This one buzzed past me in Yosemite Valley, not far from the lower waterfall, carrying nesting material. It stopped to look around, as birds often do before returning to their nests, making sure it was safe, and I managed to capture its portrait before it moved on.


Yosemite National Park, 22 May 2026

Tech stuff: 28-400mm lens at 340mm, 1/125" @ f/8, ISO-2500, -0.7EV. These are not exposure settings I would recommend for birding. In the early morning under a heavy canopy of trees there wasn't much light, and I had been shooting the landscape along the banks of the creek, not planning to capture birds. When the jay appeared, I knew it would perch for only a few seconds, so I didn't have time to play with settings, and just took what I could get.

ConeflowerWith a break at last from the heat and thunderstorms hereabouts, I was happy to have a chance for a little hik...
07/23/2026

Coneflower
With a break at last from the heat and thunderstorms hereabouts, I was happy to have a chance for a little hike on the trails of a nearby park. Even the insects seemed to be taking a break. A typical coneflower photo usually includes a butterfly, but it seems the local lepidoptera decided to go on strike. Or maybe they were having a team-building confab at a juice bar. Whatever the case, I decided if the butterflies were willing to break protocol, so could I, and I was happy enough with just the flower, unadorned with big floppy wings. I think it works OK on its own.


Killbuck Lakes, Ohio – 22 July 2026

Tech stuff: 28-400mm lens at 400mm, hand held, 1/160" @ f/11, ISO-450. This lens does not have the extremely close focusing distance of my older super-zoom, the 18-300mm. That lens can focus without going cross-eyed at about 19 inches throughout its zoom range, but the 400mm needs about 4 feet, which is sometimes difficult, particularly when shooting downward toward a flower (or butterfly), since my arms aren't 4 feet long. So I had to hunt for awhile to find a coneflower where I could get sufficient distance, but without other foliage in between, and with a satisfactory background that was neither too close nor too messy. Fortunately, there were a lot of coneflowers in bloom, and five minutes of searching produced one that I could make work. I needed to stop down the aperture because the flower was bouncing a little in the breeze, and even with it moving in and out I wanted to get most of its depth in focus. Of course this also meant I needed the background to be even further back, so it would not be in focus. Ah, the multitude of details that come into play when trying to capture a portrait of a pretty flower. Sometimes models can be temperamental, and you just have to be patient with them.

The Face Of Half DomeOne of the most recognizable faces in California is the sheer, flat, vertical face of Half Dome. Ea...
07/22/2026

The Face Of Half Dome
One of the most recognizable faces in California is the sheer, flat, vertical face of Half Dome. Early in the morning, with the sun low behind it, shining on the dome side, a photo of the shadowy granite face demanded to be black & white. There was essentially no color anyway, and the somber shades of deep gray are perfect to carry the stolid mood of the massif. It is a face that inspires awe and wonder, a view never to be forgotten.


Yosemite National Park – 24 May 2026

Tech stuff: 28-400mm lens at 320mm, tripod, 1/1000" @ f/8, ISO-100, -1EV. The RAW image was converted to monochrome in post, cropped to 7x5 (which had been anticipated during composition, though the camera's natural aspect is 3x2), and finished with some dodging & burning (with thanks to Ansel Adams).

Moody Mojave MorningThe wind was fierce across the desert, pounding and shaking the tent so that I got very little sleep...
07/21/2026

Moody Mojave Morning
The wind was fierce across the desert, pounding and shaking the tent so that I got very little sleep during the night. I was up as soon as there was light, but the wind prevented me from making coffee or cooking breakfast, so I was driving along the dirt roads toward the highway that would take me to town. I made slow progress, because I stopped often to gape open-mouthed at the scenes the desert, mountains, and sky were conspiring to create for me. All alone in the desert, with not another person or car anywhere in sight, it did feel as if Nature had put on the morning's show just for my benefit.

The sight of a gigantic cloud bank, dark and roiling, pouring over the mountains, creating rapidly-shifting cascades of light flashing and playing across the landscape, filled me with awe, not only at the power and beauty of Nature, but with gratitude that I should be there, in that place and time, to experience the beginning of a new day arriving with such magnificent glory.


Mojave National Preserve – 26 April 2026

Tech stuff: 28-400mm lens at 115mm, hand held, 1/250" @ f/11, ISO-125, -1EV.

The winds, they kiss my lips, the sun,He beats me hard.The dunes, they snigger at me....—Kaavyaa Kriday, The Sand DunesT...
07/20/2026

The winds, they kiss my lips, the sun,
He beats me hard.
The dunes, they snigger at me....
—Kaavyaa Kriday, The Sand Dunes

The winds were hot. The sun was hot. The sand was hot. It was late morning; it was early May. It was very hot.

When you walk upon sand dunes, you make little progress. Every step is pulled back, tugged by the dunes, as if they are unwilling to let you go. The sand crawls into your shoes, trying to entice you to merge with the dunes, become a part of them. Before I had moved a hundred yards, I was tired, panting hot dry breaths. The dunes are unrelenting. And the sun beats you hard. Sand dunes are soft. Walking is hard.

I stayed only long enough to be enthralled by the enormity of their seductive beauty: sinuous curves, yes, and beguiling, subtle colors shifting like the grains beneath my feet. I walked with effort, my neck twisting to follow the shapes sweeping across the expanse. I dropped to my knees to peer through the lens, knowing my photos were feeble illusions of the powerful sand. It was very hot.


Death Valley National Park, Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes, 1 May 2026

Tech stuff: 28-400mm lens at 400mm, hand held, 1/200" @ f/11, ISO-125.

At the edge of an alpine lake, a tiny pine grows, with a beautiful view of the water and mountains stretching out before...
07/19/2026

At the edge of an alpine lake, a tiny pine grows, with a beautiful view of the water and mountains stretching out before it. Perhaps someday it will be tall and strong like the two giants guarding over it.


Yosemite National Park, Tenaya Lake, 25 May 2026

Techie jazz: 17-28mm lens at 17mm, hand held, 1/160" @ f/16, ISO-125, -1EV. In close quarters between the two large trees, wanting to emphasize the little tree but include as much of the mountains as possible, it made sense to use a wide-angle lens and shoot from a very low perspective. This also brought the feet of both the two big pines into view to frame the little guy in the middle. With bright, mid-morning sunlight, exposure was dialed back one stop to keep the clouds and the snow on the mountainside from being overexposed.

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